Stuart Ellis-Gorman's Blog, page 4

Playing at the World 2e, Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson

Few books have impacted me quite as much as the first edition of Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World. A 700 page self-published brick of a history on the origins and influences of Dungeons and Dragons was exactly the kind of deep nerd lore that I craved. I devoured it while working on my PhD, and even snuck in a little reference to it on my footnotes. Now long out of print, it was a book I would recommend but with many caveats around people having to really be into this kind of thing specifically. Thankfully, Peterson has seen fit to put together a revised second edition, now available via MIT Press, and Playing at the World has never been so approachable. While a weirdo like me can’t help but miss some of the first edition’s idiosyncrasies, even I must admit that this is altogether a more polished history of the origins of D&D and roleplaying games in general.

For its second edition Playing at the World has undergone a complete restructure. No longer a single hefty tome, it is two volumes. The first - which I am reviewing here - is the more straightforward narrative history of how the duo of E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson happened to create Dungeons and Dragons between 1971 and 1974. It starts before either individual, though, and examines the early history of commercial board and miniatures wargaming in America to provide a clear contextual account of how the ideas that informed D&D happened to be in circulation for Gygax and Arneson to encounter. The second volume will examine what Peterson has called the “pillars” of influences on D&D, looking at things like how fantasy fiction of the time created the specific flavor of fantasy adventure that comprises D&D campaigns. While I believe this split makes complete sense, and certainly makes the book more accessible to general readers, I am a little saddened since I actually adored the weird structure of the first edition and many of my favorite aspects of Playing at the World are in the forthcoming volume 2.

Still, I can’t complain about what volume 1 achieves. This is a very readable and engaging history of the origins of D&D and the further years of research Peterson has done on this subject clearly shows. The book handily avoids falling into hero worship of the game’s creators and instead takes ample time to outline the many influences and side figures without whom D&D never would have come to be. As the book itself says, D&D was more than the creation of one person.

I particularly enjoyed the expanded sections on the introduction of various now iconic sub-classes. While I remember the story of the invention of the Thief character - submitted by fans to TSR and then later made official, without compensating the inventor of course - this new edition includes stories of how rangers, bards, and other classes emerged from the fan communities and even how fans reacted to new official sub-classes, like monk and assassin, by making their own versions.

While the founders of TSR do not exactly cover themselves in glory in this book, Peterson does a good job of explaining the challenges facing a company trying to balance their own commercial goals with the collaborative fan culture that made them as popular as they were. I don’t think anyone would say that sending letters from lawyers as a first step was the brightest idea for engendering a good relationship with the game’s fans, but Peterson does paint a complex picture of some of the gray areas that existed with the creation of a new style of game and the interaction between fan creation and publisher’s brand. This also helps to further underpin the narrative that while Gygax and Arneson’s names are on the game’s cover, D&D was a product of a wider community without whom we would not have roleplaying games as we do now. I also really enjoyed the factoid that apparently the term “role-playing game” was coined by one Richard Berg, an eccentric, prolific, and personal favorite designer of mine.

Peterson is an excellent writer and making this kind of dense sub-culture stuff both readable and engaging is no small feat. I read a lot of academic histories and few are as exciting as this one about midwestern nerds inventing a new game. I also really enjoyed how Peterson frequently engages with the fact that people struggled to describe D&D after it first came out - it is fascinating looking back from a time when RPGs are ubiquitous to examine a time when people didn’t have a name for them and even struggled to describe what the game was. A helpful reminder that language is tricky and explaining new concepts is hard.

I can never be who I was when I first read Playing at the World. Since then I have read several more books on the history of RPGs, including several by Peterson, so the new revised edition could never hit me the same way that the original did. Still, I had a great time reading it and didn’t want to put it down. If you haven’t ever read the original, you should definitely read this one and if you did read the original I think it is still worth your time. Now, who do I talk to about getting an advance copy of volume 2? I don’t think I can last until April.

Paper Time Machines by Maurice W. Suckling

Paper Time Machines, which takes its title from a famous quote from commercial wargame pioneer James Dunnigan, is the latest volume in a burgeoning scholarship on tabletop gaming and in particular historical tabletop games. Within this new niche Paper Time Machines stakes out an interesting territory. Functionally, it is a college textbook covering a variety of aspects of the form, history, and design of historical board games. Teachers and professors will, of course, find much of value in this book for forming their own lessons, but how interesting is it for a non-academic reader?

Author Maurice Suckling does a good job of making the book approachable to as wide an audience as possible, but as it serves so many purposes inevitably most readers will probably find certain sections are more interesting and/or useful to them than others. That is no great critique, this is true of countless books, but it is perhaps to encourage readers that they don’t need to tackle it cover to cover. The book’s textbook format means that sections are clearly outlined with their purpose and content, so teachers can adapt it easily to their own preferred lesson structure, which makes it easy to grab what might be interesting to you from the get go. While there are benefits to reading the book in order, earlier chapters foreshadow discussions to come, it is by no means mandatory.

Paper Time Machines is split into five sections.

The first attempts to define the parameters of what is a historical board game - no small feat as the extensive sample of potential definitions included in the book shows. It also provides a brief history of historical games which, while brief, contains impressive depth. I enjoyed this section the most, but I’m also exactly the kind of historian who would happily read dozens of different histories of the hobby. I love this kind of thing.

Once the definitions and background are completed, most of the book focuses on game design as practice. The second part is a general guide to the game design process and tools, with the third part digging into how to use these more general ideas for the specifics of designing historical games. Part four is a collection of case studies using several of the author’s own games. This part was interesting, but I felt like I would have gotten more out of it were I already more familiar with his games - potentially something to revisit once I’ve had the opportunity.

The final section ventures away from game design advice and practice to cover several key topics of debate within the historical game scene - the section on the postcolonial turn being particularly interesting. Were I to nitpick I might have preferred for this section to be earlier in the book, it seems to me a better companion to the book’s opening section, but that is the nittiest of nit picks.

I must make a confession - while reading the sections on game design I frequently found myself spacing out while thinking about an as yet theoretical project, frequently putting the book down to type something in my notes app. This puts me in an odd position, because on the one hand I’m sure I glazed over some sections of the text, I certainly did not give it the level of attention I have given to other books I’ve read. At the same time, though, when reading a book that is meant to help you develop your own game design skills, surely inspiring you to focus on your design and not worry overly about the book itself is a significant success. Only time will tell if my design idea fully materializes, but if it does then I should certainly give at least some of the credit to Paper Time Machines.

On the whole I really enjoyed Paper Time Machines. I think going forward I will prefer to use it as a reference work, pulling up sections as needed, rather than reading it cover to cover again. As an introduction to the hobby, to game design, and to historical game design specifically there is a lot of value to be had here. While far from the final word, a likely unachievable goal for any work, it is another valuable addition to an ever expanding subject. Check it out.

Washington’s War by Mark Herman

It’s strange that it took me this long to try Washington’s War. Its predecessor, We the People, was my first ever historical wargame – an outlier in my journey, as I wouldn’t enter the hobby properly until decades later. Given my fondness for that game, I should have grabbed Washington’s War during one of my previous attempts to get into wargaming, but it took until the most recent reprint for me to finally get We the People 2.0 to the table. Unfortunately, that interlude was so long that I’ve now forgotten much of the nuance in the 1.0 version, so I cannot make any profound comparison between the two versions. Maybe further down the line I’ll open my battered copy of the original and give it a go, but for this review I will largely limit myself to the version that is currently available. That’s no bad thing, though, as Washington’s War is an excellent game that, while it shows its age in places, delivers a satisfying experience without losing itself in complexity. The genre-defining originator shows that sometimes old games can continue to remain relevant even after their systems have been adopted and updated by countless others.

GMT Games provided me with a complimentary copy of Washington’s War.

Most people probably already know this, but in case you don’t, We the People was the originator of what is now referred to as the Card-Drive Wargame (CDG). These games give players a hand of cards and they play those cards in alternating turns to take various actions. Cards either have a printed numerical value, called Ops, that can be spent on actions, or they have an Event. These events have some kind of special effect and are based on historical occurrences from the American Revolution – e.g. there are cards representing the publication of the Declaration of Independence and Benedict Arnold’s betrayal. In later CDGs it would become standard for cards to have both an Ops value and an Event, and players would choose which of the two to use, but in We the People, and in Washington’s War, the cards only have one or the other. Washington’s War is an updated version of We the People, but its core CDG system is functionally the same as it was in the original.

A selection of the kinds of cards available to players in Washington’s War.

The age of Washington’s War’s take on the CDG mechanism is something that is immediately apparent to anyone who is familiar with the genre. There is that separation between Ops and Events, of course, but also the Events are quite simple. They often place or remove political control (we’ll talk about that later), or give a bonus in combat, or adjust some other minor system. What I’m saying is that they’re not game shifting – some modern CDGs make their Events radical transformations of core game systems, but very situational in terms of how you use them. Washington’s War errs on the side of simplicity, and it feels older for it. However, that is not to say that it is bad! What is somewhat surprising is how tight and interesting the card play feels, even today. Events can be discarded instead of played to take a small political action or, interestingly, to give a bonus in combat. Adding the bonus in combat can be crucial, but it also will often cause you to have one fewer card than your opponent, potentially letting them have two turns in a row. There is surprising depth in the simplicity of the card play.

The deck can be a cruel overlord – the mix of Ops values, between one and three, and the fact that Events are restricted to one player or the other means that it is very possible to draw a terrible hand with very few options, or to have an amazing hand with the American eastern seaboard as your oyster. The luck of the draw certainly has the chance to skew a game of Washington’s War, but I would argue that it is no greater than the potential of a string of bad rolls to disrupt many other games. This game is about making the best out of what you have, and the imbalance in hands enhances some of the bluffing feel of the game. You are trying to infer from your opponent’s play if they’re being cagey this turn because their hand is bad, or if they’re sitting on three amazing cards and just trying to trick you into overextending yourself by playing all their bad cards first. It can get quite tense and mind-gamey, especially if you’re playing on the excellent Rally the Troops implementation and can’t even see your opponent’s face to try and get a read on them.

Washington’s War’s fickle deal of the cards also encourages you to play a long game – the averages will most likely work out if you give it enough time, so take it slow. That is, of course, if the game gives you that time. Washington’s War also includes a semi-random game end point. Throughout the deck are a series of cards that declare the fall of the British government, which ends the game. Each iteration of this card has a year, which corresponds to a turn in the game. At the end of each turn you check when the government is supposed to fall – if it is the current turn or before, the game ends, otherwise play continues. Each new iteration played replaces the one currently on the board, so even if a turn is supposed to be the end when you start playing it, that could change – especially as these cards are mandatory and cannot be discarded.

The fact that you can never know how long the game will last creates a satisfying tension – the long game probably favors the Americans overall as the British will run out of reinforcements, but you can’t gamble on having all the time in the world and with their early board presence it is even possible for American to win early if they’re aggressive and lucky. I love that the ending isn’t purely random. It’s not like you roll a die at the end of each turn and see if that was the last one – they are cards in the player’s hands. You could draw a card telling you that the game will end this turn and sit on it until the very end to drop it on your opponent as an unpleasant surprise. Or you could drop it early and gamble on the possibility that your opponent also has a game end card, and they will be forced to replace yours whether they want to or not. There is strategy to how you manage these cards. My only reservation is that if you are dealt multiple end game cards, your hand is complete trash – they can’t be used for anything else and must be played, so a hand full of them could basically ruin that turn for you in an incredibly unsatisfying way. I wish there was some system for moderating how punishing that can feel – more from a place of how boring it can be to have to effectively skip multiple turns rather than from a strict concern over game balance.

At this point you would be forgiven for thinking that Washington’s War is a card game, and that’s my fault, I haven’t even mentioned what the rest of the game looks like. Washington’s War takes inspiration from an unusual source, for a wargame at least, in that it replicates elements of Go. Players win by controlling American colonies, in this case including Canada, and control is done by placing political control markers on the map by spending Ops points. Each state has a number of locations, and whoever controls the majority in a state controls that state. If Britain can secure six colonies by game end, they win, otherwise they lose. This does have the odd effect that small states like Delaware or Rhode Island are weirdly important, since you only need to control one space and they’re worth as much for victory as a large state like Virginia or New York, but at least from a game play perspective it does introduce some interesting wrinkles to the strategy.

The game also benefits somewhat from a familiarity with the borders of Eastern US states. Each state’s locations are color coded, which provides some help, but it can be tricky to parse especially when it fills up with pieces.

I mentioned Go, though, and this is where things get a little spicy. If your control markers are ever isolated, meaning they are completely surrounded by enemy control markers, and there is no friendly military unit in that area, all of your pieces in that area are taken off the board. In practice, the requirements for isolation are quite generous and you won’t be removing that many pieces in most games, but understanding and using it is nevertheless essential to good play and impactful on your decisions. Because empty spaces prevent your pieces from being isolated, it is often desirable for players to not completely fill every space on the map, but then because you are playing an area control game leaving spaces blank is making it harder for you to establish control. Since Britain can also trace back to ports to prevent isolation, there is a nice bit of asymmetry where their control pieces are often harder to remove once they have set in, but at the same time the Americans usually have more freedom in where they can place pieces, making it easier for them to isolate pieces away from the coasts. Like much of the game’s asymmetry, this is minor but immensely impactful on how the two sides play and the differing strategies that you must employ if you want to win.

The changes to combat in Washington’s War are one of the few differences from We the People that even I can notice, with my hazy memory of the latter. Where We the People had a card game within the game that players used to resolve battles, Washington’s War offers a much simpler dice-based combat with a few modifiers. Part of me misses the old card combat, but since I haven’t played it in so long it may just be nostalgia, and there’s no denying that the dice combat is much faster. There are a few quirks to combat that I quite like.

Generals can only carry 5 units with them on the march, so the strength of an attacking army is somewhat predictable. This prevents a situation where one huge army can cruise around the map crushing all opposition. You can create a huge defensive stack, but if you want to go on the offensive, you’ll only be so strong. While that unit cap gives some predictability, it is somewhat undermined by the random roll that all generals must make before combat to see whether they use all or half of their combat value. This approximately represents how well they manage to organize their forces on the day of battle, and it injects a valuable sense of uncertainty into the combat math, making the combat more than just a dice off between two nearly identical armies.

That said, the combat remains quite tight, so battle cards and the discarding of enemy Event cards for a bonus remains incredibly valuable if you want to emerge victorious on the field – but maybe you don’t even care that much about winning fights. The game is not decided by who wins the most battles, but by territorial control, so while some fighting is inevitable this is more a game of movement and control than it is of pure combat. Which makes sense, since historically the side that lost the most battles ultimately won the war, so it would make no sense to link victory directly to battlefield performance.

Washington’s War is a simple game that takes a very birds-eye view of the American Revolution, so it is understandably not the most detailed simulation of the revolution. At the same time, it doesn’t need to be. It’s a big picture game that will give a decent impression of the ins and outs of the war without getting too lost in the weeds. While part of me would have liked a slightly deeper political layer, I must recognize that in even having one We the People stood out, and adding more would probably have mucked up such a smooth design. As someone who grew up in Thomas Jefferson’s hometown this history was drilled into me from a young age, so it is fun to see cards and generals that I recognize while playing. It’s not a game that is going to teach you the ins and outs of how the Continental Congress interacted with the Continental Army, but as a simulation of the decisions facing Washington and his generals vs. the British generals, I think it works perfectly well.

Washington’s War fully deserves to be called a classic of the wargame genre. While it clearly shows its age in places, that does nothing to diminish the joy that can be found within this box. Later iterations on the CDG mechanism have taken it in new and deeper directions, but Washington’s War shows that sometimes the simplicity of the original can be just as, if not more, satisfying that some of its successors. Plus, it’s on Rally the Troops in an amazing implementation, so it has never been easier to play. This is an all-timer, you should try it.

(Hey, if you like what I do here, maybe consider making a donation on Ko-Fi so I can keep doing it.)

WItMoYW ep. 12 - Rebel Fury by Mark Herman

For episode 12 of the We Intend to Move on Your Works Podcast Pierre and I played the latest hotness - Rebel Fury by Mark Herman. We are big fans of Gettysburg, the C3i game that originated the system used in Rebel Fury, but we emerged from our time with this game a little skeptical of some of its changes. But will our skepticism override Alexandre’s desire for a good bargain on an interesting looking game? Listen to find out!

Yokai Hunters Society by Chema González - Review and Free Scenario

Yokai Hunters Society is a light RPG by Chema González, based on Tunnel Goons by Nate Treme. I picked it up on a whim about two years ago because the premise looked cool and the print on demand version is very affordable (as is the PDF edition, which you can get from https://punkpadour.itch.io/yokai-hunter). It sat on my shelf before last year when I had a chance to run a Halloween one shot for my usual RPG party plus one more player who was entirely new to tabletop RPGs. I figured this very simple system would be a great way to play something on Halloween without it being overly taxing.

In that same vein, I want to keep this review relatively light. Unlike for my Forbidden Lands review, I haven’t been running Yokai Hunters Society as a big multi-year campaign. Instead, I have run one session, so my thoughts are general impressions rather than in depth analysis rooted in significant experience. I have also decided to include a (more polished) version of the session I ran as a scenario at the end of this review so that you can try it for yourself using that if you want. A copy of Yokai Hunters Society is only $4.00, so with a free adventure (either mine or one of several other available options written by others) you can just play it for yourself and see if you like it!

The core system of Yokai Hunters Society is incredibly simple. Player characters (PCs) have four stats and when they need to make a test players roll 2d6 and add the relevant stat – each one gives some guidance on when it is appropriate, and they are all wonderfully broad. You could also add a bonus to your roll if you have a relevant item and based on context you may have advantage or disadvantage, rolling one extra d6 and dropping the highest/lowest. You are looking to roll a 10 or higher to succeed, on a 9 you succeed but suffer for it, and on an 8 or lower you fail and some kind of escalation happens. There are a few more wrinkles to be added, such as the Cursed die which can boost rolls but penalises you for using it too often or how fighting monsters is harder than normal tests, but the core can be explained in one sentence.

Dice rolls are entirely player facing, the GM never rolls dice. While I am a fan of rolling dice, as a GM I do really like these kinds of systems for making the play easy to understand and taking out of my hands any feeling of responsibility for what the players may do to themselves. I think it encourages a level of collaborative feeling around the table and suppresses the malignant notion that players are in opposition to the GM.

While I love unnecessary crunch in RPGs more than anyone probably should, I also have a deep appreciation for systems that can get out of the way and let the game flow. I think particularly for a horror game it is important to have a system that keeps things moving – nothing breaks the tension in a horror scene like having to consult the rulebook. This is also a light system that I think works well for new players – some light systems are so light that they ask a lot of their players in terms of commitment to roleplay and bringing their own imagination to the game, which can be intimidating if you’ve never done them before. Yokai Hunters Society isn’t like that – it supports the players and doesn’t ask too much of them – you can bring as much as you want to the characters, but you can also play it as a straight dungeon crawl if you’re not comfortable roleplaying.

The setting is Meiji-era Japan with the PCs all members of the mysterious Yoka Gari Kai or Yokai Hunters Society. The book provides very little background, which is probably fine. I like the society being largely mysterious and unexplained – it leaves room for each gaming group to decide for themselves how the society works and who is behind it (if they even care about that in the first place). There is a list of prompt questions for GMs to answer that will let them flesh out the world and ensures that no two tables of Yokai Hunters Society play exactly the same.

Beyond that, the setting his historical Japan. Since players are expected to be Japanese people who live ostensibly normal lives when not engaging in secret monster hunts, it is beneficial if your players (or at a minimum the GM) knows a decent amount about Meiji-era Japan. As a historian and a huge weeb, this was not a problem for me, but I did find myself having to do a bit of an info dump on my players to bring them up to speed on some key aspects of Japanese society that they would need to know to fully immerse in the gaming experience. That’s not a complaint, I love historical settings for RPGs and would like to see more, but it is a bit of a warning if you’re considering running this as a minimal prep experience. I do worry a bit that without historical guidance there is a chance that groups could fall into potentially racist stereotypes, but also if a group of nerds are going to be racist in their basement there’s very little an RPG designer can do to stop them.

If I have one (minor) complaint about Yokai Hunters Society, it’s that I wish there was a little more GM facing material in the rulebook, with the recognition that this is a very short rulebook and so I am in fact just asking for it to be longer. This is a system that by design rewards flexibility in a GM and there are several pages of GM advice in the rulebook, so it’s not like it leaves you high and dry when you’re running it. However, as a huge fan of the generative tables included in games like Forbidden Lands, I wish there were a few more tables to provide ideas for cases – maybe more options that linked the supplied sample of yokai at the back of the book with potential types of case that the existing random table generates.

I would also have liked slightly more information on running combats, especially against yokai. The rules are in the book, combat works as any other test with only a few differences based on how dangerous the yokai, but as someone who has never been very comfortable designing combat encounters (it’s why I prefer exploration/investigation games when I GM) I would have loved a little more handholding. Overall, though, the GM information is good but while I think this is a good system for new players, I would recommend that GMs have some experience running games or at a minimum be comfortable winging it before running Yokai Hunters Society.

This is a very cool little game and given the price of entry it is well worth checking out. As I mentioned at the start, I have also included a punched-up version of the one-shot I ran for my table as part of this review. The full text is copied below, and there is a PDF version which I have tried to make a little nicer which you can download as well. This is a pretty light scenario, I ran it in about 2-3 hours including character creation as an introduction to the system and a nice way to spend a Halloween evening, but feel free to add to it or expand it if you want a bit more depth to its core structure. I also have minimal layout and art skills, so it is structured for function not so much for aesthetic - if anyone would like to improve that, please reach out and I’ll happily share the original word file!

If either this review or the adventure was of interest/use to you, maybe consider throwing me a few coins on Ko-Fi? There is a hovering donation link or you can go directly to https://ko-fi.com/stuartellisgorman. I really appreciate the support and in particular if this proves popular I will explore doing more RPG reviews and sharing more simple adventures. Thanks!

The Haunting of Kushu Kaido PDF

The Haunting of Kushu Kaido

The year is 1912 and travellers have been disappearing along the increasingly neglected Koshu Kaido, the mountainous road that traditionally connected Nagano Prefecture to Tokyo/Edo. The players must travel to the village/way station of Tsutaki-Shuku to investigate the disappearances and possibly eliminate any yokai responsible.

This is a simple introductory adventure meant to be played in 2-3 hours by new or still relatively inexperienced PCs.

 The party are contacted by the Hunters Society with the following message:

Travelers are going missing on the Koshu Kaido near Tsutaki-Shuku in Nagano Prefecture, we suspect a yokai is responsible. Investigate the disappearances and, if a yokai is involved, stop them.

Travel to Tsutaki-Shuku is easy if the party chooses to travel along the Koshu Kaido. No roll is necessary to travel along one of the great highways of the Edo era, but should players choose to go over the mountains have each player roll either Sharpness or Wisdom. If most of the party succeeds, then they make their way safely to the town of Tsutaki-Shuku, gaining advantage on all future rolls to navigate the nearby wilderness to reflect their greater knowledge of the terrain. If a majority fails, the party becomes lost in the wilderness. Each player loses d3 health and they must roll again. If they fail three times, they meet the Shunobon (see below).

Tsutaki-Shuku

Once a relatively prosperous stopping point for nobles and their retainers traveling to Edo as part of the Shogun’s requirement that all lords spend half the year in the capital, under the new Meiji government and with the railroads making travel faster along other routes the village has fallen on hard times.

Tsutaki-Shuku consists of two inns, one of which has been boarded up, as well as a handful of houses. The main village’s purpose was hosting traveling guests and is designed almost entirely for that purpose, but further out in the mountains and woods are outlying homes for woodcutters, artisans, and recluses.

Inoue Inn

The open inn is run by a middle-aged woman named Inoue Yo and her son Toshio. Yo is happy to provide the party with basic meals and accommodation – she will attempt to charge them a premium (7 sen) but can be negotiated down.

Very few travellers pass through the town these days – those that do are usually local to the region, visiting elderly family she assumes.

The Samurai

An older samurai named Ueda Akihito is already staying at the inn. He is initially haughty and uninterested in company, but if the party spend a few coins on either sake (5 sen) or a good meal (7 sen) he can be persuaded to join them and share his story. If the party doesn’t want to or can’t pay the cost, they may attempt a Self-Control test to try and impress him with their demeanour. The first test is made straight, but if one player fails all subsequent attempts to impress him made by other members of the party are made with disadvantage due to their association with an obviously unpolished individual.

He is from Nagano and his younger brother was supposed to visit him from Tokyo, but it has been a month, and he has not shown up.

His brother has run off to Osaka to avoid debtors, but Akihito does not know this.

Akihito suspects bandits are responsible for waylaying his brother – he has no real basis for this belief but is convinced that as a member of the samurai class he must hunt down the bandits and drive them off, no matter how outdated that notion is.

He plans to march off into the woods with his sword tomorrow morning, the party are welcome to join him in his quest if they wish.

The Son

Yo’s son Toshio helps around the inn, cooking, cleaning, carrying guests’ possessions to their room and the like. He is also secretly stealing items of value from the guests, without his mother’s knowledge. He exchanges what he can with any merchants that pass through or with other tradespeople to help cover the inn’s costs.

He will attempt to steal from the players, either when they are out or if they let him take their stuff to their room for them. If the players catch him, he will beg for them not to tell his mother and promises to do whatever he can to make it up for them.

If asked about anything suspicious he may have seen he will tell them about a time last month when he got lost in the woods on a moonless night (while stashing some stolen property). In his wanderings he stumbled across a shack that he was sure he’d never seen before. He thought he heard a voice calling for him to come rest there, but he fled, eventually stumbling back on the road and making his way home in the early dawn.

With a successful pair of Sharpness and Wisdom rolls the PCs can determine where in the woods the shack was, but it has since moved. However, identifying this location will give them advantages later in tracking down the yokai as they can learn something about how it manifests.

The Abandoned Inn

The inn is boarded up, but only loosely. If the player’s break in they will find evidence of habitation, someone is staying in one of the rooms. If it is daytime the inn is empty, but at night the haunting sound of shamisen echoes out over the village from the inn.

The Goze

The goze[1] Toda Keiko has been staying in the inn, waiting for her nephew to come and take her to Tokyo. He is already several days late. During the day one of the villagers comes and takes her to their house to eat, but she insists on spending the night in this inn because that is where she told her nephew she would be – she did not know it was closed when she sent the letter weeks ago but nevertheless refuses to change her accommodation.

If asked about anything suspicious she may have encountered, she will say that someone came to her two nights before and told her that he could take her to her nephew – he wasn’t far. She didn’t trust the voice, though, and refused to join him. He said he would give her three days to change her mind and would return then (the night the day after the players arrive in the town).

The players can choose to bring her with them to Tokyo when their mission is finished, possibly earning a boon. Keiko has a Kenko Omamori that she could persuaded to part with if she can be reunited with her family in Tokyo.

The Yokai

Two yokai working in tandem are responsible for the disappearances along the road: a Shitanaga Uba and a Shunobon.

Shitanaga Uba

The Shitanaga Uba takes the form of an elderly crone, living alone in a shack. Her shack only exists from dusk until dawn, disappearing with the arrival of light to appear in a new location at dusk. She has an extremely long and agile tongue that she uses to strangle and devour the flesh from her victims.

If players stumble across her shack, they will find an old woman spinning cloth. She will welcome them into her hovel and feed them simple food and tea. They are welcomed to spend the night, but once they fall asleep, she will use her tongue to lick the flesh from their bones, devouring them while they are alive if she can or strangling them one by one and then eating them if she must.

Level: 1d6, Long Tongue, Flesh-eater (heals 1 the first time it damages a player).

Shunobon

The Shunobon is a shapeshifter who can grow to a height of two meters. He has a huge red head, far out of proportion with the rest of his body, which has a massive mouth full of shiny teeth and one big eye. Shunobon usually scare their victims, frightening them to death and then devouring their body. This Shunobon is working in conjunction with the Shitanaga Uba, leading or herding victims to her shack so she can kill them, and they can devour the victims together.

If the party come across the Shunobon in the wilderness he may attempt to drive them towards the Shitanaga Uba, or he may decide to try and eat them himself. He is far more likely to attack an isolated victim and steer any groups of individuals to the Shitanaga Uba so they can team up on them.

Level: 1d3, Shapeshifter, Frightening Beyond All Reason (Upon seeing his true form, the next Courage roll PCs make is with disadvantage).

Finding the Yokai

The players are presented with several options for tracking down the yokai, but they are also welcome to come up with their own solutions. Several of the most likely paths to the yokai are outlined below, but I advise you to be flexible and lean in to what the players’ want to do.

The Reckless Samurai

The party could choose to follow Akihito on his quest for “bandits”. Akihito will insist on leading the party but while he is well meaning his competence is lacking. He is quickly lost in the woods, and the PCs with him. The PCs may attempt a Sharpness role to orient themselves in the woods, and then a Wisdom roll to (politely) convince Akihito to follow their advice, including potentially returning to town.

If they stay out in the woods, roll a d6 at dusk. On a roll of 1-3, the players take d6 damage but stumble onto the road – they can return to the inn, but Akihito will insist on going out again tomorrow. On a 4 or 5 the Shunobon appears disguised as a bandit and leads them deeper into the woods before stranding them for the night (PCs take d3 damage from exposure, and must try and navigate their way home, potentially suffering more damage in the process). On a 6 they find a lone shack with the Shitanaga Uda inside – she welcomes them to stay for the night.

The Goze

Players may accurately guess that Keiko’s visitor was supernatural in nature. They can lie in wait for the arrival of the Shunobon. He will appear as a normal peasant but if ambushed will transform into his true monster form. If he is defeated, he will beg for mercy and try to place the blame on the Shitanaga Uba in the woods. If the players force him to lead them to the shack, both yokai will attack the party together. If the players kill the Shunobon without listening to him, Keiko will mention that Shunobon often work in tandem with other yokai.

Brave Explorers

The PCs could also choose to wander off into the woods looking for any potentially malign threat. Have the party collectively make a series of three rolls using either Sharpness or Wisdom. They gain Advantage on one roll for each of the following that is true:

They came here overland rather than by road.

Toshio told them where he found the hut.

They have wandered the woods with Akihito (but are not currently lost with him).

They met the Shunobon.

If their total successes are equal to twice the number of party members, they find the shack in time for it to magically appear at dusk – letting them know that something isn’t right.

If their total successes are equal to the number of party members, they find the shack soon after nightfall. They have no reason to believe it is suspicious but are awake enough to interact with the yokai and potentially be tipped off to the danger.

If they fail to even get that many successes, they arrive at the shack in the dead of night and collapse from exhaustion upon being invited in. They will have disadvantage on the subsequent encounter with the Shitanga Uba.

Showdown

There are two ways to deal with the Shitanga Uba: kill it via straightforward combat or burn its shack to the ground with it still inside.

If they burn the shack to the ground without entering it, the Shitanga Uba will be defeated but unless they found it earlier the Shunobon will escape and find a new ally somewhere else, potentially a future problem for the party.

If they enter the shack and meet the Shitanga Uba they can interact with her, eating her food and drinking her tea. She will attempt to lull them to sleep, but they may resist. If they are overly rude to her, she and the Shunobon (if it is still alive) will eventually just attack them, giving up the pretence entirely. Players may attempt Self-Control or Wisdom tests to get a read on the old woman – success will tell them that something is off but it will not definitely identify the woman as yokai, they have to make that logical leap themselves.

If the players fall asleep, the Shitanga Uba will attempt to eat one of them – starting with Akihito if he is with the party. Sleeping players must make a Sharpness test with disadvantage to wake up.

A PC that is being eaten takes d8 damage and then must test Courage to try and break free from the Shitanga Uba’s tongue. They cannot cry out to wake the others until they succeed in breaking free, but they may choose to kick a nearby PC, waking them, instead of making their Courage test against the tongue. On their next turn they will take another d8 damage from the tongue until they break free or the Shitanga Uba is killed.

If the players kill the Shitanga Uba and the Shunobon, they are successful in their mission! If they fail, then the yokai continue to devour travellers along this road or potentially elsewhere in Japan.

[1] A visually impaired woman who performs music

Louisbourg 1758 by Mike and Grant Wylie

I struggle with what to do about games that are just fine. Not so good that I can pour praise upon them for hours at a time, nor so bad that they have multiple avenues of badness for me to explore. These are the games that I would understand if someone told me they enjoyed them but would give side-eye to anyone claiming this was their favorite game ever. Louisbourg 1758 is certainly among this august-ish company. It’s a perfectly fine block wargame, but it doesn’t quite stand out from its peers, unless maybe you happen to be a huge fan of the siege of Louisbourg. Usually when faced with this situation I just don’t write anything about the game – if I can barely muster the energy to say something interesting, I can’t really expect anyone to find the time to read it. However, this isn’t very satisfying and I feel represents a small failure in myself as a critic. In an attempt to tackle this problem, I’m going to try and curtail my usual verbosity and give a very quick first impression of Louisbourg 1758 outlining what I think is interesting and why it ultimately didn’t hold my attention.

Worthington Publishing kindly provided me with a review copy of Louisbourg 1758.

At its core, Louisbourg 1758 is a simple block wargame. I would classify it as less complex than your average block game from Columbia Games, but that is not to say it is without its own little bits of chrome. The activation and combat systems are simpler than what you would find in a Columbia game – you activate one stack of blocks each turn and in combat while unit strength works the same as in a Columbia Game, with pips representing strength on each side of a block, units by default all hit on only 6s and all attacks from one player are resolved at the same time. There are no “A1 vs B3” unit distinctions to be found here.

However, to add some wrinkles to an otherwise incredibly basic game there are rules for amphibious landings, raids, naval and fort bombardment, and naval attacks. In a few cases these can change the results needed to deal hits in combat, which I think is crucial for any game that relies on just “roll 6s” for hits. There is also a fun little system where the British player uses blocks to secretly plan his initial landing parties on the first turn and then the French player deploys his units. There are decoy blocks so the French player can’t be certain where most of the British soldiers are likely to show up. It’s a fun bit of bluffing that really leans in to the strength of block games.

My landing is planned, and the French player has put out his defenses. The landing parties face a significant barrier as the defender gets a significant bonus on attacks, but the abundance of British regulars should let me wear them down over a few rounds.

The game also features cards which can give bonuses to your actions or have other effects on play. On the whole, I’m not wild about the cards. It’s a shared deck of events for both French and British players, but you can only play your events so your opponent’s cards just clog up your hand and do nothing. Drawing a card in a game should be a moment of excitement, but if fully half the deck are dead cards then it makes it feel rather pointless.

The one card I do quite like is the Attrition card, which only affects the French player. Since the British player can win by taking Louisbourg there is an incentive for the French player to just stack all his units in the fort and wait. However, when drawn by the French player the Attrition card inflicts strength losses if they have more than 25 strength points in Louisbourg. This almost justifies the shared deck, since if the British player draws the Attrition card it does nothing. This adds a nice little risk/reward element where the French player is encouraged to spread your troops out across the map (and thus, play the game) but they can, if necessary, risk consolidating more troops in Louisbourg and hope that no attrition card is drawn.

The rulebook is only okay. It taught me how to play the game, but it also left me with a few questions as some situations could be better explained. It’s far from the worst rulebook I’ve ever read, and I was never at a total loss for what to do, but it did leave me with more questions than I would have liked when I started playing the game.

However, the rest of the production is very nice. The map is pretty and the routes are clear, but it would have benefited from more clearly distinguishing which spaces classify as “coastal” as that has a significant an impact on the game. The blocks are good quality and the screen printing is nice enough, but I have to confess that I like putting stickers on blocks so I will always prefer that option to screen printed ones.

It’s a nice touch that both sides have the bombardment table and the sequence of play is printed on the map. I love touches like that which mean that I don’t have to check the rulebook or a play aid card every turn.

Overall, Louisbourg 1758 is a perfectly enjoyable block game, but I don’t see any reason why I would choose it over one of my favorite Columbia games instead. The game, and the combat especially, is a little too simple for my taste and I wish it had just a bit more weight and grime to it. If you are already interested in the French and Indian War and/or the siege of Louisbourg specifically then there is probably something here you’ll like, but as someone who is generally uninterested in this period of warfare it didn’t have enough to get past my general malaise. I’m glad I played it, if a friend asked me to I would almost certainly play it again, but I can’t see myself picking it off my shelf and trying to convince someone else to join me for a game.

Historical Simulation and Wargames by Riccardo Masini

Riccardo Masini’s Historical Simulation and Wargames dragged me back to memories of my undergraduate degree, but not to my history classes. Instead, this book reminded me of studying philosophy, and for that reason I believe it to be a work of philosophy first and all other things secondary. Its opening chapter is virtually pure philosophical discussion on the theory of games, including the kind of specific definitions of terms and ideas one would expect, and while other chapters do at times conform in shape to more historical analysis across the wide expanse of the book’s scope its wanderings have an altogether more philosophical flavor. This is not a criticism, merely a description - an attempt to outline what the book is so readers can set their expectations.

However, while Riccardo presents his philosophy well - with the caveat that nearly all works of philosophy can be hard to grok on first reading - I have a confession. Whatever school of philosophy that Riccardo is outlining in this text, I think I'm in the other one - the one that presumably eventually writes equally dense books on why our niche interpretation is correct. My school has no name, I didn't even know of its existence until I was nearly finished the book, but I am certain that in ancient Athens we would be competing for the funds of rich kids with nothing better to do. Again, this is not strictly a criticism, but rather an observation about Riccardo's arguments and how reading this book has shaped my own thoughts. Let me try and explain. 

To greatly elide the nuance, the overall structure of the book is five chapters. The first chapter defines the notion of “simulation game” as distinct from other games; the second examines game mechanics while providing (briefly) a history of hobby simulation games; the third examines the relationship between games and history; the fourth considers the intersection of games, designers, and players; and the final chapter considers challenges and flaws in modelling history in games (sort of). That is the general outline, but the actual discussion ranges widely and arguments crop up in unexpected places throughout the book. The experience of reading Historical Simulation is more akin to wandering through a landscape, each section distinct but also sharing elements with the others you’ve traveled through, rather than a strictly structured march from one argument to another. I don’t know how I feel about it - I would probably have preferred the more structured approach, but the wanderings do help it lean more into its philosophical side, especially as repetition can help with some of the book’s more opaque arguments.

I'm not prepared, after a single reading, to explain in detail the philosophical argument contained within Historical Simulation and Wargames but I believe I can trace its outline.

The book’s perspective is focused most clearly on games and game mechanisms. The author has a wide knowledge covering decades of different games and that is on showcase across the book. Countless examples of games that are representative of a point the author is making are scattered throughout the text. While the jargon and frequent asides to obscure games might prove challenging to those entirely new to the subject of historical wargaming, those who have dipped a toe or more in will be pleased to see old favorites and intrigued by mention of titles entirely new to them. Readers will find far more emphasis on design principles and mechanics than they will the history of the hobby, for example.

The work as a whole is very positive on the potential and value of simulation games - I would go so far as to say that it is a cheerleader for the hobby. A core theme is a series of arguments for the strengths and merit of playing simulation games as a way to explore and learn about history. Even beyond that, it suggests that the games themselves are essentially works of historical argument, scientific analysis, and art all bundled into one. It can sometimes feel like it is a briefing document or argument paper whose purpose is to make the case for hobby wargaming to some power that be sitting on the fence - it is firmly placing the hobby’s best foot forward as much as it can.

The games within the text are broadly some of the hobby’s best - little room is made for known failures - and while I would not say that it is trying to convert many of its readers to the hobby, it is arguably trying to help current participants develop a greater appreciation for their leisure activity. Even when games are criticized, the criticisms are minor and there is always room at the end to find a compliment for it - the game may have failed in one aspect, but its fundamentals were still sound and other designers found ways to improve it, for example. Those hoping for an interrogation of hobby wargames flaws will not find it here - it is not totally absent but it is certainly confined to the niches. 

This is why I feel that this is a work staking a philosophical position and, as well, that I must belong to an entirely different philosophical school. Rather than nit picking my way through the books nearly two hundred pages, I think a quote from the book’s conclusion will provide the best summary of where Riccardo stands and how my own position differs (emphasis mine):

... we should always keep in mind that simulation games do not tell us what should have really happened, but only what could have reasonably happened if different conditions were verified. The fact that they put us in the concrete possibility of creating those different conditions makes the games truly engaging, but does not detract in any way from the scientific value of their processes or foundational statistics. 

In such a context, to a historian those conclusions are if not equally at least comparable important as factual analysis to understand what actually happened, even when taking into account the many biases and distortions getting on the way before reaching such an ambitious goal - biases and distortions which, it should be said, are quite present even in more conventional historiography and even in the vast supply of major sources.

In essence, Riccardo argues for the comparable value of playing wargames to historical research and the publication of works of history. Throughout the book he also reifies the competence of wargames as historical works and frequently equates designers with historians. 

I don’t want to dwell on this too long, since I’m reviewing the book not writing my counterpoint to be presented to my illustrious patron, but I have an altogether less positive view of the historical value of wargames. While I am a huge fan of the hobby, I see historical games as only able to reliably capture a small fragment of a historical topic - far less than even a brief history book could do. While wargames have their own strengths, in particular their ability to engage people and convey certain arguments more clearly than via text alone, they are to me tertiary work - meaning that they are generally dependent on the research of established historians. That's no bad thing, many fine popular histories are the same, but I do not rate the quality of research by the average game designer as highly as Riccardo does. As an example, Riccardo highlights the work of Phil Eklund, including praising how he distributes history throughout his game rules. Eklund has made some very fascinating games but is also notorious for his ahistorical screeds where he argues that colonialism was good and many other bizarre historical interpretations. Riccardo does not dwell on this, though, as the book once again puts the hobby’s best foot forward in a manner that I don’t altogether agree with.

If you'll allow me one slight moment of axe grinding. The book has several spelling errors and formatting inconsistencies throughout the text. I don't place this on Riccardo, as someone who is writing a book in his spare time outside of his native language, these are totally understandable. However, with proper editorial support this should have been fixed by the publisher. Given that the publisher is charging $85 for the hardback edition, it is unfathomable that they couldn't have splurged for a thorough copy edit of the text. It's a shame because it gives the work a slightly unprofessional vibe and that is not the author's fault and they deserved better. 

I fear that In my conclusions I have given the impression that I did not like Historical Simulation and I want to clarify that while this was not my favorite book I read this year I am very glad to have read it. I believe I probably have quite a few points of fundamental disagreement with Riccardo on how we praise and criticize historical games, but reading his arguments was invaluable for me in terms of better framing my own. Philosophy is not a zero sum game - it is rather one that is vastly improved by disagreeing positions laying out their arguments for everyone to engage with. However, philosophy is also a rather niche subject and not one that lends itself well to dabbling. For that reason (and because it's $85) this is not a book I would recommend to everyone, but if you are interested in arguing the merits and demerits of hobby wargaming there is something in this book to support your position or to inspire your opposition, and what more could an author ask for? 

A Year(ish) Abroad

On the 13th of September, 2024 I moved to South Korea.

Not permanently, at least I don’t intend for it to be, but for at least the next year this is where I live. My partner has a job at the local university, my daughter is in the kindergarten, and I’m doing stay at home dad stuff plus whatever freelance work comes my way (hey, if you’re looking for an editor or historian, get in touch).

This of course has quite a few implications for my future activities, but I will spare you all my lurching steps towards learning to cook with Korean ingredients and painful attempts to learn hangul. This is a website devoted primarily to history, and in particular to historical games and books. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to explain how I approached moving my hobbies to South Korea. The vast majority of my possessions are in a storage unit in Ireland – we brought only what we could fit in our (very heavy) checked bags, and about 80% of that was just clothes and basic necessities. That left very little room for games, books, or other fun things. I had to pack lightly and choose sparingly. I will be able to get some new games while I am here, but every new acquisition also includes the thorny problem of how I will bring it home with me (or whether I will). There were three primary categories I was considering when packing various hobby items: board games, books, and RPGs. Plus, one bonus group, but we’ll get to that later. The thought process behind what to pack for each type of item was often interlinked, but they each also have their own unique foibles as well.

Board Games

In terms of hobby gamers, I don’t have the largest collection. I try very hard to keep it (relatively) lean but it is a Sisyphean task. Even with that, my collection of games was far far too large to come with me to Korea, I needed to pick just a few. I also wasn’t sure if I would have anyone to play with, so games I was prepared to play solo were a priority. I quickly limited myself to just wargames – I prefer playing them solo to other hobby games, and I figured if I did find people to play with, it would be easier to find and buy a hobby game in Korea than it would an obscure historical wargame. So, with that in mind, I picked a handful of games, balancing old favorites with ones I was very keen to explore over multiple months.

The games that made the cut

(If you’re in South Korea, especially in or near Daejeon, get in touch. I would love to get some in person games played!)

Men of Iron: Arquebus – Men of Iron is one of my favorite systems ever, I particularly enjoy it solo, and I’ve only dabbled in the scenarios in Arquebus. I chose to only bring one volume from the MoI series, and this seemed like the best choice. I may also supplement this with playtesting some of the upcoming volumes that GMT has teased.

Sedgwick Attacks; A Greater Victory; Prelude to Vicksburg – Blind Swords is another favorite system of mine, and one that plays particularly well solo. Revolution Games kindly sent me these three games as review copies, and I figured that made it a no brainer to bring all three. They’re conveniently the folio editions, easy to squeeze in a suitcase.

Korea: The Forgotten War (OCS) – I previously covered how I’m planning to explore some games on the Korean War, so obviously I had to bring some with me. OCS is not a system that I have been desperate to learn, but it is the scale of Korean War game I’m interested in and I do like the emphasis on logistics. This one will be a challenge for my small Korean apartment for sure.

The Korean War – The seminal classic from Joe Balkoski, this seems to be thought of as the best game on the topic out right now so of course I had to try it. I managed to grab a mint condition copy of the old Victory Games edition and I’m very keen to explore it. Again, this is a big one, so space will be a challenge.

Give Us Victories – A confession – Sergio Schiavi very kindly sent me a folio edition of this game at least a year ago and I still haven’t played it. My excuse is that we plan on covering it on We Intend to Move on Your Works, and it has taken longer than I expected to get to Chancellorsville. I brought it with me both so we can eventually play it on the podcast and so I can explore the many interesting items in this package – seriously, I think there’s like four different games in here.

Army of the Heartland – Second confession, I didn’t really want to bring this one. This operational game on the western theater of the American Civil War is too big for my apartment and doesn’t even have the excuse of being about Korea. However, it’s the next game we’ll be playing for We Intend to Move on Your Works and I needed the rules for that, so I brought my folio edition. I doubt I’ll play the physical version, but who knows, maybe I’ll love it enough to try and make space for those two huge Rick Barber maps.

Books

Books are heavy, and I own so many. What to bring was a hard decision. There are a few, mostly secondhand, shops that sell English language books in Korea so I knew I could get some new reading material while I’m here. That meant that I mostly prioritized books that would be hard to find – ones on historical subjects that might not appeal to most English speakers living in Korea.

My hobby shelf in Korea - I’ll probably do my best to limit myself to about this much stuff. Space is limited!

I also managed to finish writing my second book before I left Ireland, so I didn’t have to bring much in the way of research materials. This spared me having to bring an entire suitcase full of books on the Hundred Years War, which was a real lifesaver in terms of packing. I will miss having so many books at my fingertips and will have to consider less book dependent writing projects for the next year, but nobody said this would be without sacrifices. The books that did make the cut were:

The Wilderness Campaign; The Legacy of the Civil War; Southern Lady, Yankee Spy – I’m keeping my theme of covering more American Civil War history and memory with these three books. One on a battle I’ve always liked but don’t know much about, an extended essay on the memory of the Civil War by one of the South’s best (and a personal favorite) writers, and a fascinating book on a Southern Unionist spy network in Richmond by an author I already really like.

Frederick Barbarossa – Have to bring at least one doorstopper to keep me busy. While it’s heavy, this will take me a while to finish, so the weight to time reading margin should be good. I also have this idea that Barbarossa’s Italian campaigns would be a great subject for an operational wargame…

Playing at the World 2e – The second edition of one of my favorite books, really looking forward to this.

And, of course, The Medieval Crossbow is my own book. I figured it might be nice to have a copy. Mostly just for personal comfort.

Roleplaying Games

Much like with board games, I have no idea if I’ll be able to find anyone to play RPGs with, so any games I brought had to at least be interesting to read as well as play. I opted to bring just two games with me, although they ended up being pretty heavy ones.

Dragonbane – I wanted a classic RPG experience but D&D with its three core books would have been far too heavy. Dragonbane, however, offers that classic adventuring party doing fantasy quest stuff in a compact, self-contained box with a lovely production. I really hope I can get another person or two together and actually play it.

Swords of the Serpentine – Gumshoe is one of my favorite systems, and it’s also probably my favorite system to play online because of how little dice rolling it requires. This is also a big ol’ book and one that I think will be really interesting just to read. Keen to see how Gumshoe has developed as a system in its latest entry.

The Robot in the Room

I first started building Gunpla as a Gundam Wing obsessed teenager in the mid-00s. That hobby went fallow when I traveled to Ireland for university, but I rediscovered it on a trip to Japan in 2019 and especially over the pandemic. Wargaming has mostly supplanted my Gunpla time (seriously, I have like two boxes of unbuilt kits I put into storage, all pandemic purchases I never got to), but I figured Korea would be a great time to get back into it – especially as I can easily find kits here. I brought two smaller kits with me to get me started.

I also brought some fiction books (we ended up bringing the complete novels of Jane Austen and Dashiell Hammett, two great writers but not what I’d initially imagined we’d bring) and a few other odds and ends like a small dice tower, some RPG graph paper, notebooks, etc.

That should give you some idea of what to expect from me for the coming months. There will still be some reviews of other games – I have a few reviews I wrote before traveling but still need to be edited and published, as well as games I played online and I’m hoping to receive a few other games from publishers as well – but expect coverage of some or all of the above to dominate much of what I publish here for the next while. I’m also hoping to take this opportunity to dig deeply into these games and other hobbies, possibly writing multiple pieces on some of these games. First, though, I really need to work on my cooking, the family’s gotta eat.

If you could only bring a handful of games and books to keep you entertained for a year, what would you bring?

Also, if you like what I do, maybe consider throwing me a donation on Ko-Fi. I would really appreciate it!

The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge by Joe Starita

The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge is a fascinating book and an excellent example of how authors can find interesting ways to structure a historical narrative. Dull Knifes was recommended to me by a public history colleague who knows a lot more about American history than I do, and I bought it for my father-in-law for Christmas some years ago. I came across it recently while staying with them and decided I should really read it for myself. It’s a very easy read, at least in terms of the writing – Joe Starita’s background is in journalism and he’s an excellent writer – but content wise it can at times be challenging and emotional. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge examines the lives of a single family of Oglala Souix Indians, highlighting one person each across four generations. In doing this it merges a wider history of the Oglala Souix/Northern Cheyenne with the specific lives of these men to create a work that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Slightly more than half of the book is dedicated to the first two generations of the Dull Knife family. It begins with Chief Dull Knife, a Northern Cheyene chief from Montana who lived during the Indian Wars – leading his people to a reservation in Oklahoma under threat by the US government before leading them back north in defiance of that same government rather than letting his people die in an alien land. His youngest son George Dull Knife was left behind on Dull Knife’s march north and ultimately was raised by members of his extended family who happened to be Oglala Souix in the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. As an adult George toured Europe and America with Buffalo Bills’ Wild West shows before returning home and spending decades working as a law officer in the reservation – subversively participating in and refusing to report traditional Lakota dances and rituals performed in the backwoods in defiance of US law and policy. While examining these men’s personal lives, the book also covers decades of racist US policy towards Indians in the plains and includes a deeply distressing and detailed account of the massacre at Wounded Knee. This stuff is hard but important reading.

The central framing of the book is George’s eldest son, Guy Dull Knife Sr., who was born in 1899, fought in World War I, and at time of the book’s writing was in his mid-90s. Vignettes of Guy in his nursing home during the present day are interspersed across the narrative of his family and even when the book moves on to discuss his son, Vietnam veteran and artist Guy Dull Knife Jr., the father remains central to that story. Again, the book provides a fascinating, and upsetting, history of 20th century US policies towards the Lakota as well as internal divisions within the Pine Ridge Reservation and the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

I would happily recommend The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge to anyone interested in a history of relations between Plains Indians and the United States’ government and military and the consequences of decades of deliberately genocidal policy on the people of the plains, but the book is also more than that. By focusing on this one family, Joe Starita injects intimacy into a narrative that could become overwhelming. You become invested in the Dull Knife family – not just the main male line but also their wives and daughters as well. When family members die or they suffer the loss of a good friend, you feel it. When Guy Sr. has to go into full-time care and doesn’t want to be separated from his family, it doesn’t feel abstract, it feels like you know them. This intimacy makes parts of the book more intense, but it also helps to blunt some of the more harrowing elements of the history. You know the Dull Knifes survive these hardships, so while Wounded Knee (both the massacre and the later standoff between AIM and the FBI) remains hard reading, there is a little bit of positive to consider – not everyone dies, the family survives.

In that way it is also a subtle rebuttal to the notion that the plains Indians, or any other native group, are dead and gone. It rejects the idea that America’s genocide of them is purely past tense and nothing that can be done about it now. It embraces the complexities of being an Oglala Souix in the modern era and while it refuses to be completely depressed about the future of the Oglala and their related tribes it also pulls no punches on what was done to them and the problems they face. The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge isn’t just an amazing book on the Oglala Souix, it is an important portrait of America and what it means to be American – necessary reading for pretty much anyone who calls themselves by that name.

WItMoYW ep. 11 - Glory III by Richard Berg

We’re Back to Berg baby! After a mixed experience crossing the mountains, the boys are trying one of Berg’s takes on Antietam, arguably the most influential battle of the American Civil War. Originally published in 1995, the same year as the first GMT edition of Three Days of Gettysburg which would spawn the modern era of GBACW, and substantially revised in 2002, Glory is a light hex and counter from one of our favorite designers. Will we like it more than GBACW? You can probably already guess!