PLAYING With HISTORY

Game designers David Thompson and Dave Neale discuss turning the past into a tabletop experience.

- Jonathan Gordon

If you're anything like us, you enjoy learning about history in a number of different ways. We have history books, of course, but also documentaries and miniseries. And we have films and plays that dramatise history for us and bring it to life. One medium that you might be less familiar with, however, is the world of tabletop games. Rather than reading about or watching history, you get to be a participant in it, making the decisions that will change events. We chatted with game makers David Thompson and Dave Neale about their latest offering, War Story: Occupied France, which places you and your friends in the French Resistance, working together to foil the Nazis.

Could you walk us through your process for how you approach a piece of history to translate it into a tabletop game?

DAVID THOMPSON: When working on a historical or historically inspired game like War Story, I usually use a four-step process: 1) Identify the topic of the game, 2) Conduct research, 3) Deconstruct the historical topic to identify the core elements and concepts I want the game to convey, and 4) Design the game. Of course, each of these steps is broken down into countless additional elements, but that is the overall approach.

What kind of resources do you most frequently use to flesh out a game world you're establishing?

DAVE NEALE: I try to find primary source material where I can.

For example, for War Story I obtained the original SOE [Special Operations Executive] training manuals, and for developing some of my prior games set in Victorian London I bought a genuine old newspaper from 1889. I especially like small touches that will likely go unnoticed by the majority of players but that are authentic to the time period, for example the use of a particular phrase or word with specific cultural and historical meaning at that point in time.