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@kworker @fishsauce This is so good. While I agree with Crimethinc.’s analysis of the game and its genesis, as you’d expect, I also have a certain amount of reverence built up for Jim Dunnigan – he looms far larger, albeit mostly indirectly, in the story of my own life than can be accounted for in a flat reading of the politics of simulation.
That CRT is like a piece of the mid-seventies dropped into 1969. It must’ve given them a little frisson.
(“So, like what are we going to do? Are we going to organize students? I couldn’t stand students”: lol lol.)
Kurious UAW/MF addendum for game nrrrds & grognards:
“In 1969, Columbia University history major Jim Dunnigan, who would later found Simulation Publications, Inc., published a simulation game in the March 11, 1969 edition of the Columbia Spectator named ‘Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!’ The game was based on recent disturbances at Columbia University and allowed the players to play either as protestors or administration with victory determined by winning over various stakeholder groups.”
I’d buy that for a dollar! With an SPI hex-grid map, to be sure.
@adamgreenfield I've got that game's BGG entry on hand every single time someone has the ignorant audacity to say "let's keep politics out of wargames".
Some years later SPI would publish "The Creature That Ate Sheboygan", a silly game about giant movie monsters versus the police, army, etc.
Then one of their magazines published an article on how to convert it into a serious game about rioting and civil disorder.
@adamgreenfield wow I wonder if the rulebook is in some archive somewhere, I'd love to read it
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