July 17, 1999 - Interview
Alan Emrich on TOTALER KRIEG!
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Forward: Without a doubt, one of the most anticipated releases of 1999 is TOTALER KRIEG!
Recently released by Decision Games after nearly three years of development, ConsimWorld.COM is pleased to present this exclusive interview with co-designer and developer, Alan Emrich. Those who have enjoyed the hobby over the years have surely been touched by Emrich's commitment to the industry; from GAMA and game conventions, to helping shape some of the top consim game releases over the past fifteen years. Perhaps Emrich's greatest talent is his absolute gift in sharing his passion for the hobby...the energy level at a convention reaches heights that can only be attributeable to Alan Emrich's presence.

CosiWorld: Papers, please, Alan. Who are you and what have you done for your hobby?

Emrich: Jim Dunnigan would call me "one of the Old Grognards Network." I discovered wargames (and, coincidentally, Playboy magazine) in the summer of my thirteenth year back in the early 1970s. Realizing I was spending way more time with the former than the latter, I knew I was a game geek and have reveled in it ever since. I founded the L.A. game conventions, published hobby magazines (including Fire & Movement), have served as Vice President of GAMA (the Game Manufacturers Association), was an editor with Computer Gaming World magazine, have written more gaming articles and columns than I can count, plus a few books, and worked on game titles like Modern Naval Battles, A House Divided second edition, and Krieg!

Oh, heck. If you want the long version, just go here: http://members.aol.com/alanemrich/aemrich11/default.htm

That's my web page and you can find my personal and gaming biographies there. Suffice it to say, I've been around the block in this hobby so many times I'm dizzy. I'm a dedicated hobby evangelist True Believer in gaming, gamers, and games - three distinct nouns that I've donated my time and labors to over the years.

Here's a quick story about that: One evening during my college years, I'm cooking dinner for my then girlfriend and her friend whom she invited over. The dining room of my home doubled as the game room, so it was floor-to-ceiling with games. I overheard from the kitchen my girlfriend's friend remark to her (with an air of female jealousy), "How can he give so much time and attention to those games? What a waste! They'll never love him back." Well, my girlfriend understood my affinity for our hobby and responded in my defense, "That's not true. I've seen him make games and test them, invite friends over and they have a great time when they play together. He writes about them and enjoys writing. No, when he's like that, I’m sure those games are loving him back." That was a very astute observation, I think.

Eventually, I married a gamer, and life has been great. (Thanks, Petra! You’re the greatest!) We even named our daughter Avalon Candice ("can dice," get it?) Emrich. Now that's a gamer's daughter!

CosiWorld: How did you and the original KRIEG! get together in the first place?

Emrich: When Origins was in San Jose, California (1994), I noticed a guy shopping his game around to the exhibitors looking for a publisher. Actually, I noticed the game first (naturally), as it was a Third Reich looking map with Russian Campaign looking pieces. "My kind of game," I thought, so I sat down at the Decision Games booth and listened to the designer's spiel for a while.

It turns out that the designer was Steven "Kos" Kosakowski, who was at Origins with his wife, Kate. I saw the promise in the bold, clean design concepts and offered to develop the game should Decision opt to publish it. (My enthusiasm for this hobby really knows no bounds, and I love to help out and polish up a good design idea.) A year later, there it was in my mailbox and Kos and I started operating on it. Looking back on those events, it reminds me of the improbable, out-of-the-blue way I met my wife. God has a way of taking a hand in matters sometimes, and this was one of those times. Kos, Krieg!, and I were fated to be together.

If you want to know what happened then, it's a long story, but you can visit this area: Totaler Krieg!: The Evolution of a Game.

CosiWorld: So, you're not really a designer; you're more of a "jumped up" developer?

Emrich: Yes, I would definitely call myself more of a developer than a designer. I'm much better at focusing someone's concept, writing it up, doing anal retentive cross-checking, and so forth. Grabbing a blank pieces of paper and saying "you're going to be a brilliant game design before I leave this table" hasn’t always been easy for me. I've been very fortunate to work with the likes of Sid Meier (Civilization), Frank Chadwick (A House Divided), Steve Barcia (Master of Orion, Master of Magic), Dan Verssen (Modern Naval Battles card game), and of course, Steve Kosakowski (Krieg!). Those guys are the geniuses. I'm just glad I was able to help them when I could.

A House Divided and Modern Naval Battles, two completely disparate topics and design approaches, reflect Emrich's
ability to help mold a wide range of game design projects

CosiWorld: How would you characterize the reaction to this game upon its initial release, and which design aspects drew the most raves, and loudest criticisms?

Emrich: I'm amazed how much pent-up demand for TOTALER KRIEG! there seems to be. People have been hearing about its release and seeing bits of it up on the internet and in people’s hand-made playtest copies for a couple of years now, so I guess they like what they've seen and heard so far. It's very edifying, and that's important. No one is in board wargaming to get rich; we're here because we love our hobby. I consider the positive initial public reaction to everything they've seen and heard about Totaler Krieg! to be another one of those cases where this hobby has loved me back.

The design aspects that have drawn the most raves are twofold. First, there are all the things people liked about the original Krieg! game (simple systems, intriguing Option cards, lots of innovative little twists). Second, there is the Random Campaign Game Generator, which I called Dice of Decision. I designed this (yes, here I started with a blank piece of paper and labored as an honest-to-goodness designer) because it was something that I always wanted in other strategic WWII games. During development, I was dumbfounded how much feedback this aspect of Totaler Krieg! got as people played these "Wacky War" scenarios over and over. Basically, in Dice of Decision, you roll a die on several tables to determine a chain of events leading from the beginning of WWI to the eve of WWII. This determines what the map will look like at the beginning of a Totaler Krieg! game. Nations may or may not exist (Armenia, Croatia, and Serbia — among many others — may be there, Poland and Finland may not); governments will rise and fall (what if the Kaiser was still around, or the Czar? or if France were communist or Germany democratic?), pre-war alliances might shift (France could start out neutral, or Czechoslovakia, Greece, or Portugal might begin as active Western Allied minors). Anyway, you get an interesting new starting situation in 1939 and, more importantly (to me, anyway), you get enough back-story as events unfold to understand why and how you got there. It all ties together. I guess you have to see it to believe it, but it rocks. If you want to know more about it, including reading an example of how it works, go to the Dice of Decision area of the Web site.

The loudest criticisms are the same as those in KRIEG!, meaning that there are too many design-for-effect abstractions for some players. In particular, the "generic" support units draw flak (some prefer a complex set of air and naval rules) as does the economic model presented in the Option cards (some players want to build empires that get bigger and badder like the BORG in Star Trek — Kos and I don't see real nations and empires behaving that way). As a bone to those critics, the support units now come in more distinct flavors (fleets, bombers, etc.) but they're still only play a simple supporting role. The focus of the game remains a simple panzer pusher. Also, we've added a few spices in the card system/economic and political models of the game, but it's all pretty simple stuff.

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Copyright © 1999-2002. ConsimWorld.COM. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Web Masters are encouraged to link directly to this page, this URL is not subject to change. For general site information: kranz@consimworld.com

Headline News | Archives | New Products
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Copyright © 1999-2002. ConsimWorld.COM. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Web Masters are encouraged to link directly to this page, this URL is not subject to change. For general site information: kranz@consimworld.com

Headline News | Archives | New Products
Game Ratings | Clubs | Events | Discussion Board

Copyright © 1999, 2000 ConsimWorld.COM. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited. Web Masters are encouraged to link directly to this page, this URL is not subject to change. For general site information: kranz@consimworld.com