Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group
A slightly belated onside report of a committee game I ran during the Design Weekend, titled Back in the Fold. The subject here is the negotiations in 1949 at the Petersberg Hotel near Bonn between the Allied High Commission and the recently elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer. Developments in this […]
I ran a session on using Twine to create interactive computer games after my game Hill 70 caused a little bit of a stir. Twine is a very simple to use editor that can be used to make either interactive fiction or interactive graphical adventure games. Twine uses web tools like HTML, & CSS, and a computer programming language […]
I was due to run my fourth game test of “A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese” (Albobanc) on the first day of the Games Weekend, on 6th October. I had been working on my design ideas on my commute and some moments snatched between marking and lesson prep over the past month. On […]
A game of the outbreak of the English Civil War The English Civil War has interested me since reading a Ladybird book at a very young age – this was obviously a balanced account of gallant cavaliers and villainous roundheads with puritans abolishing Christmas – talk about striking fear into young hearts! I suspect the […]
We are coming over from the Netherlands for the CLWG Conference with at least 4 people and intend on filling one game design slot on the megagame “God’s sake Nelly, why didn’t you marry him?”. This was an operational (double blind) megagame on the Seven Days’ battle in the early American Civil War. As you […]
Over the summer I have been working on a computer game called Hill 70. I have done this so I learn it before I teach it. The game is an Interactive Fiction or Text Adventure Game. I have tested it several times and I think I have got rid of any bugs, hopefully. But I […]
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 […]