Taka-Haradin puolipeikko
Filthy Kalinite
- Joined
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https://burdenofcommand.com
http://burdenofcommand.com/
http://grogheads.com/interviews/15577
http://grogheads.com/interviews/15577
Tuesday Interview – Luke Hughes of Burden of Command
The main brain behind the forthcoming Burden of Command has a chat with GrogHeads ~
Brant Guillory, 11 July 2017
When I hear “Burden of Command” I start to flash back to my days as a company commander, and being buried under a pile of 15-6 investigations, dental cat-IVs, and guys who couldn’t qualify with their personal weapons. I’m assuming the newly-announced “Burden of Command” game isn’t a game of competitive administrative duties. Give us the thumbnail insight of what we can expect in the new game, and why this one is more focused on the ‘burden’ of command than other similar games on the marketplace?
Damn, I can run but now I can’t hide. A real company commander, I’d love to know when and where! (ed note: nothing exciting – it was a National Guard HHC while the rest of the battalion was mobilized)
Now you are so right, real command is a lot of administrative tedium puncture by rare moments of terror. However, maybe not such a great game. Though the game “Papers Please” might teach us differently. What you can expect in BoC is not only the command and control decisions you associate with classic wargames (directing fire and maneuver, and the 4 F’s: find, fix, flank, and finish) but the morale oriented decisions we might associate with a classic tactical board game (ASL, Combat Commander, Band of Brothers, Fields of Fire).
Finally, and more unusually, you must take responsibility for the “preserve” decisions around the men’s physical and psychological welfare on and off the battlefield. They will look to you for the right mindset to adopt in the face of war. Novelist Karl Marlantes, who dropped out of his Rhodes Scholarship to serve as a 1st Lieutenant in Vietnam wrote “What It is Like to Go to War.” He argued that, like it or not, when you go to war you enter a spiritual journey because you are in the presence of death. You have entered the “Temple of Mars” as he so eloquently put it. Whether or not you or your superiors have prepared you for that experience, and for making life or death decisions is a different question. But the burden will be yours, prepared or not.
In sum, leadership in BoC is “Direct, Motivate, and Preserve.” And the burdens are many.
What’s the expected timeline for development right now? When will the first testers get their hands on the game, and when can the general public expect to start banging on the game?
Ha, I plead the 5th on that. “When it’s done right.” But I can tell you we are about halfway through the narrative side of the campaign and my current focus is iterating on the tactical play to “find the fun.” Finding that fun will *critically* require a lot of playtesting. The good news there is we have had a slightly overwhelming response in terms of playtest volunteers! 8-() A nice problem to have. I can say, so I’m not a total evasive weasel - that we expect to release in 2018.
When I first sit down with the game, what’s the first set of decisions facing me? As a new player, how does the game guide me through the new paradigm of decision-making, and gently (or not!) remind me which decisions are the important ones?
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