Position paper for game

• FIGHT FOR LIBYA Position Paper

Fight For Libya is an Avalon Hill-inspired war game that models the 2011 Libyan Uprising. Players take the side of either Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan Army or the rebel forces of the Libyan People’s Army. Players fight & gain control of the Libyan government. The game includes ground troops of two different kinds, simulated air strikes, and conditions that simulate the imposition of a NATO no-fly zone over Libya. This game is most inspired by the Avalon Hill war game 1776. Fight For Libya is our attempt to bring the revolutionary war aspects of 1776 into a modern context through a simulation of a more recent conflict, as well as an attempt to improve some of the its noted flaws – namely, to make Fight For Libya a simulation that is specific to the Libyan uprising and not just a set of game mechanics that could be applied to any martial conflict. The two games utilize many of the same game mechanics, including dice rolling with combat results tables, hex-and-counter movement, and variable player powers. The hex-and-counter game board was chosen because it allows players to move in almost every direction at the same speed. Whereas a board with square markers only allows pieces to move equally in four different directions – or unequally in eight directions if diagonal movement is allowed, since pieces move faster when traveling on a diagonal than they do while moving in rank and file – the hex grid allows pieces to move at equal speeds in six of the eight possible directions. While still not perfect, this provides a compromise between the equal four directions and unequal eight directions of a square grid board. The use of dice to determine the outcomes of battles and other situations in the game was chosen to provide an element of chance and randomness into the game. By adding combat results tables to the use of dice, more powerful players are provided with a statistical advantage over weaker players, while still allowing for a certain amount of chance. Finally, variable player powers were chosen to provide differentiation between the two armies in the game. Gaddafi’s army is much more powerful, with loyal, trained regular army troops and the ability to perform air strikes. However the less loyal and relatively untrained militia members of his army can defect quite easily to the rebel army, giving the rebels a much larger but much weaker and less trained fighting force. The most helpful things that came out of play-testing Fight For Libya were improved differentiation between the two different armies and clearer, streamlined rules. In the first design of the game, each arm contained three different kinds of pieces – infantry, artillery and planes. After playing through this version of the game several times, it was decided that the two armies were too similar to each other and did not accurately reflect the differences between the two armies in the conflict that was being simulated. It was at this time that the decision was made to have only two types of troops – trained and untrained – as well as the inclusion of a mechanism for troops to defect to the other side. Play testing also helped to streamline and improve the mechanisms for air strikes and the imposition of the NATO no-fly zone.