Connections Online: Showcase 2022

Wednesday 19 October 2022: a one-day, all-day Connections Online project showcase for professional/practitioner game design. Each presentation will run 90-120 minutes and focus on a single use case of a game designed or adapted to professional military/ national security usage, including deep dives into the objectives/purposes, designs, mechanics, execution, and lessons learned from both the preparation and conduct of the games.

The event will be a single 12-hour event, with no overlapping presentations, broadcast over Youtube for people who register. All or most presentations will be made available to the public after review.

Here is the schedule:

 Schedule (all times EDT)

1100	MAJ Dan Warner	Decisive Operations
1300	UKFC	Take That Hill / (urban ops)
1500	Eric Price & James Sterrett / SAMS	Root at SAMS
1700	Roger Mason	TBA
1900	Andrew Olson / Matthew Kirchman	Malign / A Splendid Failure
2100	Brian Train	QUICK

I will be giving a talk on the QUICK game, of course, and how it was designed and used at the 40th Infantry Division’s Urban Warfare Planners Course in July 2022. I’ll be at or near the end of the queue of presentations because of time zones: I am on the West Coast and need to get home after work to make the presentation.

Other presenters include two students from the Georgetown University Wargaming Society (Matt Kirchman on A Splendid Failure (Reconstruction in post-ACW US) and Andrew Olson on the Malign wargame design); Command and General Staff College student Dan Hauser on Decisive Operations and incorporating that game into the curriculum there; SAMS instructor Eric Price and the inestimable James Sterrett on integrating ROOT into professional military curricula; and a presentation of the UK Fight Club training game Take That Hill. Not sure what Roger Mason will be talking about but he’s always interesting to listen to.

Registration starts tomorrow (September 29). There is an event charge of $3 to cover their IT costs. Go here: https://tabletop.events/conventions/connections-online-showcase-2022

Hope to see you there!

Connections North 2022: videos

The videos from the Connections North 2022 conference have been posted to Youtube.

One of them is me introducing a panel discussing “influence gaming”, with some remarks on two of my primitive efforts in that direction… Ukrainian Crisis and Kashmir Crisis.

REMARKS ON INFLUENCE GAMING 2022

Coming up: Connections Online 2022

https://www.armchairdragoons.com/acdcons/connections/

Hey all!

Next week will see the 2022 edition of Connections Online, the second iteration of the purposely online version of the long-standing Connections franchise of conferences. As such it joins Connections-US, Connections-UK, Connections North, Connections Oz, and so forth in trying to create lasting, uh, connections between the hobby and professional wargaming worlds.

Core events are 19-21 April, with a series of extended events to either side 18-24 April.

The theme this year is “Developing Wargame Practitioners.” Panels on this topic include:

• Recent Innovations in Wargaming
• Hiring new Wargamers
• Designing a Professional Wargame
• Resources for Professional Development of Wargamers
• Wargamer Professional Certification: Necessary or Not? (a perennial favourite!)
• Wargaming outside the National Security Space

Lots of other things to see and do as well! I plan to attend events on Innovations in Hobby Wargaming, Wargaming Other than War, and Wargaming Politics.

Cost is $5.00 to attend the whole thing, everything else is free but you have to get a ticket to attend an event. Core events such as I have listed above will be posted on Youtube later, but the extended events will likely not.

Please plan to attend!

Connections North 2022: there’s still time!

There is still time to register for the Connections-North conference happening this weekend!

It’s free, and online, and always interesting.

For general information: https://paxsims.wordpress.com/connections-north/

Link to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/connections-north-2022-tickets-238439548107

Conference programme: https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2022/01/23/connections-north-2022-conference-programme/

I will be chairing a panel on how games can model “influence operations” on Sunday the 20th… which operations are succinctly defined by Jim Wallman as, “doing stuff short of actually shooting people to get them to do what we want”.

How do we game social, political, and diplomatic influence in an age of digital communications and social media?

This is of central concern to all of us right now, as we are still working through a major episode and demonstration of all forms of influence operations by Russia, the United States, and practically everyone else who possibly could get into the act.

But of course, there is much much more happening because this is after all a Connections conference… so please come and join us!

Connections Online – Practical Game Design presentation on Youtube

Just a quick one… here is the link to the event on Youtube.

Connections Online 2021: Whiskey Charlie podcast

Tomorrow!

I’ll join Maurice Fitzpatrick on his podcast, with Brant Guillory and others to talk about the Connections franchise of annual conferences on professional wargaming – its past, present (online for now) and future.

The Connections Online conference is next week, registration is open, and the schedule and events thereto are filling up.

Hey, don’t forget I will be talking about the practicalities of game physical design with Mike Markowitz on Monday, April 12 at 1500 EDT!

Connections Online

Connections North (the Canadian variant) is in the past, the US conference is 22-25 June (special theme: Ethics in Wargaming) and the Connections-UK conference has been moved forward two weeks from its usual time (14-16 September). All will be online events, For The Duration Of Viral Hostilities. Meanwhile, keep up with developments on the Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/ConnectionsWargaming

Tune in, maggots!

Connections Online 2021: 12-14 April, +/-

The Connections Online conference on professional wargaming will be a virtual event.

Details, registration link and a preliminary schedule are here: https://www.armchairdragoons.com/connections/

All core Connections Online events will take place from 12-14  April, each day 1000 – 1600 EDT(UTC -4). All core events will be recorded and available for future viewing.

A livestream of the conference and the recordings will be free and open to all, but you can register to get access to a whole lot more. A small fee of $5 will be charged to partially cover the IT expenses.  Registration cost includes:

• All presentations, panels, and keynotes (unlimited seats for participation), including ability to ask questions / interact with the speakers during their presentations
• Access to the Connections Online Discord server
• Ability to register for any extended conference events, on a first-come, first-served basis for limited-seat events

Oh, and what about those extended conference events you may ask? Well, from 10-18 April there will be many smaller focused events during and to either side of the core hours and dates. Details are still being worked out about these but will include game demonstrations, presentations, and activities similar to the famous “game lab” event where we work in small groups to brainstorm and explore how to game or model certain topics or issues, or general approaches to and utility of games and modelling.

If you are interested in serious games (and this term is definitely not limited to military wargaming!) you should check this out.

This is the latest addition to the Connections franchise of professional wargaming events. Connections-US, the original and American version of the conference will be in June and will also be a virtual event. I’ll post more about that later as details are firmed up. Readers of this and the Paxsims blog will know that there are also Australian, Canadian, Dutch and UK conferences along the same themes. I really miss these events in person, I’ve been several times to the US and UK ones and it’s an intense experience. Maybe next year we’ll be back to doing this sort of thing in person – though we have certainly proven the added value of doing as much as possible online, or making things available online.

Anyway, as part of this particular conference on Monday April 12 at 1500 EDT I will be doing a joint presentation with Mike Markowitz on practicalities of DIY game design. Mike, a really smart guy and a better public speaker than I, will talk about graphic design and I will talk about methods of self-publishing. Both are add-ons and developments of the talks we gave to the Georgetown University Wargaming Society recently, and you should watch these first.

Again, if you want to talk to us and ask questions you’ll have to register. It’s five bucks but you get a whole lot more than just us!

We hope to see you all there!

[ETA] Here is the Youtube link for the event…

Connections North: full programme

The full programme for the Connections North conference (February 19-21, 2021) is now available!

https://paxsims.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/connections-north-programme-2021.pdf

The event is free but you have to register through Eventbrite. So far over 200 people from 19 different countries have signed up!

See you there!

Register on Eventbrite

Connections North: now register this!

Announcing the opening of registrations for the Connections North conference, to be held virtually over Zoom during the weekend of 19-21 February, 2021.

CONNECTIONS NORTH is Canada’s annual conference devoted to conflict simulation. It is intended for national security professionals, policymakers, researchers, educators, game designers, university students, and others interested in the field of wargaming and other serious games.

Prior registration is required, but is free:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/connections-north-2021-tickets-134452457921

Themes to be addressed this year include:

• wargaming and other serious policy gaming in Canada

• wargaming in smaller defence communities

• gaming the Arctic

• COVID gaming and hybrid threats

• gaming fisheries policy

• analytical and policy gaming in the humanitarian sector

• wargaming for command decision support

• distributed gaming

• diversity and inclusion in professional (war)gaming

A full version of the conference programme will be posted by mid-January. Online connection information and other details will be sent to all registered attendees a few days before the conference itself.

We hope to see you all there!

New book: Successful Professional Wargames by Graham Longley-Brown

Graham Longley-Brown served in the British Army as a Regular officer from 1986 to 2003, and finished off his career as the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College Directing Staff Subject Matter Expert for wargaming from 2000-2002. Since his retirement from the Regular Army, Graham has worked as a self-employed consultant (www.lbsconsultancy.co.uk) running wargames for national militaries and their research centres across the world. Graham also developed the Rapid Campaign Analysis Toolset in use by the British military, helped to write the UK MOD Wargaming Handbook, and co-founded and organizes the Connections-UK conference on professional wargaming. (www.professionalwargaming.co.uk)

I’ve known Graham since I first became involved with Connections-UK, at the first conference in 2013. Now he has written a book, Successful Professional Wargames: A Practitioner’s Handbook wherein he promises to reveal all his secrets.

He’s obviously doing something right!

Published by John Curry’s History of Wargaming project, you can buy your copy here: http://www.wargaming.co/professional/details/professionalhandbook.htm