Mark Herman. Wargames According to Mark

I am delighted to write a second foreword to Mark Herman’s book, even if I’m playing the proverbial second fiddle to Jim Dunnigan, who mentored Mark at Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) and played a huge role in sucking me into the Wargaming hobby and, ultimately, the wacky world of professional Wargaming. Although I knew of Mark from those early SPI days, I did not have the pleasure of meeting him until a game convention (Avaloncon, if I remember correctly) back in the late 1980s. I was working on my own book about Wargaming and went to the con primarily to meet Mark and ask him if I could set up a time to interview him for my own research. His very gentlemanly agreement led to a long-term friendship and even a professional collaboration, on our game War in the China Sea, created for the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon.

Working on that game with Mark gave me a chance to see firsthand how he started the process of designing a game. It was much like a whirlwind. Butcher paper and marker pens; a sketch map and a buckets-of-dice combat system. Not quite mixing paint for Picasso, but as close as I ever came to such an experience.

This book can give you a taste of that experience. It is a no-holds-barred dive into the mind of a true wargame-design master. Mark does not claim to provide here any sort of "right way" to design an historical wargame; instead, he focuses on describing his own approach, philosophy, and thinking about how he designs historical wargames. And that is really the heart of the matter. Mark is an historian, first, and his games concentrate on presenting the historical narrative—not only the paths actually taken in reality but also (and more importantly) the "envelope" of paths that could have been taken. (Foreword by Peter P. Perla)

As many of you know, Mark Herman is a giant in the wargaming hobby. Over his long and distinguished career as a game designer, Mark designed signature games for SPI, Victory Games, and with us here at GMT. Mark learned his craft beside Jim Dunnigan and so many talented designers at SPI before later running the company that created so many of my favorite games ever, Victory Games.

Beginning in 1991, he brought his design talents to GMT, often paired with his dear friend, Richard Berg. For over 30 years now of working with our teams, Mark has continually pushed the creative envelope in the wargame and strategy game spaces to create a succession of fun, ground-breaking, and award-winning designs like For the People, The Great Battles of Alexander and SPQR (and the entire Great Battles of History series), Empire of the Sun, Churchill, and Fire in the Lake (with Volko). (by Gene Billingsley)