The 2 Half-Squads
(Jeff Hallett and Dave Kleinschmidt) have just celebrated their tenth
year of presenting entertaining and informative reviews, banter,
after action reports, rules discussions and performance pieces to the
Advanced Squad Leader community. In addition to their tenth anniversary, they are as of this writing three short of the milestone of 200 episodes. As they like to say, they are
"the only podcast dedicated 100% to the greatest game in the
world.’ For my money, the real meat of their episodes has been the
interviews with luminaries in the ASL community, which provide a
unique and intimate look behind the scenes.
As someone with a
deep personal interest in the history of wargames I regard interviews
such as these as important historical documents. I find myself
referring to them often in online discussions where, for example,
newcomers to the ASL and greater wargaming communities pose questions
that are nicely answered by the designers, developers and publishers
themselves in their own words. Making reference to a podcast has its
challenges, as the contents are distributed in hour-long (or more)
chunks, and sharing specific bits of conversation is logistically
challenging.
From the 2 Half-Squads website LINK TO THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW |
To that end, I’ve
chosen to transcribe the interview I find myself most often referring
to others. John Hill was a well-known game designer from the 1970’s
on, and is of course famous in ASL circles as the original designer
of SQUAD LEADER. There are many interviews with Hill in various
vintage gaming magazines, but the conversation with Jeff & Dave
covers much (interesting) ground I had not seen discussed by Mr. Hill
before. The 2 Half-Squads interviewed the man himself in February
2010 for their Episode 32. He passed away shortly after the 2
Half-squads completed Episode 132 in January 2015, and the interview
was re-released at that time.
Transcripts are
not an exact science. Clarity can be an issue – in this particular
case, Mr. Hill’s speech was very informal as one would expect of an
intimate conversation, and some words were either garbled, or
frankly, beyond my comprehension. (I am familiar with a gladius, for
example, but some other terms he makes reference to in regards to
ancient historical combat are unfamiliar to me.) I suspect some words
have been inadvertently skipped or mashed together in the process of
recording them from a phone conversation.
Beyond these
technical limitations, I’ve deliberately kept many of the
idiosyncrasies of the speech patterns in the transcript. Hill changes
tense and pronouns, often in mid-sentence, and sometimes invokes a
third party (‘he says’). Though it looks odd in print, I thought
it more important to present the words as actually spoken. These
irregularities may speak well of the skill of the interviewers, as
Mr. Hill seems to have felt quite at ease with them. And if it seems
like Jeff & Dave are not holding up their end of the conversation
(“mm-hmm”), knowing when *not* to talk is also a skill that the
best interviewers acquire.
I’ve edited out
some cases where words or phrases are repeated while the participants
gathered their thoughts and tried to evict the umms and aahs, though
a couple have been left in where I thought they might be appropriate such as a clue that the speaker has had second thoughts about whatever
words may have come to mind first. Variations from the recording (the
elimination of superfluous words, repeated phrases, or unintelligible
phrases) are captured either by parenthesized words (like this) or
ellipsis ("...") and in some cases a question mark (?) to
indicate something completely unintelligible to me. There will no
doubt be some words that have been changed in the transcript, some
inadvertent, some deliberate (for example, when the speaker jumbles
two words together but it is clear what he intended to say).
The original
podcast may be found at this link, and the entire series is naturally
recommended for anyone with an abiding interest in, or affection for,
“the greatest game in the world.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff: Hello,
John.
JOHN HILL: Yes,
how did the sound check go?
Jeff: Oh, it
sounded beautiful, you sound very handsome.
JOHN HILL: Well,
let’s not jump to conclusions.
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: I
appreciate your kind thought (but) I have to certainly question the
veracity of the information given the fact that we’re… I’m not
on a television phone.
Jeff: Yeah,
unfortunately – though we’d like to see you, we’d like to take
a peek into your game room, I’ll bet it’s really nice.
JOHN HILL: Well,
like most game designers, I don’t play that much.
Jeff: Ah, yeah,
that’s a problem.
JOHN HILL: I
don’t know, maybe it’s some sort of unexpected, and, you know,
curse, you know… James Dunnigan was always proud of the fact that
he never played a game.
Jeff: Is that
right? (laughs) Well ...we were looking at your page on Wikipedia.
Did you know you had an entry on Wikipedia?
JOHN HILL: I’m
sure someone put one in.
Jeff: Yeah, and
among many other things, it mentions that you were… I’ll just
read this: “Hill was named to the Wargaming Hall of Fame, receiving
the Charles S. Roberts awards at the Origins gaming convention in
Chester, Pennsylvania on June 23rd, 1979. Hill developed what is
arguably the most popular rules set ever developed for
regimental-level American Civil War miniature gaming, the JOHNNY REB
series.”
JOHN HILL: Oh,
well that’s true, that’s true enough. People often (say) what is
the… they’ll ask me what I think is the most popular Civil War
miniatures rules, and I says well, it’s not JOHNNY REB. And they’ll
look at me sort of weird, and I would say, it’s (a) basically the
most common regimental set of Civil War rules is a variant of JOHNNY
REB. Every...the system is very, very robust, as is SQUAD LEADER,
(as) you can just pile a lot of stuff on it as ADVANCED SQUAD LEADER
proved and the system holds up quite well.
Jeff: Yeah. Yes,
it does.
JOHN HILL: And
JOHNNY REB, you’ll…people have been tweaking with it and adding
stuff on it and taking chrome on, taking chrome off and playing with
it forever and…uh, now, it still holds up well. As a matter of
fact, the two systems, if you look into them, JOHNNY REB and SQUAD
LEADER are very similar. In some respects, JOHNNY REB was the further
development of the SQUAD LEADER chronology, except it’s now done on
a simpler, more simultaneous mechanism which is more traditional with
miniatures games as opposed to the phased turn sequence in board
games.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: But if
you break down the JOHNNY REB turn sequence you’ll say ‘hey, this
is basically SQUAD LEADER but it’s being done simultaneously.’
Jeff: Oh, I see.
JOHN HILL: And
you can certainly do it, you could go back from one to the other and
you could (and there is)…and that’s because they’re from the
same roots. Ah, that is (a) depiction of the chronology of combat
which hasn’t changed since Cain and Abel. And that, you know…you
go back to pretty much all battles are pretty much the same, and just
different scales, different weaponry and that…One side will have a
piece of land, one side is going to be the defender, he’s very
happy with what he has, he’s dug in, and does whatever he wants to
do to fortify his (position), and the other guy is determined to take
it away, either by driving him off or killing him and then taking it
away.
So you have a
phase where, you know, the attacker will do a prep fire, whether
it’s, uh, you know…24/7 bombardment like the Somme, or hail of
arrows like back in the Persian era, or, you know, just some heavy
suppressive fire from MG-42s, it’s basically a prep fire.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: In the
Civil War, the one hour barrage by the Confederates before Pickett’sCharge. It’s a prep fire.
Jeff: Right.
Right.
JOHN HILL: And
then, okay, they says that prep fire has softened them up a bit,
hopefully (that) we can now advance. So then there is the advance,
and then the defenders that are not dead, dazed or otherwise out of
it, they will put on a defensive fire, whether it’s with arrows,
with (?), with javelins (and) their various weapons or whatever you
have. It’s David with a sling or long range stand-off defensive
weapons. Well, then, that either stops the defender (sic) or it
doesn’t. Or if it makes him go to ground and make him crawl forward
slowly, and then finally the attackers that do survive the defensive
fire will attempt to close with and destroy the enemy. Whether it’s
a Roman with a gladius, or a German with a Schmeisser, basically this
chronology comes out the same.
Jeff: Mm-hmm. And
did you discover this on your own, or was this…
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
yeah, pretty much but it’s not like DUHH.
Jeff: Right.
(laughs)
JOHN HILL: But
obviously, start reading military history, and uh, it’s almost the
same thing every…there’s always a prep fire phase where you’re
throwing rocks at each other with slingers in the days of the
Philistines, or heavy artillery in today’s modern world.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Dave: Well what…
JOHN HILL: The
chronology is the same.
Dave: Yeah, I’d
like to ask you, then, what your gaming background was. I mean, we
joked that you had… don’t have a lot of time to play games since
you’re designing. Were there games that you liked best when you
were a youngster?
JOHN HILL:
Well…when I started out with the dawn of Creation and started out
with TACTICS II. And played that to death. And then we waited with
bated breath for every new game that Avalon Hill would come out
(with) once a year. And then there was BLITZKRIEG, which I liked. (?)
it was something different other than TACTICS II (and) had hexagons.
Wow – well how’s that for novelty?
Jeff: Oh, right.
Tactics II |
JOHN HILL: And
then we went to BATTLE OF THE BULGE which I thought was very good.
And…but I always wanted a much more tactical game. And then…because
(I was) fascinated with small unit actions and both small and large
unit actions still saw a similarity to the chronology. And so I was
really excited when SPI came out, starting coming out with some of
their tactical games. The first one I think was Dunnigan’s TACTICAL
GAME NUMBER 10.(1) I have no idea what one through nine looked like.
But yeah, that was, you cut out your own counters, pasted them
together, and yeah, it was, okay, it was an attempt but you still had
a lot of anomalies in it.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: Then
we came out with PANZERBLITZ. And that still didn’t feel right,
beyond the problem with “PanzerBush”, the quirk in the rules that
you couldn’t interrupt your fire as a person ran from one cover to
another.
Jeff: Oh yeah,
that’s right.
Dave: Okay.
JOHN HILL:
PanzerBush…gimme a break, you know?
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: And
then also if you fired at someone, I think, okay, each unit
represents five tanks and I says, okay, and you could kill all five
or you could disrupt them. When the most likely thing is you maybe
kill o-, if you open fire on a platoon with your appropriate, your
platoons or whatever, you might knock one out,…damage another one.
But you wouldn’t disrupt them, I mean it’s not like these five
tanks are now scrambling around bewildered.
Jeff: Right.
JOHN HILL: You
either, you know, (with sort of like) you either did no damage,
disrupted the tanks or you killed them all. There was nothing in
between.
Dave: So was
that…did you
JOHN HILL: That
gave me the impression that okay, something’s…that’s, then they
put in the…uh, problem with the PanzerBush effect and things like
this. So more and more it was a question of scale. Okay, so if you
really want to show attrition on weapons and you don’t want to have
a tally sheet or something to keep track you might, should perhaps go
down to a lower scale, squad and single vehicle. And if you look at
most of the stuff I was studying, was not the massed armour battles
of Kursk but I was looking at a lot of the fighting in Normandy and
the fighting in Stalingrad and things like this where it was small
groups of men with armour support. Occasionally the tanks would fight
(?) platoon against each other, you know, a section to the fore but
it was mostly the special…it was combined arms fighting. The actual
big quasi stand-off tank duels, and they happened out in the Ukraine
and certainly the desert, but I found the little combined-arm actions
more interesting. So… I followed a lot of other things and so that
was the root of SQUAD LEADER.
It was two
things. One, I was not getting, there was no game showing the type of
level I was interested in at the time and there was nothing that
seemed to be an accurate simulation of the chronology of the tactical
combat.
Jeff: So the
scale of SQUAD LEADER really came about from the need to meet those
criteria?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
… the criteria, that didn’t feel weird.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: But if
I fired a group of five tanks with an appropriate five tanks there
would be a … you would get something better than nothing, disrupted
or all five are dead.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: And I…since
I played SQUAD LEADER before I played some other World War II
miniatures games, I played BATTLEGROUND miniatures game…
JOHN HILL:
Mm-hmm.
Dave: …SKIRMISH,
and I know that…they can run up on you, and there’s like no
defensive fire, and it drives me insane. Because…
JOHN HILL:
Yeah…that’s sort of like what you had in PANZERBLITZ where
everything is a strict phase, where you can’t do anything. You
know…when it just says okay we have (a) six T-34s, they’re going
to run right up to the 88 and nothing’s going to happen?
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: I
don’t think so.
Dave: Yeah, or
well…in this game system you have a…where if you lay your opp
fire out (in) like a certain area, and you can’t turn to your left
and fire at someone (who) runs up at you down the street. You know,
which again I’m like this doesn’t quite, doesn’t work for me
after playing your system. So…
JOHN HILL: Well
yeah, and you can certainly make your case that okay if you’re
suddenly…change your arc of attention or something like that(2),
your, you know, quick reaction fire. Yeah, your fire could be
degraded. You could easily work it into SQUAD LEADER, treat it as
moving fire, half factor. Because for all practical purposes you …
can make a case that your attention is moving. If you’re at a
crew-served machine gun and it’s too far over the flank you have to
pick it up and slap it down on the flank.
Dave: Yeah, which
would be harder to do than with a rifle, or pistols…
JOHN HILL:
Yeah,…but the thing is that’s the nice thing about SQUAD LEADER.
A mechanism is there. If you could say, if you defined an arc of
attention, arc of where your primary fire suddenly changed target,
you could say ‘well,…a lot of things are changing.’ Attention’s
changing, you don’t know the range (so) it’s a snap shot, so to
speak. Depending on the weapon you can easily treat it as moving
fire.
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL: And if
one unit is a squad, the whole squad may be actually doing subtle
little movements that if nothing else going for them, from the north
side of a foxhole to the west side of a foxhole, or something. But if
you want…if you adjudicate that that would degrade their
performance, you have a mechanism, treat it as moving fire. Does the
same kind of thing in JOHNNY REB. If somebody says, ‘Well, I don’t
think this is right.’ Okay, treat it as this thing or the other
thing. So you know, you have a mechanism to address situations that a
person may not be, feel comfortable with or they may feel that
they’re an anomaly. You don’t have to gut the whole system and
redo it.
Jeff: Right. Were
you working for Avalon Hill when these thoughts were formulating in
your head?
JOHN HILL: No. I
was just a free-lance designer.
Jeff: Oh.
JOHN HILL: I was
actually… I had already done, had my own game company, the ConflictGame Company. Or I was doing quirky little things. My first published
wargame…or, not a wargame, was a game on organized crime called THE
BROTHERHOOD.
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL: Which
is more of a family game, more like a 3M game or something. But it
had an edge to it, but it also had the fact that you were the
Godfather and you treated everything like a business. Which was just
go out and kill the other guy. Ah, hit men are expensive, and… it
may be better just to say you can’t make a profit in a certain area
of the town but you can in another area and they just move your
operation. So that was sort of quirky. That was the first one. It was
pretty quaint.
The second one
almost was a tongue-in-cheek game. Yeah. And it still is popular with
this (?) little cult and that was VERDUN. Which incidentally was
re-published I think last year or the year before.
"The Game of Attrition" |
Dave: Oh.
JOHN HILL: It was
published by Cool Stuff Games. You know, you sort of wonder is it a
real serious wargame when the sub-title of the game VERDUN was THE
GAME OF ATTRITION.
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL: And no
matter what you do, it’s unfortunate somewhat, you can have
occasionally great successes but pretty much at the end of the game
everybody’s dead.
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
you may have taken the ground and (?) it basically, everybody has
chewed through all the reserves and until they’re willing to say,
sort of… fascinated by the Germans actually calculated that during
the Battle of Verdun the casualties were so predictable, German
efficiency at its best, that they realized that every week they would
have to totally draft all the young men in a single German town and
then the next week they would have to go to another town. But that
basically…it was the concept of soldiers treated as a consumable.
Dave: Mm.
JOHN HILL: You
know, they’re just a form of ammunition.
Jeff: Were you
happy with the way that turned out?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
it accurately simulated it.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: But
there was enough…there wasn’t enough…wiggle-room for tactics,
what kind of artillery barrage, and that kind of stuff. That, yeah,
at least you could get something for the fact you were burning…
battalions like popcorn.
Jeff: Yeah.
(laughs)
JOHN HILL: The
weird thing was you began to think you…the Germans had to roll for
reinforcements, because Falkenhayn was very stingy. He actually did
not want to get a victory. An outright victory. Which he probably
could have in the beginning. Capture Verdun. He wanted to always be
threatening right on the edge of it so the French would continue to
pour troops in to defend. The whole point is he deliberately wanted a
battle of non-decision, because he felt that Germany could withstand
a prolonged attrition better than France could.
Jeff: Right.
Dave: Oh, okay.
JOHN HILL: It’s
sort of a, you know…God help us if our military leaders ever fall
into that mentality.
Jeff: Oh yeah.
Dave: Yeah. How
many total games do you think you’ve designed in your entire
lifetime?
JOHN HILL:
Maybe…published, uh…I don’t know, probably twenty-ish.(3)
Dave: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: Every
now and then I try to sit down and count, and I’ll (?) with some
other wargamers and they always say ‘No, no, you forgot this’ and
‘You forgot that.’ …There’s another number of wargames that I
designed for the government, for the intelligence community, that…
Dave: Oh, really?
JOHN HILL: …that
don’t count since they were all classified.
Dave: Oh, really?
Jeff: Can you
talk about them now or would you have to kill us?
JOHN HILL: No,
they’re still classified.
Jeff: Oh, wow.
JOHN HILL: No,
and I wouldn’t have to kill….I hate people when they say that.
Dave: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: I was
part of the intelligence community and …the only person that gets
in trouble is not the recipient of the information, it’s the person
who committed the security violation (by) babbling.
Jeff: Right. Oh,
I see, yes.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
so…that is usually said by people who are intelligence community
wanna-be’s or something.
Jeff: (laughs)
Dave: Or people
like Jeff who just like bad jokes.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
right.
Jeff: Yes, I do.
Dave: (laughs) So
how did they contact you? Or did you seek that out as opp-
JOHN HILL: Well,
it was sort of a mutual thing. I had been involved in…There were
people, obviously, in the government who play wargames, and some that
are very familiar with both everything that goes (on) within the
government – gaming circle there and within what we might call our
field, more common recreational entertainment field of wargames. And
they were constantly (calling?)…a person who has done a tremendous
job on that is Matt Caffery, I think he’s a general now, for the
Air Force.(4) He was head of wargaming at (their Air (Force)?)
university. But he’s very, very knowledgeable (about) the
commercial wargame field. And…he always was trying to bridge the
two. But I had…basically at one point there was an issue I had in
doing some consulting work for one of their ‘beltway bandits’
back when I lived in Virginia, for the intelligence community, and so
I already had the clearances to a point...But then they decided they
needed a wargame on a certain subject because there was a big debate
between State Department and the Defense Department on you know,
should we do this, that, or what happens when we give these guys this
weapon, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, they decided they wanted
a wargame and one of the persons was familiar with my work. And he
says ‘Well, I know a guy, he lives right here in Virginia and
already has the clearances. Why don’t we give him a call and see
what he can do for him as a contractor?
Jeff: Yeah, and
were they…did they give you, then, requirements for what they
wanted and did those influence you in coming up with designs to make
them realistic?
JOHN HILL: Well,
the thing is, first of all, yeah, they show me what they were looking
for. The main thing is they are looking for often a specific answer.
I called in, I got very much involved with the analytical wargame.
It’s a wargame that says if X does this what is the…decision
matrix after that? What are the probable outcomes? You know, the
whole question of, okay, well that and if there is a reciprocal
escalation on the other side what was the probable outcomes of that?
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: It’s
sort of like, you show them…you start working with hexes, okay….You
can create a wargame world where they can plug in things to find out
what is the effect of, should we (this type of operation and the
office says okay we?) like to help decide but we don’t want to do
X, Y and Z. And eventually I got very much involved in the
intelligence community and gaming out various mil-, uh, weapons
options to the Mujahedeen.
Jeff: Mm-hmm,
right. Oh, really? So the games that you designed for them-
JOHN HILL: And by
the way, the movie Charlie Wilson’s War is very well done.
Jeff: Oh, yeah,
it’s a great movie.
Dave: Yeah, yeah.
Jeff: Were the
games you designed for them more strategic level?
JOHN HILL: More
tactical.
Jeff: Really?
JOHN HILL: You
know, because by then I had already developed a reputation as the
tactical guru from SQUAD LEADER and some other things.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: It was
almost like…or tactical/slash/operational.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: So
there was plenty of folks doing the strategic, and the Army, the
military, had a lot of its own wargames which unfortunately often
were, the result of those were either training, which is one thing,
or they were trying to…designed to prove or justify the virtues of
X weapons system.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: Now,
that’s fine and that’s all…in training those are both simple
and valid uses. But an analytical wargame which they’re doing for
the (?) actually says what’s actually just going to happen without
any real decisions coming in on it. You know, let other people make
the decisions…I’ll just game it out and you can run it as many
times as you want. No, a lot of times there was, they wanted a
computer game, and they wanted this, that. So it was amazing, you’d
go into the library of existing government wargames and there was
maybe a hundred different systems and you could pick a system you
want, call up whoever had it and say ‘hey, DIA(5) or CIA would like
to use this for some stuff, can you…can we get the software from
you?’ Since its government, already government-owned, ‘yeah,
fine, not a problem.’ But it was sort of fascinating just to go,
when they gave you the requirements and say ‘if possible, we don’t
want this created from scratch, can you go kick around the government
wargame libraries and find something that would work? Or that you
could modify to make it work?’
Jeff: Yeah. That
does sound interesting.
JOHN HILL: It is.
You know, it was….and, heck, it kept me gainfully employed for
twenty years.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: That’s
what I was going to ask next. How long. Twen-
JOHN HILL:
Actually, during that time period, with the exception of JOHNNY REB I
still was pretty much not that active. I…for obvious reasons I
didn’t want to touch anything even inkling of modern war.
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL:
Because after a while your brain becomes a jumble and you don’t
know what you’ve learned from unclassified sources and what you’ve
learned from classified.
Jeff: Ah, yeah.
JOHN HILL: And
so you just decide, hey, you know, I’m not smart enough to sort it
out anymore, so…
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL: …I
know the information but I can’t sort out where I got it. Obviously
with the Civil War I was safe.
Jeff: Yes.
Dave: Yes.
JOHN HILL:
There’s a few things that are still classified on the Civil War…
Jeff: Is that
right?
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL:
…involving the Lincoln assassination.
Jeff: Oh, okay.
Wow.
Dave: (laughing)
Jeff: Well….when
did you, if we could talk to you, you know, because our main focus
is, of our podcast, is about SQUAD LEADER, when did you get the first
ideas that you would design a game like-
JOHN HILL: Well,
after a while. Because…I should go back to earlier, I just said I
was totally dissatisfied with what were always available in terms of
a tactical wargame. You know, it didn’t show the lower echelons and
also had silly effects like in PanzerBush, and some of the…and
where you, where a guy can run from cover to cover and not be fired
(at) in between, and even though there was a lot of minis, in many
respects I started designing this as a miniatures game, first.
Because I wanted to play with Micro-Armor. And you know, but I
figured this was all sort of the same thing. And the interesting
thing about it was that I also ran into the same situation that you
had made, pointed out. There is a number of wargames that had this
ridiculousness that a person could run right up to a person point
blank and not receive any defensive fire.
Dave: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: So I
sort of worked it out. We used to play monst-... Micro Armor and I used
little wargame counters for the infantry. That also was (to) sort of
make it work, so you started with a standard. (You) said ‘okay,
what is the base unit we’re going to work with?’ And then
everything is relative to that. What is the, you know, the lowest
common denominator? And if you notice in SQUAD LEADER, the…I think
the basic unit is a four-four, something like that?
Dave: I’m
sorry, what do you mean by that?
JOHN HILL: A
combat factor of…
Dave: 4-4-7?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
4-4-7, something like that?
Dave: Yeah. That
does seem like the base, yeah.
JOHN HILL: Yeah.
And the reason I started with that, particularly the 4-4-7 was I had
tons of VERDUN counters left over that were already labelled as
four-fours.
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: So I
figured ‘well, I can play with…use these ones for playtesting’
and just throw on a morale number of seven, or whatever.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: It
doesn’t matter if this is…because all the numbers are relative,
so pick a number as a base. You know, for your common G.I., neither
elite, neither green. Neither hero, nor coward. You know…
Jeff: Right.
JOHN HILL:
General run of the mill. So, we started playing with it like that.
And it was coming together rather nicely. You know, I talked to Eric
Dott(6) about a tactical miniature game, that was played with
minatures, he said ‘I’m not interested in miniatures.’ And
remember, Eric Dott was the late Eric Dott, now, as president of
Avalon Hill, he says ‘we just do board games.’ Alright, not a
problem, one inch is one hex.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: And it
translated perfectly, because basically it wasn’t based on another
game, it was based on what I, my perception of reality. And for a
long time I’d go to wargame conventions and run SQUAD LEADER in
miniature.
Dave: Yeah, which
I have done also, actually.
JOHN HILL: It
works very well.
Dave: It does,
yeah.
JOHN HILL:
Whether it’s SQUAD LEADER or ASL, it all works very well. I was at
a convention out west and a guy had actually built a section of
Stalingrad that was on the…that I had, from my little game board,
you know, that actually he was doing a miniature of the infamous The
Guards Counterattack.
Dave: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: Which
is probably the most-played wargame scenario of all time.
Dave: Yeah, it
probably is, I suppose.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
the first scenario of SQUAD LEADER.
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL: And
that worked out, and there were a lot of guys that (?)…in many
ways, ASL is, you know, it’s just SQUAD LEADER with a hell of a lot
of chrome.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: And
some guys like a lot of chrome, some don’t. Fine. It proves that
the system will function if, whether you layer on as much as you
want. You know, when you get down to looseleaf book number three or
something, you know, you’ve layered on quite a bit, (but) that
still works.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: My
personal preference, I think, in…I think ASL has gone too far with
too much detail, and too much that slows down the game too much.
Dave: And when
you look at the fact that they reissued ASL Starter Kits…
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
I thought that was a rip-off.
Dave: …which
have pared it back down.
JOHN HILL:
Yeah…but I also think that I was sort of, had a bit of…a lot of
gamers told me they had a problem with…’your old counters are no
good any more, you gotta buy all these new ones.’ So, I sort of
like wherever possible to try and keep backward compatibility.(7)
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL: (But)
it’s become a legend, it’s become a lifestyle. The problem I
thought…once again, it’s the old question of detail versus
playability. It’s not necessarily realism. Well, realism has many
different flavours. One of my design objectives with SQUAD LEADER was
once you learned the game, the basic game, you could play it in real
time, two minutes (per turn). People have done that.
Jeff: I’d like
to try that sometime.
JOHN HILL: You
know, because it’s supposed to present the actual quick, snap
decisions of combat.
Jeff: Yes. Right.
JOHN HILL: You
know, go back through Band of Brothers and time some of the combat
sequences.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: You
will see everything. Prep Fire. Defensive Fire. Advancing Fire. Close
Combat. He comes up to the building and throws in a hand grenade. And
he says ‘hey, this is all happening in a two-minute cycle.’
Jeff: Hmm.
JOHN HILL: And
you have to make decisions – and that was the whole point of…you
could do it in two minutes, you had to make quick decisions. You
couldn’t ponder, and says ‘okay, let me look up a rule on this,
is this in Volume 3 or Volume 4?’
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: No!
Somebody says ‘go for it’, you know. When you began to lay on all
the extra detail and chrome of ASL where people are…You know, I’ve
watched people play it, and they’ll spend most of their time going
through the rules.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: Which
they’re very complete, you know. And they’re obviously, when
there are multiple volumes, they gotta be complete. But when it
takes, because of all that rule-checking back and forth, when you
have, when you now have two-minute turns, assuming you’re trying to
simulate two minutes of combat and takes a half-hour to resolve…
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL:
…you’ve gotten a lot of detail, but I think you lost the realism.
Realism is in the stress and snap-decision of small-unit combat.
Jeff: Were you
aware of that when you were designing SQUAD LEADER? Were you paring
back things? Was detail creeping into your design, which you later
took out?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
it was a constant thing. You’d want to put more detail in, at the
same time you could still have the fast and furiousness of it.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: My
personal opin- and it’s a balance. You know, a matter of fact, a
matter of personal taste. Many things. I think the best balance was
attained in CROSS OF IRON.
Dave: Now, did
you work on the next two modules?
JOHN HILL: I
worked on CROSS OF IRON and CRESCENDO OF DOOM. And it did some work
on G.I.: ANVIL OF VICTORY but that was mostly Don Greenwood.
Dave: Okay,
right. Okay, I remember his name, yeah. Because I actually just got
started in when they did the ADVANCED.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
well…
Dave: But I know
exactly what you’re saying about the speed thing, and it is a
lot…you can still capture that with the new…with the ADVANCED,
but if you stick with infantry. I think that really helps. Or if
you’re playing someone who really knows the rules really well,
which is not me! And I’ve been playing a lot.
JOHN HILL:
Mm-hmm.
Dave: You know, I
can rely on him: ‘okay, what happen here when you overrun me, okay,
you got deception, deception, deception,(?)’ or I’m just ‘I’ll
just do that’, you know? But you’re right, I really like a game
that when you put a little more pressure on it and try and move those
turns along.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
and the thing is… the whole question of options. How much options
do you really have? For, you know, some people (?) the concept of
should you be able to….span of control. And, you know, if you’re
the wargamer in SQUAD LEADER and you’re running the normal
assortment of counters, you probably have maybe a company…maybe…
four squads in a platoon, maybe three platoons…twelve to
sixteen…squads out there, maybe more, maybe less. You’ve…got a
couple of tanks in support or something like this. Now, so you’re
the wargamer, so you‘re functioning as the company commander,
that’s your cockpit. You suddenly say ‘get those tanks over
there’, and send the tanks over there, let’s hope the armour does
its thing. Knock out this little roadblock or something like this
with the infantry support. But you’ve just given the order for them
to…. How they actually, necessarily do it, and what options are
really being chosen by the people in the tank, your infantry support,
the defenders and stuff like this, you can’t control. You just hope
they do their job, and…they get lucky.
Jeff: Hmm. Right.
JOHN HILL: So
somebody’s thinking ‘okay, the tank’s going to overrun this,
and my options are this option, this…’ I sort of thought, well,
the options are really if you go back to the concept of you are the
company commander, your option is you order it into battle, tell it
where to go and hope for the best. So that’s why you could…I
think a lot of that stuff as you go further away from the wargamer as
a role-playing person (he’s the company commander) the more you
should probably abstract the various events. Rather than having all
the specific little options played out. But a lot of gamers (?) want
to be able to say ‘no, I want to be able to do… control the
options of everything
Dave: Yeah, I
actually want to be the infantry guy throwing the DC and the tank
commander and…
JOHN HILL: Yeah.
You know, once again, as I say, watch…Saving Private Ryan or any of
Band of Brothers and the first thing that…the combat is very well
done… The people are sort of in control, but they’re really not.
You watch… things are going on, the guy who is supposedly
commanding this is just watching, just hoping and trying to react and
trying to make decisions but his actual span of command once you’re
engaged is very limited.
Saving Private Ryan |
Jeff: Yeah, you
see in that: you see an enemy squad coming around the corner of a
building, you don’t, you don’t weigh…’Should I fire at him,
or should I wait until he…’ (laughs) ‘
JOHN HILL: You’re
going to cut loose
Jeff:…crosses
the street (to) fire. You’re just gonna cut loose. Yeah, that’s
right.
JOHN HILL: Or
you’re just going to say… you’re out there by yourself with
your Colt .45 and here comes a German squad with an MG-38(sic) you
just hope somebody else is around to take them out.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: (laughs)
Jeff: Now, did
you…as you were designing it, you know, what was your consideration
regarding fog of war? That’s always been a sort of a topic around
wargaming that’s been really interesting.
Dave: In and
around SQUAD LEADER.
Jeff: Yeah, in
and around SQUAD LEADER specifically.
JOHN HILL: Well,
I think you always try to blend in as much as you possibly can, fog
of war, to a point. You want to have as much (as) you possibly can
without… with still making it playable. You could get ridiculous to
the point that no one, there’s no counters on the board and you’re
not even, everybody’s plotting and charting and stuff like that.
Well, c’mon guys, it’s still supposedly a game. But on the other
hand, too much fog of war itself is unrealistic. There’s a lot of
games that sometimes over-stress it…There’s the little blocks…
Jeff: Yes. The
block games, right.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
you can’t see what’s behind them and stuff like that, you know,
you can’t see…you see just a block representing troops.
Dave: Yeah,
WASHINGTON’S WARS did that, I remember. But it only did it when you
were, like, far away, so…
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
but in reality though, particularly let’s say on the Eastern
Front….they got one of the big block games on the Eastern Front.
Everybody pretty much knew what they – intelligence was very good.
Everybody had good orders of battle on the other guy.
Dave: And you had
aerial reconnaissance, and you had radio communications…
JOHN HILL: And
everybody says, you know, you can look at the Russians’ Operation
URANUS which, the big cut-off at Stalingrad. The Germans weren’t
surprised by the Russian attack. They saw aerial reconnaissance, they
saw all the stuff building up on their flanks. It wasn’t lack of
information, it was the misjudgement of maybe, ‘yeah, well, they
can do that but we probably will, yeah, we’ll attack and we’ll
deal with it.’
Dave: Yeah,
right.
JOHN HILL: It was
a mis-… not so much the lack of information but a lack of
appreciation of the potenti…the poor fighting quality of the
Hungarians and Romanians and Italians. And also an overestimation of
what *they* could do…
Dave: Correct.
JOHN HILL: Which
is more…rather than just a lack of information, big…total
surprise. In some (?) also Kursk, it wasn’t…both sides knew,
everybody knew what each side had or what each side was doing and
everybody, and the Russians knew when the Germans were going to
attack. It was a battle of perfect information. On both sides.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: And so
it was, the mistake was not a lack of intelligence, it was this
mistake of judgement. You know: ‘Do we really want to do this?’
…so that’s an example, sometimes, you know, what is the fog of
war? I think fog of war is more relevant in some of the more
mod-…anc-… more period games where people’s whole armies could
hide behind a hill and come out of a fog and things like that.
Jeff: Yeah. Okay.
JOHN HILL: And
also it becomes a little more fog-of-war-ish as you get down to the
smaller units. Very rarely, you know, it’s not like the company
commander in the middle of a fight for a little town somewhere in
Normandy has access to, at that instant, access to all the aerial
photography. You wouldn’t. And even then it would be 48 hours old.
So: so what?
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: He
doesn’t necessarily know exactly what i-…you know, what amount of
Germans are coming around, at him at this moment. He’s pr-… very
much…he’s in a close action inside a town, or, you know, woods or
something, he’s, he will very quickly find out…
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL:
…whether…so in that case you have the fog of war. I think you
could work a lot of that into SQUAD LEADER and ASL.
Dave: Yeah,
weren’t the concealment counters…they were in the original SQUAD
LEADER, right?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
that’s what they were there for, and there’s, other, you
could…they could mean a lot of things. They could say ‘it could
be real, it could be dummy’. You were also, could do some amounts
of ‘okay, I have a whole platoon hidden behind X Hill’ or
something like this. The hidden counter could als…usually estimate
if its real or dummy. You could also, could be ‘it’s real but it
represents like six squads.’ Easily enough done with just a little
roster sheet.
Jeff: Right.
JOHN HILL: But
you don’t want the fog of war element to become a tedious game in
itself. You know, bottom line, we do this for fun, and after a while
if it becomes too much work why bother?
Dave: Yeah, with
all, recording all the secret things and that kind of stuff.
JOHN HILL: Now,
some people, that’s their game. You know, they’re, that’s
okay. But they really like that.
Jeff: Yeah. So
did you design the game so it was fun for you, or were you thinking
of your audience? Then did you make certain concessions on your own?
JOHN HILL: I felt
that primarily I tried…the group I was playing with thought the way
I did, so (if) it was fun for me, it was fun for them.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: Beyond
that group, one didn’t know. That’s why so many wargames are a
dud, because the designer thinks they’re a lot of fun, his little
group thinks they’re a lot of fun, but when they go out and throw
it out into the great piranha-pit of wargamers at large…
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: NOT!
Jeff: Yeah. And
in 1977 you published SQUAD LEADER and what was the reception like
when it…
JOHN HILL: It was
outstanding… I remember when Avalon Hill first, when they first
released at a wargame convention in some little place in Long Island,
I think.(8) Not Woodnough(?) College, but maybe….I think it was
somewhere else like that…Basically they sold out the first or
second day and they had to get more games schlepped up from
Baltimore.
Jeff: That’s a
good thing. And when it went to press, were you happy with the way it
was? Were you satisfied when…
JOHN HILL: …I
was…it was fine. There was always going to be some compromises and
stuff…
Jeff: Were you
already starting to work on the next…
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL: Yeah…
Jeff: …
improvements…
JOHN HILL: … to
some degree, what would be next, what I should we should go.
Something, they wanted to do certain things for marketing reasons,
like, you know, and I says ‘okay fine, whatever’. But I don’t
know what…person came up with the idea that the box should be
purple.
JOHN HILL: You
know, which is the most unlikely colour for a wargame box. Well,
second most unlikely, the first one would be pink.
Jeff: Yeah. (more
laughter)
Dave: It's not
very military...unless you're like an ancient, I don't know, Prussian
or something.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
okay, Caesar's colour...I think the colour of the Emperor of Rome was
purple.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: Yeah...
Did...
JOHN HILL: And,
it was, you know, that was just..., but now that's probably one of
the most sought after antique wargames of all time, the 1st Edition
purple Squad Leader.(9)
Jeff & Dave:
Yeah.
Dave: Did you,
um, can I talk business a little bit? Do you sell these games in
bulk? I mean, you know what I mean, is it like...you're contracted,
or you design it and then you just sell it all at once, or do you
keep a royalty system, or has that changed throughout history, or ...
JOHN HILL: Well
back then I was doing everything on a royalty basis.
Dave: Per box
sold, or...?
JOHN HILL: It
would be so many per game sold, and it could (be so much) per game
unit or it could be a percent of the amount you get, maybe, if it's a
fixed percentage maybe you get a different amount or it's a wholesale
sale, or retail sale, or you just come up with a flat figure. There's
been a lot of different ways (of) doing it. You know, and a lot of
different companies want different ways.
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL: More
and more, not even more and more, a lot of times depending on when I
look at the level of whatever somebody wants something and, maybe,
usually just the scenario for their existing game. I've done a
scenario for the Flights of Fantasy's(10) TIDE OF IRON. It was their
idea, and it was a good idea, to get all the famous wargame designers
together to design one scenario for the TIDE OF IRON game... So there
was no real royalty, in essence, they all go, all the scenario go
into one scenario book, so that was a flat fee.
Dave: Okay. And
now you don't get it...well, you don't get anything, obviously, from
the ADVANCED system?
JOHN HILL: No, I
don't.
Dave: And your-
JOHN HILL: That
was a mistake on my part, not to really go into...not to press fully
for that with, you know, the full legal power that could be available
to me. But I didn't. So I didn't get anything on ASL.
Dave: Okay.
The...and of course, no one makes a living at this, or have you
managed to kind of do that, or...?
JOHN HILL: No. No
one has made a...They made a living by using it as a lever into
something else. Certainly I made a very good living with the
intelligence community for 20 years.
Dave: Right.
JOHN HILL: Which,
my introduction to that was primarily through doing some wargames,
and then one thing led to another and then pretty much it was just
sort of sucked into the whole thing, and you know... But it then
works, but that's the fact the government pays very well.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: So,
but now designing wargames and stuff, yeah, I can (?) living but it
makes such...it makes pocket money and I never will because, you
know, I've got a pretty good government pension, so I don't have to
(rely) on it for a living.
Dave: Do you
consider yourself-
JOHN HILL: Most
people who make a living out of wargaming are not doing it in the
commercial sector. They eventually... come to the attention of the
prof-... governmental sector, then you can make some very good
money. Provided they have the right contacts... the timing is
everything. You can't just come out and say 'I'd like to sell a
wargame to the DIA or something like that.' Well, it doesn't quite
work that way, they already got their contractors, so...
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL:
...they just got to hook up with some bidding for something, that's a
whole other game in itself.
Jeff: So after
SQUAD LEADER, you know, the 1st Edition, then ...that came through
four editions I believe, is that right?
JOHN HILL: That's
possible. Yeah.
Jeff: And were
you involved in those second, third and fourth edition modifications?
JOHN HILL: Of
SQUAD LEADER, yeah.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: Well,
I was involved in cashing...I was cashing my royalty cheques,
certainly.
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
Jeff: That's the
best part.
JOHN HILL: But
after a while, they're just sort of, you know, cleaning up the rules
and plugging and chugging and at least getting away from the purple
box.
Jeff: Yeah,
right.
Dave: (laughs)
Jeff: Which they
did, on 2nd Edition, I thought.
JOHN HILL: Oh
yeah, they most certainly did. As they were doing it they created
the...all-time, you know, the number one collector's 1st Edition. I
know guys...who just constantly go through the consimworld listings
and everything, and constantly hunting for the, hoping that someone
has ... a purple SQUAD LEADER...unpunched, will surface. Lots of
luck, but if you do, it's going to be serious money.(11)
Jeff: Yeah. You
don't have a stack of those stashed in your basement?
JOHN HILL: No,
everybody has asked me that.
Jeff: Yeah.
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
Jeff: Ah, what
the world wants to know.
JOHN HILL: Yeah
that would be... no, no...no.
Jeff & Dave:
(more laughter)
Dave: And it also
said that you-
JOHN HILL: I
probably should have!
Jeff: Yeah, if
only-
Dave: Looking
back, yeah-
JOHN HILL: You
know, I could have treated it like a wine, take a whole case of the
purple SQUAD LEADERs and, you know, stashed it away for twenty years.
Jeff: Well who
would have thought, I mean, it seems to us that there's a reason...
JOHN HILL: It's a
phenomenon, it was unpredict-
Jeff: Yes.
JOHN HILL: And
that was the... No one expected it to be what it was. The normal run
of a game would be, you know, it would be popular for a couple of
years and then sort of die out. And then another game would be in
vogue.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL:
There's an old saying that 80% of all wargame sales happen in the
first two years. That was the rule of thumb in the commercial
wargaming industry at the time.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL:
Because everybody went on to the newest and greatest whatever it
was... To have planned for SQUAD LEADER being what it was would have
been impossible.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: You
know, two things you never can really predict is total disaster and
total success.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: But
odds are too much against either one.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL:
Ninety-nine percent of the time you get something in the middle. And
SQUAD LEADER was such a successful design in the basic mechanisms of
how it works, whether it's SQUAD LEADER, ASL, JOHNNY REB or any one
of its numerous imitations, it had an elegant simplicity about it
that gave it legs that had not been seen probably before or since.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Well it seems to us that there's, you know, something of a
Renaissance, I guess, in this kind of board gaming and we suspect
it's because people played these when they were younger, high school,
college...
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
and they're sort of getting back into it.
Jeff: And they're
getting back into it, the kids are gone to college themselves, and
people have time and-
JOHN HILL:
...starts poking around in his basement and stuff and goes 'ah, yeah,
I remember that.'
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: And he
dusts it off, 'yeah, that was cool, man, I had a lot of good times
with that.'
Jeff: Yeah, and
of course the internet makes it so easy, then, to find people to
play, it's a wonderful thing. I mean, I found-
JOHN HILL:
Absolutely. Oh yeah, before the internet you just sort of ... it was
by pure chance.
Dave: Yeah, or
you made your friends play.
JOHN HILL: Your
friends, yeah, you converted a few friends and you played the role of
the apostle.
Jeff: Right.
JOHN HILL: ...Or
eventually maybe you started a little wargaming club at your high
school or something like that.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: Or
college, or whatever.
Dave: Now you had
also owned a game store, is that right?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
I owned a co-... it was a hobby shop. It was in Lafayette, Indiana.
It was, you know, common general full-line hobby shop. Mostly model
railroading and military hobbies of which wargaming was one part of
it.
Dave: Okay.
JOHN HILL: But I
... it wasn't primarily a game store. Games... I did okay with the
games but the bread and butter was in the more established hobbies
such as model railroading, R/C models and things like that. The main
reason was model railroading was an established adult hobby, but now
adults had a lot more money than the high school kids who were
primarily the core of your wargaming group at the time.
Jeff & Dave:
Right.
Dave: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: Now
any smart businessman focuses his business on the hobbies of the
rich.
Dave: Yeah.
(laughs)
JOHN HILL: You
know, so, yeah...adult, model railroaders, they had a lot of money,
they could drop a couple hundred bucks on a single engine and stuff
like that....I want to sell stuff to these guys. But the wargaming
was fun, I had ... I enjoyed it and stuff but...it was primarily the
hobby of the people of, in high school and college and (they) do not
have that much disposable income. A few did, but not that many.
Dave: Yeah, and I
think though-
JOHN HILL: And it
was...okay, then, that's when I was running the hobby shop and then I
even, that's when I spun off my game company, the Conflict Game
Company.
Dave: And how
long did that last?
JOHN HILL: Oh, it
lasted for about a couple, two, three years. And then I sold the
company to Game Designer's Workshop.
Dave: Oh, okay,
right, right.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
and they ran with it for awhile and it's (a) sort of sobering thought
that very, very few wargame companies survive, maybe five to ten
(years) at best...
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: And
some not even that long,
Dave: Do you have
any insight into the failure of Avalon Hill, or were you not that...?
JOHN HILL: Eric
Dott's (?) never was a failure. His whole concept was ... Eric Dott
was a businessman.
Dave: Was he the
owner of Avalon Hill?
JOHN HILL: Yeah.
He owned Avalon Hill. Basically Eric Dott owned a printing company.
Actually Charles Roberts sort of started Avalon Hill and the company
went bankrupt, mainly because they owed Eric Dott's printing company
so much money, so Eric Dott just wiped out the books, took over
Avalon Hill, (he was) smart enough to see this little company has
some legs, let it run for awhile, but the whole point was, he would
keep it going to the point he would be able to cash in and sell it
off to somebody else. And he sold it off, eventually, to Hasbro.
Dave: Right. So
you mean the printer guy, Monarch, is that Monarch Printing, or
something?
JOHN HILL:
Monarch Press, yeah. That was owned by Eric Dott. That gave him the
angle, the leverage to take over Avalon Hill and then run with that.
Eric Dott was a supreme opportunist and businessman. The company was
a ... his strategy, you know, whether...he sold it off for a good
chunk of change. So from his viewpoint, it wasn't a failure at all.
It did exactly what he intended it to do. It was a commodity that he
picked up cheap because they were broke and they owed him money and
eventually...it made a good cash flow all through the years, then he
sold it off for some serious bucks to Hasbro.
Dave: And what,
how did they not manage theirfunds well enough...printing too many
games at once? Or do you...
JOHN HILL:
...Well, I think it was ... well it was sort of hard to say. They're
only bringing out one new product a year, and so your whole life, or
life or death is based on what's going to happen to that one new
prod-... you know.(12)
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: You
better have a winner every year.
Dave: Yeah, so-
JOHN HILL: And
had SQUAD LEADER not come along they probably would have died a lot
earlier. Because they had a number of really bad games. You know, one
that was sort of mediocre was Lou Zocchi's LUFTWAFFE. And yeah, okay,
it sort of played out in a very simplistic way where....the big air
campaign over Germany, but eventually Germany is pounded into
oblivion, all the targets are bombed. (It) didn't really ha-...you
know, it was okay, but it didn't have the kind of excitement. Then
there was the all-time, I think the biggest dud of a wargame, it was
designed by Tom Shaw: KRIEGSPIEL.
Jeff: KRIEGSPIEL?
JOHN HILL:
KRIEGSPIEL.
Jeff: Hmm.
JOHN HILL: That
was their game for one year. And they, you know, maybe it was very
novel, and different, but it was totally out of touch with what the
wargamers wanted....and what they were looking for. So you're
bringing out one game a year and if you bring out a total, you know,
dog, whether it's a brilliant design or not, if the gamers don't like
it you're dead in the water.
Jeff: And SPI on
the other hand was coming out with-
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
they just cranked them out like popcorn.
Jeff: Three a
month, or something like that, for a while?
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
and the whole point was, yeah, some were good, some were bad...
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL:
...some were hideous, some had little (?) but who cares? You got
a....you didn't like it you got another once coming, a couple coming
next month.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah,
right. (laughs) Right but that didn't-
JOHN HILL: ...you
throw, you do enough of them, you're going to get funds, you're going
to have a part, an even mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.
But...they were cheap enough and popcorn enough that you happen to
get one of the ugly ones, so what? Maybe the next one's going to be
great.
Jeff: Have you
seen the ... we recently received an email with a link to some video
on YouTube of an SPI infomercial. What they call an infomercial from
1977 or so, or 1980. It's about five minute long commercial for SPIGames, have you seen that?
JOHN HILL: No.
Jeff: I'll email
it to you, it's pretty...fun to watch.
JOHN HILL:
(laughs)
Jeff: It'll take
you back.
Dave: Yeah, it'll
take you back.
Jeff: It'll take
you back.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
I'm sure it would.
Jeff: Do you
play...what are you playing these days? Are you still playing? Have a
group of guys you-
JOHN HILL: Oh,
occasionally I'll be get together, when I go to the conventions I'll
get talked into a JOHNNY REB game or something like that.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: ...
Okay, you know I went to Consimworld...and I'll occasionally play
something, but usually people just want to sit there and talk about
games, or I'll ... talk about some of my...ongoing design work and
stuff.
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: I
really don't play that much anymore...it's simply, I'm more
interested in who I'm playing with.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: My
God, there are some people out there who take this stuff way too
seriously.
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
Dave: And you
made the game, and you're saying that...
JOHN HILL: No,
but there is a... I went to a fun little convention, I recommend it
to you, it happens every two years, down in Indianapolis, it's called
JOHNNYCON.
Jeff: Oh.
JOHN HILL: It was
based, the guy who runs it was one of the original playtesters of
SQUAD LEADER, one of the original playtesters of JOHNNY REB and he
became a big JOHNNY REB fan so he founded JOHNNYCON, it was basically
based on JOHNNY REB and all derivatives thereof and since SQUAD
LEADER was the prequel...it's always played there in apparently
endless variations. It's in Indianapolis...this year in June. And if
you're in Chicago, I can promise you it will be a great, a good time.
There's only about 50 guys there. But you're going to be with all the
guys who were there at...the creation.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Might be a worthwhile road trip.
JOHN HILL: ...If
you're in Chicago, it's a two hour drive.
Jeff: Yeah. Well,
we might do that. It'd be fun to see...
JOHN
HILL:....I'll be there... and a lot of the other guys, there's always
some beautiful SQUAD LEADER miniature games. One fellow did a
beautiful version I think, of, I forget the actual scenario but
everybody knows it, Hill 681 or something like that(13)...
Jeff: Yeah,
right.
Dave: Oh, with
the big hill.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
which...and I had sort of forgotten, about this scenario and
forgotten how to play SQUAD LEADER even. But this guy had done it
brilliant with miniatures, he did all the terrain in miniature, you
know... So...I was playing this scenario as the German, it's very
frustrating for the German, you guess, when you're constantly seeing,
(when) you're getting ahead, you know, more Russians coming or
something, like that...
Jeff: Yeah, here
comes some more...
Dave: Yeah.
(laughs)
JOHN HILL: ...so
finally I got these bastards under control, 'aw, ma-an,' you know?
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: Which
was really what the Germans felt like in the post-Kursk era.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: Yes, no
doubt.
JOHN HILL: And,
at one point, I says 'you know,' - I was getting so frustrated -
and...something like that...I had a significant string of bad luck,
and I find myself (saying) 'this is really unbalanced, what moron
designed this scenario.'
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: And
then the response, 'well, you did!'
Jeff & Dave:
(more laughter)
JOHN HILL: Oh -
okay!
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
JOHN HILL: But
yeah, so, in closing, so frustrating that I had even forgot I was the
creator of this monster.
Jeff: Oh, my
gosh.
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL: But
everybody had a great laugh about that.
Jeff: Yeah, well.
Maybe we will get to JOHNNYCON this year. That sounds very
interesting...
JOHN HILL: It is.
And you'll get, the guy will probably once again bring Hill 681.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
JOHN HILL: ... It
is cleverly balanced in there, the German keeps thinking 'I almost
won this time, maybe the next time If I do just that little bit
different.'
Jeff: Yeah.
JOHN HILL: That
makes for a good wargame.
Jeff: It'd be
worth the drive. It would be worth the drive just to meet you,
because, you know, like it or not you're a legend.
JOHN HILL: Well,
thank you very much.
Jeff: How's that
feel. I mean, when we ...it's really been a real honour to talk to
you.
JOHN HILL: Well,
thank you very much.
Dave: Definitely.
Yes.
JOHN HILL: But, I
mean you're gonna...the people who will be there were one who were
some of the first playtesters of JOHNNY REB and the first playtesters
of SQUAD LEADER. The guys who played it in miniature, crawling around
on my basement floor.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: (laughs)
JOHN HILL: You
know, this is the real grognards.
Jeff & Dave:
Yeah....
JOHN HILL: The
thing is, you begin to see all the games are, JOHNNY REB is basically
derivative of SQUAD LEADER. And you see all these different
variations. The thing is you can put on any game you want, provided
it's a, based in some way, loosely cosmically with, from JOHNNY
REB/slash/SQUAD LEADER.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Sounds like a kick.
JOHN HILL: It is,
it absolutely (is)....because it's so grossly informal, it is a kick.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: Now, that
is Hill 621 you think, that scenario we were just talking about?
JOHN HILL: I
forget the number, but everybody's knows what I'm talking about.
Dave: Yeah, I
think it was 621, it's listed on the ROAR(14) record where they
record who wins and it actually comes up 75 victories for the German
and 74 for the Russian. That's pretty well balanced. According to
this.
JOHN HILL: Yeah,
you don't get more balanced than that.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: Alright,
well thank you anyway. Anything else you'd like to say?
JOHN HILL: Well,
no, I think you pretty much covered it from the SL and ASL viewpoint.
Jeff: Well, we
appreciate you very much taking the time to talk with us, I know-
JOHN HILL: Well,
it's been my pleasure fellows, fun to reminisce about a lot of the
quirks of hobbies, how these things come to be.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dave: ...we had
interviewed the new full-time employee at MMP last week(15) and we had
you this week, and I told Jeff it's all downhill from here.
JOHN HILL:
(laughter)
Jeff: We've
already got our...maybe we should stop recording, Dave, and just fold
up the tents.
Dave: Yep...after
this, there's just nothing more important than these two guys.
JOHN HILL: You've
already climbed the two mountains you wanted to do.
Jeff: That's
right.
Jeff & Dave:
(laughter)
Jeff: Well,
thanks again very much, John.
END
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
-
Hill may be referring to Tactical Game 3, which was the precursor to PanzerBlitz.
-
Hill refers several times to “arc of attention”, perhaps a more common wargaming term would be “covered arc.”
-
Boardgamegeek lists 21 published titles with Hill as a designer.
-
The LinkedIn page of Matt Caffrey, Jr. lists him holding the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Wargame Coordinator position beginning in May 2005.
-
Defense Intelligence Agency
-
Eric Dott was the president of Monarch Services, which was Avalon Hill’s printer. When Charles S. Roberts sold Avalon Hill to its creditors, Dott eventually became the sole owner of Avalon Hill.
-
Hill’s response is a non-sequitur as the ASLSK don’t require the replacement of counters. He is likely referring instead to the reaction of original Squad Leader players to having to start from scratch again with ASL, which completely replaced the rules, player aids and counter sets. Only some of the map boards from the original Squad Leader series continued unchanged in the new game system.
-
ORIGINS III was held on Staten Island on 22-24 July 1977.
-
Reaction to this notion of "sought after" in the community is mixed. The author tried very hard to obtain an original and eventually did find two purple boxes for sale, at modest prices, in the last 10 years or so.
-
Hill is referring to Fantasy Flight Games.
- This author did the same with the ebay listings. His pair of purple boxes contain later edition components inside the box. Finding a true 1st Edition may be a difficult task. This author has produced a guide to authenticating a 1st Edition - click here or see the video on YouTube.
- Hill is talking about the original loss of Avalon Hill by Roberts to Eric Dott in 1962, rather than the sale of Avalon Hill to Hasbro in 1998.
- One suspects this is actually Hill 621, the popular Scenario 5 from the original SQUAD LEADER.
- Remote Online Automated Record. - website
- Chas Argent was featured in Episode 30 "All That Chas"