The story so far...

A game from Tim "Herr Niemand" Taylor

The story so far...

Messagede Arnauld » Dim Mar 01, 2009 11:12 pm

The Story So Far...

As designer of TTLM!, I’d like to say a bit about how this game came to be in its present form.

I’ve always been fascinated by World War 1. Perhaps because one of my first games was 1914 by Avalon Hill, published in 1968. In high school, my favorite games were PanzerBlitz, D&D, and that old SPI game “World War 1,” because all were playable in one study hall period!

Around 1990 I started tinkering with a WW1 game design, purely for my own pleasure. I called it, THE GREAT WAR. It ended up covering every theatre of operations (and most of a ping-pong table) in way too much detail. With more than a thousand counters, it was a monster. That wasn’t the point, though. I just wanted to have fun with my gaming buddies. Trouble was: the game wasn’t fun. Although it had a great deal of historicity due to my years of research, the game was just too long and boring. So I set aside version 1.0 to pursue other endeavors.

A few years later, back at the drawing board, I was commissioned to design v 2.0, a new corps-level game. In this version, I would split the game into different theatres, each one on a separate map. Thus the map costs weren’t going to be unreasonable. That deal fell through, which was just as well since in retrospect the game was still too long and too slow -- in other words, no fun.

Then a profound realization struck me, that a great simulation is pointless if no one bothers to play it. As Billy Bob Shakespeare said, “The play’s the thing...”

The Great War had to be fun! So back in the mid-90s, I designed a totally new game, a card game -- version 3.0. I created this game purely for my own amusement. Entirely a card game, TGW v3.0 used only pencil and paper to keep track of armies; literally everything was in the cards! It played great and was a lot of fun, but was disappointing as an historical simulation. This version just didn’t seem like a wargame. However, with the card play, I had the makings of a game engine which could drive an exciting World War 1 game.

I set the whole shebang aside to become a popular late-night DJ in Indianapolis. That kept me pretty pre-occupied so I had never heard of PoG or even Eurogames -- until I found BGG, that is. So TGW's card game engine is quite unlike PoG or Friedrich.

In 2000, with a new century and a change of venue, I designed TGW versions 4.0 to 4.2 as a block game and focusing just on the western front. I’d always been a great admirer of Craig Besinque’s designs Rommel in the Desert and EastFront and thought the block method might just be the model to use with my card game engine. Unfortunately, after many attempts, it became obvious that TGW would need too many blocks to make it as historically accurate as I’d like.

By 2002, I was using miniature figures in TGW version 5.0. I really enjoyed this version -- fast and furious, but with an eye towards historical simulation. And it looked pretty good with the miniatures from many scavenged games. Proper miniatures would have been too costly, though.

I needed to reduce the cost to make TGW. I opted to shift to cardboard chits and revamp the game into versions 5.1, 5.2, and 5.2.1. This was even better; freed from restrictions on the number of units, I could allow The Great War to flower into the historical simulation game it was always meant to be, yet it played fast and remained very entertaining. Playtesters who played it wanted to immediately play it again.

Then I found another wargame company and they were very enthusiastic. With a change of name, TO THE LAST MAN! (version 5.2.2) was finally going to be published ... or so it seemed at the time. Originally slated to have been published in 2004, they delayed it time and again. In late 2007, after more than a year of no communications, they suddenly cancelled the project.

Naturally, I was disappointed, but also felt bad for those of you eagerly awaiting the arrival of TTLM! Many have written me expressing their disappointment as well. Two BGG users simply would not give up on the game. The French Arnauld and the Belgian Christophe wanted to play this game so badly that they would not stop bothering me. They volunteered to design the counter art, map and cards. How could I say no?

Arnauld and Christophe convinced me save this design from languishing in unpublished form. At their urging, yet another rules rewrite, version 5.3 is now complete. Collecting together all the little changes over the years as well as stripping out vestiges of the unpublished version, I'm renumbering TTLM! to version 1.0 to represent a new start. I intend to make all or most files available on BGG (as long as Aldie says OK), and Arnauld has graciously offered other hosting possibilities as well.

I will be offering TTLM! as a free PnP downloadable game for many reasons, not the least of which is that I've spent nearly 20 years honing this design. I would really like other people to enjoy this game as much as I have. My only apology is that each of you will have to make your own copy.

TTLM!
is currently undergoing final polishing. As of this writing, I hope everything will be uploaded by early 2009. My idea is to provide this game as an "open source" project. Christophe and Arnauld have already produced far nicer game components than I could possibly muster. The contributions of others can only make this game even better.

Waiting in the wings is a companion game, AT ALL COSTS! -- The Great War in the East. Although each is a stand-alone game, together they will provide an easy-playing, exciting historical study of the Great War playable in under 4 hours. I currently have no plans to complete this project, but who knows what the future holds?

TT 26 January 2009
Run ! The Devil is coming !
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