Two Brush Strokes – Japanese Team development Session

Offside report by Jim

Meeting 5 October 2024

Dave brought a prototype section of his upcoming ‘Two Brush Strokes’ china-themed megagame that related to the two player Japanese team.

This issue for him was (If I understood it correctly) that Japanese olicy in China in the ;ate 1920 was to some degree ambivalent. Whilst there was general agreement with government about Japanese imperialist expansion in China – in particular Manchuria – the civilian government and the military differed about the methods, priorities and pace this would be implemented. Dave’s aspiration was that one of the two players would represent the civil government and one the military and without direct competition and conflict between players (this was important) have to somehow wrestle with these differing perspectives.

We tried out and did a walkthough of Dave’s prototype system, and there followed a reall interesting discussion which talk about what the historical situation was, and what the decisions and tradeoff the team would have to consider. This led Dave to the conclusion that they may be a simples system that involved generating ‘policy cards’ with pros and cons, consequences and precursors, so the team had to weigh these up and balance each action with consequences. It was also suggested (by Andrew I think) that policy cards could also be laced on a timeline track allowing the game to reflect the benefits of committing to long terms plans in terms of better effect or lower costs.

In summary a typical CLWG design sessions – interesting in that I learnt more about the period, and also fascinating to watch the creative process in action.