Tag archives for game design - Page 2
Faith in Morale
I've been reading operational research on the psychology of combat recently. It got me to thinking about the role of religious faith in maintaining soldiers' morale. I'm not personally religious and don't have an axe to grind on this. Does having faith help soldiers deal better with combat? What I am trying to do is build a game design model that properly accounts for relevant factors. The thought that struck me was that combat is very stressful and that soldiers are called on to do unpleasant things to others. This isn't an every day thing but it does happen. The after effects can be very severe, PTSD isn't pleasant for anyone and can last for years after the traumatic events have finished. Psychological casualties are as real as the physical ones, they just have a delayed onset and are harder…
Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray
Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up. This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn't an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up…
An Update
I'm a bit behind with writing things for the blog, there are about six books that I've read but not reviewed and also a continuation on a couple of projects that I'm working on that I was intending to write about. Part, but not all, of the reason for this is that I'm very busy with my day job. Over the last month I've been working much longer hours than normal, my team has doubled in size, and in the next two weeks it's going to treble in size (that's up from 7 to 43). This is a good from a day job perspective, but not so much for my side activities. I managed to completely miss doing TMA3 for B120. Fortunately I have had oustanding marks for TMA1 & TMA2, so provided I manage not to miss any more…
Counterfeit Game Money
At Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group we design and play a lot of games involving game money. We do this to the extent that we often joke that all you need for a game are CLWG members and some (play) money. By definition none of this is real, but in game terms it is always genuine. There is never any question that some of it could be fake. For more modern games involving high value government expenditures this is definitely fine, but in some of the games we play it would make for an interesting dynamic if it turned out we couldn't rely on the value of the coins. Game money (Photo credit: James Kemp) So while my daughter was playing with my stack of play money (see the photo above) I was thinking that I could run a…
Game Design Notes: World War One Strategic Battles
This was originally written as a game design session prompt for a session at Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group back in April 2004. A discussion thread on about this excellent blog post lead me to dig it out and post it here. World War One Strategic Battles Turn structure Three turns per year, March – June (Spring), July to September (Summer) and October to February (Winter). Actions Small offensives can be prepared and launched within one turn. Large offensives take a turn of preparation and then take a whole turn of offensive action. Small offensives can be carried on into large offensives. Battles are fought in phases. Preparation: divisions are allocated to the line, first wave, second wave, exploitation, training and reserve tasks Bombardment Assault Counter-attack Continuation phases if appropriate Resolution Fighting is resolved at Army level, with Divisions as the…