My First Wargame Design
The first wargame that I ever owned was Avalon Hill's Battle of the Bulge. It was released in 1965 so I would have been twelve years old. I remeber seeing it in the toy department at Boston Store and saving up my money from babysitting for my siblings until I could buy it. I loved it and was hooked. I acquired and played a lot of the Avalon Hill classics when I was in high school: Stalingrad, D-Day, Afrika Korps.
As an adult I went through phases when I would play wargames alternating with periods of inactivity. Since I have two sons I assumed that I would have automatic wargaming opponents as soon as they were old enough to play. It turned out that one had no interest at all while one did become a wargamer. My son Tim and I played many games of Russian Campaign and Turning Point Stalingrad, classic games which I still play today. But when Tim went off to college I didn't have any wargaming partners so I stopped playing for several years.
First ever two player game of Fallujah Fury
Then I moved to Singapore in 2006 and got involved with an active group of wargamers. Since coming back to the US I have worked hard to find wargaming opponents in Boise. It hasn't been easy but I have cultivated a few. I also travel to wargaming conventions all around the western US and Canada and even play via email. I've gone way past being a casual gamer to being really hardcore. I track developments in the hobby and play the most current releases.
After that the next step was to get involved with new games as they are being developed for publication. At the game conventions that I go to I was able to get involved in playtesting of new games. I got the chance to work with game designers and developers on new games. I suppose that it was only a matter of time before I would think about designing my own game.
It happened at Consimworld Expo this past summer. Brian Train, a well known designer was showing me a new game design on the battle for Mosul. I played the game with a friend and we gave Brian our feedback. It uses a system similar to Columbia Games block wargames. While we were talking Brian mentioned that Mosul was the largest urban battle since Stalingrad. It just happened that the previous two days I had played Stalingrad games (Turning Point Stalingrad and Stalingrad: Verdun on the Volga). It made me think. Why couldn't one of those game systems developed for urban combat in Stalingrad be adapted to Mosul?
Map for my Fallujah Fury game
I spent the (very long) drive back from Tempe designing a game in my head that used the TPS system for the battle of Mosul. After I got home I called my oldest son Tim, the one who is the wargamer, and talked to him about it. He's also an Army officer who has done many deployments to the Middle East. His opinion was that Mosul was not a very interesting battle but that Fallujah might be better. Since my birthday was that week he bought be an excellent book on the battle, No True Glory by Bing West. He convinced me that Fallujah was a much better choice for a game.
Since coming back from CSWE I have been working on the game design. I found satellite photos of Fallujah on the internet and used them to develop a map for the game. I used the system from Turning Point Stalingrad and added some additional mechanics to adapt it to a counterinsurgency battle. The insurgents in Fallujah were not the Red Army. I got the map printed. I made my own playtest counters. I developed a simple VASSAL module. I wrote up a rule set. I played solo a number of times until I thought I actually had something that was a real game.
When I went to BottosCon in early November I talked to several of my friends who are game designers or developers and incorporated their advice. Now that I have a prototype of a game I have started to try playing it with other wargamers. My friend Dale in Boise has played it face to face with me. I am playing it PBEM via VASSAL with my friend PAvE in North Carolina. Even Sandy has helped by proofreading the rules.
I don't know how far I will take this. Right now I am just doing it for fun (like this blog - which has become quite an obsession). I'm not doing it so it can be published but I am anxious to find out if people think it is fun to play. Who knows where it will go?
