'... is not unlike the history of a ball. Some designers may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the rules that are written, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.'
I do hope that the Duke of Wellington will excuse me mangling his quote* about the Battle of Waterloo, but it is rather appropriate at the moment.
This quote came to mind when I began work on the PowerPoint presentation that I am preparing for the forthcoming VCOW2021. I wanted to start with a short explanation about how the whole PORTABLE WARGAME concept came about ... and then realised that it was not as straightforward as I had thought that its was.
Looking back through my past blog posts, I began to realise that the rules evolved as a result of the coming together of several separate strands. The first of these was my desire to emulate the gridded wargames illustrated in both Donald Featherstone's and Joseph Morschauser's books.
In the latter's case, he was strongly influenced by Professor Gerard de Gre, who ran the wargame club at the college that Joseph attended as a student.
The second was Ian Drury's RETURN TO NEW STANHALL game at COW1998(!). This led directly to the development of SCWaRes (Simple Colonial Wargame Rules), which in turn was developed into WHEN EMPIRES CLASH!
At about the same time, I 'rediscovered' Joseph Morschauser's book and bought a copy of Richard Borg's MEMOIR '44 ...
... which eventually led me to buy both the first ...
... and second edition version of his American Civil War game, BATTLE CRY.
I did develop my own take on MEMOIR '44, which I entitled MEMOIR OF BATTLE, which in turn led to MEMOIR OF BATTLE AT SEA and MEMOIR OF MODERN BATTLE.
All the strands were now in place, and all it needed was a catalyst to start the process that led to the final development of the PORTABLE WARGAME.
The catalyst was an old, boxed chess set that was then stored in our conservatory. The heat and sun in the conservatory had not treated it kindly, and the wooden chessmen were warped and cracked. The edge of the board had become detached as the glue had dried out, and my wife gave me an ultimatum to either find a use for the chessboard or to throw it away.
I was loath to throw it away, and decided that it might make the basis of a simple, portable wargame. I began experimenting with ideas that I had garnered from my previous wargame designs ... and this eventually led to the creation of the PORTABLE WARGAME.
* The original quote is:
'The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.'
It was written by the Duke of Wellington in a letter to John Croker, dated 8th August 1815. Croker was an Irish Member of Parliament and a longtime friend of the Duke.
I just discovered Victory Games ‘Boom & Zoom’ has a wooden laser-cut double-sided terrain board with 8x8 and 16x10 squares. Along with terrain pieces for land-based PW.
ReplyDeleteMichel Taylor,
DeleteI’d not heard of this game before you mentioned it in your comment, but having looked at it online, you are right; it’s idea for use with the PW rules.
Now all I’ve got to do is to see if I can buy a copy!
All the best,
Bob
Bob, I snapped up a copy on boardgame geek for £5 plus postage. The five piece jigsaw style gridded board will be perfect for a really portable game with 10mm Risk figures, and the terrain squares would also be useful for designing battlefields.
DeleteThe game itself - futuristic towers shooting laser beams or similar at each other - has no appeal whatsoever. If you can find a copy as cheaply as I did, it might just be worth your while, but otherwise, don't bother.
Best wishes,
Arthur
Nice to read the origins of your rules Bob. Those classic old Morschauser pictures have been a big inspiration to me.
ReplyDeleteMaudlin Jack Tar,
DeleteI tried drawing a family tree to show how the rules developed ... but it was so complex that I ended up just listing the main branches!
I love the look of the Morschauser battles ... and like you, they never cease to inspire me!
All the best,
Bob
Morschauser's book was a huge inspiration for me as well. Curiously, I'd never played a game with his rules, though. Until last month, that is... and that was via Skype, with my opponent on the opposite side of the US!
ReplyDeletehttps://blundersonthedanube.blogspot.com/2021/01/last-game-of-2020-morschauser-hosted-on.html
Gonsalvo,
DeleteIn retrospect, I think that Joseph Morschauser got more things right than Donald Featherstone did back in the 1960s, but until recently, he never got the credit.
I hope that you enjoyed you game using his rules for the first time.
All the best,
Bob
Morschauser is indeed underrated. Featherstone was a great autor and knew how to "get things done", but I always felt his games design was a bit bland.
DeletePhil Dutre,
DeleteOne factor for his popularity was Donald Featherstone’s output of follow on books ... often containing other people’s ideas. He wrote numerous wargaming, military history, and other books, which seemed to give him great prominence within the hobby ... and his style of games still have a lot of adherents.
Joseph Morschauser wrote just one wargame book - in which he got a lot right first time and certainly put down on paper ideas that are still current - and never followed it up. As a result, his work has tended to be ignored or even forgotten, even within the US.
All the best,
Bob
Interesting to read about the strands of ideas which helped in the development of the portable wargame.
ReplyDeletePeter,
DeleteIt was a very useful exercise for me, as it made me think about how the process of designing a wargame is far more evolutionary than revolutionary.
All the best,
Bob
That's exactly one of the reasons why good academic researchers read a lot, also outside their own field. You need to internalize a lot of knowledge and ideas, although you might never know whether they will be useful to develop something new.
ReplyDeleteBut once you develop something know, it's hard to pinpoint where the new idea came from exactly. Often it has been stewing in your mind, connecting all those little strands together, sometimes subconsciously.
Phil Dutre,
DeleteReading and researching around a subject is - in my opinion - vital. I used to find this with my history students, who read the set text books, but who rarely read anything about the period. Sometimes they did ... but did not realise that they had! For example, I remember a group of students who were studying the Napoleonic period in history and reading a Jane Austen in their English classes ... and had not realised that the latter were set during the former!
Backtracking has helped me to realise just how much inspiration and how many ideas I’ve gleaned from other wargame designers. I think that my contribution has been to link things that had no previously combined ... and I hope that the sum of the parts is greater than the separate originals.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
DeleteThe case of the students reading Jane Austen reminds me of when I had to do Pride & Prejudice for O-Level - our teacher never explained the historical setting, class system and social mores of the period! Just as the physical constraints of the Tudor theatre were never explained when we studied Shakespeare... Yet I went to a good grammar school with a proud academic record.
My mother (who had been a professional actress before her marriage) used to offer very different, practical insights on the plays, such as 'that scene has been put in so that Richard Burbage, who's been on stage a long time as Hamlet, can go off and have a break.'
When I taught English, I therefore made a point of explaining the construction of the Globe, &c., and the historical background to the novels they studied (which were often chosen by me precisely for their period settings!).
Best wishes, Arthur
Arthur1815,
DeleteKnowledge without context is often of little or no use. Taking the work of Jane Austen as an example, having little or no understanding of contemporary events and the structure of British society means that the nuances of the plot etc., must be difficult to comprehend. After all, how else can one explain the presence of so many military officers in the stories!
Having trod the boards myself as an amateur, it’s not until you begin to work on a stage that you can begin to understand how a play actually ‘works’. Just reading the text doesn’t give that deeper understanding.
One area where the literature has distorted the historical view that many people have is the Great War. I once tried to explain to a class that soldiers did not spend the entire time they were in France in trenches, under fire, and that they spent time away from the frontline doing training, having rest and recuperation time, and doing basic labouring. This was not the picture that the literature painted ... and many of them just could not believe what I said. Furthermore, they would not or could not believe that even at the height of the war, there were more troops in the UK under training or for Home Defence than there were in France.
All the best,
Bob
Re the discussion about reading extensively, including wargame books and blogs, which provides a framework for your own ideas. I was just thinking of a possible idea for a horse & musket (I wouldn't call it quite Napoleonic, just sort of in the period) campaign on a gridded campaign map I had drawn. One idea led to another, and I had to put pencil to paper and record them before I lost them. I realized that most, maybe all, of the ideas were bits I had gleaned from reading all the wargame books in my "library" (i.e. pile of books I reach in and grab from time to time). So read on, you never know when that little tidbit comes out of hiding at the most unexpected time.
ReplyDeleteDale
Dalethewargamer (Dale),
DeleteI keep a notebook where I jot down ideas and bits of information that might be of use at a later date, I have also had most of my blog posts printed out and bound so that I can refer to them without having to search through my computer files and my blog.
Good luck with your Horse & Musket project. It sounds very interesting.
All the best,
Bob