Fletcher Pratt and "The World's Most Complicated Game"

[beamjockey]

On rasff, Cryptoengineer has just pointed out a fascinating 1963 Sports Illustrated article, by Paul Mandel, on Fletcher Pratt's legendary naval war games.

Comments

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant.

You know, we have lots of room on the sands, and the ability to use real explosives. Friday sound good?

[gmcdavid.livejournal.com]

Back about 1967-1968 I played that game a few times. Somebody in Rogers Park was hosting it. I think it was someone connected to the SF group that met at the apartment of George Price (of Advent Books), which I also went to a few times.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Harpoon - very explicitly a missile-era homage to FPNWG, hence the name - was just as complicated, with endless dice-rolling and reference to damage tables. purplecthulhu and I once tried gaming an engagement between a US destroyer and a pair of Libyan missile boats. It took us about an hour to play through an engagement that in real life would have taken something like three minutes. (We all ended up as sinking wrecks.)

There was a series of computer versions that I got very addicted to which did all the number-crunching for you. They were immense fun (well, if you like that sort of thing) and pretty realistic, but were only ever player-v-computer; the promised multi-player version never arrived, probably because there was no really good way to implement variable time compression.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate having these gems pointed out -- because I'm mostly not motivated to go rooting through the whole pile myself.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

This is the first moment at which I've become aware that Sports Illustrated had an archive. (Duh.) Who knows what gems like in there? Stories on oddball sports like hovercraft racing? The science fiction story by Theodore Sturgeon they published in 1964? The antics of Bill Veeck? I'll have to browse some more.

I wonder how often they used the cliche "may sound like science fiction."

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Thanks to the college gaming group I fell in with, in the late Seventies and early Eighties I played or saw played several variations of this, though they mostly involved space ships rather than water ships.

[grey-lensman.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I think I still have my copy -- I only ever had a few destroyers, but I remember playing that game in Minneapolis. And yeah, for skilled players, a three-minute turn could take as little as thirty minutes...

[guyfie.livejournal.com]

I think we should use bottle rockets during the firing phase.
Is there any way we can get a copy of his published rules?