Archive For The “Analysis” Category
Brant Guillory, 13 May 2020
Based on an older academic professional development seminar, here’s a recording of Brant’s discussion of uses of games & sims in the classroom, for training & learning purposes.
We’ve previously discussed some different facets of the games & sims discussion with both Brant and Dr Sterrett chiming in. We’d love to hear what you have to say, too.
We appreciate you visiting the Armchair Dragoons!
Please leave us your feedback in our discussion forum, or in the comment area below.
You can also find the regiment on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you.
Brant Guillory, 17 February 2020
Everyone that’s grown up in the fantasy RPG world knows how D&D’s “Vancian” magic works, and over almost 40 years of gaming, my experience is that virtually everyone hates it. There’ve been a variety of replacements introduced over the years, from spell points to the DD4e at-will/encounter/daily powers to skill-based magic. Stripping back from execution to concept, however, there are always a few considerations that need to be framed before moving forward with whatever way in which “magic” would appear in the game world. These underlying concepts are the building blocks which define virtually any magic system. (more…)
Professional development through better gameplay? ~
Brant Guillory, 12 August 2019
The first tremors hit Carana around 415 in the morning, local time. The capital was just stirring as many laborers were hurrying through their pre-dawn meals before shuffling out of their small houses to arrive at work by sunrise. The full brunt of the earthquake arrive 20 minutes or so later, and the devastation was described by at least one news outlet as “biblical.” The nations tenuous infrastructure, barely a patchwork to begin with, had no chance against the fury unleashed by the Earth’s shifting tectonic plates as bridges crumbled, roads buckled, water pipes tore apart like paper, and the electrical grid shut down, ending any communication that was out of shouting distance.
The full brunt of the earthquake arrive 20 minutes or so later, and the devastation was described by at least one news outlet as “biblical.”
Help was slow in arriving. Certainly the help wanted to arrive, but the routes into the country – the limited airport, the ramshackle seaport, and inland border – were never ideal under perfect circumstances, and these were not perfect circumstances. The local population certainly had a will to survive, but lacked critical supplies for medical care, safe water, and food & shelter. The world mobilized to help.
And the help began to arrive, a multi-headed hydra of organizations, services, expertise, and agendas. Usually cooperative, occasionally antagonistic, and always under the steady gaze of the worlds’ TV cameras, the various organizations rolled up their sleeves to start the long, hard slog of restoring the basic necessities of life to Carana.
Brant Guillory, 14 May 2019
Note that this is a companion piece to the original column on recon & intel in tabletop wargaming.
In the tactical world, we have several different tools we use to ensure that we get the right data at the right time.
One of the key methods involves the use of map graphics. We use transparent overlays on standard-size military maps (1:50k) and use graphics to indicate enemy actions: locations of units, routes for movement, places we expect them to attack or defend, etc. (more…)
by Gary Mengle, 8 October 2018
Around 1998 I declared wargaming as a hobby finished, washed my hands of it and sold off most of my games.
Yeah. That was dumb.
I mean, it seemed logical at the time. The wargame-as-simulation designs that the hobby was then still in the grip of could clearly be better accomplished on computers. Non-CCG tabletop gaming was getting crowded out of retail spaces and conventions. Gamers’ time was increasingly being devoured by computer games. And wargaming, by then a niche for the better part of two decades, was the first to vanish from the major convention scene.
Digital wargaming