Our onward march with Battlechat continues today with another American guest, the charming and thought-provoking Jeffrey Knudsen, known to many as “The War Artisan” thanks to his wonderful website.
I first encountered Jeff in the early days of the Old School Wargaming Yahoo! group (sadly now defunct, I imagine, because of the changes made to Yahoo! groups) back in 2005. I quickly recognised him as a highly intelligent contributor to discussions about the nature of games and the kind of experience that he felt players ought to have, so it came as no surprise to discover that Jeff is himself a rules writer and game designer.
In fact, his long involvement in the hobby has been extremely varied, encompassing fantasy, science fiction, role playing games and board games, but he now focuses almost exclusively on historical gaming, with a particular passion for the ‘gunpowder to gasoline’ era. Of great interest to me is his love of the Age of Sail, because this has led him to create a simply exquisite range of cardstock model ships (PDF downloads to print, cut out and assemble).
Jeff is equally passionate about land warfare of the Napoleonic era, for which he has authored an excellent ruleset of his own (Napoleonic Command), as well as being involved in the development and playtesting of the large-scale battle rules ESR (Et sans résultat!). In fact, nowadays Jeff confesses to being as interested in running and designing games as he is in playing them, and we spend time discussing his approach to games and some of the important aspects of the process, including scenario design and understanding probability.
An early adopter of the WWW, Jeff has also amassed a simply wonderful collection of photos on Flickr that I wholeheartedly recommend you to visit – amongst the photos of gaming conviviality (there seems to be a great deal of cake and whisky consumed during his games!) there are wonderful shots of both naval and land-based wargames in progress, many in the form of annotated After-Action Reports. His account has amassed more than 2 million hits!
Time, therefore, to line up another unit on your painting table, pick up those miniatures and get to work in the company of this charming and thought-provoking ambassador for the hobby in the USA.
Henry
Royal Museums Greenwich Ship Plans
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