Am I going to be automated out of my own hobby?

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….

We Are Coming Nineveh: make your pre-orders now!

The time has come for all good people to make their pre-orders for the English-language version of We Are Coming, Nineveh! from Nuts! Publishing.

This is a grand-tactical/operational scale block wargame on the battle for Mosul in 2017, designed by two former students of Rex Brynen’s and further developed by Rex and I. This one is a challenge to balance speed and casualties and time as Iraqi government forces hem ISIS fighters into a smaller and smaller perimeter in the Old City. The game has many event and capability cards that vary play, by accident or on purpose respectively.

Price 52 Euros (about $56 USD), reduced from regular price of 65 Euros. Not sure of shipping cost of course, but for once the European customers will get a break on this part of buying a wargame.

Deliveries begin in March 2023, so no long waits! The link below is for pre-orders and has some very good images of the high quality graphics to help you make up your mind about that part… as for the play and replay value, I definitely will vouch for that.

https://www.nutspublishing.com/eshop/nineveh-en

CFS: TESA Collective wants to see your game design!

https://www.tesacollective.com/we-are-seeking-to-sign-and-publish-new-board-and-card-games-about-changing-the-world

After 10 years of publishing work by internal designers and commissioned work by social organizations, the TESA (Toolbox for Education and Social Action) Collective is calling for outside designs.

A link for a submission form and additional details are available at the link above, but here is information on what they are looking for:

Please read: What we are and are not looking for

Here’s what we’re looking for: Board and card games that address an issue – such as nature and environmentalism, social justice/social change matters, historical events, building people’s power, climate change, and other important issues. The issue your game addresses can be big (like stopping climate change) or small (like growing a community garden) or anywhere in between. In summary, we are looking for games with a strong theme and a message about making the world a better place, in either a big or small way.

• The game you pitch to us can be literal, but it does not have to be literal. Allegories or addressing important topics in fantastical settings is just fine. For instance, our games Space Cats Fight Fascism and STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion both do this. Either approach – literal or fantastical representation of the theme – is fine, as long as the game is about something.

• We are primarily looking for games that would be exciting to be played during game nights with friends and family.

• Your game doesn’t have to be finished for you to pitch it to us, but you should have a playable demo that you feel good about – even if it will still needs some fine tuning. Part of our responsibility is to help get the game to the finish line. We would prefer if you have at least some minimal graphic design and placeholder art (do not commission final artwork, that would be our responsibility) to help us when we play the game. But if we sign the game, it is our responsibility to make the game beautiful and ready for print.

• We’re not looking for pitches that are just an idea you have for a game. (If you want us to develop a game for your organization, however, that’s a service we offer.) We are looking for games that have been created and playtested already (even if they are not 100% done).

• We prefer games that are accessible. They don’t have to be super easy to learn, but we’re not looking for incredibly complex games that take an hour to learn and 4 – 5 hours to play.

• We are looking to work with people who are open to collaboration. We may have some gameplay improvement suggestions as well as other ideas for marketability purposes. While we will not steamroll your vision, we want to make sure folks we work with are open to suggestions.

• Though not a requirement, we have a preference for games that have a hopeful message.

• We are open to both cooperative and competitive games.

Interview with Compass Games, 5 June 2020

Coming to an Orthicon Tube near you: John Kranz of Compass Games does a live online interview with me!

Mostly we will be talking about the Brief Border Wars Quad, coming out Real Soon Now from Compass, but maybe other things if John lets Unca’ Gran’pa’s mind and mouth wander….

Friday, June 5, 2020: 1700 Pacific, 2000 Eastern

Click on the above or below to set a reminder!

Tune in, maggots!

Scramble scramble

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/vb9gd9/a-cancelled-board-game-revealed-how-colonialism-inspires-and-haunts-games

So, this has been lighting up sections of the BGGverse for the last week… in case you have not heard, or are trawling through this blog years from the time it was posted:

• GMT Games put up for P500 a game called Scramble for Africa in February. From the ad copy, it seems to have been in broad terms a “3X” game (Explore- Expand-  Exploit) as opposed to a “4X” game ( -Exterminate) where European powers enter the Dark Continent, found colonies, interfere with each other, etc.
• After GMT posted the developer’s notes at the end of March with some more specifics, it emerged that this game was shall we say a bit light on historical accuracy and completeness – the native population was more or less the background on top of which the players drew their designs.
• An increasing amount of adverse commentary on Twitter, Facebook, Boardgamegeek, and other spots led GMT to pull this off the P500 list, with a very measured and reasonable explanation and apology from the publisher.

People are still yelling about it, but more in defence of or offence against their own straw men. Some decried it as bowing to the mob, erasure of unpopular opinions, censorship, my god this is the beginning of the end what’s next erasing the Nazis soon they will come to pry all my wargames from my overheated flabby hands… never mind, you can imagine all this yourself (and if you can’t, there is a thread on BGG that is over 1,000 posts long now, counting the unusually large fraction of ones deleted for personal attacks and abuse).

Others had more measured and thoughtful responses. The link above is a much better explanation of the event and what it means than I can write; go have a look. It also gives due credit to the thoughtful games GMT can and does produce. Colonial Twilight, Navajo Wars and Comancheria all get praise for handling complex issues well, as do Freedom: the Underground Railroad and This Guilty Land, two games by other publishers.

Again, I did not have a chance to learn very much about the game, but it seems it was too cavalier and light a treatment of the topic to be appealing to the strong-history crowd, and not satisfying enough for the theme/history-be-damned, strong-play crowd. So, a sound business decision, and one that is GMT’s and only GMT’s to make.

We should not shy away from historical controversy, for that is the most direct way history teaches us it’s still there and still valuable. But it has to be done in a productive way, that advances the state of play. Obviously, this game did not do that.

Probably more than a few people have commented that if the game were rethemed and placed on a distant planet as “Scramble for Afraxic”, they might have  had a goer on their hands… sometimes that works. GMT has a few of these 4X in space games in their stable, and they sell very well… I suppose they are good games too, but I don’t play much science fiction stuff anymore. But the point is that there is sufficient distance from what is going on, even more so than the usual abstraction of playing a game about something, to not bother people.

 

 

The Player’s Aid: Best 3 Games with… Designer Brian Train!

 

Oh my. I really did not expect this.

Grant Kleinheinz has written a really nice post about three of my designs he’s had the most fun with:

• Winter Thunder
• Binh Dinh ’69
• Colonial Twilight

I’m touched by this, and happy that he’s enjoyed my work enough to write such nice things about it. Thank you Grant!

Go have a look….

https://theplayersaid.com/2018/01/05/best-3-games-with-designer-brian-train/

Wowsers! Look what came in the mail today!

One of the very first copies of Colonial Twilight! GMT sent me an advance copy, just in time for Consimworld Expo. The rest of you will have to wait a few more weeks, please be patient…

Not going to do an unboxing video, but I am very very pleased with the quality of the components. And nothing has been changed on me without my knowledge or consent.

VERY happy! Can’t you see?

Just a few more days to get your P500 order in – pay only $52 now instead of $75 after! 1,448 other chums can’t be wrong! You don’t want to be wrong, do you? Preorder at the link below:

http://www.gmtgames.com/p-548-colonial-twilight-the-french-algerian-war-1954-62.aspx

New Post on InsideGMT: Colonial Twilight Force Pieces and Structure

Near-final map. Art by Mark Simonitch and Chechu Nieto.  Lookin’ good!

Over at the InsideGMT blog, about 2,000 words on the different wooden bits in Colonial Twilight and what they represent.

http://www.insidegmt.com/?p=11853

COIN Day in St. Paul!

Poster by D. Dockter. Carbine by Inland Division of General Motors.

The redoutable David Dockter has alerted me that next next next Saturday will be COIN Day, sponsored by the 1st Minnesota Historical Wargaming Society! Games to be played include the entire GMT COIN series (Andean Abyss, Cuba Libre, A Distant Plain, Fire in the Lake) as well as some great oldies such as Bloodtree Rebellion (an SF game by Lynn Willis that’s actually about Vietnam, and one of the best insurgency games I’ve ever seen) and 1776 (yes! it was an insurgency!). So, if you’re anywhere in the neighbourhood, drop in and see what’s up!

RBM bnr of ADP re SFWkly-MS

Thanks Rodger!