Wargaming
Series

Wargames are familiar to most, if not all, military forces around the world. Wargames can range from classroom exercises, to expansive undertakings that involve the deployment of force elements and major capabilities into a designated area. Underlying these activities is the connection between the use of gaming constructs to derive lessons and as a means for training and education. War(games) offer the military profession with an important avenue for training and educating its force in ways of thinking about problems of varying complexity, collaboration and coordination between disparate elements of the force and also with external agencies, and to test plans and capabilities against a designated adversary. These outcomes can also be achieved when considering ‘gaming’ more broadly, particularly through the abstraction and problem modelling that games offer.

The Australian Defence College is exploring the use of games as part of Professional Military Education. This series is intended to be a catalyst for further discussion about how the Australian Defence Force can deliberately incorporate games throughout all levels of joint professional military education. I thank all the contributors for their perspectives on this important discussion, and I encourage you to continue the conversation.

Send your ideas about how games can enhance the training and education of the ADF to the.forge@defence.gov.au.

signature of M.B. Ryan

M.B. Ryan
Major General
Commander, Australian Defence College

Gaming and Professional Military Education

The importance of play has been recognised in all cultures; it has been widely studied and endorsed in the human sciences and demonstrated in practice in enlightened schools throughout the world.

40min

Establishing a Wargaming Insurgency at the University

Educational wargaming is experiencing a remarkable resurgence, reflected in the growth of wargaming Fight Clubs and the embrace of wargames as pedagogical tools in the classroom.

20min

Wargames as an Educational Tool

While games are a powerful teaching tool, not all games can serve all these purposes.

The Student as Sponsor: Understanding Wargaming Initiatives From the Student Perspective

As an educational tool, wargames promise to educate the civilian decision-maker and the warfighter in how to think about war before a conflict ever starts.

Wargame Design Decisions in Twilight Struggle and Elsewhere

When Jason Matthews and I set out to design a game, we didn’t initially anticipate the Cold War as our subject matter. But when we looked at the offerings already out there (in 2001), the Cold War games were few and far between.

20min

Games as a Window on a Complex World

Games are sharable models of complex human systems and therefore are potent tools for training foreign and defence affairs specialists.

Pandemic Wargaming: Exercises GOSSAMER and RUNTIME at the Canadian Forces College, May 2020

The 2019-20 Academic Year (AY19-20) in Canada was interrupted by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19). The academic year was about two-thirds finished when the faculty, staff, and students at the Canadian Forces College (CFC), Canada’s joint service staff college, were forced to disperse because of the pandemic.

Wargaming: taking the time to play

Currently there is more time and people involved in playing than ever before, but is wargaming the best use of resources?

Using RPGS to build the intellectual edge

Before The Forge, there was the Forge. Founded in April 2001 and closing in 2012, the Forge was a community of 4,476 users making 266,041 posts about designing, publishing, and playing new and innovative role playing games.

10min

Would You Like to Play a Game? Wargaming as a Learning Experience and Key Assumptions Check

How "old school" analog desktop wargames can be a useful tool