Name: Mark Allen Campbell

Genius: I don't know what you mean by this! Do you mean what I think I do best? If so, my answer is:

1. Naval History
2. Teaching (communicating in general)
3. Swimming
4. Sailing
5. Dancing
(In descending order of competence)

Bio: Additional designs, awards, past credits, recognitions or other accomplishments? with dates if possible...

I started work on CLOSE ACTION in 1979, and started selling the first rudimentary version in 1982. By 1989 CA had gone through 4 major upgrades. In 1990/91 I released version 6.0/6.1/6.2, and left off CA to do other things, thinking that the great work was finally finished. Boy was *I* wrong! Anyway, in the meantime I took time to work on some other games with Christopher Bell, a friend and fellow wargamer/wargame designer.

In 1989 I published our jointly authored battalion-level Napoleonic tactical miniatures game, _Napoleonic Warfare_. In 1991 I published _The British Are Coming_, another jointly authored work. The latter was a battalion-level American Revolution tactical miniatures wargame. I also wrote an article, "The Navies of the American Revolution, 1775-1783", which appeared in the _Encyclopedia of the American Revolution_. (It is listed as a co-authorship with Jack Greene, but I did 80% of the research and all the writing, so I think I can fairly claim it as mine.) After a 3-year hiatus to attend graduate school, getting my MA in History, I went back to work on CA, finally seeing it published in the summer of 1997.

Current job (and title): What do you do for a living?

Right now I am Purchasing Manager for a small hi-tech firm specializing in systems integration. We are also now producing our own hardware, so I am getting much experience in low-level hardware components like resistors, capacitors, etc., and also in systems-level purchasing. I am also the office manager (I told you we're a *small* hi-tech firm!) and on weekday evenings I teach computer courses at the local community college.

Where did you get the inspiration for Close Action?

When I was 16 I played my first age of sail game, FRIGATE. It was manifestly unsatisfactory, both as a simulation and as a game, so I moved on to WOODEN SHIPS & IRON MEN. This was much better, and was WSIM was very satisfying for a year or so. Then my good friend Mark Hancock analyzed the game using Chess analysis techniques, and found that the best opening move in tournament situations bore absolutely no resemblance to historical tactics.

But it worked! (As proof, he and I jointly won the Origins WSIM tournament 5 years in a row, from 1978 to 1982, using the "Hancock Maneuver", as it became known.) The existence of such a powerful yet completely ahistorical tactic left me very dissatisfied, and in early 1979 I began researching the capabilities and limitations of wooden sailing warships during the period 1740-1815 in a systematic and careful way. By 1981 I had accumulated enough data, and correlated it within myself, to be certain that WSIM was fatally flawed as a simulation, and for that reason also was not a good game. This conclusion prompted me to see if I could design a better game, and CLOSE ACTION is the result!

What do you believe is the greatest success of the design? The most noticeable flaw?

My overriding concern as a designer and developer was to obtain a game which was both extremely playable and extremely realistic. This is nearly impossible to do, and the huge difficulty of combining the two in an elegant way is why it took me 18 years to perfect CLOSE ACTION. However, I believe I've succeeded in making a necessarily complex simulation as approachable as possible to the novice. I've have new players enjoying the game after only 15 minutes of instruction.

If you want me to identify the most important parts which make CA the success it is, then I would point to (a) the simultaneous movement system (which *accurately* models the way the square-riggers of the period actually sailed), (b) the gunnery system, which seems to accurately reflect real-world rates of damage (but slightly accelerated, because CA is, after all, a GAME, which has to be able to be played out to a conclusion in 3-5 hours), and (c) the stress I've placed upon having more than one player per side. CLOSE ACTION really shines when you get more than one person per side; then, using the limited signalling rules, the problems of fleet maneuver in the period really come to life. If you're playing with more than two people and four or more large ships (either large frigates or ships of the line) on the board, I don't think there's another game that ever has, and probably ever will, come close to being either as realistic or as much fun as CA.

However, CA does not model very small ships, or actions involving only two ships, very well. I was aware of this flaw from the beginning, and deliberately accepted it in order to concentrate on modelling the larger, more important ships and battles, as best as I could. Many people really like playing with very small ships, like brigs, cutters, schooners, and even gunboats. While CA *can* handle such dinky vessels, it does not really SHINE at this scale. I chose to concentrate on the much more interesting (to me) fleet and squadron-level battles.

In creating Close Action, how did your design philosophy evolve? Did something trigger the proverbial lightbulb to light up over your head during design and testing?

Actually, this process happened over and over again, to the general despair of my friends and helpers. At least twice I remember saying, "OK, that's it, CA is *DONE*!" when releasing version 5.0 and 6.1. I was, of course, WRONG! But as I played more CLOSE ACTION games, and ran more monster games, I learned more about the dynamics of naval combat in the age of sail, which in turn taught me what was still wrong with my game. So I kept tinkering until I finally got it right. If I were smart, I would have listened to my good friend Chaim Kaufmann, who saw where I was headed six years ago, and would have saved myself much time and effort. Oh well, it's a good thing I stick to a task once I've started it, because I sure wasn't very swift when it came to developing CA!

When in design mode, what's your favorite snack food?

Pretzels, definitely, accompanied by far too great quantities of Pepsi (Diet and Diet caffeine-free). I also like Chocolate Chip cookies and Oreo cookies. Darn. Now you've gone and reminded me about my waistline, sigh. I better go swimming again soon!

Tell us about the scholarly papers you've authored and the lectures you've delivered, like the keynote address at Historicon 97...

My chief scholarly interest is naval history. However, I'm not interested only in the age of sail. My other major research interest is studying the effects of rapid technological change upon doctrine. Thus my MA Thesis was entitled "The Influence of Air Power upon Fleet Battle Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1922-1941", and, as it suggests, is concerned with examining the institutional/organizational response of the USN to the introduction of an unprecedented technology, the airplane. I hope to expand my thesis into a book in the next year or two.

Do you play computer games?

Not very much. I find most of them tedious. I *much* prefer human opposition, and I suspect I always will until computer "AI" becomes decent enough to be worth the name. The only computer game I really have ever gotten hooked on is Civilization/Civilization II, from Microprose. CIV II is enormously better from a graphics and sound viewpoint, but surprisingly, CIV I is a better game, with better AI than CIV II! It doesn't make sense that this should be so, given the enormous advances in computational power that occurred in the two or three years separating Civ I and CIV II, but there it is!

What type of computer system do you have?

I have several, but my primary system is a moderate-power Pentium 133mhz with a 2.5gig HD, CD-ROM, and 32megs of RAM. Right now it's misbehaving, and as soon as I can afford it, I want to migrate to a much more powerful processor with a better monitor. However, as I have just purchased my first home, I'm afraid any upgrades are going to have to wait for a while...

What piece of hardware--real or imaginary--would you add to it?

As I intimated above, a 17" monitor is first on the priority list. Then a flat-bed scanner. Then a 11x17" color inkjet printer. Then a Pentium II / 300mhz with 64mb RAM. The list is endless, and by the time I'm done upgrading, the standard desktop computer will probably be a Cray XMP or its equivalent! . . . sigh. On the other hand, I shouldn't whine; without my computer and associated software, CA would still be nowhere *near* done. Thank GOD for computers!

In general, do you think board or miniatures wargames make the leap to computer screens more effectively? Why?

I'm really not an expert on these, because I've chosen not to play many, but my *guess* is that board (that is, hex-based) wargames would be much easier to port to computer than miniatures games. Miniatures games are inherently "fuzzy" -- that is, they have no clearly defined "zones of control", or other such devices for measuring effect, so they should be MUCH harder to program.

How would you like to see Close Action presented on a computer screen, if at all?

Well, as a matter of fact, someone is working on that right now, and I hope that it will be ready in a year or so. If I have anything to say about it, it will faithfully recreate the real world, in that players should usually be able to exert only as much control over their fleets as real admirals could over *theirs*. There will be a "micromanagement mode", I suspect, but I hope players won't want to use it much.

If you were going to be represented on a computer screen by an icon, what would it be?

I'll answer that another way. My personal coat of arms is crossed swords, gold, on a sable field, with the motto, "Victory and Honor". The colors are the historical Clan Campbell colors, and the motto is meant to suggest the tension between winning and doing the right thing, which many people (including myself) often have to think about to stay on the side of honor.

What was the last movie (theater) you watched? Last videotape rental?

Last movie seen: Lost World (BIG disappointment; any time you WANT the leading characters to die because they're behaving so stupidly, you knows it's got to be a very badly written movie). Last videotape rented: Hamlet (the 4-hour Kenneth Branagh version).

Is there a movie you'd like to do a game of?

Only Kelly's Heroes, but I think it's already been done!

Given unlimited resources but present day technology, what would you design and why would it be cool?

I've thought about this a LONG time, and the answer is perfectly obvious (to me!). I'd obtain a laser holographic tank about 30' by 15', get about 40 laptop PCs, each of them running a version of CLOSE ACTION, get a really fast Sun workstation to act as the server, and voila -- I'd have the perfect real-time CA game, with each player representing one captain or admiral, with information limited to just what he could obtain from his vantage point on his own quarterdeck. (The Holographic tank would be for everyone to look at the spectacle of the battle as it progressed, because it would be SO cool!)

They say everyone needs a hobby. How do you decompress outside of game designing/playing?

Well, other than sex, which I get FAR too little of (I *really* have to find a babe one of these days . . . but they're all too wise nowadays! It's not fair!), I enjoy reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, sailing, swimming, ballroom dancing, and playing other wargames.

Where was the last place you visited on vacation? What's your next vacation spot?

Vacation? What's that? Seriously, I went to Nantucket Island two years ago with a friend, and she and I both had a great time. As to my next vacation; come hell or high water I'm taking a "grand tour" of Europe next summer!

If not bound by time or space, where would you go...and why?

Duh, that's so obvious! Alpha Centauri, first, then Epsilon Eridani, then Vega, then . . . you get the idea! Got a good interstellar yacht you can lend me?

Excluding your own creations, what three games (of any type) would you take with you to the proverbial desert island? What three books?

Ah, the inevitable "Desert Island" question. Let's see, this is a tough one. Usually one gets to select more than three (grumble, grumble). OK, with respect to games, I'd have to choose Settlers of Catan, Napoleon (the older Columbia/Avalon Hill "wooden block" game, not the newer one), and perhaps A House Divided. You'll notice that no monster games or super-complex games like ASL are included in this list. Nor would they be, because I consider myself a great proselytizer for the wargaming hobby, but ASL clearly isn't the way we're going to get Magic:The Ripoff-playing kids to convert over to wargames! With the games *I've* selected, I'd be able to turn any savage boys/young men I found on my desert island into wargamers!

As for books, there's no POSSIBLE way to limit it to three; I own over 4000 books myself, so perhaps you can pardon my indecision. Instead, I'll limit it to three works, or SERIES of works, by category. I'll have three categories: naval history, naval fiction, and science fiction. Let's see. In science fiction, the first *series* I'd take would be Lois McMaster Bujold's Vor (also known as Barrayar) series (7 books now, I think), about a wonderfully frenetic hero named Miles Vorkosigan. It's one of the best SF series you'll ever read. Another series would be the wonderful _Jhereg_ series (six books) by Steven Brust, about a human assassin named Vladimir Taltos in a world dominated by a humanoid but non-human race -- thus the humans are the minority! It's great. The third fiction series would undoubtedly be the "alternate history" works of Harry Turtledove, including _The Guns of the South_, _Agent of Byzantium_, and of course L. Sprague de Camp's _Lest Darkness Fall_, which started the whole genre.

In terms of naval fiction, the only series I'd definitely take would be the immortal C.S. Forester's _Horatio Hornblower_ series. In my educated opinion, it's miles above the Patrick O'Brian series. Another naval fiction book would be J. D. Southworth's _The Pirate From Rome_ (1968), a little-known but very well-written work about the final eradication of the great pirate fleets which had nearly usurped control of the Mediterranean from the Roman Navy in the pre-civil war period. My third naval fiction selection would have to be C.S. Forester's WW2 naval fiction work, titled _Gold From Crete_, if I recall correctly. Heck, everything C.S. Forester's ever written would have to go into my "desert island" survival pack. Let me put it this way: If I could write ONE PAGE of fiction as well as Forester has written EVERY PAGE of his works, I'd die a happy man! That's not a joke.

In naval history, there's so much to select from that the choice is nearly impossible. However, Alfred Thayer Mahan's brilliant _The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1666-1783_ is so important, and so well written, that I'd have to take it along. I really can't decide from among all the other great works which I would absolutely HAVE to take along, so I'll choose two others more-or-less at random. One set would be John Lundstrom's superb _The First Team_ series. These two books examine the development of U.S. carrier fighter tactics and organization from Pearl Harbor all the way through the end of significant naval phase of the Guadalcanal campaign. They are models of naval history, and should be required reading for every aspiring military/naval historian, because they are enormously detailed and yet are fascinating reading. The other set would I suppose have to be Samuel Eliot Morison's noted 15-volume semi-official _United States Naval Operations in World War II_. That way I'd get the most bang for my buck!

Finally, to feed the heart and soul as well as the heart, I'd have to have a volume of the complete works of Rudyard Kipling. No wargamer should be without him, because to some extent we are taken by the romance of great battles and events, and Kipling spoke of glory, and honor, and all the noble feelings which war should be about (but of course is not).

We see the emergence of online gaming as putting the social aspect (and the smarts of a real-live opponent) into gaming on a world-wide scale. Good or bad? Why?

Fantastic, because it engages people's attention more to be playing against live opponents. Bad, because it tends to remove the social aspect of gaming, which is very very important to our already somewhat-less-than-normally-socially-ept cohort.

Do you have a favorite poster or cartoon hanging by your desk? What is it and what makes it your favorite?

Well, my pictures/posters/calendars usually either involve (a) ships, (b) mountains, (c) cats, or (d) naked or mostly naked babes!

What epitath would you want encoded on your (hopefully far in the future) digital tombstone?

Here is Mark Campbell's Cenotaph; it *would* be his tomb, but he was late for his own funeral, and we haven't found him yet!