The Good News and the Bad News

Good news!

So I'm at the school's book fair last night and I run into two past acquaintances simultaneously -- one runs a "Strategic Thinking" course for kids in the county that features light wargames and heavy euros, and another that I had chatted up about old wargames a year or so back. He caught me reading a rulebook and explained he had been an AH/SPI guy back in the seventies and eighties.

Apparently the two had just met and were just chit-chatting and as I walked by I said, "hey -- it's the wargamer's pod. One grenade could clear Edgewater of this." After running around with my boys buying books I came back and they were deep in conversation about Kingmaker and Diplomacy.

So it appears that I've volunteered to start up a wargaming group and have real live opponents to play against.

Bad News!

I got fired up about it and went home and broke out the copy of Diplomacy that I had fall in my lap a few months back. 76 AH version with the wooden pieces, appears to never have been played, missing one green navy stick. Damn!


The remainder of the package is there though, and it's quite interesting to read some of the materials. They have a play by mail brochure in it where Avalon Hill explains that they have 20 game-masters throughout the world ready to coordinate your play via surface mail. Reading something like that you realize just how heavily this hobby has been helped by the communications revolution. I can't imagine Diplomacy via IM or email. Via postal mail must have meant games lasting a year, with a board set up somewhere in your house that entire time. If there are any old-timers out there that actually tried to do this I'd love to hear how it went.

Sag.

Sag sounds like the Good News far trumps the Bad News.

Congrats on the the new wargaming buddies. Keep us posted as to what you end up playing.

Kingmaker seemed to be the hot topic so that may be the lead-off hitter.

Sag.

Sagrilarus wrote:
"Via postal mail must have meant games lasting a year, with a board set up somewhere in your house that entire time."
In England there used to be many fanzines that ran games, semi-regularly, published when the editor felt like running off copies on the mimeograph. I imagine it would take a year or two for some, e.g. Magic Realm! There were commercial games, such as StarWeb, that went for several years.

Congratulations on the new game group. Coincidentally, I've just discovered that a couple at the local fortnightly game group live a couple of dozen houses up my street, so I now have regular Monday gaming as well.

Postal Diplomacy games took a few years to finish. Consider that the best Diplomacy zines were published monthly, so after 1 calendar year you could be, at best, finishing up 1906. They had to combine retreat/build phases with move phases to make it move at a reasonable pace too. You didn't need a board set up at all unless you needed something to look at while you considered moves. Most of the zines published maps along with the game report.

Don't know how you feel about it, but I've had pretty good luck with the "has parts for trade" game stat over at BGG for various games. If it's just one piece like that, odds are you could get it for free from a generous soul. It's happened for me a couple of times. I looked over there and it looked like there were a couple of people with spare wood parts from the 60s or 70s willing to trade/donate. You should check it out.

I'm pursuing that, thanks!

Sag.