Water Water Everywhere

A prediction of what will be underwater when the sea rises two metres. Water Water Everywhere I helped run this session as part of the CLWG design conference; CLWG being the Chestnut Lodge Wargaming Group. I believe the organisation is around forty years old, and is much more focused on the design of new games rather than playing existing ones. Well, I say “helped run” the session, I mainly took notes while my co-designer, Terry Martin, asked the questions. ...

April 17, 2024 · 6 min · 1132 words · Nick Drage

A week of fun spread over months.

Playing. These are the weeknotes1 on the games I’ve played2 purely for fun3 in the last few months. There’s very few listed below, which is very disappointing to look back on… I can’t help thinking I’ve missed a couple. But I do have a “new” Xbox360, and I’ve been tidying up some space, so maybe that will change. It kind of needs to change, considering how much time I spend thinking about games and game design. ...

July 6, 2023 · 7 min · 1433 words · Nick Drage

Lessons From Running a Hybrid Megagame

Prologue: As I wrote up in my recent weeknotes, earlier this month I helped run a hybrid megagame called Bad Moon Rising, organised by South West Megagames. This was a megagame based in an alternate history of the world, set in the 1970s during the Cold War, but with all the nuclear powers having also established bases on the Moon. If you’re not familiar with megagames do watch this video, or think of a “megagame” as just being a board game or tabletop role playing game, except with anywhere from 20 to 300 players. ...

July 28, 2022 · 9 min · 1731 words · Nick Drage

Battle of Tuyệt Quá HởTấn After Action Report

From about July 2021 until June 2022 I played “Battle of Tuyệt Quá HởTấn”, one of the “Section by Section” games by Hearts of Oak. This was played online over WhatsApp and Google Slides. The setting is a small village during the Vietnam War. Both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army are defending the civilians in the village, with American soldiers coming to interrogate them using four platoons from two companies. That’s about 200 hundred soldiers on each side. Before any pieces are placed on the virtual board, the game looks like the image below. The village to the North of the map, the darkest green is jungle, the light green is brush, the blue is paddy fields. ...

July 25, 2022 · 7 min · 1319 words · Nick Drage