Next PG Modern Game Subject?

[Matt W]

One of the true issues behind an introductory game is that it has to be truly introductory AND be commercially viable.  In order to be commercially viable it must be on a well known battle/campaign and presumably include Americans (largest immediate market). For PG Normandy was an obvious choice.  

For Modern the choice is tougher.  It would be great to be able to use the Desert Storm campaign but I'm afraid that it suffers from one sidedness and the system probably no longer works due to technological advances (PG: Current anyone?).  Asymmetrical warfare is similarly very tough at this level.  Thus, while Vietnam fits the bill chronologically and from a nationality perspective it would be tough due to the need to permit a technologically overwhelmed force to persevere in the face of irresistible force, as well as the need to permit hidden or random forces (the sizable solo player community hates hidden units) and the terrain would pose a special rules issue (trust me, bocage was bad enough!).

The problem with the Falklands as an intro is that there isn't that much meat there and the lack of any significant armored forces (the Argentines had 12 Panhard armored cars) takes a big chunk out of the rule set.  It is probably scaled to fit a Golden Journal with 5-6 scenarios.

Thinking about the series in general, it has a very different profile than PG.  In PG we will almost never run out of historical actions to portray.  That's kind of what happens when millions of men fight each other for 5 or more years over three continents.  As a result, there is always something that actually happened that can be portrayed in the system.

For Modern, we have a dearth of actual significant actions, despite tons of weapon systems and doctrines that are well known that never quite got used the way they were designed to (Thank God!).  I have noticed a great deal of interest on many of the boards in Cold War topics and many of the older Cold War games carry a pretty hefty price (see GDWs TWW series or SPIs linkable magazine games like Fifth Corps/Donau Front/BAOR).  As such, I think the market for such a game would be acceptable.

I would suggest that Modern probably would benefit from an introductory game (and game arc) set in a Cold War gone hot.  We eliminate a lot of the problems of actual actions by putting the battles in easily modeled terrain and we remove the whole asymmetrical aspect of many modern combat situations, which would require a heavy weight of rules.  As a line of games I expect that Modern would be an inverse of PG in that the main line will be conjectural battles from which real actions will be hung, as opposed to PG's actual campaigns from which an occasional alt history product (Iron Wolves, Hopeless but Not Serious, etc.) are posed.

Nevertheless what I WANT to see is the Indo-Pakistani wars, primarily as a result of playing Indian Unity...