February 14, 2014 - 12:02am
Courtesy of BGG.com
Recently the Washington Post published
a fantastic article profiling game designer Volko Ruhnke. In the process of bringing a good amount of attention to a very niche, and hard-core branch of the board gaming world, the Post offers up a good insight into the man responsible for the creation of such highly regarded titles as
Labyrinth,
Andead Abyss,
Wilderness War, and his latest release:
A Distant Plain. Ruhnke, a CIA analyst, and apparently quite a the old-timey gun enthusiast (just look at the pictures, you'll see what I mean) talks about the culture and process as well, and the writer gives a well-written account of just what playing one of his games is like.
Frankly, this is a style of gaming that I'm not terribly familiar with, but reading the article certainly stoked my interest. The complicated styles, and very interesting and non-traditional themes of his games (Andean Abyss, for example, is about the 90's insurgency in Colombia of all things), again, all very thoroughly addressed by the author, are painted in a very intriguing light.
