New PBM game: Officer's Club Wargames [ historical email wargames ] From: lindahl@rt.com (Greg Lindahl) Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000 Name: Officer's Club Wargames [ historical email wargames ] Type: historical wargames Duration: depending Frequency: once per month GM: computer assisted Costs: flat rate US$1 - 4/turn URL: http://www.worldaccess.nl/~kolley/oc.htm Email: kolley@worldaccess.nl Keywords: commercial, closed-ended, email, wargame, historical Last-Update: 1996Dec14 Description: Officers Club is a flexible PBM wargame system which allows players to act as Formation or Unit commanders in historic battles. Several scenarios will be played by teams of players. A wargame is like a chess game which originally was a training exercise of battlefield tactics and analytic thinking for Chinese officers. But while a game of chess maintains a highly abstract view on combat, a wargame in the tradition of the Prussian "Kriegspiel" tries to simulate the tactical, operational or strategic battlefield reality for training purposes or for the prediction of further military events. The Wargames try to simulate historic military battles just because of the interest in military history and for fun. While we play we don't have in mind glorifying war, military aggression or ideologies of the past. In the games it is tried to maintain the highest accuracy ("purist") in research and in the development of presentation and execution. In OC scenarios, the common "rules" or "charts" of common "wargames" are not used by the players as they would not be used by a military commander in the field such as a "combat effect chart" or a "movement points chart". They are not able to conduct military operations as pure mathematical exercises of some game mechanism. The game systems are run entirely by the gamemaster/umpire (Leitende). The player uses for 20th century games only "real" means of conducting a battle like maps, a pair of compasses, orders and other means of communication; his own "eyes" and his personal knowledge of commanding a formation or an unit. Games who expect more "observing" the battlefield than reading maps are played with the OC version of the Electronic Cardboard. Some scenarios include also a small element of role-playing. Players can get involved in personal combat or have, for example, to hassle with superiors over artillery support. The scenarios cover on the time scale from a minute up to a historic day in large campaigns per game turn. Time can be manipulated by the gamemaster to slow down or fasten up the game. The largest formations are divisions and exceptionally corps while the smallest units represented are squads or Commando's. The terminology will change according to the period played. The Games will be designed as team games of 16 or more players. In most games, players can join later on. [ This is a new entry for the PBM List. You can find the list itself, and instructions for adding games or comments, at http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbm.html or ftp://ftp.pbm.com/pub/pbm/PBM.list -- greg ] Up