Early Correspondence

Enjoyed your note of 19 Nov 79. The reasons behind using Rodger’s [Rodger MacGowan] illustrations are twofold. First, he is a longtime personal friend, and second, he is very skilled for good rates. This does not, however, mean I am not interested in others doing covers for us.

Your prices, however, hurt. I assume you have seen our three most recent covers by MacGowan [Warring States, I Will Fight No More Forever, and Torpedo!] He did them for $30 each (U.S. funds) and is charging me $35 each for two I have commissioned for games due out in Spring ’80.

I have canned the guy that was doing the new cover for The Peloponnesian War because he seemingly cannot put it together right. So I have a job which must go to you or Rodger on a somewhat time urgent basis. On the grounds of D.A.K. and Scourge of God, I want you to do it. This is a redeveloped 2nd edition but details of scope remain same.

What do you expect when you sell your first born

We bought Napoleon’s Last Triumph outright as a design. I remember Bill not being happy with the alterations during development, but there was nothing unusual about that. It was his first baby, and he did not want to see it touched. But, like most first designs, it was not really playable as submitted. Though it had spectacular aspects, which was why we bought it. Peter Hollinger (a serious Napoleonics person) and I got it into shape, keeping as much of the original as possible, while making it playable without having Bill in the room with you to explain how. He indicated he would have done it differently and was unhappy, but that is rather normal.

And sometimes we threw in a few extra just to confuse the collectors

Totally luck of the draw [whether games had blank counters or not]. We used whatever die had the closest number of counters to what we needed. If there were left overs, I tended to run out apartial row with blanks of the same counter, just to make the color work more simple.

That’s why all our games come with a first aid kit

Newberg defines realism as ‘a feeling that the element under examination is correct in relation to some other element.’ ... Newberg makes the point, and it is a good one, that ‘realism’ and ‘historical accuracy’ should not be confused. ... Newberg says he strives for ‘designing systems so that when they dovetail together the resulting overlap and synthesis gets the player sufficiently involved so as to feel ‘realistic‘.’

And we’ve been illiterate ever since

Rockets (sic) Red Glare wins this year’s prize for the most unimportant research item unearthed in the course of a game design. The lack of an apostrophe for the title’s first word is defended on the grounds that Francis Scott Keys (sic) neglected the possessive form throughout his score for our national anthem. Whatever...”

The Production Hall of Fame

Jim Dunnigan 123; Perry Moore 80; Frank Chadwick 56; Richard Berg 53; Rob Markham 45; Joe Miranda 39; Steve Newberg 33; Craig Taylor 33; Mark Herman 31; Joe Balkoski 29; Ty Bomba 29; Kevin Zucker 29. 12 designers (about 1.5% of the total) accounted for 580 board wargames (about 21% of the total).