Hitting the road again

In a few weeks I will be crossing the pond again, for the first time since 2018.

I will be in London for a few days in late August/early September to visit step-family and meet some gaming folks, including hanging out with the Class Wargames crowd… they will be arranging a play of Civil Power using Dr. Richard Barbrook’s plus-size demonstration set!

Then to Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, for the Connections-UK conference. I’ll be speaking on a panel about urban warfare and wargames, that is, mainly about the QUICK and some more about the other games that I have designed adjacent to the topic since then (EXURB, 91 DSSB Staff Game, Scaleable Urban Simulation, and SubtLE). There will also be a game fair to show these off.

Then to Turin, for two events connected with the University of Turin and ISTORETO (“Istituto piemontese per la storia della Resistenza e della società contemporanea ‘Giorgio Agosti’”). First is a public event where I will be talking about A Distant Plain and relating it to other games, followed by group play of the game (see notice below). It is the first in a series of four weekly events, the other game designers invited are Paolo Mori (Blitzkrieg! World War Two in 20 Minutes, which is actually a really neat game), Andrea Angiolilo (Wings of Glory) and Glauco Babini/ Chiara Asti (Repubblica Ribelle, a new co-operative game about creating and defending a Partisan republican zone in occupied Italy).

The next day I will be talking to a class of Games Studies students at the University about “Analog Newsgames” (you know the story here, I have found some interesting examples of these from Italian media of the 1980s for illustration as well).

Turin is a city with a very deep history of popular resistance, so there are some places I want to visit connected with the themes of anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi resistance during the war, and the disturbances during the Years of Lead.

I’ve never been to Italy before so I’m really excited! I was invited through the kind offices of Professors Giaime Alonge and Riccardo Fassone, from the Department of Humanities at the University of Turin. Thanks to them for the chance of a lifetime!

I giochi di Clio – BRIAN TRAIN  A Distant Plain: Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan 1^ incontro