Wargame Innovator
George Jeffrey
Dead at 58

Dispatch News

by Ned Zuparko

It is with great sadness and while still in a state of shock, that I write to inform readers of the THE COURIER about the sudden death of George Jeffrey on November 19, 2001 when in his fifty-eighth year.

George and wife Yvonne in 1985. Photo by Zuparko

I am not in a position to gauge the extent or value of any influence his wargaming ideas had for the hobby, but his passing was especially felt by those who are or have been members of the COURIER family at one time or another. THE COURIER had always had a unique relationship with George because it was through the pages of THE COURIER that George was introduced to the American historical wargaming community at large two decades ago. Recently, after a long hiatus from the hobby, he again was in touch with Dick Bryant. THE COURIER was preparing to reintroduce his ideas through new articles and a possible rules set when the sad news was received. Therefore, I hope the readership will find the following background of some interest.

George served his country in the Royal Scots regiment for 17 years in an exemplary fashion, retiring as a sergeant. He then became an administrator for the National Health service in Edinburgh. He took an early retirement and was supplementing his pension as a truck driver delivering parcels at the time of his death.

George had children and grandchildren from a first marriage. When I met him him twenty years ago he was married to his second wife, Yvonne, and had two young boys. (It was the loss of Yvonne to cancer and George’s decision to concentrate on raising Martyn and Darren that caused him to drop out of the wargaming scene in the late 1980’s.)

Those who met George will attest to his friendliness, generosity, and the force of his personality and humor. He was entertaining, brash, proud, loyal, and yes, even stubborn. George didn’t have as much formal education or literary sophistication as some others had, but those who have encountered him have always been impressed by his high intelligence. He was creative, articulate, and a gentleman. He also had common sense and an ability to get to the essentials of problems without getting lost along the way. He was a unique character.

George had been inspired to set off down the Napoleonic road, as many others were, by David Chandler’s CAMPAIGNS OF NAPOLEON. In 1974, Almark published George’s book THE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME, in which he discussed his Napoleonic rules and theories. By the end of that decade he had developed his Variable Length Bound (“VLB”) technique and was using it at the Capital Wargames Club. (George later said he didn’t “design” the VLB, but that he stumbled onto it.) When Paddy Griffith and others began the Wargames Development (“WD”) group, George joined and described some of his ideas in their newsletter THE NUGGET. That is where I got involved in 1981 or so..

I had had my own set of Napoleonic rules published (VIVE L’EMPEREUR! by Chaosium) and was the Napoleonic editor for the COURIER. I was also an active reader and participant in several amateur publications (including THE NUGGET, EMPIRES, EAGLES and LIONS, THE PW REVIEW and others) and was always on the lookout for new ideas.

I read George’s notes in the NUGGET and began corresponding with him. George wrote a series of articles for THE COURIER called “New Concepts in Wargaming”. The first appeared in the Volume III No. 3 November-December 1981 issue. This was where American readers got their first glimpse of the VLB. (He later had articles published in the United Kingdom in MINIATURE WARGAMES in 1984 and 1985.) George also began contributing to Jean Lochet’s EMPIRES, EAGLES, AND LIONS. It didn’t take long for me to appreciate what I thought were some brilliant insights, so much so that I ended up discarding my own game in favor of George’s theories.

I also got involved in bringing George to the USA a couple of times to give personal presentations. Larry Duffield, who owned the GAMETABLE in Campbell, California set up a wargaming symposium of which George was an important part, and Norm Flam of the LAST GRENADIER in Burbank, California, set up an appearance there to demonstrate the Variable Length Bound. (Anyone remember Freddie Laker and Laker airlines? Well, if I remember correctly, the Laker bankruptcy caused us to eat the price of an extra set of airline tickets to get George here on time. Not only is it hard to make a profit in the wargame world, it is tough to avoid losses!)

THE COURIER sponsored George’s attendance at the July 1982 Origins convention on the east coast. One of my favorite memories from that convention was a discussion about Napoleonic skirmishing by the EE&L folks. At one point Sergeant-Major Jeffrey was stepping off paces to help others illustrate period distances in the skirmish chain.

It was personal contacts like these that supplemented the written articles and got George’s notions percolating among different wargame designers. This led to many correspondants and friendships that George always treasured. This doesn’t mean everyone agreed with George, or even accepted his VLB as a valid system - but he certainly stimulated or inspired some people to reexamine what they were doing and look for improvements.

George’s ideas did not extend solely to rules. THE COURIER also published a book by George entitled TACTICS AND GRAND TACTICS OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS in 1982. While it was not a “scholarly” work and had a large number of typos that required an errata sheet to be entirely understood, it was a groundbreaking concept that he originated. George had come up with a method to approximate how much time it took for Napoleonic formations to carry out their evolutions. This was a real eye-opener because it showed that typical wargames failed to account for what amounted to some important time/motion factors on historical battlefields. When he discussed the use of grand tactical evolutions, he illuminated an area that was unknown to most wargamers., That also gave us a new perspective on why some events in historical accounts had to happen the way they did, because the grand tactical evolutions of the day required it to be so.

While those of us who were exposed to George tend to lump his rules ideas together as “VLB”, he actually contributed opinions on a variety of rules areas. His passion was examining and defining “command and control” where one commands his own troops while controlling subordinate commanders. On the wargames table he felt that one could not prevent players from gaining information with their own eyes, but one could restrict when players could use that information by using command and control rules that revolved around “changes of situation” for the lead figures on the tabletop.

George wrote about figure and distance scales, morale systems based upon “flight or fight”, and how wargamers overrated firepower at the expense of morale factors. He described his ideas of “battlehandling” and how battlefield commanders had to institute plans and how subordinates tried to adapt to that. By using actions and their durations to define turns (“bounds”) rather using predefined turns to limit actions, he came up with the VLB. This meant changing combat results tables and movement tables into rates per minute charts. It also gave a reason to examine the time and space required by historical formations and their maneuvers, and helped towards a new appreciation of what commanders were supposed to be doing on the battlefield. He also advocated an intriguing and seductive concept of players “dialoguing” the action forward.

The challenge, then, for the COURIER and George was to get George’s theories and his house set of rules into a publishable form. (He himself was no longer regularly wargaming with a group by the early eighties.) There were believers and skeptics, and with something this radical there was no assurance it could actually be achieved.

The crux of the matter seemed to be at what level the game should be based. George played the game grand tactically, but there was nothing in the rules that prevented players from going down to battalion or skirmish level any time they wanted. This led to detailed, time-consuming games, rather than fast games with Corps and Divisional decisions predominating.

After several years of corresponding with George in Scotland and most of the playtesters in the USA, we were unable to get a playable set working with an ocean preventing face-to-face discussions over a game table and requiring long communication delays. By 1985 THE COURIER released George from his contract. (Remember what I said about losing money in this hobby?). Some people tried to keep things going, but George’s domestic situation and his wife’s health obliged him to retire from the scene. He gave permission to Peter Dennis and Cliff Knight to use his ideas, and they came out with their own modified versions of Napoleonic and ACW sets, but George seemed to have disappeared!

And so, until last summer, that is where matters stood. Tantalizing ideas that never got nailed down. Then in about June of 2001, George Jeffrey got on the internet. By July, a free Yahoo discussion group had formed called “VLB” rules. (You are invited to join it at -http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VLBRules - at this writing it has 99 members). George’s boys were much older and he was willing to pick up where he had left off. The group decided to work at making the Brigade the basic unit, and soon there were thousands of messages, a rough draft of new rules, and playtesters who could communicate instantly, Atlantic Ocean or no Atlantic Ocean. The list had its share of true believers and skeptics still, but progress was definitely being made when members who were reading George’s latest postings from a few hours earlier were shocked to see a message from Penicuik, Scotland telling us of George’s sudden death.

At this point, it is not clear what future there is for George’s ideas. Can they be made into a practical set of rules, or are they inherently flawed and must remain as inspiring concepts in articles and cyberspace? What is certain is that they stand as a memorial to one of wargaming’s original thinkers.

On a personal note, my family still talks about the time we brought George and Yvonne to Disneyland in 1982. As jaded, sophisticated Californians who had been everywhere many times with many people, we found we learned a lot about ourselves when we experienced Disneyland, Denny’s, and even a Highway Patrol headquarters through George’s eyes. (The TV show CHiPS was popular in the UK at that time, so we pulled off the freeway and George and Yvonne got a picture taken in a CHP cruiser.) We have never had a better time.

And as a jaded, sophisticated wargame designer, I found out I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was after I was exposed to George’s thinking. As frustrating as things have been at times, I can still say that for the last six months I’ve never had a better time. Thanks, George.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an a’ that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine -
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that.
Their tinsel show, an a’ that,
The honest man, tho e’er sae poor,
Is king o men for a’ that.

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