Originally shared by Zenopus Archives
Vintage 1963 SI article about Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame of the '30s and '40s. Courtesy Roger Giner-Sorolla
https://www.si.com/vault/1963/09/23/616528/the-worlds-most-complicated-game
https://www.si.com/vault/1963/09/23/616528/the-worlds-most-complicated-game
Good stuff! I'm trying to imagine sports illustrated covering any thing like this today, especially unironically.
ReplyDeleteI have a copy of those rules somewhere
ReplyDeleteI've seen it played in real life.. much scaled down from the ballroom sized events described here.
ReplyDeleteIt's not quite as extinct as the authors would like you to think.
Yeah I would think there's a smaller-scale version of that being played somewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe game play reminds me of Mike Carr's Don't Give Up the Ship games that he runs at Gary Con. Although it's mostly Mike on a blue carpet in that one, everyone else seated around him in chairs giving him written orders.
ReplyDeleteAmong other things, it puts me in mind of games I played in at Bay Area Conventions in the 90s.
ReplyDeleteThere was a guy who'd run an all-night game of Awful Green Things From Outer Space at sort-of life size. We'd play the crew bumbling around the ship, laid out with blue tape on a ballroom floor. The aliens were under the control of the GM. If you couldn't get into any other game, this game was waiting for you on Saturday nights and it'd run into the wee hours.
The other was an Aliens board game based on the movie, also with the 'board' laid out on the floor at human-scale. When you died you then got to keep playing as an Alien! There were queues for each 'part' and as the Earth men dwindled and the Aliens emerged, everyone got to keep on playing.
Zach H Are you sure this isn't Mark Campbell? This sounds like CLOSE ACTION to me. He runs exactly the same setup and refuses to have anyone step on his blue hex carpet except himself. Barefoot. I will neither confirm or deny that he has earned the sobriquet "the Ship Nazi"
ReplyDeleteJon Wilson Jon, that life sized Awful Green things sounds like a blast. Did anyone ever take pictures of this?
ReplyDeleteW. OHara Definitely Mike Carr, here's a pic of him refereeing I took in 2017. In his socks rather than barefoot. He was co-author of the rules along with Gygax & Arneson. It's the other Gygax & Arneson collaboration. : )
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/bZBKahgeJhpCOagpKravBYMkMMv8vfyhDGUv6aIdr-kxhkLLh_9hGprhZgstnE9-vfszvL1pVp_D4VDgc_IxHyfQVk_ExVGwS0g=s0
This is the rule set: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Give_Up_the_Ship!
ReplyDeleteDelta reviewed the game last year and mentioned the influence of Pratt's game --- deltasdnd.blogspot.com - Traditions of Real-World Statistics in Naval Games
ReplyDeleteZach H i have a copy.
ReplyDeleteW. OHara, no pictures that I have. It was WELL before having a camera in your pocket everywhere you go was a thing.
ReplyDeleteI do vividly remember being a room or two away from a fire extinguisher when I needed it on the Znutar, but being unable to reach it in time -- and remember how into it everyone got when playing the Aliens!
Jon Wilson That's awesome! A fellow made a 3-D Znutar that he used for running the game at Historicon last year, and I got to play in it. He split the ship up among three levels, and split the crew and aliens up into teams. But it wasn't life-sized!
ReplyDeleteGreat photos. Jon that sounds like a great time. Awful Green Things is my favorite game except the board is too small.
ReplyDeleteI have a game around here that is played like this, except bigger. It's called Biplane something or other. The game scale is 1:72, your plane goes on a little 6 inch platform with 3 wheels and a 6 foot tall stick. Only played it once. The wheel size determine speed. You could use a gymnasium.
ReplyDeleteAerodrome, by Stan Kubiak?
ReplyDeleteSi Mihi Asfem Des...