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September 26, 2015 10:15 AM

Let's Play: War

The Rand Corporation on wargaming, introduction to wargaming, and the anatomy of a wargame.

That time the Pentagon used nukes in training.
A brief history of PLA wargames.
How HG Wells popularized the tabletop wargame
The DoD's recommittment to wargaming

Can gamers redesign war?

posted by the man of twists and turns (13 comments total)

Jon Peterson's Playing at the World is a great tour of war-gaming from the Prussian kriegspiel games through the Rand Corporation's simulations to Lake Geneva. He also has a related blog.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:46 AM on September 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I met an older fellow at a bar one day. We got to talking and he told me that he had been in a tank near a nuclear bomb test. He said that when the bomb went off the tank was nearly flipped on its back. For a moment it was pointing almost straight up. He said he had never been so frightened in his entire life. I wonder if he was a part of the training exercise described in the FPP.
posted by Splunge at 11:05 AM on September 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh wow, I haven't played Avalon Hill games in years, but my buddies had entire bookcases with boxed sets stuffed with everything from Squad Leader to Circus Maximus when we were growing up. Favorite was always Kingmaker. We had a tradition that any time you executed a royal, you had to take their piece on the back of your thumbnail & flip it up like a coin to represent "Off with his or her head!"
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:32 AM on September 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

Squad Leader was a complicated game. But then add Cross of Iron to it. Tank counters with turret counters on top, FTW. :)
posted by Splunge at 11:45 AM on September 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Does the hive mind of MeFi know of any SciFi litt, playing with the premise of nations playing simulated war games with each other, as a way of settling real issues?
posted by playeren at 12:37 PM on September 26, 2015

Kiln People touches on it.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:39 PM on September 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Star Trek, Original Series, "A Taste of Armageddon"
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:40 PM on September 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

How about a nice game of chess?
posted by Fizz at 12:42 PM on September 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does the hive mind of MeFi know of any SciFi litt, playing with the premise of nations playing simulated war games with each other, as a way of settling real issues?

Two of Iain Banks' Culture novels, The Player of Games and Surface Detail, play with the idea (or something similar).
posted by firechicago at 12:44 PM on September 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

Ender's Game qualifies as sci-fi lot for war games, no?
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 2:47 PM on September 26, 2015

the premise of nations playing simulated war games with each other, as a way of settling real issues

I really liked Iain Banks' Player of Games, except for the hand-wavey declaration that (some) human game players can beat super-computers that have been established to be capable of practically anything, including simulating actual humans. If you get over that hurdle, it fits your request to a T: most of it is set in a society where games are used to establish practically everything, and besides the core game of the story there are various meta-games that provide the plot of the book.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:45 PM on September 26, 2015

thebotanyofsouls: "Ender's Game qualifies as sci-fi lot for war games, no?"

Maybe half way. They practiced war until Ender actually used his experience to direct an actual war.
posted by Splunge at 6:19 PM on September 26, 2015

There were some 1970s Brian Aldiss short stories where whenever two countries wanted to go to war they sent their armies to the (minor) planet Pluto to fight it out.
posted by monotreme at 6:51 PM on September 26, 2015