Richard Berg is arguably one of the icons of the wargaming industry. He has worked for or contributed to scads of wargaming magazines and has designed or contributed to the design of hundreds of games. (Well, not quite "hundreds"; fifty would be more accurate.)

His experience across five decades of wargaming gives him a truly authoritative understanding of the hobby and its direction. He is currently working on Dillinger, Samurai, yet another Gettysburg game (TSS 1H), an ancients card game entitled Bellum, something on Ivan the Terrible, whatever modules he can pump out for SPQR, Battles of the Danube (Waterloo II, or "Loo-Two" if you like), and even another GameFix entry in the "Animal House" series, A Kingdom for a Horse. (Remember Chicken of the Sea from issue 3?) And that's just last week.

When he's not plotting the ruin of countries, kingdoms, and armies, he is doing the same to publishers and designers in his newsletter, Berg's Review of Games (BROG).

GameFix: I'm sure many of our readers would be interested in knowing a little about you. Where did you go to school?

Richard Berg.- I originally had a full basketball scholarship to UCLA, but when I showed up, they told me I was the basketball. So I opted for Union College (NY), followed by Brooklyn Law School.

GF: Military experience and such?

RB: Well, in between college and law school, in one of my "umm, whaddo I do with my life now' periods, the US Army found me. Now, this was right before Tet, and there I was, an Asian History major with two years of Chinese language. So, where do they send me? Germany, as Musical Director for the Frankfurt Army Playhouse. Civilian clothes, theater, and women ... I almost re-upped. As it was, I had the most military experience of anyone at SPI New York.

GF: What got you interested in the hobby, and when?

RB: My father worked in midtown Manhattan, and at the street level of his office building was a Brentano's Book Store. I used to wander in there regularly, usually when my father asked me to do something that smacked of work. One day, oh maybe in the late 50's, I spied my first AH game; Chancellorsville, I think it was.

Now, I'd been watching a couple of older kids down the block where I lived play "war" with a rather weird form of miniatures. They had a sand box for terrain, and they used to fashion "units" by rolling little balls of play-clay. So, here was a chance to actually fight a real battle without getting my hands sticky, or having Herbie Bookstein bat me in the head when I knocked over his clay supply. Needless to say, I loved the game, which shows how little I knew about both gaming and Chancellorsville at that time.

GF: When did you design your first wargame and what was the title?

RB: The first game I ever put any thought into was during slow periods at NYU Graduate School, where I majored in "Not Showing Up." It was something I called "World Colonization," an idea that came to fruition some years later in the pages of Strategy & Tactics as Conquistador.

The first map I ever attempted to draw for a game was for a "Campaigns of Alexander" fiasco, complete with purple magic markers. The game was dopey and clumsy enough to be a 3W release, although some of the ideas did show up in the SPI boxed game The Conquerors. But my first, published game was Hooker &Lee, in Blue & Gray II, which I designed with much help from Joe Angiolilloo and no money from SPI. Jim Dunnigan was always quite ingenious at getting people to work for little or nothing, a skill I much admire.

GF: What was it like working for Strategy & Tactics in its "Golden Days"?

RB: Well, it was metaphysically most rewarding: great people doing lots of interesting, creative stuff, pushing life's envelope virtually every day. I still have some very strong friendships from that era and, whether one likes it or not, SPI established most of the groundwork for today's hobby. Financially, you were better off trading pesos on a Mexico City street corner.

GF: What was it about the team at SPI that made it so good?

RB: The willingness to share creativity; that, and the fact that no one took any of it overly seriously. No one figured they would be doing game design twenty or even ten years later, and they were right. (Hmm, so where does that leave me?)

GF: How many wargames have you had published, and which is your favorite?

RB: Let's see... 52, as of January 1995. I have no favorites. It's like asking a parent who his favorite child is. That some of them should have been exposed, Greek style, on a barren hillside goes without saying. But I put a lot of energy and passion into virtually all of them.

GF: What is your favorite period for wargaming and why?

RB: Any period where the "personal" element is a major factor.

GF:What motivates you to design a game?

RB: I'd like to say money, but that would get a big laugh. Have you ever read any of those detective books by a fellow whose name I can't remember, but the titles are all something along the lines of "Eyes of Prey," "Nose of Prey," etc.? It seems that his detective-hero has been able to retire from the force, buy a huge house and a Porsche, all from the profits of his wargame designs! Fiction, it seems, knows no boundaries. Seriously, it's from a deep desire to know what it was really like at that time and that place; in essence, it's my version of time travel. I always liked Redmond Simonsen's description of S&T. "The Paper Time Machine."

GF: What do you find is the most difficult part of designing a game? RB: I used to hate typing the rules over and over, but computers solved that. I don't find any of it "difficult." I do find it challenginga most inviting and delicious challenge to allow the player to get the same feeling I expressed above. Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't.

GF: You have never been shy about expressing your opinion or speaking out on controversial topics, so let's move on to some of those. I understand you have recently had trouble with 3W exploiting your name without your permission. What really happened?

RB: The details were pretty well chronicled in GameFix #4, and, in this case repetition is not exactly the soul of wit. That affair is more a personal one between Keith [Poulter] and me, although misappropriation of one's name is something the public does have some interest in. The main problem I had with 3W is that it put out so many bad games - not bad because of lack of design creativity, but bad because of the sheer intellectual laziness and sleazy practices that permeate much of what 3W does. The company has created a retail glut of games on the market, which has serious repercussions on other companies. It's much like a boardgame version of Adam Smith economics, because here we have the "cheap" driving out the "dear."

Most distributors, and far too many retailers, have little knowledge and even less interest in their inventory. The result is they buy and attempt to move off the shelves anything that comes out with regularity For them, the more "product" they move, the more money they make. It matters little what is in the box, as long as they have a box to sell.

What happens, of course, is that the small store ends up with a host of unsellable 3W junk (not all of it is junk, mind you) that clogs up its shelves. Since it can't move the 3W chaff, it won't buy any new games because there is no shelf space. Savvy retailers will find a way to get rid of this stuff (mark- downs, give-aways, etc.), knowing full well that retail is a matter of cash flow, not simply profit and loss. However, there are too few of these smart operators around, so the 3W "Junk Line" retards the movement of other products. To 3Ws credit, they have gone out and hired a capable developer, Joe Youst, to oversee all of their projects. Let's hope that he has some influence. Lord knows, others have tried.

GF: Will there be a lawsuit?

RB: Well, I could, and I probably should, but to what end? Keith is already somewhat of a pariah within the industry, and few are the people therein who take him seriously. (Then again, given the damage done, perhaps they should.) Ultimately, if my sources are telling the truth, this may all be moot by the time you read this. [Ed. note: Apparently they were; 3W has gone out of business.]

GF: There was some controversy about a "Geronimo" game you designed and sold to Avalon Hill. What really happened?

RB: [Sigh.] Some years ago, Doc Indecision [Chris Cummins of Decision Games] and I contractually agreed that I would do a magazine game on the Indian Wars. After some research, and far too many false starts, I came to the conclusion that the topic as I wished to do it was far too expansive for a magazine game. It required 3-5 players, hundreds of cards, and a set of mechanics that would be anathema to the magazine crowd. DG and I therefore agreed in a written addendum to the aforementioned contract to substitute another subject for the Indian one. (Another depressing story, but you didn't ask about that one.) Some time after that I was approached by Avalon Hill to do a game on the Indian Wars. Since I had much of the information before me, and they agreed to the component parameters, a deal was struck. When you play Geronimo you will quickly see how inappropriate to a magazine format it is.

GF: You've been around the wargaming industry for quite awhile. How do you view the current state of games?

RB: I think we have companies Garners, GMT, XTR, Clash of Arms, etc. and designers - Dean [Essig] and Dave Powell, Paul Dangel, Ty [Bomba] et amis, J.D.Webster, and others too numerous to mention - who are all doing, by far, the best work the industry has ever seen. Consumers and players have a visually appealing product, a choice of design styles and complexity levels, and a breadth of topical coverage never before seen. You want details? try The Gamers' TCS series, or the WWII stuff from. GMT. You just wanna bang heads and roll dice for a little, relaxing competition? get the latest issue of "Command." True, there are some clinkers, but that's the penalty that the Muse of Creativity exacts. There's (lots of) something for everybody, and even with the wide range of likes and dislikes in this hobby no one with an interest herein should go hungry. And I haveiA even mentioned the word "cards."

GF: What do you think most of the current wargames lack in their designs?

RB: That I take on a game-by-game basis. Of course, I hear the Greek Chorus in the background intoning, "design for cause, design for effect; design for cause, design for effect." I have not been shy in coming out squarely on the side of Cause, but that's a personal predilection. "design for effect" games -where you don't learn "why," you just rehash "what" - are popular, as they are geared to competitive play. When done well - and many are - they stand as stalwart defenders of their designer's viewpoint. It's just not my viewpoint.

As an example, I point to one of the first GanieFix items, Bill Banks's Thapsos in issue #1. From virtually any point of view that I espouse, this was game design at its worst. The map was humorously but definitively wrong: the Mediterranean does not come inland; that should be a salt marsh desert. And the coastline is somewhat warped. My source? The bible of ancient game designers: the Kromayer-Veith Atlas of Ancient Battlefields.

The respective strengths of the two armies are so distorted that one wonders why Banks even gave the game a battle title, and the system is so devoid of period insight and so fraught with mechanistic die rolling solutions that Stratego is a more accurate rendition of an ancients battle.

Then I read a review of Thapsos in Zone of Control in which the author, although not exactly waxing rhapsodic about the game, thought it was a pretty neat little item. Obviously, we looked for different things from what we play. And therein lies the fun in designing, although one could view it as a question of, "No matter how dumb and slipshod I can get, some Dice Potato with the brain of a deep-sea squid is sure to like it."

GF: You've been pretty straightforward in expressing your dislike for Dave Wood's concerns about wargaming. Why?

RB: Dave's interests lie in areas that hold little concern for most consumers. It's not that font usage is insignificant, it's that it is not something designers and publishers are going to spend time and money worrying about in an industry where profit is not great and time is usually of the essence. Dave, however, chooses to spend three issues developing a theme that, as I said in BROG, reminded me of the literary critic who dismissed James Joyce's Ulysses out of hand because it had no punctuation.

As I see it, Dave is trying to become "King of Pedants" in a land filled with other, similarly inclined knowledge-mongers (me included) who have a longer primogeniturial claim than he does. He says in four pages what it would take anyone with even a vague literary talent less than a paragraph to express.

As a professional communications consultant, I remind Dave, free of charge, of one of the Maxims of Communication: "No one is as interested in what you are saying as you are."

What's more, he doesn't seem to like wargames. He stated [in issue #1] that of the hundreds of games he looked at, he found only two (three ?) of interest. So why should we listen to him? It would be like reading the opera critic of the AY Times' review of the latest Afghan Whigs concert.

[Ed. note: Actually, it was only three in one period of interest, but who reads anymore?]

I did read his game reviews in GameFix #4 with interest. They read more like a test: here are the eight questions as presented by the Great God Fontinus; if ye can answer them correctly, then good be thine game. But woe betide the miscreant who stumbles falsely in his attention to the eight Precepts of Fontinus, for he shall be sent to dwell in the Woods of the Mad Kerner.

Show some soul, Dave! These are games, not the game designers' version of the Republicans' "Contract with America"! Wood is like some demented, modern-day Luther, nailing his 95 Theses to the door of a House of Prostitution. Wrong house, wrong audience. And Luther used an awful font! Other than that, what's there to complain about? At least he says what he thinks, something difficult to discern in far too many publications these days.

GF: What do you think Dave should be directing his efforts toward?

RB: Getting a Life.

GF: I understand that you and the people in charge of Command magazine have agreed to disagree. Why?

R.B: I don't think it's that cut and dried. My game design philosophy is different from that espoused by Ty, Chris [Perello], and Larry [Hoffman]. That doesn't make either of us "right" or "better," just different. I'm more comfortable with that than Ty appears to be. I'm not sure why. XTR puts out a top-flight product, and they know their audience. They've also come up with some very interesting work, as well as some major gobblers. Who hasn't? I think much of the problem comes from the fact that Ty makes his sole living from XTR, and like some others in this industry he views a bad review as a "bread stealer." Ty feels we should be "tribunes" for the hobby. Unfortunately, I ran for the office of Censor.

GF: I know that Berg's Review of Games is now back in publication. Is that because there are so many games out there to review or because the current crop of reviewers simply aren't up to the task?

RB: The latter was my original reason for undertaking BROG reclux, and, although the timbre of most magazines today has improved greatly, far too many reviewers seem to feel that if they actually express a heartfelt opinion, they'll get a visit from Torquemada- or even worse, no one will give them a free game any more. I also try to talk about a game in a larger context than just, "should I buy this sucker?"

Design theory, with all its varied paths, difficulties, and joys are what interests me. I like to see if I can figure out how much they interested the progenitor of the game at hand, and just what paths he took.

GF: How do you view the current state of hobby magazines?

RB: Through a Glass Darkly; although did you get a look at the new French wargaming magazine, Vae Victus? Wooaaaahh, major stuff!! Full color on all pages, and the counter graphics for their insert game Tunisie '43 were spectacular. They make S&T and Command look like a photocopied newsletter (and I should know).

GF: Certainly the hobby is growing and changing. What do you think the standard game magazine will look like in 5 years?

RB: That's why I mentioned Vae Victus. At least that's what I hope it will look like.