Strategic Gaming Roundtable, NDU 10/25

Tonight's program is Joe Lombardo (JFL Consulting, and a former CASL contractor) and Peter Perla (CNA and author of a key wargaming tome).

Joe Lombardo is talking about using games in strategic training (the Civilian Response Corps is one example).

Peter Perla will be talking about his new book.

Not bothering to liveblog this one... killer sinus headache and I'm not sure how many people are really keeping up with this as it goes.

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Great quote from Peter:
"A game can fail because of poor design. It will seldom fail because you have good people playing it."

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Peter's presentation is about a wargame being used to develop further scenarios for future wargames.

Morphology used to develop the "if" statement: "If South Sudan and Sudan split..."
Counterfactual reasoning used to develop the "and" statement: "... and then there's a famine..."
Scenario development gives us the "then" statement: "... then everyone kills each other."

The key was the exploration of those scenarios as plausible, likely, useful for training/exploration, of interest to the party using the scenarios.

Described by CNA as a "strategic conversation". The players aren't given an inject. They're given a statement and asked for their response. The game adjudication team then goes to the relevant other players to say "and how do you respond to that action."

Key activities:
- Draw out player actions, not positions
- Understand implications for others
- Constantly summarize information
- Manage the discussion and interactions

By: Brant