Obligatory end-of-year review, 2023

Wellll….

2023 is almost over.

A more interesting year than 2022, which was better than 2021 so on the whole we progress…I seem to have been pretty busy.

Two top gaming-related events of the year: Attending the California Army National Guard’s Urban Operations Planners Course at JFTB Los Alamitos in May, and an extended trip to Europe which included giving two game-related lectures organized by the University of Turin.

Game publishing and publicity

January: Finally got around to formally publishing Palace Coup via BTR Games and WargameVault. One fun thing about it was being contacted by the brother in law of David Hemmings’ son for a gift copy. He was very surprised to get a copy of a game that was inspired by a movie his father had starred in (and wasn’t Barbarella) and which included a counter with his dad’s face on it!

April: A Chinese-language version of Strike for Berlin appeared, produced by arrangements with Banana Games (think they are in Tianjin). A couple of my other Tiny Battles or Flying Pig publications have had the same treatment. As far as I know, these are just straight translations with new art… why they choose the titles they do, I really don’t know.

August: Posted the files for QUICK V2, following some more thoughts I had had on the design and the suggestions of students on the Urban Operations course. New map, single version of game, Execution Matrix using a streamlined set of cubes and options. Quite pleased with how it has shaped up.   Also, while I was in London Dr. Richard Barbrook of the Class Wargames group organized a public collective demo and play of Civil Power, using a triple-size version he had made up for this kind of thing. We had about a dozen people show up and I was very gratified to see the interest in the topic!

September: Two public events while I was in Turin, organized by two faculty members of the university there. First was collective public play of A Distant Plain, prefaced by a few remarks by me on resistance warfare; second was a lecture on “analog board games as citizen journalism” given to students of an interdisciplinary doctoral program that had games and gaming courses in it. I had a great time, and loved visiting Italy for the first time! Deep and many thanks for Professores Giame Alonge and Riccardo Fassone.    Also, posted PnP files for the free games Mastering Resistance: Orange Gobi and Operation Canuck. These are my first two purposely-solitaire game designs, after over 60 others (that mostly can be played solo by taking both sides). As items with the theme of Partisan warfare in the general area of Turin, I put them together as kind of a gift in return for the invitation to come to the city.

October: In the spirit of “games as journalism” I quickly created a variant for We Are Coming Nineveh! to cover the Israeli operations against Gaza City – same components, just new map. These operations are still going on at the time of writing and I’m not at all sure when they might end.

November: Mischa Untaga, who I met in London at the public collective play of Civil Power, created a version of Algeria (OSS edition) for Rally The Troops, a new website/ software program that allows online play and even enforces the rules for you. It attracted some attention!   Also, posted a major variant to Berlin 85, one of my favourite wargames, to give some greater depth and possibilities to operational urban combat.

Game design work and future publication

Work and or testing started or continued throughout the year on the following. Other projects languished or are pretty much done (Virtualia II, Squares of the City, O Canada, Scaleable Urban Simulation, Imposed Cost, SUBTLE, EXURB, Flying Maple).

Brief Border Wars Quad Volume II: Files were submitted mid-year and no sooner had we done so when Compass asked about Volume III! Sigh. Latest word (from their Christmas catalog) is that the game will be out in mid-2024.

China’s War 1937-41: Still more jerky development this year but we are getting there… the game is mechanically done, testing has finished. Map art is done, it remains to do art and layout for cards, components and box. Done with writing playbook materials (designer’s notes, bibliography, historical essay on the war, pronunciation guide, etc..). Still remaining to do are selecting art for the above, and the solitaire system (which I think will the the card-based Arjuna system, I am not taking a hand in it) and the  tutorial scenario. So, maybe by the end of 2024? I am not sure how bollixed up the GMT supply chain is still. At year end pre-orders are stuck just short of 1,700, which is good enough but not many more than this time last year.

Quick Urban Integrated Combat Kriegsspiel (QUICK): Version 2 published in August 2023, after the May serial of the Urban Operation Planner Course both the students and I had many ideas. I think it’s shaped up really well, for a simple semi-abstract game about opposing modern-day forces engaging in kinetic conflict in a large city.

91 DSSB Staff Game: Demonstrated this at Connections-UK and have had some interested parties contact me since. Minor additions, most notably a set of “role sheets” that explain to the players a bit more about who they are and what they want to do in the game.

Mastering Resistance: Orange Gobi and Operation Canuck: I started work on these two games on Partisan warfare in Piedmont early this year and got them done by summer. Orange Gobi was a “Torinese OSS mission” retheme of a generic Mastering Resistance booklet-game I had been working on with a faculty member at JSOU; Operation Canuck came about after I learned in the course of my research about an SOE mission that took place in nearby Alba. Both are simple and quick games that use decks of ordinary playing cards (been doing a lot with those lately), small maps and a low number of counters.

Conventions

November: Went to BottosCon in New West. No COVID this time, not even the usual con crud. Got in some demo games of QUICK and even a play of Powers of Persuasion, a card game on influence that was distributed at the Connections-UK conference.

Conferences and professional wargaming stuff

April: For Connections Online, new chum Robert Domaingue (a very clever fellow who had a good career in the US State Department and is now enjoying a thought-filled and creative retirement) did a short presentation on the idea of “Red as a creativity prompt”. That is, how do you get to finish that list of things that would never occur to you….

May: Third serial of the Urban Operations Planners Course. It went very well, I think! We had more time to introduce the game, in two sections (Wednesday afternoon saw introduction and play and Saturday was further play and discussion). Again, thanks to some excellent facilitators, the enthusiastic support and participation of the General sponsoring the course, and plain novelty value we pulled it off.  The students had a lot of suggestions and comments (mostly positive) so based on those and my own notions I quickly produced Version 2 of the game, which is the one now available on The QUICK Page . The next serial is in August 2024, after 40ID HQ gets back from running Task Force Spartan in Kuwait (and hopefully there will not be a regional war or major US military intervention to interrupt things).

June: I did not attend Connections-North in Ottawa but did make a short video detailing what I had been up to designwise in the previous year. The one-day conference coincided in time and space with the opening of an exhibition about wargames at the National War Museum, featuring a copy of A Distant Plain among other things.

September: Went across the pond for Connections-UK 2023, held at RMA Sandhurst. Sweltering weather but it was great to be back after 5 years! I made a presentation about my urban combat wargames and in the two “Games Fair” periods I demonstrated the 91 DSSB game and EXURB.

Writing and ‘casting

February: I was on a panel about “Colonialism in Boardgames”. It was organized by Fred Serval and ably highlighted Mary Flanagan’s new book about that subject (though the book gives wargames very short shrift). I certainly never expected to be on a panel with luminaries like Mary Flanagan and Cole Wehrle! I managed to keep my finger out of my nose and there was a long and moderately interesting (because it was well monitored) BGG thread afterward.

March: I was on the Pushing Cardboard podcast as part of SDHistcon Online, to talk about my operational scale urban combat games.

April: In Conflicts of Interest, an online zine maintained by Harold Buchanan, there was a roundtable of 7 designers including me on “Gaming the Unpleasant”. Very, very thoughtful answers on a topic of perpetual interest and work for me.

July: I had a great time on the “Five Games for Doomsday” podcast. We talked about a lot of things other than games!  Interview:

August: talked with Dan Bullock, a brilliant guy, on his “Game Design Deep Dive” podcast – it was also very far-reaching and thoughtful. Again, we went into the issue of designing on unpleasant topics. People are going to think I’m some kind of ghoul….

November: For SDHistcon Fred Serval posted a video of a short discussion between the two of us in his apartment in London about the state and future of wargames, while I teach him Guerrilla Checkers. Fred did a longer interview with me for his Homo Ludens podcast when I was in London, and it will come out later.

Near-meaningless digest of site statistics:

Overall traffic seems to be down a bit over 2022. I seem to be cruising still at around 1,700 views per month, for a total of about 21,000 views. About 8,000 visitors in all. The five most curious countries were: US (by a very wide margin), UK, Canada, Spain and Italy. One guy clicked in from Nigeria; likely a bot, or perhaps a lonely cash-rich prince looking to bankroll my BTR Games imprint.
Besides the then-current post, popular pages included Free Games, BTR Games, the QUICK Page and Scenarios and Variants pages. The two most popular posts were on the Gaza City variant for We Are Coming Nineveh! and a bad review I wrote of a book on wargaming that was apparently written and illustrated by ChatGPT or something like it. Again, the number of hits was likely due to linked traffic from Facebook groups.
The most downloaded documents were items for free PnP games: the maps for the Gaza City variant and Operation Canuck, and the counters for QUICK and Mastering Resistance. By the unequal numbers of downloads for the different game components I cannot help but think that a lot of these downloads are just grabs by ‘bots… whatever for, I don’t know.