323 - The Ballad of Billy Pilgrim
If you don’t know who Billy Pilgrim is pick up a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and find out. I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed.
I have an interest in games that fall into the category of abstract strategy, which, loosely defined, are games of perfect information where nothing is left to chance, typically with relatively simple rules that have profound strategic implication. “A minute to learn, a lifetime to master” is often said about these sorts of games. Chess is perhaps the best know example, though I would say globally the game of Go is probably even more well known.
Well it turns out that early in his career as he was struggling to make a living at writing Vonnegut tried his hand at board game design, coming up with the long lost but newly released GHQ, which it turns out is an abstract strategy game. I’m not going to spend time here describing it, follow the link if you’re interested, however, I will note that a Venn diagram comparing the experiences Vonnegut had in WWII that went into both the game and the novel Slaughterhouse-Five would almost perfectly overlap.
I seem to be stuck in a ballad rut here lately - I’ll pull out soon.
