Archives for games - Page 17
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McKinsey Invented Matrix Games
Most of today I spent on a training course called "Top Down Thinking" being run by a nice chap from PA Consulting who is the project's workstream leader for technology. What was most interesting for me was the way it boiled the presentation of just about anything down to a 'Governing Thought' and some key lines that summarised your arguments (no more than five of those). The general style of it was very similar to the Matrix Game format where you say I think x will happen because ... and give three arguments to support your case. Apparently the basis for this approach was a book called Pyramid Thinking written in the 1970s by a woman called Barbara Minto who was the first female partner than McKinsey had. So on that basis I think it is fair to say that…
Hot Blood & Cold Steel – onside Report
This was a design session on how to do a WW1 skirmish game, focusing mainly delivering a participation game for Jerry Elsmore’s 50th Birthday con. I’d already done a first darft of the rules but wanted to talk through some of the principles about what I wanted to achieve. I found the discussion particularly useful in clarifying my methods for running a participation game at a show. Gone is the idea of having all the action in a static circle of squares that represented all that could be seen (I may do this at CLWG sometime as I still like the idea, although it would be too time-consuming for being run at a show). I did get some ideas for making changes to the terrain though so that it would only become clear when figures entered the square in question.…
Revolutionary Warfare – onside report
When I played Andy Grainger’s A Month in Country I immediately thought of some of the parallels with my Revolutionary Warfare game. I have run this at CLWG couple of times, although with only a few players. I would particularly like to re-do the Palestine game as one player in particular couldn’t cope with the concept of the role that they were given. (I won’t name names, but those that were there know who I am talking about – the British Governor wanted a PR power sharing assembly between the Palestinians and the Jews). Revolutionary Warfare The concept I was playing with was similar to Andy’s but on a slightly larger scale. At the time of design I was considering producing ‘Lion Comes Home’ as a megagame. So the Revolutionary Warfare module had to work very smoothly. It is essentially one sided. A small group of…
What you missed at the January meeting of CLWG
The Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) January meeting (Sunday 9th January) was in Jim's office near Holborn. This one had 14 members in attendance. When I turned up there was a promotion board going on for one of the characters in our long-running Starship Marine campaign (details of the campaign and a history of the 130th Regiment). To make this more interesting for the players who were on the board ( the interviewers) there were a couple of candidates for promotion, including one marine Captain who brought a bomb in with him to prove how easy they were to defuse. A nice piece of live role-play from Jerry (who improvised the bombs immediately beforehand.) I was called upon to defuse the device which consisted of an ice-cream box with an anti-tilt device on it and a fuse inside which had…
CLWG December 1999 – Offside Report
What you missed at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) December meeting. In December we started from 12 at John Rutherford's house and played until after 9pm and chatted with the aid of several bottles of wine until almost midnight. In total we had 13 members at the meeting. It started with a fairly light-hearted game called 'Battling Druids' which was originally designed by Trevor Farrant as a participation game for wargames shows for another club that he is a member of. This involves four 100mm models of druids, four fountains, a cloud with a lighting bolt, hordes of hedges, magic spells and a whole lot of fun. A sergeant air-gunner mans his Vickers 'K' gun from the rear cockpit of a Fairey Battle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Next up was an RAF Aircrew RPG which I ran with the help…