Old Question - New Group

[Larry Reese]

What a great read, Bill. And you reminded me of two things:

1. GDW - I'm assuming you're talking about Game Designers Workshop here. What a great set of guys and games! Them and Steve Jackson. GDW had a title out that I've never seen equalled, called Striker. It was miniature rules for ground combat in the Traveller RPG, but it was vastly more than that. Because Traveller dealt with all levels of technology, Striker allowed you to easily fight a Roman Legion (or similiarly armed troops) against a mechanized infantry combat team, or even against futuristic opponents armed with powered grav-mobile battle suits and fusion weapons. Great morale and leadership rules, and included budgeting and purchase rules and a whole host of other things that covered everything you'd need to run your own custom designed military. But what blew me away, and what really set this apart, were the vehicle design rules. You could design anything your heart desired. From a war chariot, to a grav tank with a 35 megawatt x-ray pulse laser. Autocannons. Sensing systems. Wheels, tracks, air cushion vehicles, grav, fixed wing, helicopters, it was all there and all seamlessly integrated. God that was great fun. The example in the book for tracked vehicles was the design of a Panther tank (you had to also design the main gun itself and ammunition) and the system worked so well that only very minor descrepancies were to be found between the actual tank and its performance and that of the one designed through the system. An increidible effort, I must say.

But I digress. The second thing you brought up, was using those early computers as aids to conventional war gaming. GDW had another system called High Guard out (design, maintenance, and operation of fleets of spacecraft within the Traveller system) and I spent many hours writing software routines to automate the seriously heavy dice combat system. System worked perfectly, even had a built in randomizer subroutine to avoid the effects of the fact that random number generators really aren't random. Sometimes I think I should have pursued programming as career instead of doing what I did.

And to think, I thought at one time I was the only person who was enthralled by Panzerblitz. LOL.

LR