I’d love to hear if it’s useful! I have your simulation games in the pol science classroom - I think I’ll try one or two of those suggestions in a class next year!

Today’s game in Historical Simulations (a prototype by a PhD student) on the Chinese Educational Mission (1872 to 1881), where 120 teenaged Chinese boys were taken to Hartford, CT and educated- until the Chinese government, fearful the students were losing their traditions, brought them back:

We need historians because evidence doesn’t explain itself.

Context does not simply exist. It is built through research, interpretation, and critical analysis.

What stories have you uncovered in the historical record?

#TalkAboutHumanities 🗃️

The first two prototypes in my Historical Simulations class at @rpihass.bsky.social Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, and Scribes of Danielic Memory (some rather smart brainwork has gone into these and I’m very chuffed with what my students are showing me so far):

Today’s game: 7-player game of Elizabeth: England Aflame. The agents in the pay of Spain and Portugal took a surprise win as the Spanish Armada landed. Playing at Circle DC convention.

Today’s game: Cabinet Noir (ministerial rivalry in Napoleon’s Empire). Played with 5 players today. Everyone lost - no one backed the winning factions and everyone accused each other of not doing enough to help the Empire. C’est la vie.

A new game coming, a co-design of mine on the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War, being published by Fort Circle Games: www.fortcircle.com/peace-1905/

Thank you for the interest- yes - isn’t it a fascinating topic!

Today’s development: The Emperor’s Choice (my design) and The Emperor’s Voice (Wes Crawford’s design) - related games on Japan’s surrender and an attempted coup August 1945. To be published by Worthington. (All prototype art is temporary.)

Today’s game: Space Cadets. Co-op turn-based real-time hybrid:

In the UK it only ‘functions’ before noon. After that it’s over. So if you can sleep in and stay home and away from the internet you’re fine.

Wait - that’s a joke?

My goodness me, yes. You could well be right about that!

As I understand it, Allied commanders believed they would have fought at 3:1 odds if Downfall had happened. But some scholarship has put this closer to 1:1, in which case it’s hard not to see Downfall as utterly horrific in terms of likely casualties.

That’s a valid point. It was a discussion. The side pushing for the coup didn’t want to continue the war because they believed it could be won - within the military there was a belief that if the war continued as far as Operation Downfall they would get better (or more ‘honorable’) peace terms.

Today’s game: The Emperor’s Voice (by Wes Crawford, to be published by Worthington) the 2-player game, as one side attempts to find and smash the Emperor’s Recording and to prevent surrender from happening - the night of August 14/15 1945.

I have heard of such tales before. Thanks for sharing!

I suspect the BGG forums are filled with house rule mods people have adopted over the years. The design definitely shows its age in places and sort of lacks a really satisfying ‘third act’. I can imagine someone ‘re-booting’ this and giving it a new lease of life.

The whole game is really pretty mean.

Essentially yes - nothing. It does chew up your hand limit, though - so you’ll want to discard it. It means that turn’s draw yields one fewer useful cards.

Today’s second game: looking over Wes Crawford’s The Emperor’s Voice, about the August coup in Japan.

Today’s first game: back to Junta, 4-players.

Today’s reading: The Long White Cloud, second in Kingsley Poole’s trilogy on the Huntston family - this time we’re on the Western Front in 1917. Excellent pacing. Well written.

Board prototype courtesy of Linus Zhang.

Today’s development: update to the board for what is now likely to be called “The Emperor’s Choice”, a 2-player game about the fraught Japanese cabinet discussions on August 9 1945, leading up to surrender and then the attempted coup.

Maybe. I wonder if watches/clocks were all synched.

Yes, exactly so. Some of the ships logs put it at 39 or 40 minutes. (This was the topic of my global history MA thesis.)

Thanks for sharing.

I haven’t got that far with it yet, but I did wonder what a modern take on it might do with the coup element to make it more dramatic, and likely faster.

I wonder what a re-boot might look like to tidy things up a little…

Today’s game: Junta (1979, this is a later edition). First time playing it for me - just a learning game, really. But will revisit next week with more players. I think I can see why people liked this.