Question about good historical theme games

[dpendery]

Yes, good questions. Complexity should even be fairly low, because my students are not native English speakers. But a good touch of realism would be nice, and actually referring to historical events. Which events could be open, one person even had what looked like a very good suggestion about a game that reenacts the Constitutional Convention. This is history and even non-native speakers can be fairly up on, and the political angle in such a game is nice. But war games would be fun--some games set around China and Taiwan, or Japan, might be best and most applicable. I'm in Taiwan--a Taiwan/China conflict game would be perfect. WWII is always possible. Perhaps some ancient war, which students might not know a lot about, but since it's so removed from current times, we could perhaps take ourselves there and revel in the history making. You are right that there are endless ideas, and I hope this might spur a few comments and suggestions

[lch]

Originally Posted by dpendery

This is history and even non-native speakers can be fairly up on, and the political angle in such a game is nice. But war games would be fun--some games set around China and Taiwan, or Japan, might be best and most applicable. I'm in Taiwan--a Taiwan/China conflict game would be perfect. WWII is always possible. Perhaps some ancient war

Then you really should look at "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", as it's a historical novel about the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era of China, so it's not entirely modeled on historical events, but then again a lot of the things that are in there actually are based on real historical figures and you immediately have creation of legends with events and especially wars and conflicts so long ago. As Wikipedia states, it is arguably the most widely read historical novel in late imperial and modern China.

[S.R. Krol]

Originally Posted by dpendery

I'm in Taiwan--a Taiwan/China conflict game would be perfect. WWII is always possible. Perhaps some ancient war, which students might not know a lot about, but since it's so removed from current times, we could perhaps take ourselves there and revel in the history making.

There was a recent magazine (Strategy & Tactics) game, Red Dragon Rising, that featured a modern Asian conflict, though Taiwan was only part of it. There is an older magazine game on a hypothetical Taiwan/China conflict but it is long OOP and is hard to acquire. Supposedly there is a Chinese game on the subject which looks to be a plagerized version of the OOP magazine game but other than seeing one forum post on it a long time ago I don't know anything more about it.

Victory Point Games has Fleets 2025 which is a low complexity game on a modern naval clash around Taiwan.

Battle For China covers the China/Japan conflict. There is a version from Fiery Dragon that is physically small in size and then there is a later magazine version from Decision Games that is the same game, but with a larger map and counters. See Strategy & Tactics issue 259.

A Most Dangerous Time is a game on Feudal Japan from Multiman Publishing. They actually have a couple of upcoming games that would also be of interest, Warriors of Japan and War of the Suns, but I'm not sure when they will actually get published.