Blog Archives
sGuest Post by Dave Hoffman: From the Tabletop to the Internet – MMORPG’s Past, Present and Future
Monday , 30, May 2016 Computer Games 6 CommentsWe play board games, especially D&D and its variants, for the feel of adventure with our friends. Whether the events within the campaign are scripted or organic, we appreciate the experience itself and the social setting for what it is. They are not just the means for the entertainment, but the ends as well. Those […]
I hate that it has taken as long as it has to write the follow up to Part 1 of my review of The Guns of August. For one thing, I figured that even connoisseurs of wargames would not be interested in all of the minute back and forth struggles between the Austro-Hungarians and the Serbs […]
Vox invited me into his class on video game development and I wanted to try to convey a little bit of what it’s all about. Up front, the most striking thing about it to me was just how much Vox is into every little nuance of the history of the medium. You know, the guy […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Fire in the Lake, Silent Victory, and Combat Commander
Wednesday , 18, May 2016 Wargames 1 CommentThe big news this week is that Andrew Ruhnke’s Falling Sky is arriving at the homes of wargamers the world over. Twitter is lighting up with images of skrinkwrapped wargames emerging from their boxes of foam peanuts. Those that are holding out for the upcoming two-player COIN game by Brian Train are meanwhile getting a look at […]
Answering the RPG Critic: Left Over Lies from the Satanic Panic
Thursday , 5, May 2016 Games, Tabletop Games, Uncategorized, Wargames 3 CommentsDarren Molitor played Dungeons & Dragons for many years as a youth and became convinced from a personal perspective that role playing games are unhealthy and should be avoided, and wrote a guide for the interested non-player as a warning. At first he gives a basic overview of character generation to introduce the uninitiated. Then […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Wargame Design, Role-Playing Games, and… (please no!) LARPS
Wednesday , 4, May 2016 Wargames 4 CommentsThe bombshell post of the week is over at Neal Durando’s Defense Linguistics blog: Not only had The Forge alerted me to EMGs, it had also provided many fruitful discussions of how player expectations might best come when a game system supports those expectations. Briefly, some players simply want to win any game while others […]
“For those who think that World War I is an unexciting subject for a game, GUNS OF AUGUST will prove a shock comparable to the appearance of British tanks at Cambrai, and German stosstrupen at Caporetto.” – The Guns of August, Box Text Bold words, Avalon Hill. I was keeping my fingers crossed that a […]
One reason I value wargames is to stay sharp: Wargames require a lot of mental energy and processing power to play competitively. Even casually, there are a large number of variables and connections to make, moves to foresee and plan for, calculation of odds and unlocking possibilities. It’s exciting in the same way as rock […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Twilght Struggle on Steam, Harold Buchanan on Low Player Count, and Fire in the Lake in the Classroom!
Wednesday , 20, April 2016 Wargames Leave a commentThe internet has been positively on fire with great material on wargaming the past couple of weeks here. Check it out: GMT Games now has Twilight Struggle up on Steam. This is the war game that very nearly burned down Board Game Geek– and it’s now available on the PC or Mac! If you want […]
One striking similarity I have observed across wargames is that they are organized around dice and a puzzle-esque amalgam of differing pieces, units, or types or applications of the same. Despite the Occam’s Razor of presumption that they evolved from a common ancestor or copied one another in a large part, I am of the […]
GTD’s The Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns
Wednesday , 13, April 2016 Wargames Leave a commentGTD’s Napoleonic Wars game is… Different? Ambitious? Impressive? Innovative? Clunky? I hardly know how or where to begin.
The Dragon Awards: Fan Driven, Open Voting
Thursday , 7, April 2016 Comics, Fiction, Games, Uncategorized 6 CommentsDragonCon 2016 has launched a new award and invites all fans everywhere to participate: Welcome to the first annual Dragon Awards! As a part of our 30th Anniversary as the nation’s largest fan run convention, we are introducing a new way to recognize excellence in all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. These awards will be […]