Nuts!

Musings on Game Design and other Remembrances
In 1965 the Avalon Hill Game Company published The Battle of the Bulge - a map and counter strategy game for ages "12 years & up". Founded in 1952 by Charles S. Roberts, the Avalon Hill Game Company regularly released new strategy games through the 1970s, many new titles (as I recall) were published each year, all aimed at a mass market audience and widely available when I was a young gamer. Their catalog included games based on various subjects related to sports, business and military history. As a boy who was especially interested in sports and military history, I suppose I was part of their target market demographic even before I reached the suggested age of "12 years".

I recall being desirous of laying my hands upon the intriguing history games as soon as I saw one in a local store. I eagerly anticipated the fun promised by the mere thought of playing such an "advanced" game. The Battle of the Bulge was not the first Avalon Hill game I acquired, but it is a game that holds up well today - even though it was designed 57 years ago - and it is the game that is prompting me to write about today's subject. Some games are classics because their appeal seems timeless. 

In 1965:

Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States and his "Great Society" was taking form in the wake of an expanding war in southeast Asia.

The NASA space program launched its first two-person Gemini mission - the moon was a dream. 

The Beatles were still taking the music world by storm.

The musical drama film The Sound of Music won the Academy Award for Best Picture (along with 4 other awards).

I make mention of these items of remote historical interest by way of demonstrating that the world was in many respects a very different place in 1965 from what it is today.

But back to the present and the topic of games: I recently played Avalon Hill's 1965 version of The Battle of the Bulge. It has been some time since I had last played this game and in the interval have played many other games based on the same events history knows as the Battle of the Bulge and I have read a number of books on the subject in those years since last playing the game. It seems not unlikely that several thoughts on the matter have been brought into my mind in the intervening years since last I played Avalon Hill's classic. 

I am delighted to say that I enjoyed my recent revisit with the old Avalon Hill "hex and counter" wargame pictured above. In all honesty was not expecting the game to provide the level of engagement that I experienced while playing and the degree of mental challenge the system seems to present in different ways to both the Allied and German player. (I had also forgotten the game has an "Introductory" and an Advanced or "Tournament" mode of play, but that fact seems less significant.) Incidentally, I consider the "Introductory" game, as it styles itself, a decent strategy game - and one that is probably well suited as an introduction to the hobby of wargaming. 

Even more to my surprise is the take-away idea that I now have that The Avalon Hill Game Company's The Battle of the Bulge game is probably the basis and inspiration of many of the more detailed games on the subject that I have played since 1965. Informed as I am today by material and ideas I did not have access to years ago, my perspective has "evolved". I thought new thoughts as I worked my way through an old game design and made comparisons and had many "what if" moments as I thought about how I might "house rule" the 1965 game. 

During my recent play of The Battle of the Bulge I  also found myself wondering whether this Avalon Hill game may have served as a starting point for many of the later games, those featuring more elaborate rule mechanics, including many of the ones that I have personally encountered playing more recently released games on the subject. Traffic congestion, limited supply, weather conditions, surprise, and many other historical details written about this battle have been incorporated into various other games in an effort to make them a more "realistic" Battle of the Bulge game.

It is the nature of things that they be improved upon over time. Human beings find inspiration in one idea and in combination with data, experience and innovation, expand upon the idea and sometimes improve it!

If this sounds familiar, I think it should! The fantasy role-playing hobby has often taken a similar development path with respect to the original game designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson back in 1974. By adding to, and by adjusting things, even by taking away from one rule or another, and by replacing various mechanical aspects of the rules with a different mechanic, game developers have sought to improve upon play and to customize the game, all while making use of some of the basic concepts established in that original design. Variations on a theme - I would say borrowing an analogy from my study of music. Simply put, we build upon what came before.  

So one may ask about the title of this post - "Nuts!". As it is explained on the cover of The Battle of the Bulge 1965 game box, "Nuts!" is the famous one-word reply the American commander gave to a German Commander's request for the American troops to surrender during the actual battle.