The Wargamer

Introduction

After marching for years in the west, John Tiller has directed the troops back to the east in what may be the climax of his Civil War Battles series.  Campaign Gettysburg was released by HPS Sims late last week, offering wargamers the chance to experience the famous battle through hundreds of particular scenarios.  The staggering number of scenarios was the most noticeable feature of the new game (outside of its setting, of course), so The Wargamer's Al Berke and Chris Abele hunted down Campaign Gettysburg's scenario designer, Doug Strickler, to discuss how he managed to create so many scenarios, his research behind those scenarios, and some of the other game mechanics of the new game.

Interview

The Wargamer (WG):  Doug, could you give us a background of who you are and your role in Campaign Gettysburg? Have you worked on any other John Tiller titles?

Doug Strickler (DS): Sure. I’m 54, a public defender, married, with no kids. I’ve gamed since the 4th grade, starting with AH’s Tactics II, playing anything from AH through high school, S&T and it’s progeny after that with a real love for the monster games, and GDW’s Europa series. Moved on to computer gaming from the late 80’s on. I’ve had a fascination with the Civil War since childhood. In fact Gettysburg was one of the earlier games I played – AH’s first edition. I designed games for myself in my teens working off the OOB’s in Battles and Leaders.

I constructed the campaign, the scenarios, and the maps for Gettysburg. What I arrived at is by no means the only path events could have taken, but I think there are enough twists and turns to make it have high replay value.

I have been involved in the playtesting of the other titles in the series, though usually late in the game, as the time I’ve had to devote to other projects has been pretty limited by the work on Gettysburg.

WG: Why did the development team choose the battle of Gettysburg? Obviously it’s an extremely well-known battle, but it’s also very different from the smaller, lesser-known battles depicted in the previous Civil War Battles games.

DS: John contacted me long ago about doing Gettysburg. I wouldn’t claim to be privy to his thinking on the choice, though he wanted a recognizable battle, and planned on leading with a lesser known action or two, and then releasing one of the more well known fights. John chose me, I think, and Gettysburg because I had done a series of expansions for the Talonsoft game, altering the OOB’s from Gettysburg, and using the forces from Gettysburg on maps from other titles in that series. When last I looked, those could still be found on John’s web site, and several other locations.

While Gettysburg has been done time and again, no series attempting to cover the events of the Civil War would be complete without coverage of the Confederate summer offensive of 1863. You’ll note my description of what the game covers – the words are used for a reason. The attempt in this game is not so much to cover the battle of Gettysburg or even a campaign culminating in that battle. You certainly can get there if you follow the historical line of play all the way down the line, but the intent on my part, kindly acquiesced to by John, was to put together a vehicle that would allow the player to open things up, and explore a range of possibilities for the summer of 1863 in the eastern theatre.

WG: The Battle of Gettysburg is one of the most well-documented battles in history. While it certainly makes it easier to construct the detailed historical accuracy behind the game, it must have also made sorting through all the information tedious. How much time was spent researching history for the game? Were you forced to scale back on certain details because of the volume of information?

DS: You are certainly right about the amount of information on the subject. It is daunting. When you add in the fact that there is substantial disagreement on details – especially when it comes to the map sources from the era – a lot of cross checking was required. Even after cross checking the data, I still ended up with no more than educated guesses as to a lot of information. I don’t feel too badly about that, as, if one reads the sources carefully, you find that the authors have all done the same thing at times.

As to the time involved, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a hard number. The game development began in the spring of 1998. I was/am still consulting additional sources. Map changes were made well into this spring. My part of the game took several thousand hours of my time to develop, even excluding the time I’ve spent play testing it. Each of the maps involved took several months of my free time to lay out initially, and I’ve spent untold hours on each of them since then, revising things.

The volume of information didn’t necessitate my scaling anything back. That’s one – of many – reasons why this project has taken so long. While I’m sure John would have liked this title to come out far sooner than it did, he let me pursue my vision of what the product should deal with, providing the tools necessary to accomplish my goals..