I understand Chris is including a detailed writeup for the Ancient Korea scenario, "Tale of the Hwa Rang Do," that I ran at RiverCon 2000 this year. This is mainly additional comment, with a few odd points here and there that impressed me. I made a few minor changes to the scenario from what we started with in the ongoing PBEM on the MatrixGamer eGroup. For one thing, my research on MagWeb, mentioned by several others on the list, showed that in that time period the primary form of warfare was siege warfare, and that leaders gained status by winning them. As such, all cities began with a defensive barrier, the city walls. In addition, I made Japan a playable option from the beginning, although in the actual game we only had enough players for the basic three kingdoms. Finally, Koguryo gained a unit like Silla's Hwarangdo, the Kyongdang, which replaced one of their starting armies. The game started with border harassment between Silla (played by Ken Foushee) and Paekche (Chris Engle). Paekche's fields burned, infiltrators disguised as merchants tried to assassinate Paekche nobles, and fortifications went up all over the borders. The Koguryo (Clay Karwan) incursions began soon after this, into both of the other kingdoms. They returned more or less without incident, but soon returned to Paekche to help with a famine caused by Silla's earlier sabotage (I think I'm remembering that right.) I think it was at this point that the King of Paekche declared fealty to the King of Koguryo, and soon to be Emperor of Korea. In the development that followed, the southern provinces built to enrich themselves, while everything of importance moved to the new capital of Tonggu. Eventually, an Imperial marriage cemented the place of Pojang Wang as Son of Heaven. I was amazed at the time that open conflict didn't break out -- of course, no one made the bold committments that Chris did in the early turns of the PBEM. There was some tension from the Chinese over trade with Japan, shortly after the Korean shipbuilding program began, and I was sure something would happen -- after all, a Chinese fleet deployed to the waters southwest of Korea, and despite the abundance of figures in the Yalu valley, all huddled around Tonggu, only one was an actual army -- the T'ang, of course, had two armies just across the way in Manchuria. The solution one player came up with was to build a trade road across Silla and Paekche to carry China/Japan trade. I was prepared to make a hostile Chinese reaction argument Very Strong over such a move -- after all, it enriched a new local power at their expense -- but no such argument happened. What I first envisioned as a military campaign game turned into empire building in a literal sense. Just goes to show me about pigeonholing, I guess. On the other hand, with all three players in the Korean kingdoms, that did alter the focus to highly Korea-centric -- more so than the scenario already is. There was only an external threat if the three players let them become a threat, something that is hardly in any of their interests. The question, though, is would having two Koreans and the Chinese necessarily lead to a focus on just fighting the Chinese? In any event, though, the game went well, and taught me a little bit more about Matrix Games. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #17 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com