Interesting, thanks! I’ve heard good things about Dark Valley, and read generally positive things about Dark Summer on BGG, so I’m hopeful. And it sounds like there are better Simonitch games to play with his generally excellent system.
Part of me is interested in the game just as a revisiting of the history, so if it turns out to not be the most engaging gameplay at the regimental scale, that’s still okay with me at the moment.
I agree with Mike and The Womb that the scale might very well be the problem. But I think there are also other issues, like the 18-factor limit on combat and the victory conditions that essentially require you to take Cherbourg or lose. In any case, I’m sure you could punch it up with some optional rules. In the old days, someone would publish a variant in Moves magazine where you added Elric on a flying Nazgul mount or something.
On a different note, I’m thinking to dabble in … designing a wargame. Just for fun and because I like to make stuff. I also train staff in design thinking / creative problem solving at work, so I’m curious to apply those systems to board game design. I don’t have aspirations that a first game would be publication-worthy. The main goal would be to make a game to see if I enjoy the process.
I’m thinking that the logical place to start would be to read up on the specific battle/campaign that I’d like to focus on, to put some historical meat on the rough idea. The other thing that I’ve been trying to do is to familiarize myself with lots of different mechanics that have arisen over the past 20 years, basically by playing and exploring lots of different games.
But I’m wondering if there is a generally recommended path through this process? Or common pitfalls? My rough thoughts would be research, ideate, prototype, test, then lather rinse repeat until you get something into working shape, but that’s a process that isn’t very specific to the issues of game design and certainly not specific to wargame design.
I was also looking at the book Successful Professional Wargames: A Practioner’s Handbook as a potential resource for issues specific to wargame design.
Just thought I’d drop the topic here to see if someone might have a few general thoughts.
As always, thanks in advance!
(1) Find a campaign you like and have good research on
(2) Find an existing system: COIN, CDG, CSS, whatever
(3) Insert your stuff
(4) Voilà
Actuellement, @Navaronegun might be a better person to answer, since he has already designed his own game.
Never go full game designer.
My method is to find a topic I have a real passion and interest in. That will then carry me through the research and the follow-through; all the work. Then just make the kind of wargame you would prefer to play. That’s basically it for me, @Zilla_Blitz.
Now, for me I really want to do whatever history I am looking at some sort of justice. But really, that’s the kind of wargame I like to play (see above).
Cool, thanks much everyone. So it doesn’t really sound like there is some magic formula for creating a wargame as opposed to something else, and standard design-thinking/agile/problem-solving tools should work well enough. Nice. I’ll keep playing lots of different games and start reading up.
I don’t have a sense for how much full-time wargame designers make, but the sizes of production runs would make me think that it’s best considered a side hobby done for passion rather than any expectation of profit. And I’m not even close to that point yet. This is purely to see if I enjoy the creative process of making a board game.
Just to clarify:
Just set up Hannibal: Rome v Carthage to re-learn it prior to a small wargame meetup in the Lakes I am going to in the near future. Then it’s learning Fallen Eagles:Quatre Bras for the same event.
If anyone wants to play some Commands and Colours Ancients online over the next few weeks I’d be well up for that, I have a tournament there as well and it’s years since I played the game!
While this is probably the case, I found Philip Sabin’s Simulating War a very interesting approach to the subject of designing a wargame (vs more traditional game design).
He doesn’t say anything really unique, and if you are used to agile processes and abstract design thinking much of it will be obvious, but places a lot of emphasis in modelling/abstracting specifically geared towards wargames and I think it’s a good reference to adjust a design process around and to be reminded of good practices. His approach tends to focus on very heavy simplification/abstraction of modelling, so it is probably suited for a first approach, since it tends to focus to keeping things manageable.
But: bear in mind he’s an academic that uses his simulations for teaching, so he’s not approaching wargames from a hobby perspective, and some of his references feel outdated, but I thought it is worthwhile.
It’s a good read. I don’t necessarily ascribe to all of his ideas, per se, but I found it really spurred thought. Sabin is also the “anti-Grigsby” (focus, less is more, know your scale).
Dunnigan’s classic is also worth a visit.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-War-Fourth-Comprehensive/dp/006009012X
It’s a great way to lose money!
Thanks! I’ve ordered Simulating War and How to Make War. They both look like exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.
I’ve also ordered Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design as a general reference for board game mechanics. I was poking through the Amazon preview yesterday and I think it will be helpful for brainstorming what sorts of mechanics might work for a particular design challenge, and just to organize some thinking in general. It’s a bit spendy, but I suspect I might find it helpful in other ways as well.
I bought that Tabletop Building Blocks book, and it looks like it has a a catalog of all the ways different game mechanics are implemented. Very interesting, but not at all what I was looking for, so I donated it to a friend. I hope you find it useful for what you’re doing—it did look pretty comprehensive.
How do you make a small fortune? Start off with a large fortune and get into game design.
Yup, just ask Curt Schilling!
Well, to be fair his money was mostly lost on that MMO dream. :) I’m not sure how much he put into MMP, and whether he got anything back from it.
Yeah, I meant the MMO debacle.
Interesting, thanks. I’ll poke through it for a couple of days and if it doesn’t seem like it’ll be helpful, I might return it. For that price, I’m expecting something downright magical.
Fifty bucks?