Damn Karma overflow button - gotta remember to come back to this one.  Couldn't have said it better - although might have added - that sometimes the man does use some titles after his name too (sort of a Commonwealth thing -like an OBE ... Order of the British Empire.).

But what Peter said - it would be entirely out of character to not have done that.

-As for the thumb bit: Fixed now...

I love the title ... why is ... what a way to turn a phrase.  

That being said- I got nothing.   Doubt I am alone.




One does have to respect a guy willing to add a bio as a site's webmaster where it is written entirely in the 3rd person...  

I am pretty familiar with GodDaddy as hosting - they have several messageboard options there, although I don't run one myself (the one linked on my site is actually mainly for developing title projects for John Tiller - almost all of the actual action is hidden -and I don't think it is hosted at GD.

That being said I did set up a couple of phpbb boards which were pretty easy, plus as part of a hosting account you can also set up Gallery and allow users access. I never had any problem with either - in fact GD sets those up for you. I did have an issue with the software I used for SPW's Download area -that being because it was open source or something - I didn't (or wasn't able to) want to mess around with it - and the guy who developed it was basically using it as a resume builder ... then he got a job I guess, and stopped maintaining it - so basically it has some bugs and that's that...

The real reason I wanted to post this is - I have found even in my fairly limited site that donations have been able to cover my expenses - the first year it happened like 2 days after I opened my 'donation drive' - and then this year it actually happened before I 'opened' a drive - I was only talking about it - and boom ... done. - Mind you I think you have a larger audience than I do (although I guess it is tough to tell because I don't actually run a board -so I don't know what the comparable stats might be in that regard.).

I do understand about the board admin aspect of it - been there... done that - was a mod for awhile with one of the major history as a commodity plus reviews used as advertisements magazines. I did some admin work for what used to be called World War II Online (the Axis board there...). and of course did Schroeder's site for several years - and frankly I would rather always now be my own boss - so I get what you mean. but also the challenges.

One of the biggest one I have is - it is very tough to get volunteer help that actually hangs around. I had one guy, once, that I let run an AAR blog - he decided to host all of his images on his own  -and then after a couple of months sold off his domain (and all of the AARs became broken and useless.). It taught me a lesson there - don't be someone else's traffic source - as they can be interested in other things -and you can end up left hanging at the end of the day.

I don't actually have the money to pay for sites- mainly because I have to be in a position to foot the entire bill for my own site -probably more so since as I am engaged in a design project that takes precedence, the site itself I run is not being updated like it had been before I got that project.

I used to be a Cub fan - but once the Hawks won after 49 years -I decided that if a team was so incompetent that they couldn't even reach playing for it all in over 50 odd years - let along go a century without winning it - then it was time for a 'divorce' - now they could go all 'Back to the Future' now - and I promise I would not care one bit.

At least the White Sox won once in my lifetime... I guess that will have to do me.

I had one Poli-Sci prof (he was a guy who looked a bit like Vince Lombardi - although he was from North Carolina ... he used to always say:

"It's like they say in Russia.... tough shisky".     It could be anything - or about anything, include the topic of the day.

I had another prof - a Ukrainian guy - he used to use the term 'za boom booms' all of the time - and it was almost always talking about the topic ... he was a bit insane; I think he was in the war (WWII)- not sure which side he was on - but I suspect that it was not the Soviet side.  He was one of those guys that wanted you to write a 15 page paper weekly (back in the days when all you had to write with was an electric typewriter and a whole lot of correction tape.).  I was lucky enough to have a correction cassette for the type writer that I had -that liquid stuff was the worst

Roundabouts are easy ... just give way to the guys coming on your right (otoh - we drive on the other side of the road here...).  I was petrified that when I came back to the US that I would be unable to drive on that side of the road ... but, for me at least, it wasn't much of a problem at all.  I guess it was a little like playing left wing for awhile -then switching over to right wing (in hockey). . . same thing -the boards just happen to be on the opposite side. . .

Ok - an actual 'rant' - I got so much to do ... I wish I had clones (like Michael Keaton had in that film 'Multiplicity'.)   The rant is .... well, I don't...

Yeah well I will take the real life team winning (it is just that - if you are left with titles with Hawks players from the early 2000's on them ... I guess it is a bit depressing ...) not that that ever stopped me from dealing everyone off the team and ending up with 'superstars' like Ladislav Nagy on it -where I made him a serial 50 goal scorer -especially teams with Marc Savard, and Vincent Lacavallier -who for whatever reason their respective computer GMs were willing to trade garbage for and I was happy to unload.

94/95 - I guess those were too easy - once you learn how to pass to create a breakaway - you could run up the score nicely. . . (and the Hawks having a decent team... I think I had Roenick averaging a goal a game or more.).

Oh well... anyways ... I guess living in Australia - you get what you get. . .

When I get time I have to do some experimentation with my WWI titles which deal with 1914 (probably just DWK as I can't be bothered with GRD's -even though I have it -[somewhere] the scale seems to broad -plus there were *a lot* of counters, and a lot more -1 +1 modifiers that (iirc) cumulatively applied to nearly every single combat....)

Ok getting off message here... the thing I thought I was reading was basically about how there was nothing at all going on on the (French) left/ German right on their initial push into France (August -early Sept 1914) - that if one side were to weaken their frontage on the inside track so to speak (basically from about Paris to the Swiss frontier in both sides' cases) -that the other side would be able to threaten to push through in those areas - and that was the major consideration at the time. It is the reason why the Germans felt that they had to sweep to the inside of Paris instead of sweeping around it ( lack of troops basically -presumably caused by much higher than anticipated losses. ).  

I have a theory that most guys play out August-September 1914 (maybe it is because most maybe all games ) model this based upon what happened in 1940  - the entire contiguous frontage thing/breakthroughs ... but, I don't actually believe that in the early days of 1914 that either side could actually conceptualise what exactly that meant in reality. I am saying this from the point of view that both sides (well all I guess if you count Russia - which this might even apply more to)- were still fighting the war with a 19th century mindset - where armies were not of a size (nor were the armies' logistics capable of) to actually stretch from one border to another of any moderately sized area. I think that you sort of saw this beginning to evolve to a degree in the American Civil War outside of Richmond Virginia/Petersburg Virginia in 1864-65 - but even then it was not nearly so broad of an area as the 1914 Western Front (basically Switzerland - the Channel coast by way of Belgium).

My point being - I am not so sure that the commanders at the time were really up to conducting operations on that wide of a front - they had no actual practical experience in it (they did get it as things went along - I just don't think that they had it in August or September 1914 - The Russians in East Prussia were still conducting their business like 19th Century armies - basically the 'front' was where the armies were marching -and the Germans there never actually had the manpower to do much more than react to their moves  (and react pretty swiftly too - as they were much more flexible than either Russian army present.). I guess I only brought that part up as a further example of what I was meaning about Aug-Sept 1914.

I haven't a wide experience with different games of this period, but of what I do have - I think Schroeder's comes the closest to being able to replicate that.

What I am seeing in Bill's images are that he has some forces put on his extended flanks for both sides -and I guess what I am saying is that I think in reality neither side, historically, felt that was to their benefit -the initial drive was all about either protecting Paris, and barring that targeting the other sides' army as their objective (particularly on the part of the Germans when they swung to the east of the Paris fortifications.).

Well for me if it has spells, magic rings, dragons, supernatural soldiery, animated trees, wizards, and an alternate world then the premise is fantasy, and based entirely on fiction.

Not a wargame. Fantasy game -based on or inspired by a novel. 

For the life of me, I have never had any idea what advantage some companies or even players ( I am meaning that part based upon a multitude of threads over the years - it is intended as a general statement is all) find in trying to brand their material 'wargames'.


Edited for spacing -I was typing things a bit too fast.

No EA NHL games for the PC anymore   and just when my team got good... 

Dick Trickle was always a good one. (NASCAR driver).

Bibliography formatting

I found that the NLA site (National Library of Australia): http://trove.nla.gov.au is one location that has a feature where if you type in the title of a book or author, etc, -you can call up the relevant entry and there is a 'cite this' button (with several standard styles of bibliography formats).... copy/paste and this beats typing when constructing a bibliography.

This being the sort of thing one might use in designer notes (and which I plan on using myself). I do have something that qualifies based on the original topic (but it is so far out that there is nothing much I can share on it).

If I think of any more things over time, that might prove useful I will add it here.

In all fairness, Schroeder's videos only came out I think after Enrico was finished with his. I  imagine that they are sort of apples and oranges as I have watched some of both sets - however, I also know that Schroeder solicited for videos publicly (I know because for whatever reason he appears to be stuck posting only at CSW -and I was doing his webpage at the time [in other words when I cross-posted his offer to other areas I was not just a self-appointed 'do-gooder' type], was aware of them and then decided to go no further with it all. In hindsight (knowing about how the Vassal thing came together - I was under the impression that one player was actively working on them then another guy I never heard of comes completely out of the blue -and I got the impression that this was all news to the player I knew... in other words I believe he was left hanging -who knows why.)... I guess I should have known better. I definitely do now.

Although the real reason I was posting this was to add some material Dave added about his WWII series on DWK (for some reason he never gave me any of this sort of thing -as I could have actually have used it on the site at the time -but .... well, whatever. ).


I think I agree with the idea that- if he is legitimately serious about even a portion of his series forming some sort of gateway game- then he needs to find some scaled back situation and create one at an introductory type price point as well. Tannenberg would have worked well for that ... but, maybe there might be some portion of WWII that can work as well - maybe a slice of North Africa -like an Operation Compass scenario or something along those lines. I don't have any idea what one he has in mind to do next (maybe it might be France -as I think they were talking about testing that in about 2000 - although one would have to be really dedicated at CSW surfing to uncover it (I found it in the WWI folder).

Of course, the key element to the above is> if serious. Considering I could not get him to believe that if I resized a digital image of a map to about the size of a postage stamp (say about 190 px on its wide part) -and converted it to a gif that it would basically be impossible to then blow up that image to a full 22 x 34 inch map that could be used to make ripped off copies of games (I even showed him what the blown up version would look like ... but -well... yeah if one has to teach digital image editing - before doing anything - it can take awhile (if ever) to get anything done...  (spoiler -which is why I am lucky enough to have my own site where I don't have to deal with that -unless I have a 'moment' ).

I need to clarify this I think - Dave was talking about creating another version - so everything that is in there now, would still be there (including the supply rules), so this is not like what GMT did with a Simple GBoH set of rules to simplify the game ... Dave was talking about marketing the games as they are now to players new to wargames. I mean, honestly - I started waaaay back when with War at Sea by Avalon Hill - this entire use DWK as a gateway game - in my opinion is completely far fetched to pie in the sky on his part.

I guess if anyone has any ideas - they can always drop him a line.

Enrico - you know Schroeder was talking about getting guys who regularly post about Risk or Stratego and have never seen a bonafide wargame - to give DWK a go.


I don't know ... it seemed like a big ask to me... but well - I guess best of luck to him however he goes about it... it might maybe work better with a WWII title, probably purposefully designed for that end. I doubt it is something Dave would even want to hear.

I think you diversify a bit more though, Enrico... so it really isn't the same impact.