Wargames Handbook, Third Edition: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames [Paperback]

James Dunnigan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0595155464 | ISBN-13: 978-0595155460 | Publication Date: January 3, 2000 | Edition: 3

Describes origins of commercial wargames as well as how to play and design them.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jim Dunnigan is the founder of Simulations Publications, Inc and went on to design over a hundred games and publish over 500. He continues to advise the US government and foreign governments on wargame design and development.

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse; 3 edition (January 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595155464
• ISBN-13: 978-0595155460
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #792,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a disappointment!, June 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Wargames Handbook, Third Edition: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames (Paperback)

I have an earlier edition of this book, and thought that this one would bring things up to date. However, the author is stuck somewhere during the 1970's through the early 1990's. He apparantly hasn't heard of games like TOAW from TalonSoft, or the Close Combat series from Atomic. He even mentions GEnie (wastes several pages instructing his readers how to play online games there) and refers to PC's as "IBM compatible". The maps he uses in his example game have been reduced in size, and to top it all off, there's no index (no real need for it--there's not much useful information here). This book is just hopelessly out-of-date. I wish that I wouldn't have to give it any stars. I wonder if Dunnigan actually revised this book himself, or that the publisher hired some hack to do the job. TWO THUMBS DOWN!

18 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Need to judge on the correct criteria to appreciate it., February 10, 2002

By 

Christopher Pope "Warhol fan-atic" (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wargames Handbook, Third Edition: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames (Paperback)

I think the other reviews for this book are a bit harsh. I've given this five start just to balance their rating, I would say it is worth about 3 1/2 stars really.
I will agree that the so called "update" of the book just isn't so, especially in the computer area, where it age certainly shows. However, from a history point of view, the book is great. If you keep in mind the author is one of the significant contributers to the paper wargame era on the 1980s, then you can enjoy this book for what it is.
By the way, it's nice to read the paper version, but the whole book is freely available on the internet at the author's website.
With so few books on wargaming available in print, this book is worth reading if you want to see how it was in the "good old days" of wargaming, when there was a large number of gamers. If you want up to date information on wargaming, you won't find it here.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars All the reviews are correct., March 25, 2010

By 

Michael Valdivielso (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wargames Handbook, Third Edition: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames (Paperback)

All the reviews are correct - really, this must have been a great book when first published but it does not age well. Great book if you want to learn about manual board games, how to play them, design them, understand them. If you want to know about the EARLY history of computer games and the military's use of said war games, this is kind of OK. If you want to see how war games went from the paper map to early computers, from early computers to the Play Station or X Box or Total War games...FAIL. It is if he had no energy to edit or update. Really, an author has to keep on top of this kind of thing if they plan to try to re-sell an old book.