Nuclear Victory

Onside by Jim Wallman

Nuclear Victory was prompted by the thought: What if a country really was “Bombed Into The Stone Age”?

This led to the premise:
Freedonia has won a nuclear war decisively, but the consequences of victory are only beginning. Silvania’s central command has collapsed, organised resistance has effectively ceased, and the immediate military problem appears solved.

Yet millions of people remain, surviving military forces and weapons are scattered across the country, neighbouring states are alarmed, and the political legitimacy of Freedonia’s first strike remains contested among its Allies who, for ‘reasons’ were not given advance warning.

I chose to use fictional countries – Freedonia (very loosely based on the USA) and Silvania (very loosely based on Russia) – because this allowed me to boundary the problem and help players to resist getting drawn into the details. It is the principle dilemma I wanted the game to consider, rather than the practicalities (though at some level these too are important).

The game moves attention away from the mechanics of nuclear war and towards its strategic consequences.

Players are not asked whether Freedonia can defeat Silvania; that question has already been answered. Instead, they must determine what victory means in Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic terms.

This creates an effective tension between military success and strategic success. Measures that appear sensible from one perspective, for example securing nuclear sites, deploying forces, proposing international administration, may generate opposition, suspicion or unintended escalation elsewhere.

Information about conditions inside Silvania is fragmentary, while neighbouring governments, international organisations and the media possess still less. Players therefore have to make consequential decisions without a complete picture and must consider how their actions will be interpreted by actors who do not share Freedonia’s assumptions.

In my initial design the game was primarily a discussion within a Freedonia cabinet meeting about ‘what next’. However it quickly became apparent that there is also a lot of interesting play in the interactions with allies and friendly nations. So the current version has roles for players representing the fictional countries of ‘Gondor’ (based on western Europe – mainly France & Germany), Poldavia (based on Poland), Steppeland (based on Ukraine) and others like this. This has generate some interesting interactions as those countries, who border or are near Silvania are suffering the impacts of drifting fallout and mass migration of refugees from a devastated Silvania.

So far I have run this a couple of times and each game is creating some interesting play – especially from the Freedonia team who have many options to either take responsibility for their action, of stand back and ignore it.

Hopefully I’ll give this another go in February or March next year.