TOAW friends encountered en route

[briantopp]

I've been having quite a lot of fun rediscovering TOAW via the new 3.4 patch recently. Great graphics. Great turn order rewrite. Some fun new features to explore. It got me thinking about the hundreds of hours I put into playing around with scenario design for this game and I thought I'd write about that and inflict it here. Apologies in advance if you decide to read this and find it boring.

There is a little subculture of TOAW players who, like me, came to this game through board wargames. Avalon Hill games in the early 1970s (I played "D-Day" until the counters stared to fall apart. I still have my copy and look at it now and then, and remember every tricky twist of each of those French rivers). Then a subscription to "Strategy and Tactics" and SPI's amazing catalog of games. Then on to Victory Games and their wonderful series of high-end, diamond-edged designs; to Game Designers Workshop and the "Europa" series; Australian Design Group and "World in Flames"; and landing in recent years with The Gamers and their deep, fascinating and wonderfully flexible operational level games.

I had one of these games set up and being played basically without a break from when I was a teenager in the 1970s until our teenagers and cat finally spread out sufficiently in the last few years to leave no place in our house for a table covered with a couple of thousand counters, behind a closed door. Someday I hope to get that back.

I bought TOAW the month it came out, bought all of its updates and iterations, and tried to keep up with all of its patches. Always with the same interest -- an opportunity to put the board wargames I liked to play onto computer; to have a computer-controlled opponent always available to play against at any time of the day or night; occasionally to have a chance to play PBEM efficiently.

Specifically, I plunged into scenario design in TOAW with a view to being able to play Game Designer Workshop's "Fire In the East", "Scorched Earth", and "The Urals" with its 1943 scenario on computer. This project ended up on the TOAW disk as four scenarios (Operation Barbarossa 1941, Operation Blau 1942, Operation Zitadelle 1943, and Operation Bagration to Berlin 1944-1945). These scenarios allowed me to play through what I consider to be the interesting bits of the eastern war at Europa scale from 1941 to 1945, something I never accomplished with the board game due to time issues and because the game system never quite landed there. I like to play operational offence, and so the design bias was to play the German side against a PO-controlled Soviet opponent for the first three scenarios, and then the Soviet side against a PO-controlled German opponent for the final one.

My first attempts at this project were poorly executed (perhaps they remain that way). But they did serve to recruit a very fun community of fellow enthusiasts who joined me to try to work these scenarios up into something worth playing. A number of fellow players helped me crawl to a better order of battle; unit design; map; events etc. We exchanged hundreds of emails, versions, and files. Whatever the quality of the result, it was great fun. I'm very grateful for the chance to spend that much time with an online collaborative community.

This is a good moment, for example, to write a few words in memory of Chet Pool, once a real mainstay of my little corner of the TOAW community. Chet didn't talk about himself much but wrote me many precisely-worded, detailed, and always useful emails. It emerged he was a retired US army veteran (a senior officer, as I remember) whose hobbies included a meticulous and detailed study of the orders of battle and operational development of the eastern battles. He was particularly keen on seeing a scenario covering the 1944-1945 period. He provided me with a wonderful wealth of information about this, and urged me to the project. One day, he decided he didn't like the speed in which design was proceeding (I was busy at work), and favoured me with a four-sentence sample of parade-square drillmaster motivational speechmaking, on the theme get with the program, stand tall, etc. It worked. Although I didn't have a reference game in "Europa" to work from, I put together the scenario and dedicated it to him -- just about the time, alas, when he left us to go to a better place. I hope he's enjoying playing it now and then, where he is now -- he sure was keen to get it done.

Another great friend in this work was an email correspondent that I heard from in bursts every two or three months for several years. He was the captain of a U.S. nuclear submarine who played TOAW as his hobby, was also an "easterner", and would play through these scenarios and upload his detailed playtest notes when his sub returned to base from patrols and came out of radio silence. Very cool!

The most emotional and thought-provoking emails I received were from Vietnam veterans, commenting on a version of Victory Games' "Vietnam" I posted (there is a much better version of this game on the scenario disk -- I only focused on its operational side). Many wrote to share their experience of deployments modeled in the game. Some wrote in detail about their work with the ARVN, and how that army's strengths and weaknesses could be better modeled in the TOAW game system.

In addition to much useful constructive criticism about the various scenarios I’ve posted from time to time, I attracted a few emails from a handful of correspondents who wanted to flame me. Flamers are demotivating and make things way less fun. On the other hand, you have to like a game system that attracts such passionate disciples.

It was possible to track the sales arc of "TOAW" by keeping an eye on how often scenarios were downloaded from the main scenario archives online. "Operation Barbarossa", for example, was downloaded over 15,000 times in the high noon of the game -- pretty good in the wargame hobby. I pre-order OCS games at The Gamers and then seem to go to the printer when they have 600 purchasers or so.

One last fact I would like to report. This hobby can be useful. Long ago when I was living in a rented apartment, the landlord appeared with a list of demands involving some work he wanted to do around the place. I wasn't home. My girlfriend let him in and spoke to him in a corridor looking into my game room. I had Victory game's "The Pacific War" set up in there. Apparently his eyes bugged out when he saw it. "He plays THOSE for FUN?" And he went away. Never mess with a wargamer. A good argument for using TOAW as a screen saver as well as a game.

Many thanks again to the patch designers for keeping TOAW alive and thriving!

All the best
bt

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: briantopp

This is a good moment, for example, to write a few words in memory of Chet Pool, once a real mainstay of my little corner of the TOAW community. Chet didn't talk about himself much but wrote me many precisely-worded, detailed, and always useful emails. It emerged he was a retired US army veteran (a senior officer, as I remember) whose hobbies included a meticulous and detailed study of the orders of battle and operational development of the eastern battles. He was particularly keen on seeing a scenario covering the 1944-1945 period. He provided me with a wonderful wealth of information about this, and urged me to the project. One day, he decided he didn't like the speed in which design was proceeding (I was busy at work), and favoured me with a four-sentence sample of parade-square drillmaster motivational speechmaking, on the theme get with the program, stand tall, etc. It worked. Although I didn't have a reference game in "Europa" to work from, I put together the scenario and dedicated it to him -- just about the time, alas, when he left us to go to a better place. I hope he's enjoying playing it now and then, where he is now -- he sure was keen to get it done.

I just want to say "ditto" on Major Chet Pool - and his son, Lt. Col. Jim Pool. They both helped me a lot on several projects - especially CFNA. And, I know for a fact that they helped many of the original "Classic" scenario designers, too. I've acknowledged them in several of my designs. I miss Chet a lot.

[Silvanski]

ORIGINAL: briantopp

I've been having quite a lot of fun rediscovering TOAW via the new 3.4 patch recently.

Nice to see you back in TOAW-land Brian. I may get in touch to show some stuff I done to your Bagration scenario. Tweaked the Romanian surrender among some other stuff

[briantopp]

ORIGINAL: Silvanski

ORIGINAL: briantopp

I've been having quite a lot of fun rediscovering TOAW via the new 3.4 patch recently.

Nice to see you back in TOAW-land Brian. I may get in touch to show some stuff I done to your Bagration scenario. Tweaked the Romanian surrender among some other stuff

Excellent! Looking forward to it. High time that scenario got a good renovation.