Originally posted by Hooligan
Eric Bergerud = rickt and he is a History Professor (not economics).
So you piqued my interest. Who published "Savo Island" and what was the name and publisher of the other game?
Hooligan
Back in the mid 1960s, I hung around with several older guys who were deep into wargames. One of these guys, Brad Davis was into naval games. Now, back in those days most guys used commercially published rules. Brad and I designed a game for our own use. We played it on an old ping-pong table. I researched the various ships and cut out counters from cardboard, drawing the silhouete of each ship on the cardboard by hand. We used a sheet of drywall, on which we painted a map of the Gaudalcanal area. Over the course of time we worked out rules and debugged the system of play. Brad took to game (minus the map) to some club meetings. One day he called me and said that he had someone interested in purchasing the rights to the game rules and system. Well, I was 14 or 15 and when told we could split $200 I was more than happy to sell it. That was more money than I could even imagine. My parents had to sign the release as I was a minor. Brad was 18 or 19 at the time. I never met the buyer, but I did see the check and got my share. About a year later I received a published copy of the rules in the mail. Some things had been changed, but it was largely intact. Moving ahead about 15 years, I was stateside after a deployment on Saratoga and while in a hobby shop, I discovered a game manufactured by Quarterdeck Games, titled Ironbottom Sound. Intrigued, I bought it. I discovered that the rules and play system were very similar, except that it used the now more common hex type map. We used some old drafting triangles, indexed in yards with a scribe. Well, I suspect that there are only so many systems that work well with naval war games. But the system, the scenario and details were remarkably close. I suppose that our system nestled in between Avalon Hill's Jutland and the newer game. Really very similar, yet there were some significant differences. Our rules were considerably more complex, taking into account the effect of sea-state on torpedo running depth and other infinitely detailed factors. Clearly, in hindsight, I can see that our game would have been much more difficult to learn, and game play was very slow. Most of my really old games disappeared while I was in college or in the military. I haven't seen the Savo Sound booklet since I left for my first carrier based flying deployment in 1977. I guess that was the price of being the oldest in a house full of boys. Leave for a while and everything gets trashed. I'm sorry, I can't recall the publisher's name, but it wasn't one of the big-name game companies, and it wasn't published as a boxed game, just a rules pamphlet. Back then, you could find a wide assortment of wargame rules published this way.
The second game sold was largely the work of Brad, and was designed for using miniatures, rather than counters. Brad kindly gave me $50 for my efforts. I don't know if that game was ever published. I can't recall what Brad named it either. It was a long time ago, and I was at the age where my interests changed with the seasons, so to speak. You know how kids are. My father bought me a used Honda CB-160 motorcycle for my 16th birthday, and for the next 6 months all I thought about and talked about was motorcycles. In retrospect, that little Honda barely qualified as a "motorcycle", but in my mind it was wonderful.
These days, Brad owns an insurance agency and coaches baseball at his local High School. He served in Vietnam, oddly enough, in Special Services, in Da Nang I believe.
Anyway, I still wargame (still have Ironbottom Sound too), but I am now into miniatures gaming more than boardgames. back in '68 or '69, I play-tested (think beta testing) Avalon Hill's first hex based wargame, Panzerblitz. I probably played every game published by Avalon Hill, as well as many from GDW, Strategic Simulations and others. I also enjoy many of Talonsoft's PC games, such as West Front, East Front and all of the Civil war games. However, they don't run on XP, so until they provide a patch, I'm doing without, or use my old WIN98 machine.
So, Hooligan, are wargames a former or present hobby of your's?
My regards,
Widewing
