As I was preparing this talk, my friend and colleague Ed McGrady criticized my initial attempts as being too much about the past and not enough about the future. He argued that we all know what the past was like and that what’s important is what future directions the coming generations of professional wargamers might pursue. As usual, I both agree and disagree with Ed’s assessment. Before you can decide where you want to go in the future, it behooves you to understand how you got to today. Both are important. It is nearly the 200th anniversary of the publication of Lieutenant von Reisswitz’s book Instructions for the Representation of Military Maneuvers with the Kriegsspiel Apparatus in 1824. We usually date the beginning of modern Wargaming from that day when von Reisswitz demonstrated his system to General von Müffling, the Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army. The latter was impressed, stating “This is not a game! It is training for war. I must recommend it to the entire army.” The Reisswitz game is an example of what came to be known as rigid kriegsspiel. The game was embodied in a set of detailed rules defining the nature of the playing pieces and their ability to move and fight. It is also an example of what is known as a closed game; players did not see everything on the battlefield, only what an umpire showed them based on what they could see from the on-map location of their avatar or what their units reported to them.
As I was preparing this talk, my friend and colleague Ed McGrady criticized my initial attempts as being too much about the past and not enough about the future. He argued that we all know what the past was like and that what’s important is what future directions the coming generations of professional wargamers might pursue. As usual, I both agree and disagree with Ed’s assessment. Before you can decide where you want to go in the future, it behooves you to understand how you got to today. Both are important. It is nearly the 200th anniversary of the publication of Lieutenant von Reisswitz’s book Instructions for the Representation of Military Maneuvers with the Kriegsspiel Apparatus in 1824. We usually date the beginning of modern Wargaming from that day when von Reisswitz demonstrated his system to General von Müffling, the Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army. The latter was impressed, stating “This is not a game! It is training for war. I must recommend it to the entire army.” The Reisswitz game is an example of what came to be known as rigid kriegsspiel. The game was embodied in a set of detailed rules defining the nature of the playing pieces and their ability to move and fight. It is also an example of what is known as a closed game; players did not see everything on the battlefield, only what an umpire showed them based on what they could see from the on-map location of their avatar or what their units reported to them.