All posts by james

James has a keen interest in military history, backed with experience as a TA reservist and a 17th century re-enactor. He has designed and run several face to face social games and is the editor of MilMud, the journal of the CLWG game design group. He is currently working on a book on the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.
Books, design, History, WW2

Book Review – The Stress of Battle by David Rowland (Part 1)

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Real shooting tactical exercises in Smardan sh...
Real shooting tactical exercises in Smardan shooting-range with the 100 mm anti-tank gun M1977. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not exactly a book review, more of a synopsis of a great work of Operational Research by David Rowland. The Stress of Battle: Quantifying Human Performance in Combat is the end result of years of work by David Rowland and his team at the Ministry of Defence. Rowland was the father of historical analysis as a branch of Operational Research.

This particular work looks at a combination of field analysis experiments in the 1980s using lasers, well documented WW2 engagements and a handful of battles from other wars. Almost every page in it is packed with evidence or explanations of the complex methodology used to ensure that you could get controlled results from an otherwise messy and chaotic environment. If you are playing or designing wargames then this is one of the books that you absolutely must have on your book shelves (and have read too).

When I was reading the book I was often underlining or marking sections with post-it flags. In particular I drew the following interesting snippets from the book:

  • Tanks suppress defenders, but you need at least two tanks per defending MG to have any effect;
  • Combat degradation is about a factor of 10 compared to performance on firing ranges
  • Anti-tank guns focus the attention of tanks from suppressing MGs, and the bigger the anti-tank gun the more attention it diverts (unsurprisingly);
  • Fortifications & obstacles (i.e. properly prepared defensive positions) increase defence effectiveness by a factor of 1.65;
  • In defending against a 3:1 attack, the average rifleman will inflict 0.5 casualties on the attackers whereas a MG will inflict 4 casualties;
  • 1 in 8 riflemen will cause 4 casualties, and the other 7 none;
  • MG equivalents for casualty causing are: 9 rifles = 1 MG; 1 medium mortar (81mm) = 3 MG;
  • Combat effectiveness grows with experience, improving the casualty exchange ratio;

This is just a taster of what the book contains. Really worth reading. Not only that it is fantastically well illustrated with loads of graphs, diagrams and pictures from the field exercises to illustrate the points in the text.

Continued in Part 2 – Operational Research on Urban Warfare

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Books, History, WW2

Book Review: Watching War Films With My Dad by Al Murray

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Watching War Films with My DadWatching War Films with My Dad by Al Murray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading Watching War Films With My Dad. The book plays off his fascination with military history, and that for him it stems from growing up in the 70s and 80s playing with Action Man and building Airfix kits. The thing I got from it is that Al Murray is quite different from the character that we most often see him as, the Pub Landlord. Al is a much more witty person than the Pub Landlord, which shouldn’t really be a surprise if you stop and think about it.

The book is a sort of autobiographical discourse on military history. It sort of argues against the fascination with it, cleverly taking us from his youth watching war films while his Dad points out all the inaccuracies in them (his Dad was a regular army officer, a para engineer). This part of the book is very good, and you can see what fascinated the young Al Murray and why he went on to read history at Oxford.

The journey continues to a continued adult fascination with WW2, and some examples of extraordinary exploits during that war. Both in terms of heroism and also on the cost of war in human suffering and young lives cut short. From there it is a short step to realising that as a society we’ve largely forgotten how horrible war is. You’d think that with the reminders we get on the news that we’d have it in the forefront of our minds, but instead we seem to revel in the glory and spectacle. Museums have more on uniforms, flags and vehicles, and less on the lives of the people that went to war, especially the many that failed to return.

Even as someone keen on military history I understand this position, and to a great extent I share it, as much as I share many of the cultural influences Al mentions in the book (I had action men, built airfix models and have watched all of the movies he references).

You can read this without being steeped in military history, it is very easy to read, and all the chapters are self-explanatory. In places there are little footnotes, which explain where it is necessary (and in a few cases where it isn’t). The style is of a monologue, and it is generally fairly light, although towards the end it gets a little more serious.

My copy came to me from a goodreads giveaway, but it is something I would have bought anyway even if it hadn’t. I certainly recommend it if you have ever watched a war movie with someone that provided a commentary on its wrongness (possibly including me, I’ve been that armchair critic)!

View all my reviews

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CLWG, games

CLWG December 2013 Meeting

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Alexander and I went along to today’s session of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group in Anerley. Despite the engineering works we still got there in time to take part in both sessions, although we nearly missed Brian Cameron’s Weird War Two.

Weird War Two

Captain Britain
Captain Britain (Photo credit: Rooners Toy Photography)

Captain America was the movie of this game, which has been played many times by CLWG (and others) and it is a regular favourite. All it lacks, according to Alexander, is a Green Lantern character, and perhaps a mention for Bucky on the Captain America card!

We joining in with Jon Casey as the Americans and we more or less quietly stayed out of the way and developed our lightning spitting Tesla Cannons just in time to use them to shoot down the Italian Spaghetti Foo flying saucers. However the Germans had a super soldier programme on the go at the same time as the Japanese helicopter programme. So not looking great for the Allies. That said, Captain Britain was almost unstoppable (which is more than can be said for the US super heroes).

As a mature game there isn’t really much room for improvement with it, although we did play with a couple of rules during the game. This was really a matter of clarity in the rules rather than anything major. One of these was about when heroes were available to defend bases, whether you needed to fight both the hero and the base defence. Seeing as the base defences used the same mechanism as the hero combat we decided that you needed to fight twice, and that your hits carried over between consecutive battles. This made it an advantage in defending your base if it was attacked. Although this didn’t apparently make much difference when the much enhanced Captain Britain attacked the Italian base and won three consecutive combats without suffering a single hit! The other rule we played with was the one granting the ability to reroll the dice once. As played this was re-rolling once for each dice roll, because only once overall made it much weaker than the +1 that most of the other upgrades offered. However being able to re-roll any dice roll once turned out to be over-balancing in the other direction. So a compromise of re-rolling up to two die rolls per combat (which was the first to inflict three hits won) was adopted. This seemed to work, although we only played a few combats after changing the rule.

 

Panzer Pusher

English: IWM caption : 17-pdr anti-tank gun of...
English: IWM caption : 17-pdr anti-tank gun of the 21st Anti-Tank Regiment, Guards Armoured Division, guards the approaches to Nijmegen Bridge. Nederlands: 17-pdr anti-tank gun van het 21e Anti Tank regiment, Guards Armoured Division, bewaken de toegang tot de Waalbrug in Nijmegen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This was an idea from Jim Wallman on something that might be feasible for a wargames show. The game involved using binoculars to identify tank pictures (printed to scale) on tables at the other side of the hall. Once the spotter identified the tank then target orders (using the standard Group, Range, Indication, Target)  were given to the gunner who pointed the anti-tank gun model at the chosen target and then put their hand up to ‘fire’.

Jim had done a fair amount of prep in that there was a list of about 40 tanks each of which had a small and large front image and a large side image printed on card. These were what we were looking at. To make it a little easier he gave us the list of tanks (but without images) so that we had a smaller number of types to choose from.

Overall it was fun, although I personally didn’t know some of the models, and between us we got them all. Some of them I think only because we could chance guessing the ones we didn’t know off the list we’d been given. The gunner aspect got forgotten quite quickly, other than running to collect the ammo from the chair in front of where we all sat. The gun line being fixed meant that the tables with the tanks on moved towards us. This made it slightly more cardboard box simulator ish because we were still and the tanks came onto us. Using the binos also helped this feel, perhaps as a demo game it needs a tin helmet and some snadbags to rest the binos on?

What it did do was remind me of tank duel and think about perhaps trying to get that going with some of Alexander’s friends round our place in the summer (when there will be room to play it on the patio (it needs quite a bit of space to work properly does tank duel).

 

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Books, universe

Five Reasons for Establishing a Colony

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In looking through my notes from previous story and game design ideas I came across one about the reasons why colonies might be set up. This was primarily for a set of scenarios for science fiction games set in Jim Wallman’s Universe that a group of us having been playing around the Full Moon each month since 1996.  That said, they are based on actual historical reasons why people left the UK and other European countries to live elsewhere (although not always on an uncertain and dangerous frontier).

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1. Religious/Ascetic Freedom

This covers people leaving to avoid discrimination as well as those that might want to live in a place where the temptations and ‘polluitng influences’ of modern life are not present. Examples of this include Amish and similar sects that avoid advanced technology (although quite why they’d get in a spaceship I’m not sure). Features of this sort of colony may include:

  • lack of high-tech industry (unless necessary to sustain the colony – even them imports would be more likely);
  • Colonists will be complete family groups, from birth to death;
  • no luxury housing or flashy entertainment (forget the five star hotel complex or New Vegas);
  • primarily farming, fishing and hunting;
  • minimal mining & raw materials processing (mainly for construction and export);
  • very tight group, outsiders would be obvious and shunned if not co-religionists. There may be restricted areas only for the faithful if there are frequent visits by groups not sharing similar beliefs;
  • no significant police/security apparatus, discipline would be enforced by social norms and religious leaders;
  • Outside support may be a necessary requirement to maintain the colony;
  • Only co-religionists would be accepted for settlement.

2. Mining Colony

In a place where surveys have shown significant concentrations of valuable minerals then there may be an attempt to settle on a commercial basis. This would be the equivalent of the oil rig workers in remote parts of Earth, or perhaps similar to some of the mid-19th century Californian or Australian pioneers looking for gold. Features of this sort of colony could include;

  • everyone on the colony is employed by, or contracted to, a specific company or consortium;
  • Colonists are likely to be single adults without dependents and of working age;
  • heavily geared around mineral extraction and perhaps also processing ores into metal;
  • they could be focussed on producing stuff for export, and also on individuals returning home again when they’ve completed their tour, or struck it rich;
  • minimal manufacturing, agriculture or any construction not required for the mining and export operations;
  • limited off-world support, if not profitable within a short time period the colony will be closed down again and all colonists repatriated;
  • small security capability, mainly geared around dealing with drunk & bored miners on an off-duty binge (i.e. a security team rather than a police force, discipline is company and offenders are likely to have pay docked or be sent home as sanctions).

3. Farming/Ranching

This one is perhaps more an outcome of a collection of other motivations, but perhaps also from people that can’t get the space to have their own farm in the home country, and instead choose to emigrate in the hope of getting their own land. Certainly this seems to have been a common enough motivation for some of the 18th & early 19th century settlers in North America. Features of this sort of colony may include:

  • lots of agriculture, and strong exports of food and other agricultural products (especially luxury products);
  • Colonists will be heavily weighted to adults of working age, but will also include family groups, although perhaps few elderly in the early stages;
  • lots of small settlements, spaced reasonably far apart, perhaps 10-20kms from each other with cultivated land between them;
  • limited mining and heavy industry, and what is there will be geared to supporting the agricultural industry;
  • well developed chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as food and materials processing to turn produce into saleable goods that are worth more as exports;
  • Neglible police/security (think more one man sherrif/constable alongside his farming/other duties with backup from the posse if required).

4. A Better Life[TM]

Isn’t this really the motivation for everyone that decides to get up from where they are and go somewhere else? The typical example here is probably the current migrations of people to other countries. This sort of thing is less likely to directly establish a colony, but is probably a pretty common second wave that could make the difference between a colony bumping along at subsistence level and really making it. Features of a colony with a high proportion of better lifers might include:

  • mature long established colony (perhaps at least 5-10 years old);
  • lots of recent arrivals, with a broad population mix (including babies and children, but not likely to have many elderly unless the colony has been around for more than 50 years);
  • an above average economy with relatively high living standards (luxury housing, entertainment complexes, wide range of consumer goods and agricultural produce);
  • a work hard, play hard culture (immigrants tend to be harder working, and they have a determination to succeed – regardless of what you might have read in the Daily Fail);
  • high productivity leading to sustainable living at better than subsistence level;
  • likely use of robots, automation and other high tech industries within a broad economic base;
  • Mature police and justice system, as a consequence of maturity of the colony with a sustained population growth.

Political/Doctrinal Dissidents

There will be loads of different political systems and doctrinal variations that will lead to people choosing to leave. Possibly some of these may co-exist on the same continent/planet as fallings out happen and it is too expensive to relocate somewhere radically different. Others may be new colonies that are settled from a homeland. Historical examples of this could include the Jacobites that moved to Canada in the 18th Century, or perhaps some of the dissidents from Eastern Europe that made their home in London in the nineteenth. There may also be examples of small towns in North America settled this way too. Anyway some features of these colonies may include:

  • some oddly extreme governance models;
  • mostly adults of working age, perhaps towards the younger end of this (I’ve noticed that people tend to soften in their political activism with age). Total population is likely to be relatively modest, and may be kept that way by frequent splits;
  • unless the political/doctrinal belief prohibits it, there will be a lot of automation and robots in use to run the economy (after all there isn’t time for a good political argument if you need to work very hard all day to make ends meet);
  • the economy is likely to be based on a few things and be relatively spartan (from necessity rather than for doctrinal reasons);
  • strong police/security environment. This may not be immediately obvious, but there is a close relationship between extremism and strict enforcement of thought typical of police states.
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games, roleplaying

A215 Short Fiction: Daprav – A Creation Myth

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As part of my Creative Writing course I need to write a short story for my next assignment. So rather than racking my brains about it I’ve been going back over stuff I’d written, but not finished, in the past for some inspiration. I also plan to do the exercises in the book to see what that sparks up too. Anyway I was looking through my role-playing archives and went through a fantasy game I used to run where I made up all of the setting myself rather than using a published one (there are about 17k words on this, and on top of that a stack of index cards). I was rather taken by the creation myth I wrote for the primary god in a theocracy.

Daprav

It is important to distinguish between Daprav Himself and the Church, which forms the bulk of his worshippers. Daprav is an active paternalistic God by inclination. He favours wandering amongst his people in disguise, perhaps to keep an eye on them. He is also known for speaking to His prophets in the heart of their soul, although He is not above manifesting should those prophets need a major miracle performing.

The worshippers of Daprav don’t have faith, they have knowledge. The evidence of His existence is a daily phenomenon. His priests work many miracles and are enjoined to look after the flock, tending the ill and feeding the hungry. This is tempered with an injunction on the people to obey the word of Daprav, and by extension of the priesthood.

In the beginning…

Daprav is the creator of the world and all the things in it. He did this a very long time ago and spent many millennia wandering through it revelling in the beauty of his creation. He taught the early men a great deal and established many temples, each bearing slight differences according to the aspects he displayed to the tribe that built the temple. However all men were one in their devotion to Daprav and he was able to ensure that there was no strife.

One day whilst hunting with the Obor Tribe in the great fastness of the Green Forest Daprav came across an enchanted grove. This intrigued Him as He had not enchanted the grove nor had any of the priests that He had empowered with his miracles. Entering the grove He called out to its enchanter. Out from behind a tree stepped a powerful sorceror. Daprav commanded him to speak his name.

“I am known as Hapt and I was born to work magic”.

Others also stepped out from behind other trees numbering thirteen in total. They also spake their names:

“Temed, the giver of gifts” a female holding a box;

“Mistear, an archer of great repute” a slim young woman knocking an arrow to her longbow;

“Miral, the killer of many” an older male with many scars on his body and a huge axe;

“Dado, an enchanter, I created this grove” a bearded man in white robes with a golden sickle;

“Fabrius, also a creator of magics” a youth short in stature and stocky with it;

“Eubulus, a singer of songs and a teller of tales” a young man in patched clothes and holding a set of pipes;

“Aulos, the healer of wounds” a woman wearing white with braided blonde hair;

“Horin, the lover of all” a full-breasted woman with red lips and a jar of wine;

“Mousai, protector of the innocent” a man clad in armour from head to foot;

“Drok, the joker” a mischevious looking youngster dressed all in red;

“Valdese, a brave and gallant warrior” tall, dark and handsome, a man to break the hearts of many a maiden, and to carry off the souls of men in battle;

“Ojibwa, a thief and a damned good one” a medium sized woman with a lithe look to her movements as she stepped out from behind the tree.

“Why have you enchanted this grove? And why are you all here?” Daprav asked.

“We want to be Gods also, and you have the means to make that so.” Answered Hapt who appeared to be their leader. “We are the foremost amongst our kind and desire to share your divinity. Will you give it to us?”.

“No. This cannot be so. You must go from here and forever banish any thought of elevating yourselves to godhood”.

“If you will not co-operate then we shall take it from you.”

And with that the thirteen worked their magic as they had planned. They cast a spell on Daprav the like of such has never before or since been seen. Their careful preparations however went awry. Instead of stealing the Divinity from Daprav they instead put him into an endless slumber. They were able to visit the world as spirits and speak unto the people thereon, but were forever banished as punishment for attempting to make themselves Gods.

Had Daprav not been sent into a deep sleep He would have been able to counter their dealings with the various tribes and prevent the strife that was to come to His perfect creation. Each of the thirteen brought their own gift to the world, and with it some corruption of the people. Over the years the tribes formed their own sects and religions as the memory of Daprav was corrupted and forgotten. In time all living people had forgotten of Daprav’s very existence. However He continued to exist, trapped in the sacred grove.

After about two millennia the growth of the tribes had reduced the Green Forest to a fraction of its former size and brought the grove from the depths to its very edge. He appeared in a dream to His prophet Reatham who was sleeping nearby. Reatham was a hunter and Daprav placed images of plentiful game in his dreams along with clues to the location of the grove. Reatham found his way to the grove and woke Daprav.

After such a long hibernation Daprav was weak and required sustenance to build His strength back to its former glory. However with no followers or temples He could not gain strength from sacrifices. Reatham went out amongst the people and preached to them about the goodness of Daprav. However not all was well with the world. The spirits of the thirteen were still strong and afraid that an awakened Daprav would take revenge on them stirred up the people to act against Daprav’s supporters.

Reatham was killed by an angry mob incited by the spirit of Miral. The mob were persuaded that Reatham was enthralled by an evil spirit that meant to destroy the livelihood of the town. It was all Daprav could do to avoid being torn apart himself. After escaping from the mob He travelled about the world gradually building up strength and itinerant followers one by one. After some time He spoke to Rontium and commanded that he feed the poor and homeless in his district and to tell them that the food came from Daprav.

Strengthened by the prayers of the faithful Daprav was able to regain some of His powers and perform minor miracles. Many of the worshippers didn’t realise that He was the deity and instead thought Him to be a priest of Daprav, so diminished was His power. One believer who saw Him truly was Anley, a lay healer. She helped and healed the sick in His name. This boosted His following still further and in time restored more of His powers.

It was about this time that the worship of Daprav became the main religion in the small town of Balham, now known as Templeton. With the growth of His following He was able to stand up to the spirits of the thirteen and make overt use of His powers to protect Balham. It was about this time that the Duke of the District was persuaded by the spirit of Miral to destroy Balham and kill all of the people living there. He gathered his forces and attacked the town.

Daprav called down a lightening bolt from the heavens and smote the Duke from his saddle. Many of the disheartened troops fled, although many others switched sides and pledged their allegiance to Daprav, including Earl Shabas who vowed his life to the God to atone for his previous wrongs against the people of Daprav. Daprav heard the oath and granted him the name of Sir Waldo with His blessing and the ability to heal the wounds of others simply by laying his hands on the afflicted part. Sir Waldo went on to lead his men to glory in the wars of independence that the Church of Daprav fought with those misguided by the spirits. 

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games

A215 TMA01 – Night Patrol

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Here is the text I submitted for the Creative Writing assignment. The first and third parts are unaltered. I lightly edited Part 2 based on the feedback received (in net terms I added five words). Part 1 is a freewrite, intended to spark ideas based on a prompt. Part 2 is, in my case, a piece of autobiographical writing (my apologies if anyone recognises the events in question). Part 3 is a reflection on the process of doing the assignment.

Part 1: Freewrite on prompt ‘Walking at Night’

Some of the most fun I ever had was wandering about in the dark. As a teenager I used to play outside at night, walking through the streetlights, with others playing hide and seek in the dark corners. It taught me to move silently and to use shadows to sneak back to the lamp-post we used as the home base. Later I put those skills to a different use wandering British Army training areas armed to the teeth and looking for trouble. Everything was secured so that it wouldn’t rattle, money was left behind, loose bits of equipment tied or taped down using dark green paracord, black electician’s tape or black gaffer tape depending on what it was. When I was done I would jump up and down and shake my body like there was a disco thumping, all the while listening for rattles, squeaks and rustles.

Preparations complete I would go with the other members of the patrol into the dark. The landscape always looks different at night, especially without lights. Crossing a wide open field is very hard, landmarks can usually only be made out a few yards ahead, even in bright moonlight the horizons are a lot closer than in daylight. 

Part 2: Autobiographical writing ‘Night Patrol‘

I’m on point for the patrol. The countryside renders in dark blue and grey, lit by stars and a sliver of moon. The horizon is close, sky and grass blend together less than 100 metres away. Trees stand darkly, visible further out. We move in foot long grass parallel to a track, avoiding waist high patches of thick, jagged gorse.

Each step is slow and deliberate. My left foot moves forwards. Toes gently touch the ground before I place the rest of my foot down. I slowly pass my weight from right leg to left as I scan the vague horizon. I listen carefully. My full attention is to the front, others behind me are watching to the left, right and rear. We move silently and without lights. It’s November in Inverness and the air smells icily fresh. The breeze cools my face. Moving makes me overheat because of the weight I carry, 30 pounds of food, water and ammunition round my waist, my combat jacket laden with chocolate, notebook, torch, knife, whistle and more ammo. I’m wearing multiple layers, t-shirt, shirt, jersey, combat jacket, scarf, woollen hat, helmet and two pairs of gloves. These are unavoidable, we may lie in ambush for hours.

 

Ahead the ground undulates, which means we’re close to the trenches. The spoil is camouflaged with turf, but it stands proud of the surroundings. A barbed wire entanglement resolves itself ten metres in front, the wire only apparent when I can touch it. The patrol commander produces white mine tape from his jacket. He ties some to the wire as we skirt around it. In the gap, I spot a hair thin trip-wire stretching blackly across my path. One end is on the stake holding a corner of the entanglement, the other lost in the dark.

I wave the patrol into cover before carefully placing white tape over the trip-wire. I follow it to find a flare on a post. I want to deactivate the flare, but the patrol commander shakes his head. We mark the trip-wire and pass the patrol over it. A few metres further on I see sandbags atop the nearest hillock. Another silent hand signal and we form a line. Moments later a soldier is highlighted on our skyline. Looking around I observe three other trenches.

I hold a thunderflash prominently for the patrol to see. The commander next to me does the same, and together we pull the strikers. It sounds like a giant match being struck, but doesn’t seem to attract any reaction. I throw mine in a great arc to land near the closest trench. As it leaves my hand I count in my head. I re-take control of my rifle. I get to four. Lightning flashes accompanied by a tremendous bang. The patrol starts shooting. The night air now smells of burnt carbon and fireworks.

There are shouts of “Stand To!”. We’ve taken them by surprise. Return fire pops and crackles all across the position, not just the trenches closest to us. Most don’t appear to know where we are. I can see muzzle flashes of the closer firers. Each shot is accompanied by a blue flash, and I can tell that they aren’t pointed at me. I hear several flares hiss up and burst with a soft pop. A series of short-lived, cold suns brighten the neighbourhood. Sharp, moving shadows subside as they drift downwards on a parachute. Clear fire orders can be heard and the shooting slows slightly.

Surprise over, we leave in reverse order. While I provide covering fire, a comrade runs into the tripwire we marked and gets tangled. Three others bunch round to help. I hear inventive swearing and the flare fizzing. I close one eye to preserve my night vision, they are clearly silhouetted. Before following I find a smoke grenade and pull the pin. I check the breeze, release the lever and lob it to obscure my departure.

Speed is now more important than stealth. I charge past my friends, beyond the flare light, throwing myself onto the ground. I fire a few times until they thunder past me. The commander shouts to regroup at the lone tree. I sprint after them. When I get to the tree there is a feeling of exhilaration. Clouds of steam show how much exercise we’ve done. Behind us there is still shooting. I pull a water bottle from my belt, it is chilled as though from the fridge and it tastes sweet. 

 

Part 3: Reflective commentary

Free writing is new to me, I hadn’t previously written from a prompt. Usually I have an idea for a story, I think about it and then type. The free write shown here is a straight first draft, and I stopped when I got to the requisite word count. It triggered memories of 25+ years ago when I regularly walked in the dark.

I originally tried to write some fiction based on the freewrite. I took a piece that I had written for the online tutorial and tried to see how I could use the techniques learnt in the tutorial. I wrote about 400 words but decided that the link to the freewrite was tenuous. So I decided to try writing what I knew, and wrote an autobiographical piece that directly flowed from the freewrite. While writing it I consciously tried to describe the scene in terms of sight, sound, smell and hearing as per exercise 3.3 in the coursebook. The first draft came out at almost double the required word count, however reading it back I felt that I could edit it to fit.

I posted the first draft of Part 1 & Part 2 on the Forum (Kemp, 2013) in the hope of getting some feedback. There was one response, which made some suggestions which I directly incorporated into a second draft ([REDACTED], 2013). As well as those suggestions I re-ordered some paragraphs to make the narrative flow better, re-wrote it into present tense and removed repetition and superfluous words as per the feedback from the online tutorial. This brought the draft down to just over 800 words, which although on the high end was within the tolerance allowed. I then posted this revised draft on the forum in case there was any further feedback. A few days later I then re-edited to make it shorter, testing each word for necessity.

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Government, Strategy

On Syria

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English: A volcano called Syria
English: A volcano called Syria (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The situation in Syria has caught public attention because of the alleged use of chemical weapons (most likely Sarin) by someone.

I don’t usually stray into current affairs quite so much as this, these sort of situations are too raw to even think about designing games about them. However the press coverage seems to be quite off base to me, seeing this as a repeat of Iraq/Afghanistan where it appears to me to be closer to the break up of Yugoslavia, or perhaps the Rwanda genocide. Also much of my experience in trying to understand conflict can be brought to bear on this situation.

Continue reading On Syria →

CLWG, design, games, Iraq Wars

Games on COIN

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This post is prompted by an excellent post by the guys at On Violence. You should read Capturing Australia! COIN is Boring Pt.3 to which this was my belated comment.

McCormick model of insurgency
McCormick model of insurgency (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My apologies for coming late to this one, I’ve been on leave for a couple of weeks now and being spending time with the family.

I’ve been interested in designing a counter insurgency game since the mid 1990s. The original trigger for my interest were the decolonisation conflicts of the British Empire. This wasn’t a board game, nor a computer game. The group I belong to designs face to face games for multiple participants, a bit like the sort of command post exercises those of us who’ve done some military or civil contingencies time would recognise.

I never ran the decolonisation game that prompted this, it needed 20 players, which was too many for the free venues and too few to make it economic in the hired halls. However there were a number of spin-off games, including a look at the Palestine/Israel insurgency in 1945-48; Malaya in the 1950s and Aden in the early 60s.

By the time I’d looked at those traditional insurgencies we got into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. My most recent attempt, which sort of almost counts as a board game (it has a map, which is really only for flavour) looked at the experience from the point of view of the Afghan farmers, and the drivers that took them to insurgency (or not as the case happens). I ran it twice, both times with someone who served in Afghanistan as one of the players.

I come at all this as a hobbyist. I make the games I’d like to play but cannot find commercially. The same is true of the people that I play with, we form a community of game design activists. (Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group, mainly in the UK). Over the years I’ve played games as both an insurgent and a counter-insurgent. They hold a lot of game play and interest. However a lot of it defies easy mechanisms that you can write down on a few pages than just about anyone can understand.

Part of this is that insurgencies aren’t all the same. What works in dealing with one group might only make things work with another. You need to get inside the culture and methods of the insurgents to defeat them. Or at least that is how I read it. Sometimes it will be unpalatable for modern players to play those games, either because of a close connection with someone hurt by the insurgency, or because current moral standards differ from those of the period or culture concerned.

That said, I think it is possible to write good games about insurgency. They just need to be specifically tailored to the insurgency in question and the players appropriately briefed in advance. You also need players that will roleplay it a little rather than just play to mechanisms.

 

– See more at: http://onviolence.com/?e=739

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CLWG

Trawling the Archives

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I’ve been looking through some of my early writing on my computer, most of which was written for publication in Chestnut Lodge‘s club magazine, known affectionately as MilMud (a contraction of Military Muddling). I found several articles from the mid 90s which I have cut and pasted into the blog with dates when they were originally written or the file modified date if that isn’t clear. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Libre Office can open WordPerfect 5.1 files with no problems.

  • 1995 CLWG Games Weekend – Saturday. This was my first ever CLWG event and my first offside report.
  • 1995 CLWG Games Weekend – Sunday. The second part of this report.
  • A Young Officer’s Guide to Fighting in Built Up Areas (FIBUA). I wrote this as a spoof of a training manual extract. At the time I was very uch into military humour.
  • Design Session for ‘Lion Comes Home‘ onside report. This was the start of my fascination with counter insurgency, back in 1995. I wanted to do a game about the post-war decolonisation, and I did lots of work on it and ran many test versions of parts of it. However the whole game never appeared because it was too big for a club game and I didn’t want to commit to running a megagame.
  • Onside Report on C3I. This marks another of my obsessions, in trying to accurately model morale of people in combat. Almost everything I read (and a few recent conversations with veterans) suggest that most people in combat aren’t remotely effective, and even those that are aren’t as good as they would be in training. Despite the tone of the article I never further developed or used C3I because it was too fiddly for a good game.
  • Milmud article on Revolutionary Warfare. An article I wrote for the CLWG club magazine on one of the spin off games from my idea for Lion Comes Home. This was in January 2003.

There are still more articles in my archives that I intend to add to my blog, so that this becomes a better record of the development of various ideas. Unless I write fresh material as a result, I’m always going to slot them in to where they would have appeared had I had a blog at the time.

 

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Books

Book Review – Biggles in Spain by W.E. Johns

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Biggles in SpainBiggles in Spain by W.E. Johns

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked this up for a pound in a charity shop in Caterham. I was surprised to find that it stood up well to the passing of time. It was written towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, during which it is set, and first published in 1939.

It still reads as a good story. A bit boys own in places, but it is Biggles and that’s exactly what Biggles stories are supposed to be. There is a good feel for the history, which is partly through being practically contemporaneous with the events it described. Well worth reading.

View all my reviews

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