Howard Whitehouse Wonderful to meet you and Terri at Nashcon. I had a terrific time all around, what with being the latest China Gordon, Harry Flashman VC, and Commodore Harold Hardbottorn RN, as well as gangs of fiendish Dervishes. Lets make it a yearly thing! "Save Gordon" was excellent. It is hard to think of good reasons why your handful of starving troops should repel thousands of screaming warriors, but at 2arn it gets REALLY tough! I wondered at the time if the "tactical" section of Save Gordon could be modified to incorporate the other players in order to avoid that "waiting around for the result" part. Maybe allowing "spare" players to command some of the forces or to through in matrix arguments (1 per player in a diced sequence) to support their comrades (or not!) or damage the opposition. I'm not sure it helps to have "reason" "action" at the top of each card, since it restricts/confuses players rather than helps. If anyone is creative enough to use reasons as actions, they should be rewarded for it! I may use the matrix system in a Dark Age campaign I am preparing to use with WRG's DBA ancients rules (Phil Barker's belated + surprising contribution to normal people having fun wargaming). I'd planned to use a basic Diplomacy type of negotiation round, followed by area movement, which is a good basic system. I think some Matrix arguments will work well for a real Dark Age feel which otherwise the umpire will have to make up himself. I'll let you know how it works. (Nashcon was great! I would very much like to make It a yearly thing. Terri's family live just 40 miles south of Nashville so we can also "do the family thing" at the same time. I'm glad you liked "Save Gordon" even if the bloody devils did sort of kill you. It ran very well. I am interested now In seeing how the Peninsula Campaign works out as a convention game. Let me know anyway I can help you Dark Ages MG out. It sounds like It could be a lot of fun. Now for what I've dying to know. After Burnaby died (and my wife drug me to the car for the drive home) did they drive off the Dervishs?!? I know I die well (and historically) but the situation did not look good for us. It is a horrible thing to predict exactly where the enemy will be, then to qet one's plan carried out, to die in the process of it all and then riot to know if the whole army perished as well! Please let me know. --CE) Jayson Gralewicz Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you, things have been extremely hectic around here, but it has given me time to null over your matrix game and the camtients I wished to pass on to you about it. First let me say again that I very much enjoyed the Sudan game at Little Wars. Having run games at conventions with just two participants I know how important it is that you get sane feedback so you don't feel that you've wasted an afternoon. My observations on the Matrix game (at least as I played it) are as follows: 1) I am still unclear as to why three reasons are needed to support an argument, but it appeared that during the game the third argument always ended up being the most spurious one (the Queen's Birthday, indeed!).  2) My main impression is that the matrix game is far better at reflecting social interaction than military interaction (especially after reading your Soviet Union article). To take same examples from the Sudan game: The false prophet that reduced Mahdist morale was an excellent vehicle for the game system -- he could certainly have existed, and his effect would have been unpredictable by the normal sort of quantity game mechanics we are used to. On the other hand, the matrix game is at it's worst representing mechanical factors. Vis: the Royal Navy sails from England to Egypt with the Army. There is no conceivable way the bush wallahs in the Sudan could have affected the move (especially as steamships suffer very little from the weather), yet they only had a 2/3'rds chance of moving and if you had challenged it to an average argument, it would have only had a 1/2 chance of sailing! I really don't think transport fleet movements were all that random. 3) Scale needs to be taken into account. Example: I move one brigade one area. A very simple move and should perhaps gain a +1 or +2 to the die roll. On the other hand, were I to attempt to have all French armies concentrate in Seville, that is a big action and should have a penalty of -1 or -2. 4) Same things should be outside the scope of the Matrix -- Bizare example: Every turn in the Napoleonic campaign I argue that Napoleon has had enough of war, goes hare and disbands the army and declares peace and turns France into a giant Hippy carmp incapable of waging war. I argue it average, and every turn there is a 50% chance that the game effectively ends! Or suppose that in the Sudan Campaign I had argued that the False Prophet had preached disbanding the entire army! Same things should really be off limits. 5) Some personal bonuses to reflect the era should be available: Example - Napoleon gets +1 to his die rolls for movement arguments. 6) It appears that the system works better militarily the farther back in history you go. It's OK in Colonial, or Napoleonic, but imagine the possibilities of The First Crusade or even cavemen! (this Tray just reflect a more personal involvement by the leaders, and a closer interaction of politics and warfare). Well, mull that over and let me know what you think. In the meantime, I've enclosed the GenCon event stuff as I promised. You are going to have to hurry to make the registration listing. I also seem to recall a mention of swapping stuff for magazine subscriptions. Well, I love a freebie as much as the next guy, so enclosed are copies of all the rules currently printed by North Shore Press. Don't get too excited, however. Corsican Ogre is a lot better, but is still awaiting a final copy for a nice print job. The Fistsfull books are scuffed copies (sorry, but this way I don't have to account for them) but they still work. Finally, I've enclosed my business card if you want call or if you lose my address.  [Thanks for playing "Save Gordon" at Little Wars. You raise some interesting questions about the game. I'll give my best shot at answering them. Why have three reasons per argument? Hmmm, I have no good reason for this. I like three as a number, it sort of reminds'-me of Aristotle and sylogisms, but in the end I have no reason for this. Why are the odds of events happening set at 50%? Again, I have no scientific reason. I work in a mental health center so I hear a lot of weird stories. Somewhere along the line I started thinking that probably anything has about a 50% chance of happening. I could be wrong of this point. One this I have noticed though in reading the newspaper, is that events never seem to go as fast or be as certain as we seem to thing they are (in hindsight). I see the rolls as the players rolling off against the Gods of Fate rather than the actions the enemy has done. Should simple arguments have a better chance of happening? I think so. I find in playing MGs that my battle plans get simpler and simpler. I can never be certain when my men will run away, so much of my energy is directed at that rather than at cleaver tactics. I generally see simple arguments that build on one another as Strong arguments. What about "Bizare" events? I generally call these stupid arguments and I Veto them. But If the game is a fantasy game where magic Is part of the matrix what grounds do I have to stand on that an army of flying monkeys is stupid. In historical games it is a little more difficult. A player came make an argument like "I win!" which could be said to end the game. But if the players keep on arguing they will find that it is not over. In the Sudan, one must keep in mind that the Mahdi WAS a false prophet, while in Napoleonic France I would have to veto an argument about pacifism, unless they had laid the ground work for it in previous arguments. Should Napoleon get a bonus to win? Sounds good to me, maybe next game... Cave men, you say? The very first MG was about cave men, Grok is always my hero. I'll see you in August!) Back to Experimental Games Group # 13 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com