Showing posts with label How I Play Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How I Play Games. Show all posts
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, October 30, 2009
What is My Ultimate Goal?
To recap today's topic:
How I Play Games
My Character Files - The Templates
My Character's World
The Character Sheet - Details
The World Folders
Now we come to what my ultimate goal is.
My ultimate goal is to have gone through "the pageant of history." To have played a computer war game set in every period of time on earth and in space, from 4000 BC to 40K AD and beyond. To have see the long tangled skein of technology's advance. To have become a sort-of time traveler myself. My goal is the goal of the more noble of my mercenaries. It is a quest for knowledge. A desire to know what is human, and what Human is.
Can't I have done that playing economic games? To be sure I have done that too.(See Trade Empires). But economics does not make for interesting heroes. Economics is about the safe and basic stuff. Food, clothing, shelter. Even animals do some of that. War, horrible as it is, seems to be what chiefly distinguishes us from animals. While animals do have colony warfare (ants and simian packs, for example), and ritualized mating combat, these are instincts. Only man, consciously and with the full weight of his mind and spirit, kills the fellow members of his species in a highly organized manner.
But war is not always strictly about material things. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Union hero of the battle of Gettysburg, once wrote: "But we can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we may cherish such thoughts and such ideals, and dream such dreams of lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be, whenever and wherever the hour strikes and calls to noble action."
Shelby Foote had a story about one of the Confederate soldiers who participated in Pickett's Charge at that battle. That soldier knew something that Gen. Robert E. Lee did not. He knew that he and his fellows were all going to be killed in the charge and that it would fail. As a rabbit ran by him and away from the battle, he said "Run away old hare, run away. That's what I'd do if I was an old hare." He knew he was going to die, and yet he still went forward with Pickett's division. The only time an animal does something like that is when a mother is defending her young, or a pack is defending its survival.
To be human is to fight and risk death over ideas, dreams and hopes. That is spiritual, however unspiritual those ideas, dreams and hopes may be. And that is one of the major things that makes us human. Even Chris Hedges - no friend of war - has written that "war is a force that gives us meaning." He is a witness to the evil of war. And to read him is to be realistic about war and its consequences. But even he is aware that something vital to the human spirit goes on during war, even as war is being destructive to the human spirit.
Robert E. Lee seems to have had the right of it when he said, "It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow to too fond of it."
Do I learn all that from playing war games? Only a little. What playing war games on the computer really does for me is stimulate me to educate myself about a historical time period and its people. A war game is a stimulus to education.
When I've played a war game about a period, I have a better notion of what was going on and what the people involved were trying to accomplish and what their constraints were. Playing a war game gives me a better notion of what alternatives were available. This makes history a living history that is a record of only one set of alternatives coming to pass. Most people do not like learning history because it is passive. It is what has already happened. You can only read about it. A war game, and even an economic game, is history made active. History in the making.
So that's my ultimate goal. Education through game play.
How I Play Games
My Character Files - The Templates
My Character's World
The Character Sheet - Details
The World Folders
Now we come to what my ultimate goal is.
My ultimate goal is to have gone through "the pageant of history." To have played a computer war game set in every period of time on earth and in space, from 4000 BC to 40K AD and beyond. To have see the long tangled skein of technology's advance. To have become a sort-of time traveler myself. My goal is the goal of the more noble of my mercenaries. It is a quest for knowledge. A desire to know what is human, and what Human is.
Can't I have done that playing economic games? To be sure I have done that too.(See Trade Empires). But economics does not make for interesting heroes. Economics is about the safe and basic stuff. Food, clothing, shelter. Even animals do some of that. War, horrible as it is, seems to be what chiefly distinguishes us from animals. While animals do have colony warfare (ants and simian packs, for example), and ritualized mating combat, these are instincts. Only man, consciously and with the full weight of his mind and spirit, kills the fellow members of his species in a highly organized manner.
But war is not always strictly about material things. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the Union hero of the battle of Gettysburg, once wrote: "But we can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we may cherish such thoughts and such ideals, and dream such dreams of lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be, whenever and wherever the hour strikes and calls to noble action."
Shelby Foote had a story about one of the Confederate soldiers who participated in Pickett's Charge at that battle. That soldier knew something that Gen. Robert E. Lee did not. He knew that he and his fellows were all going to be killed in the charge and that it would fail. As a rabbit ran by him and away from the battle, he said "Run away old hare, run away. That's what I'd do if I was an old hare." He knew he was going to die, and yet he still went forward with Pickett's division. The only time an animal does something like that is when a mother is defending her young, or a pack is defending its survival.
To be human is to fight and risk death over ideas, dreams and hopes. That is spiritual, however unspiritual those ideas, dreams and hopes may be. And that is one of the major things that makes us human. Even Chris Hedges - no friend of war - has written that "war is a force that gives us meaning." He is a witness to the evil of war. And to read him is to be realistic about war and its consequences. But even he is aware that something vital to the human spirit goes on during war, even as war is being destructive to the human spirit.
Robert E. Lee seems to have had the right of it when he said, "It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow to too fond of it."
Do I learn all that from playing war games? Only a little. What playing war games on the computer really does for me is stimulate me to educate myself about a historical time period and its people. A war game is a stimulus to education.
When I've played a war game about a period, I have a better notion of what was going on and what the people involved were trying to accomplish and what their constraints were. Playing a war game gives me a better notion of what alternatives were available. This makes history a living history that is a record of only one set of alternatives coming to pass. Most people do not like learning history because it is passive. It is what has already happened. You can only read about it. A war game, and even an economic game, is history made active. History in the making.
So that's my ultimate goal. Education through game play.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The World Folders
Now I'll go into the folders I use to support the world my characters live in. CENT, CIRC, SPHERE, all have the following folders:
NAVY - for all the Navy characters not currently in an ephermis..
MARINES – for the Marine and ground force characters not currently in an ephermis.
These two folders have the following sub-folders inside:
SLATED - which contains those former subordinates who have done well enough to be "slated for independent command" in the next ephermis that comes up.
RECRUITS - which contains characters picked up from other ephermi. One of the advertizing points a service will use with a client is that they can hire away any successful military heroes of the client and therefore relieve that client of any political unrest that might result from a war hero being left with time on his hands.
CIRC, for example, has a number of characters with names and statistics generated from my playing of UFO: Enemy Unknown. This is another neat way of having characters with back stories. It also provides for some interesting historical characters. One Alexander of Pella (aka "Alexander the Great) is currently awaiting his first ephermis in the employ of CIRC. He found there were plenty of worlds left to conquer after all. CENT has picked up a number of famous Confederate brigadiers from its American Civil War ephermis.
A LIMBO folder. This is a punishment folder for characters who have failed their missions. Their records have been stamped with something like "transferred to an obscure administrative center on Fleabite VII in the Far, Far Away Sector."
This makes for characters who are extremely motivated to take on assignments that few other characters are willing to taken on voluntarily. While many mercs are more than willing to take on comfortable, high technology ephermi like the ones code-named "Alpha Centauri," and "Supreme Commander," very few mercs are willing to take on uncomfortable, low-technology ephermi like those codenamed "Civilization" (where they start out with a few cave men in a cave), or "Medieval Total War" (where underwear is just starting to be invented). Succeeding at a lousy assignment is one way to get out of the limbo. Resigning from a service is another.
A PRISON folder. This is a ratcheting up of punishment. Sometimes a failure or an infraction is so criminal that a prison term is imposed. As the mercs tend to say of their employers, "Tis' a hard service."
So each service has its own notorious prison planet. CIRC's prison is called "Leavenworth." And it has a legendary section know as "the durance pile." CENT's prison planet is known as Devil’s World. SPHERE calls their's Sing Sing.
A sentence to these planets is usually "indeterminate," because a prisoner leaves only if the prison planet's owning service has a shortage of mercs for a contract, or a Service's intelligence arm needs a "dirty dozen" for an assignment.
An intelligence org folder. Each of the services has an intelligence and covert ops organization.
CIRC's is know as CIRCUIT. CENT's is know as CENTERPOINT or POINT for short. SPHERE's is known as INFLUENCE for FLU for short (its enemies, POINT and CIRCUIT, call them "the sneezies " because of that.) .
They recruit primarily from their service's military prisons because the inmates have not only military training, but are also motivated and have learned skills in prison that are useful in intelligence work. And some times what really got a merc in prison was being able to think outside the military box.
They also tend to recruit independents because it gives them an ear in various ephermi. CIRCUIT, for example, has recruited a number of independent mercs from a ephermis code named "Jagged Alliance 2." First person shooter ephermi like those codenamed "Bioshock," "Farcry" are also a fruitful sort of intelligence recruits.
A Command folder. Each service tries to minimize its HQ overhead, but certain offices cannot be done without. So the Command folder has sub folders in it for the following offices:
Commander in Chief
Chief of Naval Operations.
Marine Corps Commandant
Director General of Intelligence.
These command offices double as the marketing arm of the services as well as being administrators of the contracts. The first three involve overt marketing. The DGI's handle the covert marketing. Hence, only the best of the mecs reach these offices as the cream rises to the top with promotion in rank.
The CinC is typically the highest ranking officer in the service. The Chief of Naval Operations is the highest ranking naval officer. The Marine Corps Commandant is the highest ranking ground force commander. And the DGI is the highest ranking intelligence officer.
If a merc is promoted to a rank as high as the current holder of a command office, then the current holder of the office is required to step down in favor of the new candidate. The former holder of the office can then retire, or stay in and hope for an assignment and promotion that will allow a regain of the office, or even obtaining the office of CinC. But this is rare, as there are few conflicts that require the services of an extremely high rank.
These offices make for a certain amount of interesting politicking amongst the characters, and gives the characters something to shoot for. So it’s fun to have this overhead in my game playing.
A RETIRED folder. Yes, some mercs actually survive long enough to retire. This is where the ex-office holders wind up, as well as mercs who have made enough money and are no longer enthralled by combat.
It’s also the dumping ground of flag officers (admirals and generals) who have screwed up. One of the sources of cynicism in the Services is that they cannot generally afford the bad publicity of a flag officer being executed or tossed in prison for failing a mission. So flag officers are usually quietly retired after a contract goes bad.
They join the pool of retired mercenaries from all of the services who are members of a retirement organization know as the Old Soldiers and Sailors (OSS). Less respectfully, they are also known as "the fadies" (as in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's retirement speech "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.") The OSS tends to be the majority stock holder in all three of the Services.
While all the members of each service are answerable to their service command officer, and the command officers are answerable to their commander in chief, the commanders in chief are answerable only to the majority stockholders of their Service, which practically speaking, is the OSS.
A Cemetery folder. All three of the Services maintain their own Cemetery planets. CIRC's is called Arlington. CENT's is called Necropolis. And SPHERE's is called Boothill. All three cemetary planets have Junior Officer plots and Senior Officer plots.
Arlington has a special section called Valhalla, where it heroes are buried. It also has a garbage dump called "Treason Ground" where the bodies of executed traitors are unceremoniously dumped.
CENT's Necropolis has a sort ancient Egyptian theme to it, and has a special section called the Hall of Honor for its heroes.
SPHERE has absolutely no respect for its dead. The typical SPHERE merc believe a dead merc is a loser. Hence the name of its cemetery is Boot Hill, taken from the American Old West ("here lies so-and-so, the second fastest gun in Cochise County”).
A Women's Corp folder. I've been using "he" and "his" a lot, but the services all have women members too. But this is not something the Services are totally comfortable with. The main reason is that the services find it easier to recruit from low tech ephermi where the sudden absence of a bunch of people is unlikely to be noticed. Low tech ephermi tend to be populated by traditional societies with traditional ideas about gender roles. Hence the services tend to be slanted towards traditionalists of various sorts.
The services once recruited women willy-nilly, and found it didn't work out well with the great body of the troops. Too many instances of men breaking discipline to "rescue" the women. So the consensus now is that the services will only recruit women who are already part of a military. I.e., they'll be picked up from clients who are willing to let them go.
For the most part, women have done well in the intelligence services, and not just as Mata Hari's either. But that said, in the process of my gaming, the major CinC's of CIRC and CENT have turned out to be women.
Until very recently, CIRC's Commander in Chief was Admiral of the Fleets Patricia Drake. She is a descendent of Sir Frances Drake of Elizabethan fame, she holds the Order of Death's Head (4th degree), has a win/loss reputation of 18-0, and has a networth of $118,075,016. Unfortunately, she was recently deposed after CIRC failed twice in a ephermis code named "Soulstorm" (something about a moon called Nanyanoi held by the Tau Empire).
CENT's Commander in Chief is Admiral of the Fleets Morgan Katterhenry. Her win/loss reputation is 7-0, but only because a lot of her early work was done "off registry" before CENT was really organized (Her past is rather murky. She seems to have come from an ephermis in which the English privateer Henry Morgan was never born, and in which she was a lady Pirate of the Caribbean.) She has a net worth of $218,543,958.
Finally, I have ephermi folders. For each service organization I have a folder open for each ephermi which has service mercs participating in it. I am usually at various stages in various games. Some games, like the campaign games of Total War series, take so long that I lose interest in them and need to come back to them at a later time to finish them.
So, this is my game world, and the files and folders that make it up.
Next time: What is my ultimate goal?
NAVY - for all the Navy characters not currently in an ephermis..
MARINES – for the Marine and ground force characters not currently in an ephermis.
These two folders have the following sub-folders inside:
SLATED - which contains those former subordinates who have done well enough to be "slated for independent command" in the next ephermis that comes up.
RECRUITS - which contains characters picked up from other ephermi. One of the advertizing points a service will use with a client is that they can hire away any successful military heroes of the client and therefore relieve that client of any political unrest that might result from a war hero being left with time on his hands.
CIRC, for example, has a number of characters with names and statistics generated from my playing of UFO: Enemy Unknown. This is another neat way of having characters with back stories. It also provides for some interesting historical characters. One Alexander of Pella (aka "Alexander the Great) is currently awaiting his first ephermis in the employ of CIRC. He found there were plenty of worlds left to conquer after all. CENT has picked up a number of famous Confederate brigadiers from its American Civil War ephermis.
A LIMBO folder. This is a punishment folder for characters who have failed their missions. Their records have been stamped with something like "transferred to an obscure administrative center on Fleabite VII in the Far, Far Away Sector."
This makes for characters who are extremely motivated to take on assignments that few other characters are willing to taken on voluntarily. While many mercs are more than willing to take on comfortable, high technology ephermi like the ones code-named "Alpha Centauri," and "Supreme Commander," very few mercs are willing to take on uncomfortable, low-technology ephermi like those codenamed "Civilization" (where they start out with a few cave men in a cave), or "Medieval Total War" (where underwear is just starting to be invented). Succeeding at a lousy assignment is one way to get out of the limbo. Resigning from a service is another.
A PRISON folder. This is a ratcheting up of punishment. Sometimes a failure or an infraction is so criminal that a prison term is imposed. As the mercs tend to say of their employers, "Tis' a hard service."
So each service has its own notorious prison planet. CIRC's prison is called "Leavenworth." And it has a legendary section know as "the durance pile." CENT's prison planet is known as Devil’s World. SPHERE calls their's Sing Sing.
A sentence to these planets is usually "indeterminate," because a prisoner leaves only if the prison planet's owning service has a shortage of mercs for a contract, or a Service's intelligence arm needs a "dirty dozen" for an assignment.
An intelligence org folder. Each of the services has an intelligence and covert ops organization.
CIRC's is know as CIRCUIT. CENT's is know as CENTERPOINT or POINT for short. SPHERE's is known as INFLUENCE for FLU for short (its enemies, POINT and CIRCUIT, call them "the sneezies " because of that.) .
They recruit primarily from their service's military prisons because the inmates have not only military training, but are also motivated and have learned skills in prison that are useful in intelligence work. And some times what really got a merc in prison was being able to think outside the military box.
They also tend to recruit independents because it gives them an ear in various ephermi. CIRCUIT, for example, has recruited a number of independent mercs from a ephermis code named "Jagged Alliance 2." First person shooter ephermi like those codenamed "Bioshock," "Farcry" are also a fruitful sort of intelligence recruits.
A Command folder. Each service tries to minimize its HQ overhead, but certain offices cannot be done without. So the Command folder has sub folders in it for the following offices:
Commander in Chief
Chief of Naval Operations.
Marine Corps Commandant
Director General of Intelligence.
These command offices double as the marketing arm of the services as well as being administrators of the contracts. The first three involve overt marketing. The DGI's handle the covert marketing. Hence, only the best of the mecs reach these offices as the cream rises to the top with promotion in rank.
The CinC is typically the highest ranking officer in the service. The Chief of Naval Operations is the highest ranking naval officer. The Marine Corps Commandant is the highest ranking ground force commander. And the DGI is the highest ranking intelligence officer.
If a merc is promoted to a rank as high as the current holder of a command office, then the current holder of the office is required to step down in favor of the new candidate. The former holder of the office can then retire, or stay in and hope for an assignment and promotion that will allow a regain of the office, or even obtaining the office of CinC. But this is rare, as there are few conflicts that require the services of an extremely high rank.
These offices make for a certain amount of interesting politicking amongst the characters, and gives the characters something to shoot for. So it’s fun to have this overhead in my game playing.
A RETIRED folder. Yes, some mercs actually survive long enough to retire. This is where the ex-office holders wind up, as well as mercs who have made enough money and are no longer enthralled by combat.
It’s also the dumping ground of flag officers (admirals and generals) who have screwed up. One of the sources of cynicism in the Services is that they cannot generally afford the bad publicity of a flag officer being executed or tossed in prison for failing a mission. So flag officers are usually quietly retired after a contract goes bad.
They join the pool of retired mercenaries from all of the services who are members of a retirement organization know as the Old Soldiers and Sailors (OSS). Less respectfully, they are also known as "the fadies" (as in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's retirement speech "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.") The OSS tends to be the majority stock holder in all three of the Services.
While all the members of each service are answerable to their service command officer, and the command officers are answerable to their commander in chief, the commanders in chief are answerable only to the majority stockholders of their Service, which practically speaking, is the OSS.
A Cemetery folder. All three of the Services maintain their own Cemetery planets. CIRC's is called Arlington. CENT's is called Necropolis. And SPHERE's is called Boothill. All three cemetary planets have Junior Officer plots and Senior Officer plots.
Arlington has a special section called Valhalla, where it heroes are buried. It also has a garbage dump called "Treason Ground" where the bodies of executed traitors are unceremoniously dumped.
CENT's Necropolis has a sort ancient Egyptian theme to it, and has a special section called the Hall of Honor for its heroes.
SPHERE has absolutely no respect for its dead. The typical SPHERE merc believe a dead merc is a loser. Hence the name of its cemetery is Boot Hill, taken from the American Old West ("here lies so-and-so, the second fastest gun in Cochise County”).
A Women's Corp folder. I've been using "he" and "his" a lot, but the services all have women members too. But this is not something the Services are totally comfortable with. The main reason is that the services find it easier to recruit from low tech ephermi where the sudden absence of a bunch of people is unlikely to be noticed. Low tech ephermi tend to be populated by traditional societies with traditional ideas about gender roles. Hence the services tend to be slanted towards traditionalists of various sorts.
The services once recruited women willy-nilly, and found it didn't work out well with the great body of the troops. Too many instances of men breaking discipline to "rescue" the women. So the consensus now is that the services will only recruit women who are already part of a military. I.e., they'll be picked up from clients who are willing to let them go.
For the most part, women have done well in the intelligence services, and not just as Mata Hari's either. But that said, in the process of my gaming, the major CinC's of CIRC and CENT have turned out to be women.
Until very recently, CIRC's Commander in Chief was Admiral of the Fleets Patricia Drake. She is a descendent of Sir Frances Drake of Elizabethan fame, she holds the Order of Death's Head (4th degree), has a win/loss reputation of 18-0, and has a networth of $118,075,016. Unfortunately, she was recently deposed after CIRC failed twice in a ephermis code named "Soulstorm" (something about a moon called Nanyanoi held by the Tau Empire).
CENT's Commander in Chief is Admiral of the Fleets Morgan Katterhenry. Her win/loss reputation is 7-0, but only because a lot of her early work was done "off registry" before CENT was really organized (Her past is rather murky. She seems to have come from an ephermis in which the English privateer Henry Morgan was never born, and in which she was a lady Pirate of the Caribbean.) She has a net worth of $218,543,958.
Finally, I have ephermi folders. For each service organization I have a folder open for each ephermi which has service mercs participating in it. I am usually at various stages in various games. Some games, like the campaign games of Total War series, take so long that I lose interest in them and need to come back to them at a later time to finish them.
So, this is my game world, and the files and folders that make it up.
Next time: What is my ultimate goal?
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Character Sheet.- Details
So with the forgoing explanation of the world of the mercenaries, my character file template is easier to explain.
Service and Service Arm.
The first line contains the organization and service arm of the character, followed by the character’s sustantative rank and name. The organizations are CIRC, CENT, and SPHERE or IND (independent).
Each organization has a marine corps and a navy. The mercenary services used to have an army organization, but as they started taking far future contracts, they discovered that their armies were constantly being delivered to the battlefield by the space navy. So the marines were chosen to be the sole ground force organization to reduce duplication of administration.
Each marine corps and navy has its own air corps because the mercenary services have found they need tactical air power more than they need strategic air power.
Name.
I have some fun giving names to my mercs. Sometimes I'll assign the name of a real-life or a historical person on the assumption that in a different worldline they'd have ended up as a merc.
Sometimes I'll look on the production credits of the games I'm playing or movies I've seen, and use the first name of one person and the last name of another person to make up a completely new name.
Sometimes I pick interesting names out of a telephone book.
Sometimes I use the name of a character from a science fiction novel that impressed me.
Sometimes I'll use the name of a character from a game I've played on the assumption that they been recruited.
And some times an interesting name comes to me right out of the blue. I like those names the best.
Rank.
Now, let me explain how I use rank. In the real armies of the English speaking world, there is "substantive" rank and "brevet" rank. This distinction takes into account that fact that standing armies in peace time are much smaller than armies in war time. A substantive rank is the actual career rank of an officer or NCO. It is the rank that their pension is based on when they retire.
Brevet rank is a temporary rank that arises out of the needs of battle in a war. "Battlefield promotions" are usually brevet ranks. Once a war is over, an army will usually demobilize back to its peace time size and a culling process will take place in which decisions are made as to which brevet ranks will be converted to substantive ranks and which won't. At the start of WW I, George S. Patton was a Lt. During the war he was promoted to captain, then major, then Lt. Col, and then full Colonel. When the war ended, he reverted back to the substantive rank of captain.
I was once told about an enlisted man in WW II who managed to get promoted all the way to full colonel by the end of the war. He came home very gung-ho for the army as a career choice. But he made the mistake of staying in after the war. He reverted back to the substantive rank of master sergeant. (And boy was he bitter about that for the rest of his time in the army!)
In the Space Time Mercenary Services, there is substantive rank, brevet rank, and "client" rank. Client rank is the temporary rank a mercenary assumes in order to fit into a client's table of organization. It may or may not become substantive after a contract is completed.
Some clients treat their contracts with the Services as state secrets, so service mercenaries in their hire will don their uniforms and ranks, and sometimes even under go neuro-nanonic and genetic enhancement to look and speak like the client. Other clients do not (or cannot) treat their contracts with the services as state secrets, so the mercs will wear the uniforms and ranks of their organizations openly.
Because of their common origin, all the services have the same rank designations, which are:
Description.
I usually don't put down a description because I usually remember what a character looks like, and sometimes I hold off until a characters career gives me a clue to what he looks like.
Relation.
If a character I particularly liked gets killed in action, or the character has a last name I particularly liked and he got killed too soon, I will sometimes create another character with the same last name as a son or brother of that deceased character. This tends to add some revenge plots to the character, which can be interesting.
Win/loss.
This used to be exactly that - the count of the number of battles won versus the number of battle lost.
But as I started to make little clerical errors in updating this piece of information, it started to become less accurate. So I changed its meaning to be the number of good mentions a character got versus the number of bad mentions a character got. It became an indicator of reputation.
And to the extent I continue to make clerical errors in updating, it reflects real life in that in real life reputations can be over-rated or under-rated.
A good mention is when a character gets a medal, is promoted, or praised in some way. A bad mention is when a character takes blame for something, is demoted, or reassigned to oblivion. In real life, soldiers don't always get the medals (or punishments) they deserve.
Assets.
Because I sometimes play economic games like Rail Road Tycoon, or Capitalism, I allow my characters to have assets that they can accumulate and use to run companies in economic games. The Services will sometimes loan money to their mercs to receive it back with interest, and thereby pay for the operations of its Ephermis machine. (This is also a good way for ranking flag officers to feather their retirement nests).
So on this asset line, I list any money or valuables a merc has accumulated.
The money is denoted with the $ sign, but it is not US money. The original dollar sign was the letter "U" superimposed over the letter "S." Overtime it became "$." In the Space Time Mercenary Services, "$" still denotes “US,” but it means "Universal Salt." It represents the average price of a unit of salt throughout the Space Time Continuum (excluding those ephermi in which mass fabrication is possible at low cost). This is in homage to the soldiers of the ancient Roman Empire who were literally paid in salt. (The origin of our word "salary," and the expression "worth his salt.")
How do the mercs accumulate money? Sometimes it’s directly awarded by a client. Some games actually state that a commander was awarded an amount of money or even property. All the services have had naval officers who had been privateers or even pirates in such ephermi as "Cutthroats" and "Pirates!"
But most times merc commanders receive money in the form of "droits" allowed on captured booty or enemy equipment after a battle. The concept comes from the British navy which had the concept of "droits of admiralty," where abandoned naval assets could under certain circumstances become the property of the Lord High Admiral.
This is actually a selling point that the services use with potential clients. By giving mercenary officers a vested interest in seizing the assets and weapons of an enemy, that enemy is not only weakened without further bloodshed, but abandoned weapons are collected and disposed of. This goes a long ways towards establishing the peace afterwards. One reason the American Old West was so "wild" was that the American Civil War had caused a large supply of cheap hand guns to come into circulation.
In games terms, I usually use some percentage of a game's score (if one is given) as the droit amount awarded to the commander. So that's one way in which a characters accumulated assets to indicate how successful he's been.
Decorations.
Now we come to the "fruit salad" that goes on the dress uniform. Again, because of their common origin, the services all have the same designations for their decorations.
And the decorations have a generic quality to them because they have to be translatable into client equivalents in those ephermi in which the client's uniforms must be worn. Hence "a warcross" is awarded and not "the warcross." The decorations listed lower down tend to commonly be awarded to the lower ranks. The decorations listed near the top tend to be awarded to the higher ranks.
Going from the bottom to the top, the decorations are:
Mission medal. A mission medal is awarded for completing the objectives of a mission, whether combat is involved or not. It is the basic unit of performance in the services. And because a merc can get it without necessarily being in combat, it is a cause for much cynicism in the ranks and debate in the middle ranks. As these mission medals are collected and worn on the uniform, they tend to make even average soldiers look above average. They unduly impress potential clients during parade ground reviews. But that is exactly why the medal has always been supported by the higher rankers who run the services. As long as any Service issues this medal, any other Service will be placed at an advertizing disadvantage.
Before going further, I should mention that decorations that have a "cluster" listed next to them are ribbons won above a breast pocket. A cluster is a little pip that’s puts on top of the ribbon that signifies another awarding of the same medal.
A maximum of three clusters can be placed on a given ribbon before the ribbon can be repeated. So a merc who has a mission medal with three clusters on it has successfully completed four missions. If he subsequently completes another mission, he will be awarded another mission medal ribbon. Hence, a proliferation of ribbons.
A decoration that does not have "cluster" next to it is a badge. The number represents a subsequent awarding of the same decoration, but with a raising of its "degree" (like the degree system in Freemasonry).
Purple Heart. The purple heart is the medal no merc wants to get. A merc gets it for being wounded in action. And here I'll describe my casualty system.
Before a game begins, I'll note how it can be possible for the characters to become killed or wounded in action.
In some games, it’s obvious how the character can be represented in the game. There is a unit that specifically represents the player in the game. In Jagged Alliance 2, for example, there is a character you can build who is supposed to represent you in the game. In Supreme Commander, there is a unit that represents the player and the player loses if that unit is destroyed.
Other times it is something only you can decide, like deciding that a specific unit-producing factory is where your HQ is.
What ever it is that I've chosen to represent my character in the game, I note whether the item receives damage or is destroyed. Sometimes it is obvious. In Jagged Alliance 2, a distinction is made between being wounded and being killed. If my character is wounded in the game, he's wounded in my files. If he dies in the game, he's dead in my files. It’s likewise, in Supreme Commander. If the Supreme Commander unit receives damage but is not destroyed, then the character has been wounded. But if the Supreme Commander unit has been destroyed, the character has died.
Other times it is less than obvious what has happened to the character. So I do a sort of "saving roll" on the character.
I will roll two dice. If I get two ones ("snake eyes"), the character has been killed in action. If I get an odd number, I'll know the character escaped being hit at all. If I get an even number, I'll know the character has been hit and role again to see how badly he's been hit. If I get snakes eyes from that, he'll been killed in action.otherwise, the closest the number rolled gets to 2 (snake eyes), the more wounded he is.
A 3 is 90% wounds. A 4 is 80% wounds, etc.) I've found that this system has the best balance for allowing my characters to face some risk, but without my constantly having to make new characters.
Wounded characters are presumed to have been placed in the regeneration tanks and returned to active duty for another game. If they are not too wounded, they will returned to the game I was playing.
I will discuss the disposition of dead characters later.
Rescue Medal: The rescue medal introduces another mechanism in my style of playing games. One other consequence of losing a battle is not only getting killed or wounded in action, but also getting captured by the enemy.
If it looks to me like my character or his subordinates are going to end up captured by a victorious enemy, I will do a saving roll on that. I will ask "Was he captured?" and then I roll two six-sided dice. If I get an even number, the answer is yes and he's been captured. If I get an odd number, the answer no, he's managed to escape.
A character can end up wounded in action and captured. If the wounds are severe, the capture is considered automatic. I maintain for each organization a POW-camp file in which I place characters from the other two sides who have been captured by that side.
There are two ways for POWs to be repatriated back to their original organizations.
One way is by a prisoner exchange. If two sides are experiencing a shortage of officers, they may wish to hold a prisoner exchange and exchange officers they hold who are of equivalent rank.
The other way is by rescue. Very often a game scenario will involve a "prison break" or other rescue mission. When the character I'm playing has succeeded in such a mission, I will allow him to have rescued one of his fellow organization members held by an enemy side.
I roll a ten-sided die to pick the rescued character out from those others in the POW-camp folder, and release that character for use as a possible subordinate for my rescuing character. I then award the character a Rescue Medal. This adds a nice dimension of interaction to my characters.
The rationale for allowing rescues is that if there were such a thing as Space Time Mercenaries Services, the logical thing for them to do with prisoners from a rival service would be to distribute them through out the ephermi in which they have contracts with clients who already have POW camps. That would cause rescue efforts to be a matter of pure chance.
A War Cross (or Navy Cross) is awarded for high performance while being exposed to actual combat.
A medal of valor is awarded for taking on a higher level of risk than is the norm while performing a mission.
A medal of victory is awarded specifically to the commander of a mission and only if he obtains a victory.
A medal of honor is never called "THE medal of honor," and this is so not only because it is meant to be generic, but also because the concept of the award is different from most non-mercenary armies.
Mercenaries never do anything "above and beyond the call of duty," because that would be a contradiction in terms. Rather, a medal of honor is awarded to a mercenary who makes his organization look good.
It’s even possible to get it without encountering combat. This is when a merc does something flashy, like rescuing Princess Pretty from the evil clutches of Duke Puke. The medal can be awarded for things that get an organization a lot good press.
Winners of this medal tend to be put on company tours and junkets for the purpose of recruitment or advertizing campaigns. And this causes no amount of cynicism in the ranks. But that said, it has been awarded for some extraordinary performances.
A Battle Star is usually given to a commanding flag officer (general, commodore or admiral) who wins an extraordinary victory. The recipient of the award is considered to be a Battle Master.
An Order of Strategy is usually awarded to a commander who has shown a consistent talent for strategic thinking. It is not only a decoration, but also a society of all the holders of the decoration.
The society meets annually in solemn ceremony, and at dinners in which views and insights are exchanged. The highest degreed member of the society is called the Master of the Order and sits on its ruling council and represents the council to the commander in chief of the organization.
An Order of Tactics is awarded for consistent tactical prowess and innovation. It is another society like the Order of Strategy.
When an officer is awarded both the Order of Strategy and the Order of Tactics, he is inducted into a yet more rarified society, the Order of Strategy and Tactics.
There are other medals which I have recently added to add some variation. They duplicate the existing medal somewhat and I have no set policy for them.
Now we come to the most feared decoration of all. All conversation in a room ceases when a holder of this decoration comes into it. No one wants to be awarded it. The commanders in Chief of the Services have more often then not been holders of it.
It is the Order of Death's Head. It is awarded to the mercenary who has been forced to use strategic weapons of mass destruction in the course of his duties. Marine officers are awarded it for launching strategic nuclear missiles. Admirals of deep space fleets are awarded it for using planet killers on enemy worlds. The mercenary awarded this decoration is marked for life.
Special Decorations.
These are decorations awarded by clients, and they have the specific flavor of the client they come from. One, for example is the "Son of the Security of the State," issued by Feudal Japan after its contact with the Space Time Mercenary Services.
The services allow any special decoration that does not bring disgrace to the uniform. Hence, shrunken heads, dried out fingers, and rings of severed ears and scalps are not allowed to be worn on the uniform, even if barbarian clients award them.
Titles.
These are titles that may be awarded by clients in the course of duty. Hence some mercs are "Col. Sir so-and-so," "Admiral So-and-so, the Duke of this", and "General So-and-so, the Earl of that."
Why do the services allow titles? Because they have found that in contracts with low-technology clients, the commoners distrust leaders who are not a noble of some sort. The services find that the holders of these titles tend to take on airs of “gentry” that commoners automatically respond to in positive ways. Titles are for the good of the Services.
Actions.
Now we come the bread and butter of a characters life. What has he done? And where did he do it? And what did he get for doing it? This is the section where the various ephermi a mercenary has participated in are listed and described, and where the "after action reports" are listed.
Those are the coordinates given the Ephermis machine that initiates the ephermis the character will participate in.
Here are some examples taken from my files:
Following this is a set up report like the following
The length of the ephermis introduction depended on how much I feel like writing at the time. And this is generally true of all the characters files I have.
B1, B2, B3, are the battles that occur in the ephermis. Most games are divided into a series of campaign scenarios or skirmish battles. Following the battle title will be a short description that sets forth the characters involved and the objectives. For example:
Following the battle description is the result. Victory or defeat. Specific results. Rewards or punishments.
Simple example:
More involved example:
Now, most times my "after action reports" are not very involved. In those cases, they're just meant to be the bare bones of a plot that I can put my imagination into later on.
One of the things I hope for with these character files is that I may eventually have the makings of some nice military science-fiction novels. Raymond E. Feist of the acclaimed "Riftwar" fantasy series apparently built his worlds, and got a number of his plots, from fantasy role playing games he played with his friends. That's what I'd like to do with my character files, but I'm a complete unknown and will likely remain the crank game blogger I am.
So to summarize, my format for reporting on the progress of a game is fairly simple:
But sometimes a game does not lend itself to this form. Jagged Alliance 2, for example, is not broken down into a specific set of individual battles. And there are a number of non-battle events that go on that move the plot of the game So the format I used for Jagged Alliance 2 was:
Each R marker gave the day and time stamp of the game's clock.
So those are the details of my character files. Next time: My world folders.
Service and Service Arm.
The first line contains the organization and service arm of the character, followed by the character’s sustantative rank and name. The organizations are CIRC, CENT, and SPHERE or IND (independent).
Each organization has a marine corps and a navy. The mercenary services used to have an army organization, but as they started taking far future contracts, they discovered that their armies were constantly being delivered to the battlefield by the space navy. So the marines were chosen to be the sole ground force organization to reduce duplication of administration.
Each marine corps and navy has its own air corps because the mercenary services have found they need tactical air power more than they need strategic air power.
Name.
I have some fun giving names to my mercs. Sometimes I'll assign the name of a real-life or a historical person on the assumption that in a different worldline they'd have ended up as a merc.
Sometimes I'll look on the production credits of the games I'm playing or movies I've seen, and use the first name of one person and the last name of another person to make up a completely new name.
Sometimes I pick interesting names out of a telephone book.
Sometimes I use the name of a character from a science fiction novel that impressed me.
Sometimes I'll use the name of a character from a game I've played on the assumption that they been recruited.
And some times an interesting name comes to me right out of the blue. I like those names the best.
Rank.
Now, let me explain how I use rank. In the real armies of the English speaking world, there is "substantive" rank and "brevet" rank. This distinction takes into account that fact that standing armies in peace time are much smaller than armies in war time. A substantive rank is the actual career rank of an officer or NCO. It is the rank that their pension is based on when they retire.
Brevet rank is a temporary rank that arises out of the needs of battle in a war. "Battlefield promotions" are usually brevet ranks. Once a war is over, an army will usually demobilize back to its peace time size and a culling process will take place in which decisions are made as to which brevet ranks will be converted to substantive ranks and which won't. At the start of WW I, George S. Patton was a Lt. During the war he was promoted to captain, then major, then Lt. Col, and then full Colonel. When the war ended, he reverted back to the substantive rank of captain.
I was once told about an enlisted man in WW II who managed to get promoted all the way to full colonel by the end of the war. He came home very gung-ho for the army as a career choice. But he made the mistake of staying in after the war. He reverted back to the substantive rank of master sergeant. (And boy was he bitter about that for the rest of his time in the army!)
In the Space Time Mercenary Services, there is substantive rank, brevet rank, and "client" rank. Client rank is the temporary rank a mercenary assumes in order to fit into a client's table of organization. It may or may not become substantive after a contract is completed.
Some clients treat their contracts with the Services as state secrets, so service mercenaries in their hire will don their uniforms and ranks, and sometimes even under go neuro-nanonic and genetic enhancement to look and speak like the client. Other clients do not (or cannot) treat their contracts with the services as state secrets, so the mercs will wear the uniforms and ranks of their organizations openly.
Because of their common origin, all the services have the same rank designations, which are:
Marine Corps:
Field Marshall of Marines (six stars)
Field Marshall (five stars)
Colonel General (four stars)
Lieutenant General (three stars)
Major General (two stars)
Brigadier General (one star)
Colonel (four pips)
Lieutenant Colonel (four pips, one of which has a hole in it)
Major (three pips)
Captain (two pips)
Lieutenant (one pip)
2nd Lieutenant. (pip with a hole in it)
Navy:
Admiral of the Navy (six stars)
Admiral of the Fleets (five stars)
Fleet Admiral (four stars)
Vice Admiral (three stars)
Rear Admiral (two stars)
Commodore (one star)
Captain (four pips)
Commander (three pips)
Lieutenant Commander (three pips, one of which has a hole in it)
Lieutenant (two pips)
Lieutenant Junior Grade (one pip)
Ensign (one pip with a hole in it)
Description.
I usually don't put down a description because I usually remember what a character looks like, and sometimes I hold off until a characters career gives me a clue to what he looks like.
Relation.
If a character I particularly liked gets killed in action, or the character has a last name I particularly liked and he got killed too soon, I will sometimes create another character with the same last name as a son or brother of that deceased character. This tends to add some revenge plots to the character, which can be interesting.
Win/loss.
This used to be exactly that - the count of the number of battles won versus the number of battle lost.
But as I started to make little clerical errors in updating this piece of information, it started to become less accurate. So I changed its meaning to be the number of good mentions a character got versus the number of bad mentions a character got. It became an indicator of reputation.
And to the extent I continue to make clerical errors in updating, it reflects real life in that in real life reputations can be over-rated or under-rated.
A good mention is when a character gets a medal, is promoted, or praised in some way. A bad mention is when a character takes blame for something, is demoted, or reassigned to oblivion. In real life, soldiers don't always get the medals (or punishments) they deserve.
Assets.
Because I sometimes play economic games like Rail Road Tycoon, or Capitalism, I allow my characters to have assets that they can accumulate and use to run companies in economic games. The Services will sometimes loan money to their mercs to receive it back with interest, and thereby pay for the operations of its Ephermis machine. (This is also a good way for ranking flag officers to feather their retirement nests).
So on this asset line, I list any money or valuables a merc has accumulated.
The money is denoted with the $ sign, but it is not US money. The original dollar sign was the letter "U" superimposed over the letter "S." Overtime it became "$." In the Space Time Mercenary Services, "$" still denotes “US,” but it means "Universal Salt." It represents the average price of a unit of salt throughout the Space Time Continuum (excluding those ephermi in which mass fabrication is possible at low cost). This is in homage to the soldiers of the ancient Roman Empire who were literally paid in salt. (The origin of our word "salary," and the expression "worth his salt.")
How do the mercs accumulate money? Sometimes it’s directly awarded by a client. Some games actually state that a commander was awarded an amount of money or even property. All the services have had naval officers who had been privateers or even pirates in such ephermi as "Cutthroats" and "Pirates!"
But most times merc commanders receive money in the form of "droits" allowed on captured booty or enemy equipment after a battle. The concept comes from the British navy which had the concept of "droits of admiralty," where abandoned naval assets could under certain circumstances become the property of the Lord High Admiral.
This is actually a selling point that the services use with potential clients. By giving mercenary officers a vested interest in seizing the assets and weapons of an enemy, that enemy is not only weakened without further bloodshed, but abandoned weapons are collected and disposed of. This goes a long ways towards establishing the peace afterwards. One reason the American Old West was so "wild" was that the American Civil War had caused a large supply of cheap hand guns to come into circulation.
In games terms, I usually use some percentage of a game's score (if one is given) as the droit amount awarded to the commander. So that's one way in which a characters accumulated assets to indicate how successful he's been.
Decorations.
"Hey I notice you guys sure have alot of brass around here today. I ran into a guy who had scrambled eggs on his hat, fruit salad on his shirt, and hash marks on his sleeve. He wasn't an officer, though. Just a sloppy eater."
Bob Hope, on one of his USO tours.
Now we come to the "fruit salad" that goes on the dress uniform. Again, because of their common origin, the services all have the same designations for their decorations.
And the decorations have a generic quality to them because they have to be translatable into client equivalents in those ephermi in which the client's uniforms must be worn. Hence "a warcross" is awarded and not "the warcross." The decorations listed lower down tend to commonly be awarded to the lower ranks. The decorations listed near the top tend to be awarded to the higher ranks.
Going from the bottom to the top, the decorations are:
Mission medal. A mission medal is awarded for completing the objectives of a mission, whether combat is involved or not. It is the basic unit of performance in the services. And because a merc can get it without necessarily being in combat, it is a cause for much cynicism in the ranks and debate in the middle ranks. As these mission medals are collected and worn on the uniform, they tend to make even average soldiers look above average. They unduly impress potential clients during parade ground reviews. But that is exactly why the medal has always been supported by the higher rankers who run the services. As long as any Service issues this medal, any other Service will be placed at an advertizing disadvantage.
Before going further, I should mention that decorations that have a "cluster" listed next to them are ribbons won above a breast pocket. A cluster is a little pip that’s puts on top of the ribbon that signifies another awarding of the same medal.
A maximum of three clusters can be placed on a given ribbon before the ribbon can be repeated. So a merc who has a mission medal with three clusters on it has successfully completed four missions. If he subsequently completes another mission, he will be awarded another mission medal ribbon. Hence, a proliferation of ribbons.
A decoration that does not have "cluster" next to it is a badge. The number represents a subsequent awarding of the same decoration, but with a raising of its "degree" (like the degree system in Freemasonry).
Purple Heart. The purple heart is the medal no merc wants to get. A merc gets it for being wounded in action. And here I'll describe my casualty system.
Before a game begins, I'll note how it can be possible for the characters to become killed or wounded in action.
In some games, it’s obvious how the character can be represented in the game. There is a unit that specifically represents the player in the game. In Jagged Alliance 2, for example, there is a character you can build who is supposed to represent you in the game. In Supreme Commander, there is a unit that represents the player and the player loses if that unit is destroyed.
Other times it is something only you can decide, like deciding that a specific unit-producing factory is where your HQ is.
What ever it is that I've chosen to represent my character in the game, I note whether the item receives damage or is destroyed. Sometimes it is obvious. In Jagged Alliance 2, a distinction is made between being wounded and being killed. If my character is wounded in the game, he's wounded in my files. If he dies in the game, he's dead in my files. It’s likewise, in Supreme Commander. If the Supreme Commander unit receives damage but is not destroyed, then the character has been wounded. But if the Supreme Commander unit has been destroyed, the character has died.
Other times it is less than obvious what has happened to the character. So I do a sort of "saving roll" on the character.
I will roll two dice. If I get two ones ("snake eyes"), the character has been killed in action. If I get an odd number, I'll know the character escaped being hit at all. If I get an even number, I'll know the character has been hit and role again to see how badly he's been hit. If I get snakes eyes from that, he'll been killed in action.otherwise, the closest the number rolled gets to 2 (snake eyes), the more wounded he is.
A 3 is 90% wounds. A 4 is 80% wounds, etc.) I've found that this system has the best balance for allowing my characters to face some risk, but without my constantly having to make new characters.
Wounded characters are presumed to have been placed in the regeneration tanks and returned to active duty for another game. If they are not too wounded, they will returned to the game I was playing.
I will discuss the disposition of dead characters later.
Rescue Medal: The rescue medal introduces another mechanism in my style of playing games. One other consequence of losing a battle is not only getting killed or wounded in action, but also getting captured by the enemy.
If it looks to me like my character or his subordinates are going to end up captured by a victorious enemy, I will do a saving roll on that. I will ask "Was he captured?" and then I roll two six-sided dice. If I get an even number, the answer is yes and he's been captured. If I get an odd number, the answer no, he's managed to escape.
A character can end up wounded in action and captured. If the wounds are severe, the capture is considered automatic. I maintain for each organization a POW-camp file in which I place characters from the other two sides who have been captured by that side.
There are two ways for POWs to be repatriated back to their original organizations.
One way is by a prisoner exchange. If two sides are experiencing a shortage of officers, they may wish to hold a prisoner exchange and exchange officers they hold who are of equivalent rank.
The other way is by rescue. Very often a game scenario will involve a "prison break" or other rescue mission. When the character I'm playing has succeeded in such a mission, I will allow him to have rescued one of his fellow organization members held by an enemy side.
I roll a ten-sided die to pick the rescued character out from those others in the POW-camp folder, and release that character for use as a possible subordinate for my rescuing character. I then award the character a Rescue Medal. This adds a nice dimension of interaction to my characters.
The rationale for allowing rescues is that if there were such a thing as Space Time Mercenaries Services, the logical thing for them to do with prisoners from a rival service would be to distribute them through out the ephermi in which they have contracts with clients who already have POW camps. That would cause rescue efforts to be a matter of pure chance.
A War Cross (or Navy Cross) is awarded for high performance while being exposed to actual combat.
A medal of valor is awarded for taking on a higher level of risk than is the norm while performing a mission.
A medal of victory is awarded specifically to the commander of a mission and only if he obtains a victory.
A medal of honor is never called "THE medal of honor," and this is so not only because it is meant to be generic, but also because the concept of the award is different from most non-mercenary armies.
Mercenaries never do anything "above and beyond the call of duty," because that would be a contradiction in terms. Rather, a medal of honor is awarded to a mercenary who makes his organization look good.
It’s even possible to get it without encountering combat. This is when a merc does something flashy, like rescuing Princess Pretty from the evil clutches of Duke Puke. The medal can be awarded for things that get an organization a lot good press.
Winners of this medal tend to be put on company tours and junkets for the purpose of recruitment or advertizing campaigns. And this causes no amount of cynicism in the ranks. But that said, it has been awarded for some extraordinary performances.
A Battle Star is usually given to a commanding flag officer (general, commodore or admiral) who wins an extraordinary victory. The recipient of the award is considered to be a Battle Master.
An Order of Strategy is usually awarded to a commander who has shown a consistent talent for strategic thinking. It is not only a decoration, but also a society of all the holders of the decoration.
The society meets annually in solemn ceremony, and at dinners in which views and insights are exchanged. The highest degreed member of the society is called the Master of the Order and sits on its ruling council and represents the council to the commander in chief of the organization.
An Order of Tactics is awarded for consistent tactical prowess and innovation. It is another society like the Order of Strategy.
When an officer is awarded both the Order of Strategy and the Order of Tactics, he is inducted into a yet more rarified society, the Order of Strategy and Tactics.
There are other medals which I have recently added to add some variation. They duplicate the existing medal somewhat and I have no set policy for them.
Now we come to the most feared decoration of all. All conversation in a room ceases when a holder of this decoration comes into it. No one wants to be awarded it. The commanders in Chief of the Services have more often then not been holders of it.
It is the Order of Death's Head. It is awarded to the mercenary who has been forced to use strategic weapons of mass destruction in the course of his duties. Marine officers are awarded it for launching strategic nuclear missiles. Admirals of deep space fleets are awarded it for using planet killers on enemy worlds. The mercenary awarded this decoration is marked for life.
Special Decorations.
These are decorations awarded by clients, and they have the specific flavor of the client they come from. One, for example is the "Son of the Security of the State," issued by Feudal Japan after its contact with the Space Time Mercenary Services.
The services allow any special decoration that does not bring disgrace to the uniform. Hence, shrunken heads, dried out fingers, and rings of severed ears and scalps are not allowed to be worn on the uniform, even if barbarian clients award them.
Titles.
These are titles that may be awarded by clients in the course of duty. Hence some mercs are "Col. Sir so-and-so," "Admiral So-and-so, the Duke of this", and "General So-and-so, the Earl of that."
Why do the services allow titles? Because they have found that in contracts with low-technology clients, the commoners distrust leaders who are not a noble of some sort. The services find that the holders of these titles tend to take on airs of “gentry” that commoners automatically respond to in positive ways. Titles are for the good of the Services.
Actions.
Now we come the bread and butter of a characters life. What has he done? And where did he do it? And what did he get for doing it? This is the section where the various ephermi a mercenary has participated in are listed and described, and where the "after action reports" are listed.
[]Ephermis/Worldline/date/region/conflict/CodeName: xxxxxxx
Those are the coordinates given the Ephermis machine that initiates the ephermis the character will participate in.
Here are some examples taken from my files:
[]Ephermis/Worldline/Earth/Vietam/1950-1975/Codename:BattlefieldVietNam
[]Ephermis/Worldline/40,000AD/Empire of Man/Kronus/CodeName: DarkCrusade
[] Ephermis/Worldline/Earth/2002AD/CodeName: CapitalismII
Following this is a set up report like the following
"MechWarrior Capt. Horace Zinfeld is called to duty again. Victor Davion liked CIRC's handling of Kentares IV and recommended CIRC to Katrina Steiner, as Davion and Steiner are currently allied. Steiner has a delicate mission, and because of later events on Kentares IV, Steiner is on the outs with CENT. Carver V is in a bad way. Davion has interests there. So does Steiner, and so does House Liao. And there is an independence movement trying to break free. And a bunch of pirates are in the middle of it all. It is a mess. So Capt. Zinfeld is being placed at the disposal of House Davion’s Colonel David Renard, ranking military commander on Carver V. Zinfeld is being given money and mech pilots to build up his own merc force to be called Zinfeld’s Zingers. CIRC expects the Zingers will be used to zing the pirates, but doesn’t rule out the possibility that the real reason for them is to give Renard cover if he wants to undertake operations that he can disown after the fact. But the politics is neither here nor there. CIRC wants Zinfeld to bring in money, and new high quality recruits."
The length of the ephermis introduction depended on how much I feel like writing at the time. And this is generally true of all the characters files I have.
B1, B2, B3, are the battles that occur in the ephermis. Most games are divided into a series of campaign scenarios or skirmish battles. Following the battle title will be a short description that sets forth the characters involved and the objectives. For example:
"B1: Airport Take back.
Pirates have apparently seized an airport on Carver V. Zinfeld is authorized to assemble an initial lance of two Bushwackers and a Razorback recon mech. He has only greenies to work with just yet. They need blooding."
Following the battle description is the result. Victory or defeat. Specific results. Rewards or punishments.
Simple example:
"R1: Victory! The green lance did well, taking out the pirates conventional and mech patrols. They salvaged one urban mech. Zinfeld is awarded a mission medal."
More involved example:
"R18: Campaign-ending victory! Col. Adelbert “Gratus” Mara’s REPORT: “It was touch and go for awhile. We had to the find three ICBM’s in time to prevent a triangulation and launch. We forgot about trying to defend the base and just ran with what we had - some mechs and some infantry. I gave command of the roving force to Maj. Eli Summers, while I stayed with the base to defend it as best I could and while continuing to send out reinforcements to Summers. That turned out to be enough, because the enemy did not press the base. The enemy was too busy trying to keep Maj. Summers from destroying his ICBM’s. Maj. Summers did a thorough-going job of that, vigorously searching and destroying them as he went. Finally, we were down to the last one, which was on a defended island. Maj. Summers thought of having his mechs transported in by air. An air-landing invasion, like Crete in 1942. It worked, but not without mechs dying. Fortunately, Maj. Summer’s mech was not hit this time. Then came the job of finding the NOD pyramid, which was next to a temple of NOD. With the NOD power grid already taken out, this concentration was without real defenses. Maj. Summers put infantry across a bridge, and two APCs of engineers behind them. The engineers captured every structure there, including the NOD pyramid. There was a personal duel between leader Kane and Maj. Summers over Umagon, Kane’s prisoner. Summers took out Kane with his own WarHammer combat knife. Makes a old WarHammer like me proud! Umagon is repatriated to her people, and last I heard she had accepted a intel commission from SPHERE. All’s well that doesn’t necessarily end all well. I need a vacation. END-REPORT."
Now, most times my "after action reports" are not very involved. In those cases, they're just meant to be the bare bones of a plot that I can put my imagination into later on.
One of the things I hope for with these character files is that I may eventually have the makings of some nice military science-fiction novels. Raymond E. Feist of the acclaimed "Riftwar" fantasy series apparently built his worlds, and got a number of his plots, from fantasy role playing games he played with his friends. That's what I'd like to do with my character files, but I'm a complete unknown and will likely remain the crank game blogger I am.
So to summarize, my format for reporting on the progress of a game is fairly simple:
[]Ephermis/Worldline/date/region/conflict/CodeName: xxxxxxx
B1: location, operation.
R1: [result & reports, rewards & punishments]
B2:
R2:
etc.
But sometimes a game does not lend itself to this form. Jagged Alliance 2, for example, is not broken down into a specific set of individual battles. And there are a number of non-battle events that go on that move the plot of the game So the format I used for Jagged Alliance 2 was:
[]Ephermis/Worldline/date/region/conflict/CodeName: xxxxxxx
R1:
R2:
R3:
etc.
Each R marker gave the day and time stamp of the game's clock.
So those are the details of my character files. Next time: My world folders.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
My Character’s World.
I discovered, as Tolkien did, that you just can’t have characters simply exist in isolation. They have to have a world and a rationale for existing. So what world could my characters exist in if it was possible for them to be standing in the shoes of Gen. George S. Patton in one game and then Julius Caesar the next? How could a character be the commander of a starship in one game and then be an Indian chief in a war canoe in the next?
My answer was: in the world of the Space Time Mercenary Services. And so my world-building begins.
In the far, far distant future, mankind will have finally arrived at a practical technology for traveling in space and time. It will be prohibitively expensive because of the energy involved, but it will exist. And it will be discovered that the “many worlds” interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (see number 2) is the correct one because it will be found that you can go back in time and kill your grandfather without disappearing. Travel to the past will be found to be travel to a different “worldline” of the past. There is a past in which somebody else discovered America. There is a past in which George Washington was hanged for treason by the British Empire, and a past in which Germany won WW I., as well as a past in which Germany won both WW I and WW II. The time travelers of the future will discover that when they visit these pasts, their act of visiting will cause a new past to come into being. A new worldline.The possibilities will be endless.
But it will still be almost prohibitively expensive. The invention that allows this travel though space and time will be a large contraption that uses unheard of amounts of energy to do its work. It will come to be called an “Ephermis machine.” This term will turn out to be a common misspelling of the ancient word “ephemeris” (a table of numbers used to calculate the positions of astronomical bodies during the early age of astronomy and astrology). An ephermis is an alternate history that is reachable by the ephermis machine based on the coordinate string given it (i.e. []Ephermis/Worldline/etc, etc etc) "Ephermis" is the singular, "ephermi," the plural. The repeated refrain of this invention's discovery will be “the ephermi, ad infinitum!”
Later it will be found that some ephermi, if contaminated enough by anachronistic weapons (Sherman tanks being used in the American Revolution), will start to dematerialize and go out of existence. Hence the services are often forced to use period weaponry. And sometimes the source of a contamination cannot be located, or an enemy will have engineered it in some subtle way. This will cause an ephermis to become ephemeral, and this will be another reason for the way "ephermis" comes to be spelled. From time to time,the services will have to call an emergency ephermis evacuation. (In real life this usually means the save file of the game I'm playing has become corrupted, or my hard drive has taken a hit in the middle of a game, or I've just gotten tried of a game in the middle of it.)
A Time for Everything
The Ephermis Machine will be almost prohibitively expensive to use. But only until the space and time travelers of the future discover what the one commodity is that the all societies in the space-time continuum place the highest value on: expertise in war. The Space-Time travelers of the future will find that they can afford to travel the ephermi if they hire themselves out as mercenaries to the various militaries they find there. “After all,” they will say, “our little visits will just create new ephermi instead of changing existing ones.” This will be the charter for exploration of space and time by the sword. (Most of the mercenaries will not realize until it is too late that the one thing they will change for well or ill is their souls.)
So as the aeons roll on, and the ephermi travelers with them, various “Space Time Mercenary Services” will come into being. Having a large organization makes it easier to build and operate an Ephermis machine. And as the mercenaries do battle through out the Space Time continuum, they will be fighting under various flags and for various philosophies and ideologies. Over the ephermi, these battles of ideas will have been fought and re-fought so often, and under so many different names that in the minds of the mercenaries, they will have been worn down into highly abstract principals. Instead of Central Planning versus the Free Market, instead of Democracy versus Dictatorship, and instead of Secularity versus Religion, there will be: Center versus Circumference.
The Center organization, or CENTER or CENT for short, is for the Space Time Mercenaries who believe that centralization and concentration of power, and top down management, are the only way things should be done. In the American Revolution, they will take the side of the British Empire. In WW I, they will take the side of the Central Powers. In WW II, they will side with the Germans and the Japanese. They tend to support dictatorships, and they believe that ends justify means. They wear red uniforms with a rectangular patch that has an arrow from each corner pointing to and meeting at the center of the patch. They salute by bringing the closed fist of their right hand over their heart and saying “at the CENTER!” or “CENT!” Their Pentagon is called The Pinnacle.
The Circumference organization, or CIRCUMFERENCE, or “CIRC,” is for the Space Time Mercenaries who believe that decentralization and bottom up methods are the best way of life. CIRC would side with the Greeks against the Persians at Thermopylae, the revolutionaries in the American Revolution, the Allies in WW I and II. CIRC tends to support democracies and work against dictatorships. They wear green uniforms that have a circular patch with a prominent line around the circumference of the circle. They salute by touching the tip of their right hand fingers to their left shoulder while raising their right elbow to a 45 degree angle to their bodies. This makes a rough angular circle, and they say “on the circumference!” or “Circ!” Their Pentagon is called The Cellar.
But ephermi are often not that simple for CIRC or CENT. Sometimes each organization has to “hold its nose,” when taking a contract. CIRC would hold its nose while taking a contract with the US federal government during the American Civil War, because it would be fighting for a federal government against a confederacy which is a less consolidated form of government. But CIRC would take the contract because CENT would hold its nose while taking a contract with the Confederacy. CENT would hold its nose because it was supporting a rebel government, and a less consolidated form of government, against a more consolidated form of existing government. But CENT would take the contract because it would consider slavery to be a consolidation of power based on race, which would be why CIRC would get involved on the other side. Likewise, in those ephermi in which the Roman Empire has split into the western Latin empire and the eastern Greek Byzantine empire, CIRC will hold its nose taking the Latin’s contract against the Byzantines because the Latin empire was once a Republic, whereas the Byzantines had know only the autocratic emperors, and thereby would be attracted to CENT.
And there is yet another complication. CIRC has been more stringent in its operations than CENT. So it sometimes dismisses mercenaries from its ranks for actions inconsistent with its creed. This created a pool of disgruntled ex-CIRC mercs who went on to form their own organization, SPHERE. SPHERE believes that CIRC “could stand to be a little more three dimensional.” SPHERE has no set principles and is entirely undiscriminating in the contracts it accepts. It often takes contracts that both CIRC and CENT will not take, and it will often take on third party contracts where there are three combatants and CIRC and CENT are contracted to the other two. This is how SPHERE got started. SPHERE mercenaries are considered to be the “patron saints of lost causes.” They will do things like taking the Native American’s side against the US Army during the Indian Wars, and taking on the side of the Western Roman Empire as it falls. But they are not really being saints because they charge more for lost causes. With no small controversy, SPHERE has also been known to take the side of aliens against humanity in far future ephermi. They are truly hated by both CIRC and CENT for this. But their only reply is “Hey, its cash!”
SPHERE’s uniforms are black with a grey trim and their patch is a white rectangle with a raised grey ball in the center (the “three-dimensional circle”). They salute by holding up their right fist and saying “SPHERE!” Their Pentagon is called “The Core.”
Next Post: the details of my character sheets.
My answer was: in the world of the Space Time Mercenary Services. And so my world-building begins.
In the far, far distant future, mankind will have finally arrived at a practical technology for traveling in space and time. It will be prohibitively expensive because of the energy involved, but it will exist. And it will be discovered that the “many worlds” interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (see number 2) is the correct one because it will be found that you can go back in time and kill your grandfather without disappearing. Travel to the past will be found to be travel to a different “worldline” of the past. There is a past in which somebody else discovered America. There is a past in which George Washington was hanged for treason by the British Empire, and a past in which Germany won WW I., as well as a past in which Germany won both WW I and WW II. The time travelers of the future will discover that when they visit these pasts, their act of visiting will cause a new past to come into being. A new worldline.The possibilities will be endless.
But it will still be almost prohibitively expensive. The invention that allows this travel though space and time will be a large contraption that uses unheard of amounts of energy to do its work. It will come to be called an “Ephermis machine.” This term will turn out to be a common misspelling of the ancient word “ephemeris” (a table of numbers used to calculate the positions of astronomical bodies during the early age of astronomy and astrology). An ephermis is an alternate history that is reachable by the ephermis machine based on the coordinate string given it (i.e. []Ephermis/Worldline/etc, etc etc) "Ephermis" is the singular, "ephermi," the plural. The repeated refrain of this invention's discovery will be “the ephermi, ad infinitum!”
Later it will be found that some ephermi, if contaminated enough by anachronistic weapons (Sherman tanks being used in the American Revolution), will start to dematerialize and go out of existence. Hence the services are often forced to use period weaponry. And sometimes the source of a contamination cannot be located, or an enemy will have engineered it in some subtle way. This will cause an ephermis to become ephemeral, and this will be another reason for the way "ephermis" comes to be spelled. From time to time,the services will have to call an emergency ephermis evacuation. (In real life this usually means the save file of the game I'm playing has become corrupted, or my hard drive has taken a hit in the middle of a game, or I've just gotten tried of a game in the middle of it.)
A Time for Everything
“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army.” (2 Samuel 11:1) NIV.
The Ephermis Machine will be almost prohibitively expensive to use. But only until the space and time travelers of the future discover what the one commodity is that the all societies in the space-time continuum place the highest value on: expertise in war. The Space-Time travelers of the future will find that they can afford to travel the ephermi if they hire themselves out as mercenaries to the various militaries they find there. “After all,” they will say, “our little visits will just create new ephermi instead of changing existing ones.” This will be the charter for exploration of space and time by the sword. (Most of the mercenaries will not realize until it is too late that the one thing they will change for well or ill is their souls.)
So as the aeons roll on, and the ephermi travelers with them, various “Space Time Mercenary Services” will come into being. Having a large organization makes it easier to build and operate an Ephermis machine. And as the mercenaries do battle through out the Space Time continuum, they will be fighting under various flags and for various philosophies and ideologies. Over the ephermi, these battles of ideas will have been fought and re-fought so often, and under so many different names that in the minds of the mercenaries, they will have been worn down into highly abstract principals. Instead of Central Planning versus the Free Market, instead of Democracy versus Dictatorship, and instead of Secularity versus Religion, there will be: Center versus Circumference.
The Center organization, or CENTER or CENT for short, is for the Space Time Mercenaries who believe that centralization and concentration of power, and top down management, are the only way things should be done. In the American Revolution, they will take the side of the British Empire. In WW I, they will take the side of the Central Powers. In WW II, they will side with the Germans and the Japanese. They tend to support dictatorships, and they believe that ends justify means. They wear red uniforms with a rectangular patch that has an arrow from each corner pointing to and meeting at the center of the patch. They salute by bringing the closed fist of their right hand over their heart and saying “at the CENTER!” or “CENT!” Their Pentagon is called The Pinnacle.
The Circumference organization, or CIRCUMFERENCE, or “CIRC,” is for the Space Time Mercenaries who believe that decentralization and bottom up methods are the best way of life. CIRC would side with the Greeks against the Persians at Thermopylae, the revolutionaries in the American Revolution, the Allies in WW I and II. CIRC tends to support democracies and work against dictatorships. They wear green uniforms that have a circular patch with a prominent line around the circumference of the circle. They salute by touching the tip of their right hand fingers to their left shoulder while raising their right elbow to a 45 degree angle to their bodies. This makes a rough angular circle, and they say “on the circumference!” or “Circ!” Their Pentagon is called The Cellar.
But ephermi are often not that simple for CIRC or CENT. Sometimes each organization has to “hold its nose,” when taking a contract. CIRC would hold its nose while taking a contract with the US federal government during the American Civil War, because it would be fighting for a federal government against a confederacy which is a less consolidated form of government. But CIRC would take the contract because CENT would hold its nose while taking a contract with the Confederacy. CENT would hold its nose because it was supporting a rebel government, and a less consolidated form of government, against a more consolidated form of existing government. But CENT would take the contract because it would consider slavery to be a consolidation of power based on race, which would be why CIRC would get involved on the other side. Likewise, in those ephermi in which the Roman Empire has split into the western Latin empire and the eastern Greek Byzantine empire, CIRC will hold its nose taking the Latin’s contract against the Byzantines because the Latin empire was once a Republic, whereas the Byzantines had know only the autocratic emperors, and thereby would be attracted to CENT.
And there is yet another complication. CIRC has been more stringent in its operations than CENT. So it sometimes dismisses mercenaries from its ranks for actions inconsistent with its creed. This created a pool of disgruntled ex-CIRC mercs who went on to form their own organization, SPHERE. SPHERE believes that CIRC “could stand to be a little more three dimensional.” SPHERE has no set principles and is entirely undiscriminating in the contracts it accepts. It often takes contracts that both CIRC and CENT will not take, and it will often take on third party contracts where there are three combatants and CIRC and CENT are contracted to the other two. This is how SPHERE got started. SPHERE mercenaries are considered to be the “patron saints of lost causes.” They will do things like taking the Native American’s side against the US Army during the Indian Wars, and taking on the side of the Western Roman Empire as it falls. But they are not really being saints because they charge more for lost causes. With no small controversy, SPHERE has also been known to take the side of aliens against humanity in far future ephermi. They are truly hated by both CIRC and CENT for this. But their only reply is “Hey, its cash!”
SPHERE’s uniforms are black with a grey trim and their patch is a white rectangle with a raised grey ball in the center (the “three-dimensional circle”). They salute by holding up their right fist and saying “SPHERE!” Their Pentagon is called “The Core.”
Next Post: the details of my character sheets.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
My Character Files - the templates.
By now, you’re probably curious about what my characters files look like. Here are the empty templates I used to start new characters. Later on I will post some actual characters from my files.
Obviously you can figure out much of what’s here. There’s a name and a rank and some decorations. There are battles and their results. But there are also mysterious items. What is CIRC? What is CENT? What’s does “[]Ephermis/Worldine/… “ mean? What’s B1, B2, B3, etc.? What’s R1, R2, R3? What are titles? This is where I need to do some heavy duty explaining. In my next post. See you then!
CIRC - NAVY: Ensign
Description:
Relation:
Win/Loss: 0/0
Assets:
Decorations:
OrderOfDeathsDeath(0)
Battle Star (0),OrderOfStrategy(0),OrderOfTactics(0)
Medal of Honor ( 0) /Cluster(0)
Medal of Valor (0)/Cluster(0)
Medal of Victory(0)/Cluster(0)
Distinguished Gallantry Medal (0)/Cluster(0)
Meritorious Service Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
Air Service Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
Distinguished Flying Cross(0)/Cluster(0)
Commendation Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
MilitaryAchievement Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
Marksmanship Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
Gold/Silver/Bronze Hourglass(0)/Cluster(0)
HeroOfTheEphermis(0)/Cluster(0)
Navy Cross (0)/Cluster (0)
Rescue Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
Purple Heart (0)/Cluster(0)
Mission Medal (0)/Cluster(0)
Special Decorations:
Titles:
Actions:
[]Ephermis/Worldline/date/region/conflict/CodeName: xxxxxxx
[description]
B1: location, operation.
[desciption]
R1: [result & reports, rewards & punishments]
B2:
R2:
etc.
CENT - MARINES: 2nd Lt. [name]
Description:
Relation:
Win/Loss: 0/0
Assets:
Decorations:
OrderOfDeathsDeath(0)
Battle Star (0),OrderOfStrategy(0),OrderOfTactics(0)
Medal of Honor ( 0) /Cluster(0)
Medal of Valor (0)/Cluster(0)
War Cross (0)/Cluster(0)
Rescue Medal(0)/Cluster(0)
Purple Heart (0)/Cluster(0)
Mission Medal (0)/Cluster(0)
Special Decorations:
Titles:
Actions:
[ as above ]
Obviously you can figure out much of what’s here. There’s a name and a rank and some decorations. There are battles and their results. But there are also mysterious items. What is CIRC? What is CENT? What’s does “[]Ephermis/Worldine/… “ mean? What’s B1, B2, B3, etc.? What’s R1, R2, R3? What are titles? This is where I need to do some heavy duty explaining. In my next post. See you then!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
How I Play Computer Games
This week I'm beginning a new series on how I play computer games so that you will be able to understand the After Action Reports/Fan Fiction I'm going to start posting. Here's the kick off.
I do not simply play a game and then forget about it and go on to the next game. I like there to be something tangible left behind from the time I’ve spent playing games. I like having something left behind that will remind me of the key moments and developments that have occurred in my games. I like to celebrate my games.
Further, am I not one of those "I hate to lose," John McEnroe/Ty Cobb-type, "Win anyway at any cost," exploit-using, pwning, gloating, power junkies. My gaming is competitive, but not in an egotistical way.
I also have an interest in military history, military fiction and military science-fiction. I’m fascinated by how conflicts develop and how they are resolved. And I’m fascinated by the careers that various people have had in various militaries. The whole process of “rising through the ranks” draws my attention.
As someone once told me, military rank is like having your career progress visible for all to see on either your collar or your shoulders. It is personal progress made visible and tangible in a way that’s generally not possible in civilian life. Fiction about military careers are often metaphors for progress in any career.
So there is a way that I play computer war games and economic games that allows me to see social-economic development processes at work, and see how military careers unfold at the same time. The way I do this is by playing my games as a Role Playing Character, a la Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, and Traveller. I create a computer file in which I give a character a name, an initial rank, but no serial number. And then I pretend that I am this character as I play a particular scenario or skirmish level of a game.
Before I play the scenario or skirmish, I note the characters participation in the battle and give some particulars. Then after the scenario or skirmish is over, I give the character a reward or punishment depending on the performance.
If there is a win, I give either a promotion in rank or a medal, or a better assignment next time.
If there is a loss, I hold a “court-martial” and the character faces either a demotion, a reassignment to oblivion, or even a firing squad if the performance is particularly bad.
I have some set rules for determining if the character was killed or wounded in action and I keep a cemetery folder for the files of characters who have lost their lives in battle. (And it appears that I am not unique in doing this.)
And the characters can have subordinates and superiors, which allows the characters to interact in interesting ways.
And that last is the whole point. After doing this for awhile, I’ve come to find that while the majority of the characters spend their time in the middle ranks between victories and defeats (like the rest of us), there are characters that become fascinating because they do turn out to be real heroes who rise through the ranks in rapid succession going from strength to strength.
The other end of the extreme is also interesting because complete failures turn out to be comic reliefs that lighten things up from time to time. I have Col. Klinks in my files as well as Admiral Nelsons.
The degree to which my game-playing style causes my characters to having interesting lives, worth writing about, often makes me keenly aware of what kept J.R.R. Tolkien going all those years before he got his Middle Earth sagas into print. For Tolkien, I believe, the main deal was the interaction of his characters. The writing was a means to this end and not the end itself. Tolkien was the original D&D geek.
For me, it’s the same thing, only in a different milieu. For me, its Sherman tanks rolling down the hill, and not Ents. And the question that keeps coming up again and again is “What happens to the character next?”
Each of the characters I play as brings a wonderful degree of back story to every game I use them for. A given game I play is therefore never solely about the game, but also about the games I've played before. As a character progresses in rank and experience, this cumulative effect increases.
Next time: My character files.
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
Benjamin Franklin
I do not simply play a game and then forget about it and go on to the next game. I like there to be something tangible left behind from the time I’ve spent playing games. I like having something left behind that will remind me of the key moments and developments that have occurred in my games. I like to celebrate my games.
Further, am I not one of those "I hate to lose," John McEnroe/Ty Cobb-type, "Win anyway at any cost," exploit-using, pwning, gloating, power junkies. My gaming is competitive, but not in an egotistical way.
I also have an interest in military history, military fiction and military science-fiction. I’m fascinated by how conflicts develop and how they are resolved. And I’m fascinated by the careers that various people have had in various militaries. The whole process of “rising through the ranks” draws my attention.
As someone once told me, military rank is like having your career progress visible for all to see on either your collar or your shoulders. It is personal progress made visible and tangible in a way that’s generally not possible in civilian life. Fiction about military careers are often metaphors for progress in any career.
So there is a way that I play computer war games and economic games that allows me to see social-economic development processes at work, and see how military careers unfold at the same time. The way I do this is by playing my games as a Role Playing Character, a la Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, and Traveller. I create a computer file in which I give a character a name, an initial rank, but no serial number. And then I pretend that I am this character as I play a particular scenario or skirmish level of a game.
Before I play the scenario or skirmish, I note the characters participation in the battle and give some particulars. Then after the scenario or skirmish is over, I give the character a reward or punishment depending on the performance.
If there is a win, I give either a promotion in rank or a medal, or a better assignment next time.
If there is a loss, I hold a “court-martial” and the character faces either a demotion, a reassignment to oblivion, or even a firing squad if the performance is particularly bad.
I have some set rules for determining if the character was killed or wounded in action and I keep a cemetery folder for the files of characters who have lost their lives in battle. (And it appears that I am not unique in doing this.)
And the characters can have subordinates and superiors, which allows the characters to interact in interesting ways.
And that last is the whole point. After doing this for awhile, I’ve come to find that while the majority of the characters spend their time in the middle ranks between victories and defeats (like the rest of us), there are characters that become fascinating because they do turn out to be real heroes who rise through the ranks in rapid succession going from strength to strength.
The other end of the extreme is also interesting because complete failures turn out to be comic reliefs that lighten things up from time to time. I have Col. Klinks in my files as well as Admiral Nelsons.
The degree to which my game-playing style causes my characters to having interesting lives, worth writing about, often makes me keenly aware of what kept J.R.R. Tolkien going all those years before he got his Middle Earth sagas into print. For Tolkien, I believe, the main deal was the interaction of his characters. The writing was a means to this end and not the end itself. Tolkien was the original D&D geek.
For me, it’s the same thing, only in a different milieu. For me, its Sherman tanks rolling down the hill, and not Ents. And the question that keeps coming up again and again is “What happens to the character next?”
Each of the characters I play as brings a wonderful degree of back story to every game I use them for. A given game I play is therefore never solely about the game, but also about the games I've played before. As a character progresses in rank and experience, this cumulative effect increases.
Next time: My character files.
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