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I was very disappointed with this book given how many people had listed this as a classic. I don't understand what I'm missing. I study and design games for military analysis and entertainment. I was hoping to learn more about designing classic-style tabletop wargames to supplement what I know about other genres. I didn't learn anything from this book, and I was left feeling irritated by the whole thing.
The content is shallow. The instruction is vague and trite like "do some research first" and "do some editing" with no more detail than that. It seems to be trying to be a primer for people who know nothing about war games in some places, yet does not provide any instruction. In other places, it seems to be trying to be a reference guide for experts, but it doesn't dive into details. I'm not sure who this book is for, but I got nothing out of it.
The editing of the 3rd edition is atrocious. There are random section headings and figure captions stuck in the middle of paragraphs, stray hard returns, and other layout issues that make it hard to read. The image quality is very poor -- grainy, grayed, and hard to read. It is extremely distracting, although the content is still there.
The tone is condescending and narrow minded. The whole book reads like he assumes the reader is an idiot who cannot fathom basic concepts, but then doesn't bother explaining the details as if you just wouldn't get it. So the book ends up being pretty shallow in content. Even amongst tabletop wargames, the author's notion of a wargame is narrow, and he says things like "with manual games it's obvious what is a wargame" which is not even remotely true. That community has lots of debates about what is or is not a wargame.
The author may be a good wargame designer, but he is not much of an author, teacher, or broad minded thinker.
- Paperback: 440 pages
- Publisher: iUniverse; 3 edition (January 3, 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0595155464
- ISBN-13: 978-0595155460
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 14 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#1,020,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2941 in Fantasy Gaming
- #2345 in Military Strategy History (Books)
- #2648 in Military History (Books)
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