Relative Lack of Vietnam Era Games

[pompack]

Once we start talking boardgames, there was Year of the Rat from SPI.

I remember playing it a bit but I don't think I liked it much because I can't remember anything about it other than the title and the cover from the mag.

[spence]

I would like to recommend an excellent book: "On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War" by Col H.G. Summers Jr.

Chapter One begins:

"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered that remark for a moment. 'That may be so', he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'
Conversation in Hanoi, April, 1975"

I think that explains all there is about how much enjoyment the American/South Vietnamese Player will have playing that game.

[DHRedge]

ORIGINAL: spence


"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered that remark for a moment. 'That may be so', he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'
Conversation in Hanoi, April, 1975"

Great quote,

and if someone tries to teach, and is ignored and thought irrelevant, if there teaching does not correct a problem.
Specifically the beer and travel money sent to me.
Then words must become actions, so that it is relevant to the person being spoken to in a way they understand.

The exact theme of the TV show Breaking Bad.
And the rational for manifestations into reality that create effects.

Also the larger topic of Right To Revolution, where when teaching, he did not have the money to live.
Therefore he has the right to move in directions outside of bounds of social contract, since social contract did not correctly address the problem.

Side note, in that story he had some other avenues, for instance someone he once helped long ago, that made millions off of his ideas, (in that Show so there is some writer disagreement with muse)offered him cash to correct the problem, and he could have taken that route, his pride stopped him.

So I have been posting to make it known that my pride is not an issue, and a suitcase of cash can be sent to me to correct the problem, by the various groups that have been reading my posts in various places for years. Not allowing for those that gained in the past to correct the problem is an error in that TV Show, and an error I avoided, however I can still throw the bag of ice on the floor. My friend was treated wrongly, now money must be sent to me.

Or if you want to see Zero as Da Vinci would write it, you can see that RE is in Oz O RE Z

Simple Minds - Alive and Kicking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljIQo1OHkTI

[DD696]

ORIGINAL: DHRedge

ORIGINAL: spence


"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered that remark for a moment. 'That may be so', he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'
Conversation in Hanoi, April, 1975"

Great quote,

and if someone tries to teach, and is ignored and thought irrelevant, if there teaching does not correct a problem.
Specifically the beer and travel money sent to me.
Then words must become actions, so that it is relevant to the person being spoken to in a way they understand.

The exact theme of the TV show Breaking Bad.
And the rational for manifestations into reality that create effects.

Also the larger topic of Right To Revolution, where when teaching, he did not have the money to live.
Therefore he has the right to move in directions outside of bounds of social contract, since social contract did not correctly address the problem.

Side note, in that story he had some other avenues, for instance someone he once helped long ago, that made millions off of his ideas, (in that Show so there is some writer disagreement with muse)offered him cash to correct the problem, and he could have taken that route, his pride stopped him.

So I have been posting to make it known that my pride is not an issue, and a suitcase of cash can be sent to me to correct the problem, by the various groups that have been reading my posts in various places for years. Not allowing for those that gained in the past to correct the problem is an error in that TV Show, and an error I avoided, however I can still throw the bag of ice on the floor. My friend was treated wrongly, now money must be sent to me.

Holy Mother of god.....

I will gladly send you enough beer for you to drown in if you would only do so, solving your problem and one of mine.

[catwhoorg]

ORIGINAL: fcharton

VG Vietnam is a pretty good game, but a very unusual design... Basically, you had an extreme version the "sequential operation" system, which is a hallmark of many VG games (including Pacific War), which broke the sequence of play we're all familiar with. The short scenarios are a lot of fun. The campaign is involved, but very interesting.

As others have said, there are decent vietnam scenarios in tactical games. I have fond memories of SPI Patrol's Vietnam scenarios, which worked very well because they were very asymmetric, I suspect the other games in the series (sniper, commando) might work too. You also have decent (french, and spanish) games about the French Indochina war (look up past copies of Vae Victis and Alea).

As for computer games, I suspect the market for serious wargames, and the audience of this forum, explains the lack of them. We're an old bunch, and this is in living memory... not sure everyone wants to "game" this.

Francois

The game taught me the importance of interdiction and area denial.

Prior I really thought artillery was just to blow stuff up.

[wdolson]

At this point the Vietnam War is 40 years in our rear view mirror, as far back as WW II was in 1985 when board war games were at their peak. I believe board wargames enjoyed some level of popularity in Germany who was sort of in the same situation as the US is now about Vietnam. I don't think it's so much about how the public feels about Vietnam now (wargamers tend to have different opinions about conflict than the general public anyway), but has more to say about the difficulties in modeling such a conflict.

Insurgency warfare can be modeled on a tactical level in a game like ASL. In small scale actions insurgency battles aren't that different from infantry battles between nation states. The problems come in with modeling on any larger scale. Insurgencies are sort of grass roots warfare and while you can probably model one side pretty easily, modeling the insurgency side is very tough. Operational and strategic games often have a major component of supply which insurgencies do very ad hoc and unconventionally. How do you model an enemy that fades into the background population as soon as the shooting stops?

Play balance would be very difficult to achieve. Many years ago in the AH magazine The General there was an article on the science of designing a wargame. I was not long out of school with my engineering degree and I recognized a lot of overlap. If you want a game people will actually play, balance is important.

WitP started out as Uncommon Valor because that was the period of the war in the Pacific where things did hang in the balance. Guadalcanal could have gone either way in the late 42 time frame, but in the larger time frame Japan was doomed. WitP achieves balance with a victory points system and two periods of the game that are very unbalanced. But it achieves balance in the end.

Figuring out how to achieve balance between an overwhelmingly strong US military machine on one side and a bunch of scrappy jungle fighters with some foreign aid on the other would be very tough.

There were also political hamstringing that would be very difficult to model. This is probably one reason I can't think of any wargames of the Korean War. Modeling the armies would be a lot easier than Vietnam, but somehow putting the political limits on UN forces they worked under in the real war would be tough.

In some ways a Korean War game might be kind of fun because both sides employed the best of WW II hardware (more on the UN side) along with some newer toys like early jets. In something like ASL's WW II scenarios there are only one or two that feature US hardware like the Pershing, but there were lots of those in UN service in Korea.

Bill

[Justus2]

I remember playing a game in the 80s called South Africa (hypothetical war of the apartheid government against a black insurgency, supported by Angola and other neighboring nations). Similar challenge, although from what I remember it had some unique rules on hex control etc to simulate the support of the populace for the insurgency (IIRC, some of the counters were kept flipped over, the SA player could 'search and destroy', they might catch an insurgent unit or even an infiltrator from Angola, but if the flipped counter was blank, it would trigger political consequences instead). Definitely had some high-tech units, air assault, jets for air support, but on the other hand, the insurgent player could patiently build up support until the SA were surrounded.

Boardgamegeek link

I remember at the time looking at options to adapt the ruleset for a Vietnam conversion, it seems the system would have some similarities.

Edit: Here's a review on that site with a better description of some of the mechanics.
Review

[comte]

Brace yourselves Fire in the Lake is coming

http://www.gmtgames.com/p-450-fire-in-the-lake.aspx

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: joey

I think this war would be very difficult to simulate. There wasn't really a front line. Battles were not fought establish or move a front line, but instead, were fought to attrit the enemy. Where the enemy was, was not always known. Who the enemy was, was also not always known. It was guerilla warfare at its finest. How does a game simulate that?

Agree.

Any serious strategic simulation of the Vietnam war would be a bit boring by wargaming standards I would think. Even on the tactical level "whack a mole" doesn't sound very interesting. Send in my troops to win all the battles, then lose the war. What kind of wargame would that be?

Although, I will say that there is a really fun Civilization III scenario by a guy named El Justo which deals with the Vietnam War, of course all the fun is in the fact that it isn't even remotely a simulation wargame, just good "beer and pretzel" fun.

[Shellshock]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

This is probably one reason I can't think of any wargames of the Korean War. Modeling the armies would be a lot easier than Vietnam, but somehow putting the political limits on UN forces they worked under in the real war would be tough.

In some ways a Korean War game might be kind of fun because both sides employed the best of WW II hardware (more on the UN side) along with some newer toys like early jets. In something like ASL's WW II scenarios there are only one or two that feature US hardware like the Pershing, but there were lots of those in UN service in Korea.

Bill

There was one stand alone Korean War title for a PC game I recall. Conflict Korea by Norm Koger which came out in 1992. But even it only covered the the first "fluid" year of the war. The three years of static warfare while peace negations dragged on didn't get simulated. It also had a hypothetical 1995 scenario included. 1995...our old future.

Needless to say, by modern standards it looks pretty out of date with the VGA graphics and all.

[fcharton]

ORIGINAL: wdolson
There were also political hamstringing that would be very difficult to model. This is probably one reason I can't think of any wargames of the Korean War.

There is one pretty good VG game about the whole conflict (named Korean War, unsurprisingly), and the Gamers had one in their OCS series too. I think Korea is relatively easy to model, as it is pretty much a conventional war. It is very asymetric, but this usually provides for good gaming situation.

Here's a lit of Vietnam war (including Indochina war) games
http://grognard.com/sub15.html

Francois

[czert2]

ORIGINAL: spence

I would like to recommend an excellent book: "On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War" by Col H.G. Summers Jr.

Chapter One begins:

"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered that remark for a moment. 'That may be so', he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'
Conversation in Hanoi, April, 1975"

I think that explains all there is about how much enjoyment the American/South Vietnamese Player will have playing that game.

Well depend on how that game will be designed, it is gereraly know that US lost nam war in white house and not in field.

[czert2]

ORIGINAL: DHRedge

ORIGINAL: spence


"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered that remark for a moment. 'That may be so', he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'
Conversation in Hanoi, April, 1975"

Great quote,

and if someone tries to teach, and is ignored and thought irrelevant, if there teaching does not correct a problem.
Specifically the beer and travel money sent to me.
Then words must become actions, so that it is relevant to the person being spoken to in a way they understand.

The exact theme of the TV show Breaking Bad.
And the rational for manifestations into reality that create effects.

Also the larger topic of Right To Revolution, where when teaching, he did not have the money to live.
Therefore he has the right to move in directions outside of bounds of social contract, since social contract did not correctly address the problem.

Side note, in that story he had some other avenues, for instance someone he once helped long ago, that made millions off of his ideas, (in that Show so there is some writer disagreement with muse)offered him cash to correct the problem, and he could have taken that route, his pride stopped him.

So I have been posting to make it known that my pride is not an issue, and a suitcase of cash can be sent to me to correct the problem, by the various groups that have been reading my posts in various places for years. Not allowing for those that gained in the past to correct the problem is an error in that TV Show, and an error I avoided, however I can still throw the bag of ice on the floor. My friend was treated wrongly, now money must be sent to me.

Or if you want to see Zero as Da Vinci would write it, you can see that RE is in Oz O RE Z

Simple Minds - Alive and Kicking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljIQo1OHkTI

Well, that NV colonel was totaly right, for what is for you that you win batles, but ultimately lose war ?

[Bo Rearguard]

ORIGINAL: Shellshock


There was one stand alone Korean War title for a PC game I recall. Conflict Korea by Norm Koger which came out in 1992. But even it only covered the the first "fluid" year of the war. The three years of static warfare while peace negations dragged on didn't get simulated. It also had a hypothetical 1995 scenario included. 1995...our old future.

Needless to say, by modern standards it looks pretty out of date with the VGA graphics and all.

That was the first computer game I ever bought for my old Gateway 486. [:D]

[berto]

Vietnam Combat Operations

War gaming excellence! Reason enough to own TOAW for just those scenarios.

[berto]

As others have mentioned: Squad Battles: Dien Bien Phu, Tour of Duty, and Vietnam

Also, Modern Wars: Vietnam War, a new game in the Campaign Series, due for release probably next year.