Response to the Paper Wars review by Adam Starkweather To read the review see... http://www.metrowargamers.com/articles/review_kremlin.htm I have spent a lot of time writing about what I think makes a good wargame, and when I spell it all out, it boils down to accurate maps, accurate o/bs, accurate movement rates and rates of attrition. You can achieve those things without placing a burden on the player. There is one more thing, however: does the player face the same strategic decisions as the historical commander? Here, no two designers will probably agree on what the major factors were that impinged on a commander's freedom of action. Jim Dunnigan saw the holy grail in weapons technology; I see leadership as the key. I would be happy to think that players could learn about strategy and how to think strategically by playing my games. I also want them to learn about history, not just the dramatic or the glorious sides, but also the mundane and the horrible aspects of war. I'd be pleased if the players caught a whiff of the complex of factors a commander must take into consideration before planning every move. A good sidebar to illustrate this might be a reprint of the 'Designer's notes' from the first edition of Napoleon at Bay, which are actually an excerpt from Tolstoy's War & Peace. Tolstoy is talking about Kutusov's decision to abandon Fili, the last position before Moscow, and he describes how different it is for a commander on the spot to make a decision from the way it appears to any of us, examining the event from our comfortable armchairs. From that first edition of Napoleon at Bay on I have explored those differences... Back to OSG News April 2003 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Operational Studies Group This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com