Matrix Games Forums

Long ago and far away, one of my most dreaded college courses was Art Appreciation: it met first hour—7:30 in the morning as I recall—and it was an endless flicker of slides with an utterly forgettable monolog. Only a long time later did I come to realize that the course had somehow taught me a bit about aesthetics: the nature of the “beautiful.” It occurred to me then that gaming meets a fundamental human social need: the urge for creative and competitive play--though perhaps this is more of a “guy thing.” Today much of the discussion in the gaming forums is really about the game’s aesthetics: its look and feel. Of course this assumes the game is reasonably well designed and delivered in the first place. Since aesthetics is essentially a subjective issue, endless arguments often rage around one opinion over another, sometimes to the point of “forum rage.” In the case of a game like TOAW III and its scenario design component, the aesthetic debate becomes more complex and nuanced; yet this is precisely what sets it apart from virtually all of its competitors from a creative standpoint.

When TACTICS II first arrived on the scene in the early sixties, the game was a completed work in “designmanship.” Creatively, it was also like a “paint-by-numbers” kit: the designer designed “numbers” into the game that we all then “painted” on the game board against a living opponent—instead of studying our Algebra. This all dramatically changed when Avalon Hill with Jim Dunnigan and (the late) Redmond Simonson published Panzerblitz in the early seventies, quickly followed by Panzerleader and Tobruk (AH and Hal Hock). (To be historically accurate, the game was developed by Dunnigan and Simonson at SPI in 1969 with a version released in their venerable Strategy and Tactics Magazine.) Meanwhile Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were simultaneously working on the game that would become Dungeons and Dragons (1973). The point of the history lesson is to remind everyone that the historical roots of TOAW reside with that particular genre of early games. Panzerblitz (and quickly D & D) created a lot of excitement because of the creativity it unleashed: if we players couldn’t actually design a complete game—the secret and fondest wish of all gamers—we could at least design our own scenarios: write our own “numbers” on the publishers “canvas.” RYO (roll-your-own) games addressed the deep human need I already mentioned—creative competitive play—but extended creativity to the level of scenario/game design: gamer was now also designer. With advent of the computer memorable games like Typhoon of Steel and Steel Panthers continued this natural creative progression. Norm Koger’s rendition took war gaming to the operational level of war. Now scenarios abound and in time we can all debate the aesthetic merits of each, whether those merits revolve around formation proficiencies or something less tangible, like “feel.”

With its recent release TOAW III has fairly lit up the forums here and elsewhere, which perhaps makes this an opportune time to speculate on the future of that game. There is some talk already of an advanced revamped edition in the not too distant future. Such qualitative improvement could easily make TOAW III+ the flagship game for Matrix. Yet, there’s a whole different direction the design could take by simply addressing another dimension of human expression. Where the classical war-game met a basic wish for creative competition, Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMOG) add the social desire for cooperation into the mix. I have no idea how a TOAW III+ could be transformed into an operational-level MMOG. (Obviously, tactical MMOGs like WWII online have had some limited success.) World of Warcraft (WoW) for instance is realm-based; perhaps a TOAW MMOG would be turn-based with scenario-driven “instances” set within any of the historical periods or “worlds” covered by the game.

Whatever…I know there’s enough creative genius in the gaming community to make this happen—after all, you are gamers.

ORIGINAL: Belisarios

With its recent release TOAW III has fairly lit up the forums here and elsewhere, which perhaps makes this an opportune time to speculate on the future of that game. There is some talk already of an advanced revamped edition in the not too distant future. Such qualitative improvement could easily make TOAW III+ the flagship game for Matrix. Yet, there’s a whole different direction the design could take by simply addressing another dimension of human expression. Where the classical war-game met a basic wish for creative competition, Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMOG) add the social desire for cooperation into the mix. I have no idea how a TOAW III+ could be transformed into an operational-level MMOG. (Obviously, tactical MMOGs like WWII online have had some limited success.) World of Warcraft (WoW) for instance is realm-based; perhaps a TOAW MMOG would be turn-based with scenario-driven “instances” set within any of the historical periods or “worlds” covered by the game.

Whatever…I know there’s enough creative genius in the gaming community to make this happen—after all, you are gamers.

An MMOG would be extremely difficult. At some point, a model similar to that used by Neverwinder Nights and some FPS games of small clusters of people would probably be a lot better.

We'll figure that out down the road. Either a mix of AI and human players, or multiple human players should be possible. It's going to take some work, but I plan to be around. To do online right, we'd have to put out a TOAW : Rapid Play or something like that, it would be TOAW with wego, and the same combat model, etc. I have no idea of how difficult anything like tha would be, but it would be more accessible, and I think I could make the two versions compatible. I happen to like the rounds, but they get in the way for some things, I'm not sure how to make wego and rounds cooperate. It might even be possible to make it work for disconnected play, like pbem, but sending the moves to a central server, or something. I'll put some brain calories into it down the road a bit.

Ralph

In other words...what Ralph is saying, in short, is...TOAW IV...[:D]

ORIGINAL: Belisarios


This all dramatically changed when Avalon Hill with Jim Dunnigan and (the late) Redmond Simonson published Panzerblitz in the early seventies, quickly followed by Panzerleader and Tobruk (AH and Hal Hock). (To be historically accurate, the game was developed by Dunnigan and Simonson at SPI in 1969 with a version released in their venerable Strategy and Tactics Magazine.) Meanwhile Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were simultaneously working on the game that would become Dungeons and Dragons (1973). The point of the history lesson is to remind everyone that the historical roots of TOAW reside with that particular genre of early games. Panzerblitz (and quickly D & D) created a lot of excitement because of the creativity it unleashed: if we players couldn’t actually design a complete game—the secret and fondest wish of all gamers—we could at least design our own scenarios: write our own “numbers” on the publishers “canvas.” RYO (roll-your-own) games addressed the deep human need I already mentioned—creative competitive play—but extended creativity to the level of scenario/game design: gamer was now also designer. With advent of the computer memorable games like Typhoon of Steel and Steel Panthers continued this natural creative progression. Norm Koger’s rendition took war gaming to the operational level of war. Now scenarios abound and in time we can all debate the aesthetic merits of each, whether those merits revolve around formation proficiencies or something less tangible, like “feel.”

ahh...the good old days of "Panzerbush"[:D] You forgot to mention Afrika Korps, years before Panzerblitz, and while we're at it (if you're old enough), Blitzkrieg (1967) and before that, my very first wargame, Gettysburg (1963 or thereabouts...).[X(]

Henri

Ah yes. Gettysburg, Tactics II, Afrika Korp, and Stalingrad. The bad thing was there was not a lot to select from. The good thing was everyone owned all (except maybe Tactics II) of them so finding an opponent was easier - or as easy as it can get without computers.