Ludic Futurism
May 9, 2023 Leave a comment
Connections-Online was a couple of weeks ago.
Robert Domaingue and I made a presentation on the idea of “Red” as a prompt to creativity – how we think about Red shapes what we create.
You can see that Robert is by far the better presenter. Don’t miss my embarrassing coughing fit about 9:00!
The playlist of videos for all the presentations for Connections-Online 2023 is here:
April 28, 2023 4 Comments
At Conflicts of Interest Online, operated by Harold Buchanan and the gang behind SDHistcon, Volko Ruhnke held a roundtable of seven designers responding to the question prompt:
Historical boardgames often tackle difficult, unpleasant, or unconventional topics like war, slavery, the economics and social structure of exploitive colonial economics, human rights abuses, terrorism, piracy, dirty politics, and medieval social systems, as a few examples.
As a game designer facing the paradoxical linkage between unpleasant issues and fun gameplay, what sorts of topics would you find most difficult? How do you decide whether to tackle a difficult topic? And when you do, what do you abstract out and what do you include in the game?
Some very deep and thoughtful replies from Sebastian Bae, Mark Herman, Amabel Holland, Jason Matthews, Akar Bharadvaj, Cole Wehrle.
And me, bringing up the rear….
April 13, 2023 Leave a comment
Coming next week: the 2023 edition of Connections Online!
As you can see above, the theme this year is “The Enemy Gets A Vote”, and most presentations will deal with some aspect of RED – Red teaming, Red watching, Red cabbage… there will also be demonstrations and plays-through of classical Kriegsspiel (the 1796 Italian campaign), Sebastian Bae’s very clever Littoral Commander, and more.
Main events are in the middle of the week (18-20 April) but there are also satellite events either side of that.
One of these is on 1300 PDT Saturday 22 April:
How to think About The Other- “Red” as a Creativity Prompt
Game designers and players Brian Train (hobbyland) and Robert Domaingue (ex-State Department) will talk about their thoughts on the broader concept of “Red” in games. Questions from the audience welcome.
Yikes, five people have signed up for that one already… have to get my imposter syndrome reaction under control.
Go here to sign up for the whole event (a paltry $5), and getcher badges (free free free)!
https://tabletop.events/conventions/connections-online-2023
[edited to add: the video of our talk has been posted to Youtube. Robert is by far the better speaker!]
March 23, 2023 4 Comments
Today saw the monthly GMT Games update newsletter, with tidings of developments on all game projects and – most keenly anticipated by all – announcements of new items up for P500.
Two of these are notable:
A new four-pack of games on Latin American insurgencies by Stephen Rangazas, using a slightly encomplexified iteration of the cut-to-its-core COIN system he used in the first four-pack, The British Way. This one has games on the Tupamaros (1968), El Salvador (1979), Nicaragua (1979) and Shining Path (1980). You can play the El Salvador and Nicaragua games simultaneously side-by-side in the “Resisting Reagan” scenario.
More here: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1032-the-guerrilla-generation.aspx
This one is a continental-scale game on the European revolutions of 1848, using a an area control system that was featured in 1989: Dawn of Freedom and Twilight Struggle, two perennial GMT best sellers. The designer is Jules Felisaz, whose name I do not recognize and does not show up on Boardgamegeek so this must be his first published design.
More here: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1033-1848-the-springtime-of-nations.aspx
I designed a game on the Tupamaros in 1995, a game on the Shining Path in 1996, and a continental scale 1848-revolutions game in 1997. As far as I could tell these were the first designs on these conflicts.
So of course I am excited to see the second designs on all these conflicts coming out, over 25 years later!
Yes, I signed up for these, certainly….
March 14, 2023 Leave a comment
SDHist Con Online 2023 Spring Deployment is a one-day online event coming this Saturday, March 18.
I’ll be giving a talk on the games I’ve done on modern urban combat at the operational level, both irregular and regular flavours… from Tupamaro to EXURB (don’t know what that last one is? Tune in and find out!)
[EDITED TO ADD:
HERE ARE MY SLIDES AND SCRIPT. ]
[FURTHER EDITED TO ADD: HERE IS THE VIDEO GOOD LORD THERE IS ALMOST TWO HOURS OF IT….]
Registration link: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment
It’s $5.00 to attend but every event is free.
Link to the event, but be reminded there are dozens of other interesting panels and presentations too (just not at the same time as mine). https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/73
Overall event schedule, searchable: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule
Here are some I think would be interesting and intend to check out:
Talk on We Are Coming, Nineveh! out at last from NUTS! Publishing: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/58
Land and Freedom, an interesting new game on the Spanish Civil War (title of good Ken Loach movie too): https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/42
ZOIN, or zombie-inspired COIN system game about an outbreak in the northeastern US I guess… played out on Tabletop Simulator: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/59
More COIN, a presentation by Yann de Villeneuve on A Fading Star, the newest GMT COIN system game (volume 15 in the series!) about insurgency in modern Somalia: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/6
The very clever Vesa Arponen presents Order & Opportunity, his new game on the making of the post-Cold War new world order: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/9
Okay, this looks neat: Chicago ’68, a “tactical asymmetric game” by Yoni Goldstein on the famous police riot: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/16
And in case you wanted to find out all the secrets, “How To Design a Board Game”, a table featuring Joe Schmidt (GMT Designer and Developer), Alex Knight (Designer of Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War), and Sebastian Bae (Research Analyst, Wargame Designer, and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University) where they spill the beans: https://tabletop.events/conventions/sdhist-online-2023-spring-deployment/schedule/52
And though the event is taking place in the Pacific time zone, there will be extended hours and events so our friends in the UK and EU don’t have to stay up late to attend!
I hope you will drop by and check it out.
Also, if you happen to live near Rhode Island, be advised that the weekend of August 18-20 will see SD Hist Con East, hosted by the US Naval War College in Newport RI – registration opens at the end of this SD Hist Con!
This promises to be a very special event: numbers are strictly limited by the host to 60 only – first come first served!
The lucky few will spend time touring some cool local historical sites from the American Revolution and WW2 (Battleships! Submarines!)
You can access the registration link at http://www.sdhist.com .
February 27, 2023 1 Comment
Of course, these days everyone is talking about ChatGPT and other AI programs that generate verbiage or art scraped and remixed from all over the Internet and presented according to some nebulous algorithms.
Not long ago someone asked ChatGPT to come up with some rules for a Napoleonic era wargame and it made a creditable stab at it. It makes me wonder where it’s all headed, so I set up an account on openAI and asked it, “who is Brian Train?”
Answer:
Brian Train is a board game designer and author from Canada. He has designed and published over 100 board games, focusing primarily on conflict simulations, historical games, and games based on current events.
Train’s designs often deal with unconventional topics, such as the Algerian War, the Iran-Iraq War, and the global war on terror. He is known for his innovative approach to game mechanics, his attention to historical detail, and his ability to make complex topics accessible to players.
Train has also written extensively on game design, contributing to a number of publications and speaking at conferences and events around the world. He is particularly interested in the role of games in education, and has developed a number of games specifically for classroom use.
Some of Train’s most well-known designs include “A Distant Plain”, a game about the war in Afghanistan, “Colonial Twilight”, a game about the Algerian War, and “Binh Dinh ’69”, a game about the Vietnam War. His work has been recognized with a number of awards and nominations, including multiple Charles S. Roberts Awards for excellence in wargame design.
HA!
I think it’s just trying to butter me up….
February 22, 2023 Leave a comment
Exciting news, everybody!
This Sunday at 2000 UTC, I will be on a panel on Fred Serval’s Homo Ludens Youtube channel considering depictions of colonialism in boardgames – with a lineup of people that I never, ever expected I would share a stage with.
Description of topic and participants from Fred’s announcement:
“We will focus on the evolution of colonialism’s depiction in our games, examine ethical and historical considerations of this depiction and discuss a possible way forward for the hobby.”
The panel:
Mary Flanagan: Pioneer in the field of game research.
Jason “ShelfStories” Perez: Content creator and cultural advisor for board game publishers.
Brian Train: Legendary designer of weird wargames.
Cole Wehrle: boardgame mogul.
These are brilliant people…. accomplished academics and thoughtful designers… my Imposter Syndrome is surging so much right now.
Anyway, tune in, and see if I can keep my finger out of my nose while the big kids talk.
[Edit: I think it went quite well, even if I was not at my most articulate.]
February 8, 2023 Leave a comment
Alexander and Grant of The Players Aid talk about many of the games they want to play – they work their way through a whole shelf of titles. The whole is worth watching and they save the District Commander series for the last – about 1:14:15. Their advice: don’t play these when you are tired and distracted, but when you do your effort will be rewarded! Thanks a lot, guys. (Oh, and as the commenters on Youtube pointed out, there is a 4th volume in the series, DC Zone Nord Oranais). They also mention Brief Border Wars and Civil Power.
December 21, 2022 14 Comments
Ohhhhh….
2022 is almost over.
A scant improvement over 2021, but it wasn’t worse, so on the whole we progress… or do we.
Game publishing and publicity
March: An interview in Spanish about China’s War, not that much new stuff in it though.
June: It was announced that my game Greek Civil War would be in issue #165 of Japanese Command magazine. This one uses the original rules that I submitted to Decision Games that were adapted from Joe Miranda’s Decision Iraq system, and so are quite different from the mess that Decision published in Modern War magazine. This was my second appearance in Japanese Command (first was back in 2002 with Battle for China) and like the first, it appeared with beautiful map printing and counter production. Meanwhile, the original “4 box system” version called Andartes is still available for PnP from wargamevault.com.
July: Publication on the website of the complete PnP files for the QUICK, including a Vassal module put together in jig time by Curt Pangracs of the US Command General and Staff College. The QUICK Page
Game design work and future publication
Work and or testing started or continued throughout the year on the following. Other projects (a couple of semi-abstract games on urban counterinsurgency) languished.
Brief Border Wars Quad Volume II: Announced for pre-orders in August. We have about finished rules, counters, maps and box now and this will be out some time in 2023.
China’s War 1937-41: Development jerked ahead in the summer. Bad news is that development and testing has subsided while the GMT developer works to finish off Red Dust Rebellion, a COIN system game that will sell much, much better than this one (another advantage of science fiction games is that you don’t have to be true to history, and sometimes not even to the laws of physics). Good news is that there really isn’t much more to do! We turned up the volume on many of the cards of the Event Deck as players found them underwhelming, and made a few other slight mechanical changes but nothing major. At year end pre-orders are stuck just short of 1,600, which is good enough but not many more than this time last year.
Imposed Cost: a quick and simple game for 2 players on the 18-card model, on causing or preventing clandestine trouble on projects being built on the Belted Road. Would like to work on and test this with other human beings once or twice before putting it up for free PnP.
O Canada: A couple of playtests and a bit of thought. It’s about where I want it. Will likely put it out next year for free PnP (or I will make a physical copy for you for a price commensurate with my time and trouble to do so).
Quick Urban Integrated Combat Kriegsspiel (QUICK): A semi-abstract game about opposing modern-day forces engaging in kinetic conflict in a large city. Players are Division or Group Army commanders, vying to gain control of critical terrain within the city. To succeed, they must successfully manage Enablers, the array of skilled troops and machinery that exist to support and augment the power of the main Maneuver Units in the forces they command. Each round both players will draw or select colored cubes and then take turns using them to perform actions. The color of a cube determines what can be done, and with what unit. During play Enablers will be brought onto the battlefield or returned to it by being allocated to larger Maneuver Units, and these reinforced Maneuver Units will engage the enemy assisted by the special powers and abilities of their allocated Enablers. I started work on this in December 2021 and published it on this website (the QUICK page) in the summer, just before attending the Urban Operations Planners Course in July 2022.
Scaleable Urban Simulation: this was a game I developed for the Urban Operations Planners Course before I realized that I had to take a much simpler and more streamlined approach with the non-gamer students (which resulted in the QUICK). The idea is that there is a set of core rules that cover basic sets of missions/operations – moving, fighting, renewing, seeking – that are applicable to any of the three module levels the game is played out on: Division (where division HQ tells brigade HQs what to do, who then get battalion groups to do the operations and fighting); Brigade (Brigade HQ, battalion HQs, company size task forces); or Battalion (battalion HQ, company HQs, platoons with attachments). Meanwhile there are exclusive rules and different mixes of Enablers and things like that for the different modules; it is also a more open to modelling different points on the “competition continuum” than the QUICK, which is oriented towards large-scale, very kinetic combat operations. The game centres more on the activities of formation HQ units that become less and less able to do what they want to do (or are told to do) as they get tired and dissipated, as opposed to modelling combat resolution and damage to maneuver units. Components are a sheet of counters, formation cards, a set of 80 coloured cubes as needed for the QUICK and a map built up out of isomorphic tiles so battlefields can be built however you like. Would like to work on and test this with other human beings once or twice before putting it up for free PnP.
Strongman: a thorough redesign of Caudillo, for 3-5 players. Mostly done in Early Lockdown with the help of another designer but I’ve returned to it this year to straighten out a couple of points. Again, would like to test this with some other humans, as this is one I think would be formally published (though the art bill would not be small, since it is a card game).
SUBTLE (SUBterranean Learning Exercise): a fast game about keeping planning on track. 3-10 players collectively and abstractly represent the staff officers of a BCT who are trying to build a workable plan towards an objective, represented by them exploring through a field of inverted counters and creating a route past Hazards that are nullified by Enablers. Problem is, some players are actually “agents of chaos” who may mean well but lead the route of the plan astray or place obstacles in its path (as illustration, I offer this clever article from Task and Purpose: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/16-people-make-every-operational-planning-team/. Fear the Debater, the Guy From Band Camp, and above all the Seagull.). A bit of a metaphorical exercise and the Hazards and the Enablers that resolve them have a subterranean/urban theme – navigation failures, structural collapse, civilian detainee problem etc. – but this could be changed for other settings. The game has simple components – a small plain grid and 60 counters, no dice – and takes about 20-30 minutes to play depending on the number of players. Would like to work on and test this with other human beings once or twice before putting it up for free PnP.
DSSB Staff Game: A cooperative game for 3 players who represent different staff sections in a DSSB (American Army Divisional Sustainment Support Battalion), who work together to prepare and send off daily supply convoys to 3 divisional BCTs on the FLOT. Experienced wargamers know that most civilian wargames have detailed procedures for movement and combat, with the logistics processes handwaved away. For a long time I have wanted to design a game that approached the inverse of this. It’s a time management and planning game, with simple processes featuring an endless time track and roles and choices that put demands on the players as the situation continues to change. As a cooperative game it is not intensely competitive or antagonistic but the players have to work together to prevent the front line units from starving or running out of things (which will in turn make their own jobs that much harder). The game has simple components – two pages of tracks and charts, some small player mats, 60 counters and the same set of 80 coloured cubes needed for the QUICK. It can be played at any length to cover any number of “days” (actually iterations of the unit’s battle rhythm); probably takes about an hour or less for players to get the gist of things without prompting. Would like to work on and test this with other human beings once or twice before putting it up for free PnP.
That’s 12 designs more or less finished, and in some cases also started, in the last year and a bit (I think the Brief Border Wars Quad should count as four games, because each one requires a fair amount of specific research and its own exclusive rules). The new, smaller games were all done in August-October as I was inspired by feedback from the students on the Urban Operations Planners course to the effect that they wanted more time with the games, and the “theme day” structure of the course itself where we spent concentrated times on certain aspects of urban operations… could I make small, simple fast games that related to these themes?
Conventions
November: Went to BottosCon for the first time in three years. Caught COVID on the ferry going there. But it was fun until the virii took over.
Conferences and professional wargaming stuff
February: I chaired a panel at Connections North on “influence games”.
July: As mentioned above, I went to the second serial of the Urban Operations Planners Course. It was quite remarkable! Fortunately I was able to stay on the Base and the commute was a four-minute walk with no gate-guard angst; good because it was at the go-go-go pace of many courses… meaty lectures from 0800 to 1700 every day for six days, except one day when the military students went to “Razish”, an urban combat training site at the National Training Centre at Fort Irwin (we used the time back at the base to do some orientation and practice play of the QUICK) and the last day when we collectively learned and played the QUICK. I had spent much of the first half of the year preparing for this; it was the first time I had taught a game to a large group cold, with most of the group non-gamers to boot. But 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 next serial is in May 2023 and I do believe the General is going to give it another go, so I am planning to attend this one as well (and intend to catch the lectures I missed while I was ill).
October: At the one-day Connections Online event, I made a presentation on the QUICK as a case study of a wargame being used in professional military development.
Writing and ‘casting
January: Last year I did an interview about my games and thoughts about game design with the group “Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland” (because they asked nicely). I prefer to do interviews by email but they would have liked a live event, so we compromised by posting a Youtube video of a Terry Gilliam drawing wobbling its jaw up and down while a computer voice rapidly read the transcript of my answers to their questions. Mercifully, transcript is available separately.
March: I went on Brant Guillory’s Mentioned in Dispatches podcast to talk with him about past wargames on then-future wars in Ukraine. I repeat, these things do not have useful predictive value (what will happen) but they can help you think about the possible boundaries (what could happen) of the problem.
September: A good month for podcasts… first I was on Episode 78 of I’ve Been Diced! by Tom Grant, we talked about newsgames and a lot of other things besides. And even more remarkably a long interview on Radio War Nerd with Mark Ames and Gary Brecher! The latter is only for Patreon-paying folks so you will have to join to listen, but I will say it was a wonderful talk with these two very intelligent guys… Guerrilla Checkers got a definite boost in notoriety from this one.
November: Published an alt-alt-hist scenario for Strike for Berlin on the German “Ostplan 1919” contemplated campaign to tussle with Poland over ownership of western Poland, in and around Posen/Poznan. Designed with Wolfgang Hoepper, who also wrote a very good article on the plan and its context.
Near-meaningless digest of site statistics:
Overall traffic seems to be stable and improved a bit over 2021. I seem to be cruising still at around 1,800 views per month, for a total of about 24,000 views. About 9,000 visitors in all. The five most curious countries were: US (by a very wide margin), UK, Canada, Australia and Japan. One guy clicked in from Cambodia.
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 Ukrainian Crisis and my faux pas on the Ukrainian war, likely due to linked traffic from Facebook groups.
The most downloaded documents were items for free PnP games: Ukrainian Crisis, District Commander Maracas and Putin’s War (a game designed by Riccardo Affinati and Mauro Faina that used the map from Ukrainian Crisis plus some new components). However, 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.
November 24, 2022 Leave a comment
The complete archive of presentations made during the one-day Connections Online event on 19 October 2022 is now available:
My presentation on the QUICK is at the very bottom, at the end of a very long day for the people on the East Coast.
I’ll be reviewing these soon – great selection of topics.
I like the idea of a Reconstruction period political game, among others.
brtrain 
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