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by Daniel Berger.
Original Post: Getting back into ancient Greek history
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Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a lowly graduate student at FSU studying ancient Roman and Greek history. During this time (around 1991 or so) Mark Herman came out with a game called The Peloponnesian War. That's Athens vs. Sparta, for those of you who aren't familiar with it.
Ironically, it wasn't until this year that I actually played it. It's a decent, but not great, solitaire game, and you would have to be a fan of the time period to enjoy it. However, it doesn't work very well as a two player game. This inspired me to look for alternatives. It turns out there's really only one, called Epic of the Peloponnesian War, by Clash of Arms. The reviews have not been kind, as the designer appears to have fallen into a classic design trap - good simulations often make for poor games. People just don't want to do much (or any) book keeping.
From there I considered creating my own game. I have The Landmark Thucydides (which is, without any doubt, the one you should buy if you're going to read it), and so I read it cover to cover. That, in turn, inspired me to buy some of the other primary sources for the period, including Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Xenophon, and Aristotle (yes, Aristotle has relevant passages for the war in his Politics, especially as they relate to Pericles).
But, I wanted more than the primary sources. One of the absolute best contemporary historians on the period is a man by the name of Donald Kagan, so I ordered his 4-volume series on the topic. It starts with The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and finishes with The Fall of the Athenian Empire. I'm already on volume 2, The Archidamian War. The first volume was great.
The upshot of all this reading is that I've realized that Mark Herman's game has several fundamental flaws that prevent simple "minor tweaking" (my original plan) to try to make his game better. His economic system is totally wrong, and this ripples throughout the rest of the game in a way that makes it, IMHO, unsalvagable. This only underscored my resolve to write my own game.
The trick, of course, is to make a game that's somewhat realistic without being cumbersome, relatively quick to play (6 hours or less, hopefully) and, most importantly, fun. One of the fundamental changes I'm planning on making is to turn it into a Card Driven Game (CDG). This, in my opinion, is the only way to realistically represent some of the quirky strategies of each side. The economics will also have to be totally reworked.
I've already got a large chunk of the cards worked out and I've started writing the rulebook, but it's nowhere near finished and it will need some serious playtesting. But, I'm hopeful. :)
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