Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group
Onside Review by Nick Luft Game Aim My aim was to design a game about the command, control and communications aspect of modern warfare, integrating near-real-time surveillance and intelligence with a live boots-on-the-ground operation. As I pondered my design I realised that this game would be well suited to being played using a computer to […]
Yesterday saw what will probably be the final outing – at least in this form – of my bizarre design for the even more peculiar 1814 campaign in France. This was the ‘curtain down’ on the 20yr Napoleonic saga, fought with French forces which in total were only slightly larger than one of the corps […]
Yet another play test. Yet more disappointments. And yet still the lure of temptation; there is a good game here, a good idea. It’s just a poor execution. But let’s concentrate on the good points first. Event Cards The Event Cards were a new feature, and I think worked very well. I wrote them to […]
Or, How to get rid of a tyrant in a big hat without really planning… By Peter Merritt Introduction: I grew up with the usual fairly conservative histories of the Napoleonic Wars (and most wars in general), which were written in the ‘inevitable movements’ fashion, i.e. Napoleon/Hitler was doomed, we were bound to win […]
As a sort of pre-publicity for Divided Land next April (and as a quick fulfilment of my obligation to write at least one article for MilMud) I thought some of our members might be interested in my own view of what happened during the first playing of the megagame version, in Malmo earlier this year. […]
Game Synopsis The game is intended to be a club-sized game for between 4 to 10 people. The game is about medieval farming, the struggle to survive, the conflict between the villagers, and the conflict between the villagers and the manorial Lord. I was inspired to design this game after being slightly dissatisfied by other […]
I ran a tryout of a set of rules that attempted to address the noticeable quality differences between some armies in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Design Intent What I was after was a set of rules that could be used in a mini campaign that had a reasonable speed of resolution but […]
Synopsis This is a game that recreates the struggles of a medieval village to work together, to farm together, and to raise their families. It is a game about survival. Game Aims I wanted this game to achieve two things. The players had to have their own skin in the game. If they did not […]
Onside Report on the Megagame Design session at CLWG on Sunday 6 August 2017 – By Tom Parry First, we would like to thank CLWG for inviting us to discuss megagame design. We had a very enlightening discussion, and we now have a much firmer grasp on the philosophy behind most megagame design. There is […]
Onside report by Jonathan Pickles This was a follow up to my game design session from October. The game revisits the many games I ran on the 1913 Mexican Revolution culminating in the megagame in 2004 The aim of this revision is to try to use far simpler mechanisms to deal with the operational side […]