Game Links and Resources

Serious Gaming Blogs

• Paxsims: http://paxsims.wordpress.com/
• Wargaming Community: http://wargamingcommunity.wordpress.com/
• Play The Past: http://www.playthepast.org/

Resources for Online Play

• VASSAL, a game engine for playing online adaptations of board and card games. Free, open source software. http://www.vassalengine.org/
• Cyberboard, play-by-email software for Windows: http://cyberboard.brainiac.com/
• Play-by-forum, or “forum games”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_game
• Moodle, a free learning management system:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle
• Tabletop Simulator: https://www.tabletopsimulator.com 

COIN and IW Related Geeklists (from Boardgamegeek.com)

• http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/6478/insurgency-and-terrorism
• http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/7685/revolts-revolutions-and-civil-wars
• http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/3370/civil-wargames
• http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/6043/of-politics-and-war

Designers and some of their relevant (insurgency-, pol-mil-, civil-discord-related) games

(note, some games listed here are long out of print and difficult to obtain – search out individual titles at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ )

• Mark Acres: The Twilight War
• Rich Davis: Chad: The Toyota Wars
• James F. Dunnigan: Chicago-Chicago, Minuteman: the Second American Revolution, Plot to Assassinate Hitler, Up Against the Wall
• Karsten Engelmann: Crisis Games: Colombia
• Lawrence Harris: National Liberation Front
• Kim Kanger: Ici, C’est La France!, Tonkin
• Ben Madison: Liberia – Descent Into Hell
• Joseph Miranda: Angola, BCT Command Kandahar (with Brian Train), Battle for Baghdad (with Jon Compton), Crisis 2000/2020, Decision: Iraq, Dien Bien Phu, Drive on Baghdad, Holy War: Afghanistan, In Country, Indochina, Nicaragua, Operation Anaconda, Sealords, Somali Pirates, Streets of Shadows (with Roger Mason), Winged Horse
• Javier Romero: Islamic State: Libya War, Partizan, War Returns To Europe
• Volko Ruhnke: A Distant Plain (with Brian Train), Andean Abyss, Cuba Libre (with Jeff Grossman), Falling Sky (with Andrew Ruhnke), Fire in the Lake (with Mark Herman), Labyrinth, Nevsky
• Dick Rustin: Tito
• Brian Train: A Distant Plain (with Volko Ruhnke), Algeria, Andartes, Army of Shadows, Battle of Seattle, BCT Command Kandahar (with Joe Miranda), Binh Dinh ’69, Brief Border Wars, Caudillo, Chile ’73, Civil Power, Colonial Twilight, District Commander series (Maracas, Binh Dinh, Kandahar, ZNO), EOKA, Greek Civil War, Green Beret, Guerrilla Checkers, Kandahar, Kashmir Crisis, Land of the Free, Next War in Lebanon, Nights of Fire (with David Turczi), Operation Whirlwind, Palace Coup, Power Play, Red Guard, Shining Path, Somalia, Third Lebanon War, Tupamaro, Ukrainian Crisis, Uprising
• Lynn Willis: Bloodtree Rebellion

Professional Wargaming Links

• Connections-US annual wargaming conference: http://connections-wargaming.com/
  • Archive of Connection-US proceedings documents: https://sites.google.com/view/connections-usa-proceedings
• Connections-UK, the British flavour of the above conference: http://www.professionalwargaming.co.uk/
• Connections North, the Canadian Connection: https://paxsims.wordpress.com/connections-north/

Resources on Game Design and Production

• “Wargaming and Analysis”, by Peter Perla, 2007    PERLA
• “Graphics and Physical Systems Design” by Redmond A. Simonsen (Section III of Wargame Design anthology by SPI)    Graphics and Physical Systems Design-RAS
• “Europa” game system unit symbols: scan of a page from an issue of The Europa Magazine that is a fairly complete guide to the symbols used by the system, Back In The Day.     europa font symbols scan
• Redmond A. Simonsen’s Pantone Palette: if you have ever wanted to make counters matching the shades that RAS often used, this small table gives sample Pantone numbers and RGB values for 10 of his best.    RAS Pantone Palette
• Tom Mouat’s Mapsymbs font site: Tom Mouat has made a brilliant set of intensely needed Truetype fonts available to one and all, in making up games of all types. NATO symbols, plane and ship silhouettes, all kinds of things. Free but really, if you use these in a game or enterprise that other people will see, give him credit and tip him a few quid.    http://www.mapsymbs.com
• Unsticky Notes: This is one of those brilliant things that you run across one day, download and forget, then rediscover but no longer know the original source or author. Inspired (I guess) by Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” set of cards to pick from randomly when you are stuck on a creative task, these cards are specifically for game design. Print them out onto card and cut them out.   unsticky_notes_ready_for_card_cutter
• Wargame Developments Handbook: link to collected wisdom on the many different kinds of games one can design, from my favourite group of madmen. Third edition released in 2022.    Wargame Developments Handbook

Miscellaneous Resources and Documents

• Jagdpanther magazine index (1-14): Jagdpanther magazine, edited by Stephen Cole, published 14 issues from 1973 to 1976. Each issue contained either a major variant to an existing game or a standalone playable game, plus a host of minor variants and experimental rules for games in print during that period. I wrote a guide to each issue’s contents for Simulacrum magazine, and here it is.    Jagdpthr     Physical copies of the magazine are hard to obtain now; digital scans of all issues of the magazine, with more complete descriptions of contents, are available through Steve Jackson Games’ Warehouse 23.      http://www.warehouse23.com/products?taxons%5B%5D=558399571-sb
• “Quads That Never Were”: an incomplete listing of SPI Quadrigames that were at one time proposals in the feedback section of Strategy and Tactics and Moves magazines, but were never published. First appeared in #20 of Simulacrum magazine, this 2021 update adds to the list to make a total of 47 ideas.    NEVERQDS 2021
• The Space Gamer magazine index (1-26): The Space Gamer magazine was, for its first 26 issues, the house organ of Metagaming Game Company. I latched onto their small cheap “MicroGames” when I first got into wargaming and have a soft spot for these items still. So here is a guide I wrote to each issue’s contents, from 1975 to 1980, after which the magazine passed formally into Steve Jackson’s hands. PDF copies of many issues of the magazine are available on the Internet Archive.    The Space Gamer 1-26  
• Interplay: the Metagamer Dialogues index (1-8): After The Space Gamer left Metagaming’s hands, this small digest-size magazine devoted to Metagaming products carried on for 8 issues in 1981 and 1982. Here is a guide I wrote (also with information from Ken Tidwell) to the contents of each issue of that publication. PDF copies are possibly still available on the Internet Archive.   Interplay contents  
• MOVES magazine index (1-60): Guide to the contents of issues 1-60 of MOVES magazine, the SPI house organ – full of commentary, notes, variants, discussion and more:   Index Moves
• Simulacrum magazine index (1-33): An index to each of the 33 issues of Simulacrum magazine, published and mostly written by John Kula. A complete set of back issues on CD is available from me for $45 US; all funds go to John’s son and grandchildren.    index-by-issue-and-game
• Strategist newsletter for 2000 (issues 334 – 345): I edited this monthly newsletter of the Strategy Gaming Society in 2000 for one year. Here is an index to contents and links to the issues themselves (PDF). STRATEGIST index for 2000     s334  s335   s336   s337   s338   s339   s340  s341   s342   s343    s344    s345