Ron: 0:28

Welcome, welcome back, sibilant zygotes. I'm ron, to my left on the couches, doug, and across from us, not on a couch, is I'm don and uh. If the audio sounds a little different, uh, today, folks, that's because we are taking uh Uncannery on the road. We are broadcasting to you live from Amplify in beautiful, gorgeous downtown Fullerton. Guys, what do you think? Should we rent it out? Is this the place? Is this our studio now?

Doug: 0:57

I did ask for rates, so they're getting back to me I don't think we should commit.

Don: 1:02

We ought to see how this one goes, absolutely. Maybe you know Abbey Road might be available.

Ron: 1:10

We should keep our eyes open on their schedule. I really like the idea of not committing and practicing and seeing how things go. You guys watch it's springtime. Have you guys been watching any springtime television? That's a rhetorical question. I'm going to tell you about the springtime television.

Don: 1:31

What is springtime television?

Ron: 1:33

The springtime television is the television programming that comes out in the spring. The birds are out and the insects are flying and there's hot new television. You don't know about this. This is all the networks I.

Don: 1:46

I'd say I don't know. I'm so. Everything is available all the time to me. There's spring.

Doug: 1:50

I've kept up with the price is right, you know, we stick with price right is definitely a little hairier in the spring price all right yeah, price eroding prices have been not right for a little while but that's for our other podcast.

Ron: 2:06

Um, have you heard of the show, the rehearsal I have.

Doug: 2:10

I have heard of it, several people have brought it up to me and I've reckoned have you seen it? You gotta, you gotta, watch it. You're gonna say that um, I'm not I mean, it's pretty good.

Ron: 2:21

uh, you don't have to. I'm not one of those guys who tries to like bully people into watching things that they maybe don't really want to watch, because I feel like people do that to me all the time. Yeah, and it's like too many people tell me to watch something that I will like no longer watch it.

Don: 2:35

I don't know, it's just the rebel in you. Everyone else likes it, so I'm not going to like it.

Ron: 2:46

Maybe partly that, partly that, but it's also like it's the nine-year-old girl in you. I only like the unlikable boys. It's something about like if so many people have seen it, then they'll just tell me about it. Like I don't need to. I think I'll get it.

Don: 2:54

It's a watch by proxy.

Ron: 2:55

Yeah, I'll osmosify it or whatever, but the rehearsal is a show the premise of which I find interesting, especially for today's topic, because the premise is a man who wants to find ways to rehearse the most important moments in one's life, and at least the first season, I think.

Ron: 3:13

The premise is that he's trying to rehearse a relationship, a marriageable relationship, with a woman. And then he's like, well then, you know, I want to like, I want to make sure, when I really get married, that I'm a good husband. And then, well then, we'll want to have kids and I want to make sure I'm a good dad. So, and in order to do these things, he spends HBO's money to create very elaborate sets and he brings in actors to act as his wife, and then he brings in child actors to act as his children at different age levels, and he practices how he'll be a parent or how he'll be a husband and all this kind of stuff. And it's supposed to be a comedy program. But the question I wanted to bring to you all was what is the, what is the moment in your life that you wish you could have rehearsed, that you could have practiced for, so that when it happened, it went, it would go off exactly as you wanted it to.

Doug: 4:00

Now, before we answer that, I just want to say for not selling me on the show. That was maybe the greatest pitch on a show. I will be watching it now that you said that. Really Good job.

Don: 4:12

So I mean before we, before we answer the question about the show and I know your question is related but not directly but uh, so is it like moments, like your wedding moment, or is it the experience of being a husband Like I need to rehearse my entire life of being a husband and then going back and doing it better?

Ron: 4:31

That's part of the like problem he stumbles into Right. It's like when do you stop rehearsing? Right, because it's like, like it starts with him like helping someone rehearse a date. Right, they have a friend they kind of want to ask out and so they like build literally like a facsimile of the bar that they hang out at and it's and it's about okay. How you know, what could I say to her? How can I make sure the date goes well? But then he's like well, but the date is only the first part, right, like what does it matter if the date goes well, if the relationship sucks? So I think you could kind of like extrapolate that desire out infinitely Right. But for our purposes you can just tell me like a moment or something like you don't have to say I wish I could have redone my entire marriage.

Doug: 5:17

I'm going to go ahead and hijack the podcast, let you guys know what's going on in the home life. Um no, it's interesting because I think about most of the things that I do I tend to throw myself into and then look back in hindsight and say, glad I did that, because that's prepared me for this on so many levels.

Ron: 5:38

So it's difficult to nail down a moment I feel like I'm kind of the same way I'm. I'm a sort of like I'll try it and I'll learn from it, and I'll make my mistakes.

Doug: 5:47

As long as they don't kill me, it'll be okay and I've done that with some of the ones that they'll kill you too but I do like research and yeah like figuring things out.

Ron: 5:59

I'm in the process of painting my kitchen cabinets that sounds like fun.

Ron: 6:04

It's really terrible, but I spent a lot of time like watching tutorial videos and you're trying to research the types of paint and you know, like, like that, I didn't, I didn't, probably. Okay, that's actually my answer. I would have done a dry run of like I would have picked a smaller cabinet and I would have tried the paint and I would have waited like two weeks to see how it cured and if I could get a good finish and how much I need to sand. I would have rehearsed doing my cabinets instead of just doing them, because it sucks and I don't even know if the end product's that great. But probably, also, like for our jobs, we had to rehearse a lot right.

Ron: 6:44

We're educators. You have to practice teaching a lot.

Don: 6:47

I don't practice, I just wing it, yeah, and so far it's going well for you.

Ron: 6:52

The kids like it. Don, when you were practicing teaching back when cars ran on crank engines, what was the process like? How did they get live students in the room for you?

Don: 7:10

It was a room full of cadavers.

Doug: 7:12

Just like medical school. They're dead.

Don: 7:14

That way, you can't damage them.

Doug: 7:18

Oh, you can damage a cadaver. That's another episode.

Don: 7:24

More information about Doug that we didn't want to know the bonus episode, that's the patreon exclusive my, uh, I mean my, my teaching practice. Uh, I actually had two wildly extreme um, uh, takes on it, I had to. Um, we used to call the master teacher and now they're called uh mentor teachers.

Don: 7:50

Um and uh, and one literally told me um, you need to come to my fourth period and watch me teach, and then, during fifth period, you need to say every single word that I said in the same order that I said them yeah, so cool. So there was no thinking involved, it was just can you reproduce this, this moment? And my, uh, my earlier, um, my earlier classes were a teacher who said well, you look like first day, you look like you know what you're doing. Um, I'm going to go get some coffee and uh, you'll be fine. And didn't know what I was doing, what I was teaching, ever, like he never saw me in the room at all. So too wildly extreme.

Doug: 8:30

Yeah.

Don: 8:31

So, and neither of them really set me up for being the teacher that, like I guess they. I mean I didn't take a lot from either of those two moments.

Ron: 8:41

What would you have needed? What would have made you feel like I'm prepared now? I'm ready for any eventuality and to be an effective educator in in the classroom?

Don: 8:58

Feedback on um on what I was trying to do on my own. So I appreciated the freedom that I had from in my in my morning classes, but I didn't have anybody there telling me, except for the students right, telling me that this was successful or not. And then in my in my afternoon class that was the recitation. I had no, no flexibility to to try things a different way. So yeah. I don't like that, but neither of those is my answer.

Ron: 9:23

That's not what I would rehearse if I got to choose Right Because it's worked out and you clearly had a terrible. Well, I mean so far. We'll see. Yeah, what would you rehearse?

Don: 9:35

I want to say, like my wedding, yeah, but I think I think the problem that I'm having is what we started talking about when I asked you.

Don: 9:45

The question about the show is it's a once in a lifetime moment and I hate once in a lifetime moments Like I actually hate New Year's Eve for that very reason, like it's just another day and tomorrow is a different day, but the fact that it's a year in advance, you know like everything changes, like I hate New Year's Eve is the end of something that I makes me think about all the things I didn't do like yep right um to summarize and ruminate on an entire year in one evening right so I mean we had a wedding rehearsal, but you know they're, they're as effective as everybody else's terrible right because, because nothing happens in your wedding rehearsal the way they happen in your wedding right, I've been to a lot of wedding rehearsals and it's like sometimes half the people aren't there.

Ron: 10:28

The right you know, priest or pastor, whoever doesn't really care, and they don't cause they don't go through the word, you don't get them Like it's, it's.

Don: 10:35

So you can run through the steps, right, but the that's not the moment, right, right, the moment is is when it's for real. And the look on on your partner's face, the feeling that you have the you know, not knowing what your uncle's going to do in the, in the pew, like um, all of those things are not rehearsable, yeah, and, and that's what makes those moments those moments. So if you rehearse them, I think it moments those moments. So if you rehearse them, I think it it doesn't. It's not actually rehearsal for that, it's just, uh, I don't know it's a sham.

Ron: 11:11

Yeah, there's like a flaw in that. Like we, we think that our ideal picture is like oh, it needs to be just like this. This is actually how it will be best, but like that, um leaves out a lot of possibility, space, right, because, like, all those little weird things are kind of things I remember most from my wedding and, fun or not, those are like just part of the charm of the day.

Ron: 11:35

Now you know like yeah, I'm not like oh, the playlist went off without a hitch, Thank God you know, like that's not really the thing I ended up caring about so much. But it is hard to tell yourself that the day before right right, right it is all that.

Doug: 11:50

Oh man, it's got to go just like this, yeah yeah, it's very reflective for me because I remember not believing, like when we were on the way to the hotel of the place we're going to with honeymoon. The next day, I remember just thinking, especially with wedding, like oh it's, I can't believe how fast that was. Like in in retrospect, it's just, it's just the beginning. That's right. That's absolutely right. Yeah, I really enjoyed my honeymoon, but I I definitely wish I could have savored some of those moments so much more.

Don: 12:22

But if you rehearse them, it wouldn't be those moments. That is correct, that doesn't fix that saver problem. That is correct yeah definitely no.

Ron: 12:30

You'd probably enjoy it less because you'd just be like I've done this six times. It means less to me the more I do, for sure.

Doug: 12:39

Well, mine's a more. It's definitely not as sentimental. I rehearsed because when I turned 21, I took the proverbial trip out to Las Vegas and threw some money on some gambling tables and had myself a time, and I didn't really have the money to do it. So it was a very short lived experience of just losing your money very quickly and going.

Ron: 13:03

I guess that's it.

Doug: 13:09

But I remember the experience that I took away and I remember saying the next time I go to Las Vegas I definitely want to do this is looking over at the craps table. That was the. That was what I saw. I just saw the 15 people sitting around the table, the hoots and hollers after every dice roll and, most importantly, the fact that there was dice on the table. That was the thing that I I because I, I like dice, I like dice and I, I really wanted to play.

Doug: 13:31

But the barrier of entry, when you look at a craps table and if you haven't, it's just there's so many different options how does the game work? And it seems like everybody who's at the table is the type of person that's been playing it since they were three years old. So I went home, I got myself uh, I believe is on a website called wizard of odds I took their fake bankroll and every day I practiced playing crafts, um, to get myself ready for the next time. A few years later, when I was going to take the trip, and the thing that was funny about it is I looked up a statistical analysis of different ways that you can play and I ended up on this thread that was explaining that playing uh with the house, betting with the house. You're one of those.

Doug: 14:24

Yeah, it's probably playing we can never go to vegas playing, uh yeah, with the house is the way to go. Well, what I didn't know because again, the rehearsable moment for me is I went okay, this is kind of working out. I've been playing every day. Most of the days I don't lose as much money. It seems like I'm doing pretty decent. I'm going to take this to vegas.

Don: 14:44

Well, got to my first table did you tell them this is just for practice? Yeah, I think so.

Doug: 14:50

I wanted to do over something tells me they wouldn't have liked that had I said it.

Ron: 14:54

So here's some canadian money can we just try?

Doug: 14:58

oh, they'll take that too if I know anything about them. But, um, getting to the table and starting to place bets on the side with the house when the entire table is playing against the house, I didn't realize, the moment that I hadn't been rehearsing is hearing. I'll never forget this um, mother and son that are sitting next to me and this son saying don't worry about him, mom, it doesn't matter if he's betting against us, we're gonna do fine. Well, I started winning, uh, because I was playing with the house and the house started to win and I watched, as was the only person left, and the amount of swearing at me as was leaving the table, you name it. I was not very popular in that moment, even to where the dealers at the table I believe that's what they're called, the dealers at the table even said normally, if you're going to do something like this, you usually want to find hours that there's not as many players. Even they were bummed out because they were getting tipped out by that family.

Don: 16:12

That was there, yeah, and they're losing money. So technically the dealer with the stick is called the croupier, but the other dealers are dealers.

Doug: 16:20

The croupier was not the one. It was the gentleman who was closest to the side that was taking bets. So, yeah, I didn't get. There was no. Yeah, I thought I was rehearsing for a moment, that was going to be exciting and I didn't. It was actually one of my biggest wins that I ever had going to Las Vegas. But what a terrible experience to watch as everyone essentially gives you the finger and walks away from the table. So I was rehearsing for that experience, not knowing I was not going to get the experience again. Go back to my original memory the hoots, the hollers, the excitement. Nobody was with me on that.

Don: 16:57

No, nobody's ever going to hoot and holler for you Bet in the don't pass, bar Well, I.

Ron: 17:02

Hey, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You know, money comes from someone absolutely take it from the ground.

Don: 17:07

But you could all go and play, don't pass and you both have been in my workspace and you know that I have an obnoxiously sized desk yeah yeah, that is actually the product of a good night at craps that's why I got that money and I was betting against the house, and so that's, that's Vegas's money. That, uh, I don't know. Uh, I don't actually know a lot about crafts.

Ron: 17:28

I didn't know. Uh, it seems like, yeah, you want to be the the. The who's the little guy that fights Goliath?

Don: 17:37

You want to be that little guy you want to be the day.

Doug: 17:45

It take vegas's money right? You don't want to take your fellow man's money all right, yeah, well you're not, but you can do that. Yeah, yeah, you, you bet so what?

Don: 17:49

you have better odds, why, um, every time the entire table loses, you win.

Ron: 17:53

Yeah, that's kind of sick yeah, that's why I like it. That's why I like it can be a real reptile man as long as you can play by yourself, you're fine absolutely you know?

Doug: 18:03

I mean, I think that this really begs. We need to go together collectively and we'll all play donuts.

Ron: 18:10

Yeah, we do. Let's see who can last the longest.

Doug: 18:12

That's right.

Ron: 18:16

Well, thank you all for your responses to that question. I think those are good moments. Hey, you want to talk about Warhammer? Good transition, uh, our good mo. Hey, you want to talk about warhammer good transition. Yeah, I've been working on my. I've been rehearsing my transitions. Yeah, secretly, this is a warhammer episode. I want to talk about um because it turned. Uh, really, I want to talk about war gaming. Um, because the the. I think if you're an uncannibal for a while, you've noticed that doug and I partake in war games and every time we mention it, we have to talk about what exactly it is Like LARPing. No, it's not like.

Ron: 18:54

LARPing. I'll get into it in a moment. It's close, but the reason I wanted to talk about it is because I think there's a sort of weird uh sort of ethical uh line or quandary, much like, you know, betting with the house and craps, um, and war gaming has a history of being a sort of like government tool and for a long time that that tool kind of left the government. It became a sort of sport and entertainment for the masses, um, the unwashed masses, and uh, and now it's, it's back, the governments are back into war gaming. They really love war gaming because they love rehearsing and practicing wars, uh, and operations overseas that's my.

Don: 19:36

So just so I know what we're talking about. That's my question is are we talking about war games, like you know the us is doing, uh activity with south korea in the south china sea, or we're talking about like risk? So right.

Ron: 19:50

So both because I find that history is kind of interlocked, like it's impossible to talk about one without the other. Okay, I couldn't possibly talk to you about how governments use war gaming without telling you about risk, unfortunately, I do like risk australasia, and you just build up and build up, and build up it's a common strategy, but there's other things in there too there's a, there's a question that gets, um, uh, talked about a lot in like board game or game circles like what.

Ron: 20:21

What is the difference between a war game and a board game like, like risk, don like. Is that a war game or is that just a board game and does it matter? What do you think? I think it's a board game and I don't think it matters yeah, I think it doesn't matter either, but for lots of people um a war game does mean something very different from a, from a board game, even though there are obviously board games that simulate warfare or involve combat.

Doug: 20:52

Do you think there's a?

Ron: 20:53

big difference, doug. Is this something that you it would expand on in any way? For someone who's like new to the to the idea of war gaming?

Doug: 21:03

yeah, it seems to be kind of a hobby in of itself. Uh, meaning, I actually do think that, risk it. It is, uh, it's probably the most simplified war game that you can get. I I would say that it has almost all the factors that are there, um, but I also would call it a board game. I think that war games are kind of their own, I guess, um, they're their own thing. That's such a vague way of saying it, but I just think about the fact that whatever army you're building, how their rules, that are kind of contained, whereas a board game is kind of a package that everybody knows the exact rules that are surrounding it. A war game goes so much more outside of it and it's like, well, no, you're playing a very specific game with your army, your rule set and what you're doing among the a larger set of rules.

Don: 21:55

That's there, so in risk right. The idea is that there's a map that has regions on it that are are correspond to continents and and countries and and the that's. The only part of it that resembles war is that it happens to be taking place on a map Right and and that it it introduces the complication of war, of having to defend borders Like the more land you get, the harder it is to defend that land, because the the space you need to to defend is larger. But the mechanism of that defense, the mechanism of offense, is not war, it's rolling dice, yeah.

Doug: 22:32

So that's why it's abstracted so much. Yeah.

Don: 22:35

So it's it. I mean, there's a strategy to where you place your armies on the map, but that doesn't seem to be war to me. That's that like it's war the way chess is war right yeah, let's talk about like.

Ron: 22:52

I guess, like the difference not to be too pedantic between a board game and war game is the is the word war like a war game? Is very much interested in warfare, whether it was olden warfare or modern warfare, right, that is sort of the direct, the impetus or the driving of the fantasy maybe of that game, right? And so you're like, you mentioned chess and we've talked about backgammon backgammon a long time ago, and these games owe something. They have some sort of combat or versus or competitive element. Today we're not really calling those war games. I want to talk about the first sort of war game that was designed to be instructive in how to perfect your ability to wage war, and, from what I can tell, this started back in 1810. We've got the Germans to thank, or the proto-Germans, the Prussians. In 1810, george von Reiswitz was considered the founder, the father, of the modern war game, and so he made a large board, like a two-scale board, of a battlefield. It was three-dimensional. There was no chess grid or layout or anything like that on it. He created small miniature figures to represent different military units these are the artillery, these are the cavalry, these are the blah, blah, blah. And he created, a rule set and he also acted as a essentially a games master right For anyone familiar with, like Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing games, which you all are, because you've listened to our previous episode about that.

Ron: 24:28

This is season three. Guys get with it. Okay, you need to know this stuff. Um, you're juniors now. Um, uh, so, and he would, basically he would have, you know, two people play and he would adjudicate the results. There there was no dice rolling, there was no real random element. You know, someone would say I'm going to try and take my cavalry through the woods and surprise his left, his Eastern flank, and he would whisper that to George and George would be like Hmm, okay that sucks, you're going to fail.

Ron: 24:58

It's muddy and your horses don't run very well. So, anyways, apparently this became super popular with the Prussian king, frederick Wilhelm III, who like really loved this game. He had it brought, like he had George Reisvitz himself brought in with his like only copy of this game. But george was like, oh, it's not ready for the king, and so he spent like months making it better, like carving hand figures of the soldiers and stuff like that. Anyways, he brought it in and the king loved it. Um, but it's not, it's not clear if the king liked it because he thought it was like educational. He just it was a fun game. I mean, what else are you gonna do as a king? But like, pretend you're beating. Probably, if you're like playing against your like courtiers, they're probably letting you win, right, so you're probably there's an ego inflation there going on.

Doug: 25:48

I keep thinking of, you know, the king going over and making any recommendation to him if he's the game master. He has to go with it. Every time he's like I throw the bodies, I just fling the center mass out without reckless abandon. Well, you win sir. Yeah, yeah, Bold sir.

Ron: 26:04

Yes.

Don: 26:06

It works again In your best Prussian accent. That was good.

Doug: 26:11

It's pretty British Sorry.

Ron: 26:13

The next iteration of this game actually was George's son, who was also George, so the younger Georgeorge von reisfitz. Uh, he, the war gaming runs in the family sometimes. Uh and uh, he took the game on and he actually developed another rule set for it. He actually invented, like uh, random chance elements and probability tables and he made it more like something that you uh, like if you play war games today you'd probably recognize it relied less on a games master and it had more of a rigid rule set.

Ron: 26:42

Anyways, he got this into like the Prussian military academies, with a little help from the king. He was like we need to train our officers on this, so like they were playing these games and the idea was, at least in Prussia, that this was instrumental and useful. But apparently there was like, uh, the the officer class, like the older officers, that kind of looked down on on like these games. They're like this is bull, this is turkey, this is whatever the prussians would call bull and turkey. They were looking at them like ipad kids or something. They're like what are you doing? Playing games like this isn't?

Doug: 27:19

actually going to help.

Ron: 27:21

Um, so are these things actually useful? Um, in 1870, the franco-prussian war uh occurs and um, from what I could tell, uh, prussia whips france very quickly and this is considered a vindication of their, of their training exercises, of their their war gaming fascination and and it's also sort of the beginning of like prussia and later germany's sort of like association with uh like very effective military strategy. Right, they, they were considered sort of like the leading military at the time, not only because of their armies and their technologies and things like that, but because their officer class was considered so well educated and well prepared for scenarios and strategic thinking.

Don: 28:13

And I happen to know about the Franco-Prussian war.

Ron: 28:17

Yeah, it wasn't. I mean, your father was in it, right, it's too easy.

Don: 28:26

France was better equipped, and yet Prussia won.

Ron: 28:30

Yeah, they were expected. The world thought Prussia was high for even, even engaging for being the aggressors in the war right um, but uh, they very quickly kind of beat them back. So why did they win? Yeah, well, uh, board gaming, because they're risk board game nerds.

Don: 28:52

Yeah, exactly, yeah, because you know so really, you and doug have been preparing for world domination.

Doug: 28:59

That's exactly right. You never know, you just never know.

Ron: 29:03

Obviously, this is a scenario where, like if there was something you wanted to be prepared for obviously one of the worst situations you know active warfare, combat right would be something that you would right. This is why you train in jiu-jitsu right all the time so that you would right. This is why you train in jujitsu right All the time so that you can subdue any guy you see on the street.

Doug: 29:22

All of those spirits actually Anytime I walk the streets.

Ron: 29:28

So I understand the impulse to want to do this right and to to to use it. Obviously you want to train your soldiers and your cadets and your everyone. Right, people should know how to operate on the field of battle. Right? This is a good idea. So far, right. What's the problem?

Don: 29:46

well, the way that you just posed that question. So if we're going back to um um von reitz weiss reiswitz, um, reiswitz, I don't know he made this game to train generals with yeah but what you just said is we want to train our cadets.

Don: 30:07

Yeah, and I think that's different because it actually goes back to what I said about my wedding. Right is so sure, I want my, I want my soldiers to be physical, to know how to uh attack, to know how to kill a person, like all of those skills. But we can't rehearse that because in the fog of war you can't predict all of the variables that they're going to face. It's not the way like a general looking at a map back in HQ can say, well, if we take the front here and we advance on this side and we flank them here, like that's all strategy, but when you go out to the field, like it's just about survival in that moment.

Ron: 30:43

Yeah, and that's exactly what the veteran officer corps was saying about these games. Right, it was like these were guys who had actually been in wars and it's like there's no, like no old guy who is like can sit here and you know, like, judge a game and give you an accurate representation of what would actually happen until you're actually there and you know what's your ability to command the respect of men, you know, is it, was it rainy three days ago? Was it rainy two days ago? You know, like, are the horses fed? All these things are like things that they said at the time, the time. Like you're not, like, yeah, you can make this as complicated, uh, a game as you want, but there's no level of simulation that can even really match reality, right, or uh, even put you in the same mindset. You would be in that actual time.

Ron: 31:30

Um, and there seems to be uh like for all you know, everyone thinks, wow, wargaming won, pressure, the war, they're really smart and good and war like other nations start bringing in their own kind of games and start trying to train their generals and officers on these kinds of things were, uh, war gaming. What they called the schlieffen plan, which was their original plan to again attack france, dominate them and win the war in six weeks, right? And uh, they were war gaming that one for months and months prior to the outset of world war one, and then obviously that didn't go according to plan, right?

Doug: 32:13

I was gonna say that one didn't go quite as well. Yeah, that one turned into what four years of stalemate.

Ron: 32:19

So this sort of seemed to be the moment where everyone was like, okay, maybe these are. You know, they were lucky that one time Like games might have some use. But they should not be the. You know, they may be of limited ability, until World War II actually, because you know who else really loved war games in World War two? The United States probably, but no that was bad teaching. Now it says that was a, that was a bad, that was on me.

Doug: 32:50

I'm sorry, doug, that's on me, remember earlier when I said I'll just boldly go into this situation.

Ron: 32:55

I've done that so many times on this podcast doing's, doing that no, japan, apparently japan, really, um, as japan was industrializing and emulating european countries.

Ron: 33:04

They heard about war gaming and they really uh liked the idea. They had a war gaming college, um, where they would pull all their admirals and generals and they actually war-gamed, uh, pearl. And the first time they war-gamed it it didn't work. They, you know, were trying to simulate sneaking a Navy across the Pacific Ocean and attacking, you know, the US Navy in Hawaii, and they got caught by air patrols and the weather was bad and they instead, the entire US Navy assembled and faced them on the open ocean and destroyed their Navy and crippled their capacity and would have lost them the war. And they were just like, wow, this is a terrible idea. And then they were like, let's run it one more time. And they did, and this time it worked really well. They were like, okay, we need to take a more circumnavigating route to the islands. And blah, blah, blah and it worked and this gave them the confidence to actually pull off that attack.

Ron: 34:01

Um and it did work in real life, kids, if you don't know that yet. Um so, uh, this kind of brought back the idea that like, hey, uh, you know, maybe there is a a way here to kind of expand the sort of strategic creativity of our military personnel and to come up with things that you know other people won't know. Or at least maybe you can give people who were originally uncertain of a plan. It can give them the confidence to carry out that plan right. You can be like well, it sounds dumb to me, but it did work in the simulation. So what do I know?

Don: 34:38

Maybe that kind of confidence is but, but it did work in the simulation. So what do I know? Maybe that kind of confidence is, but it didn't work in the simulation, so they ran the simulation.

Ron: 34:44

It worked the second time, that's right.

Don: 34:46

Hey General, look, this plan doesn't work. Let's not do this one. No, just roll again. Maybe this time it'll roll Like. That doesn't give me more confidence that the plan's going to work. That gives me confidence that I'm not playing war.

Doug: 35:00

You know it's interesting, as I'm thinking of spoilers for Band of Brothers coming up here. So if you've not seen Band of Brothers, it is old enough that I can spoil it. But skip ahead three minutes, I believe. What's his name? Sobel? It's Ross from Friends.

Ron: 35:15

He's one of the generals in the beginning, is it?

Doug: 35:17

so, yeah, and he's running there, there's a simulation that's in the beginning and it's just navigation of like get point to point, and I remember they were running that and he just cannot operate a map for the life of him, and so when he pulls through this area they cut through like wire that isn't even supposed to be cut through, and and one of the guys comes up and says congratulations, you just lost 85% of your men, you've been captured as a war casualty. And it's a huge moment because that's when he's kind of a jerk as a commander. And that's the moment where the guys kind of say like I don't have confidence in this guy, cause even running the simulation, he doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing, which is a big turning point for that, and I do kind of like it for that aspect. Obviously, it's not a war game where you're sitting in a room and rolling dice, but it is a simulation, and so I think it's important to a certain degree, yeah, I mean, what are the?

Ron: 36:08

there are obviously benefits to practice, right. I guess, like someone you know in a military college would be like it's not a game, it's practice. We call it a game because you're probably versus another player or another team and you're trying to outwit them and you're trying to make your plan work against theirs, blah, blah, blah, but it is a form of practice, right. There must be a way to practice. It's hard to go out and practice war, right, so there's got to be a safe way to do that. What are the pros and cons to this that we can see? Obviously, the cons are the variable thing that we talked about, right, and you know, no plan survives contact with the enemy, blah, blah, blah. Are there benefits that you see here, don?

Don: 36:54

though yes, there are benefits, but the going back to any other situation that requires practice, right, like a heart surgeon right like a guy's gonna cut my chest open and and poke around and and do whatever needs to be done to my heart. I kind of want him to have done that before yeah, I don't want to be like hey you're, congratulations You're number one.

Doug: 37:19

You said kind of I'm going to say full tilt. Hope he's done it before.

Don: 37:24

But when he gets into, look at my heart. It's not going to be just like the textbook, it's not going to be just like. There's going to be something odd about it. And I need to be able to trust that that surgeon's ability to make decisions on the fly is rooted in experience and knowledge and but it's probably going to be a one-off experience Like there's never going to. There's no heart. That's exactly like mine, right? I don't know if that's a little bit egotistical, right, but there's something something, yeah, and and like we were talking about in our profession like sure you can have right.

Don: 38:01

You have a lesson plan, that's what I thought you've got stuff ready to go, you've got it works out great in your head, and then it just falls flat when you deliver it.

Ron: 38:08

And yeah, because one kid's having an off day or everyone's kind of sleepy but then you just adjust you like, say okay, this is not working.

Don: 38:16

I, based on my experience of having done, you know, thousands of other lessons, I know how to get this back on track, and it's not about the fact that I rehearsed this particular day, but it's about the fact that I have experience with making these kinds of decisions quickly in a high pressure situation, which is its own side note rehearsal I used to know a colleague who did script out like his lesson plans were literally students to say.

Ron: 38:45

Teacher says so um so yeah anyways, but oh, a joy to be a cog in his machine.

Doug: 38:52

Right, I can't wait to go into his class and get my script for the day Line five when students don't say, he says ah, will you please say this, Cause we can't go forward till you see this.

Don: 39:06

But coming back to the war issue, like so it's the same thing, like I think that it you know the World War, I angst that grew in the field was that it's old men sitting back in London making these plans for us that have no idea what the conditions on the ground really are. And so we have to make decisions that are good for our men in our situation. And you know, yes, we're trying to achieve the same objective, but we're probably not going to go about it the way that the plans say, because we know how this works here on the ground and there's no way, like you're saying, there's no way to rehearse that it's, it happens in the moment, it's a one-off yeah, yeah, after World War two, interest in wargaming kind of dies down.

Ron: 39:49

Everyone, like governments, aren't using it as much, and that's because of the brand new field of computers, essentially right.

Ron: 39:58

Now it becomes about running computer-generated simulations through the Cold War, right, and there's still some wargaming. I found an interesting thing, apparently, during the Cold War, when they were playing wargames, the way the game is written obviously, like determines a lot of the result of the war game. So, like games that were based in mathematics and probabilities, they actually saw the participants, um like, using nuclear weapons more frequently, right, because the math stacked up and was like, well, it makes more sense to deploy the weapon, whereas a game that relied more on, like, talking and negotiating and actually face-to-face communication with the other side to negotiate a solution to the problem, saw much fewer deployment of nuclear weapons, right. So there's also something here, uh, which is like, what, what is the game we are using to rehearse? Right, if I'm practicing for baseball you know that game isn't changing.

Ron: 41:01

I know I got to work on my pitch, right, but warfare does change, right, and there are lots of different aspects of warfare. What part of warfare are we practicing? Are we practicing maneuvering? Are we practicing in the field leadership? Are we practicing geopolit in the field leadership? Are we practicing geopolitical, uh, diplomacy, right, um, uh, and so it's actually. It's actually coming back now, though, like the computer simulations are sort of less interesting, apparently, to militaries right now, because they you can kind of get a simulation, they you can kind of get a simulation of anything. You can kind of get any results you want. Like numbers only have so much value, it's more. It sounds like people today are thinking it's more about like how can we, like you said, don, prepare the people who actually make the decisions right? How can we prepare the people making calls, making calling the shots if a conflict breaks out? And so a lot of this information comes from a documentary called the Games Behind your Government's Next War, which was made by People Make Games.

Ron: 42:07

They're like a small documentary outfit that talk about essentially like you know what goes into the development of different kinds of games. But they got invited by the british government to talk to some of their war game contractors and so they did, and they started filming this documentary. Like, okay, how does war gaming translate into, you know, into modern day government usage? And they got a very icky feeling the further they got into this because they realized, like, why is the? Why is the military you know typically very secretive military interested in us making, filming them doing war games? And they realized, because it was like advertising, because they, they want to, uh, it's a, it's a big gaming boom out there, wouldn't you say right now, doug, like last 10 years.

Ron: 42:52

Board games, video games, all sorts of games have kind of just blown up. They're more popular than ever with adults and children, probably more without all today and children, yeah, dogs play board games now. Yeah, and cats are still out, but, and part of the yeah, cats not interested, couldn't care less. But a lot of that fascination has, like, transferred into government as younger people with those kinds of interests now take on government roles and they like oh, I play Dungeons and Dragons. I can see how, with a few tweaks, this could be useful, or at least I could sell this to the government and they'll give me money for developing some sort of war game to, you know, create a scenario.

Ron: 43:32

So, just to be really clear, like a war game for a government isn't necessarily like a board game, it's not like risk, it's not even like one or two people, right, it can be like 25 people on a team, all in a room, given a situation. Sometimes they have game masters, right. Sometimes they take, you know, several hours, sometimes it can take weekend, right, you know, depends on what the kind of game is and how it's designed. And so I guess the thing that the documentarians found interesting and that I also find interesting is, like you know, since kind of World War II, war gaming has sort of become a form of entertainment right.

Ron: 44:10

Like people play, people play Risk, people play Axis and Allies, people play Warhammer 40,000, right, all of these are different kinds of games that still try to simulate warfare, even if it's goofy and cartoonish and sci-fi like in Warhammer or something, but they owe a lot to essentially the core that Reiswitz kind of created back in the 1810s. Um, so what does it mean when, like, gameplay that's supposed to be kind of fun and now is being taken seriously as something that could actually result in saving or losing real human lives?

Don: 44:54

oh, it means the pendulum has swung in a direction that I don't like, but it hopefully will swing back. So the war gaming prior to World War II was focused on strategy and focused on maneuvering men into positions that would ultimately win your side of a conventional war. After World War II, the computer simulations you're talking about, the what I think the the Rand corporation, who started running those simulations what they found was that there's no way to win a nuclear war Right, and so surviving the nuclear age of the late 20th century wasn't about making the the plan so you could simulate a successful nuclear war. What the computers determined was there was no such thing, so the only safety was to not play, which is actually what the yeah, the shall we play, okay, movie war games?

Don: 45:51

uh, pointed out right the the successful, successful strategy of winning a nuclear war to not play a nuclear war.

Don: 45:57

And so Kobayashi Maru also I think mutually assured destruction was the safest strategy. So what you're talking about and the swing now to war games in government use right is because look at how many more conventional conflicts we have now than we had in the. You know. Not that the world has never been, you know, completely peaceful, of course, but, um, in the height of the cold war we had less conventional conflict because that was where the focus on preparation was. But now it seems like we've all mostly agreed although you know there's been some some chatter recently from the Ukraine war that there's possibility of the use of nuclear weapons, but the world kind of felt safe from the 90s to the 2010s that everyone agreed nuclear war, nuclear warheads were bad, so we just won't use them. We had to have them so that nobody else use them. But then the focus then returns to conventional war and I think that's that's why it troubles me. That that's the swing that's happening is because it's it, it is because it's useful now because we're returning to a time of conventional conflict.

Ron: 47:09

And, like we said earlier, I'm interested in like what that does to the psychology of the people making these kinds of decisions right, Whether or not we engage in a conflict or start or conduct some sort of provocative action that may blow up into a larger conflict. Right Because, like we were saying with the Pearl Harbor game, right If you have a lot of people playing a lot of games and they start to build up this sense of confidence in themselves like oh yeah, I think we could actually do this, or we've explored all the situations.

Ron: 47:43

I do think it lends to a more sort of a bellicose nature in people generally right, I don't really want them to be armed with that confidence, I think. I think they would then come back and say well, like you know, like the heart surgeon, well you know, if these are preventative right you know, if the worst scenario were to occur, then you would obviously want your government to be prepared to handle that with.

Don: 48:10

You know some sort of efficacy, right, but I also an army that handles it with a remembrance that these are humans, right, right and when you're talking about like when you're playing risk, like yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to attack you in Russia and no, I'm not going to be able to hold that line, but it doesn't matter, cause it's, I'm going to get you know 50 more guys in the next round.

Don: 48:33

And if that's the way you approach real war, that's terrible and it seems to be how some conflicts right now in the world are approaching it that very same way.

Ron: 48:48

And there are other issues with just war game design in general that were brought up by the people make games documentary like you know, one is just that, like, the militaries are incredibly, uh, secretive, right, they will commission someone to design a game for them, and then they will play it in a closed room, and then they will throw it in a filing cabinet and they won't even release reports about what happened in that game, so that the game designer doesn't even know whether the game worked well or not and they don't know how to, like, iterate on it to make it a more accurate simulation or to make the decision making more useful to the goals of the military. Right, even you know the fact that the military, a branch of the military, is sponsoring these. Right, they will like, commission the thing they want, right?

Ron: 49:31

And you can kind of tweak a few. You know again, like we were saying in the Cold War, right, how you design the game determines oftentimes the result from it, right, is this a game where people can engage in? You know certain actions or behaviors. Well then, that will dictate. Probably you know, whether or not they do right. Those parameters are important. So the modern day efficacy or use of these is up in the air, questionable, it's strange.

Don: 50:00

I've, can I, I'm sorry. No, no, no, so I don't play Warhammer.

Ron: 50:04

Yeah.

Doug: 50:04

I've we'll get you there.

Don: 50:06

I've seen you. I haven't seen you play. I'm trying to get.

Ron: 50:09

I haven't seen you play. You walked in on us that one time in the classroom.

Don: 50:14

But so from a non-warhammer, from a, from a noob, um, it looked like risk yeah, is it. Is it similar?

Doug: 50:23

like it's. No, there's definitely.

Ron: 50:27

I think we can make cosmetically it looks like risk because there are plastic pieces on a on a board um we're chucking dice to determine. Yeah, there's still the random element, like I would say like a lot of oh man, okay.

Don: 50:40

So I just heard there's like another like I don't want to get too hard into the weeds, it just like it looked to me like like you were geographically placing armies on a map and where those placements were combined with some random thing which was a die right. And there's a laser too, for some reason determining line of sight. Yes, um gave you an outcome right, yeah, yeah.

Doug: 51:04

So.

Don: 51:04

so in that way there's a defender and I'm sure it's much more complicated and nuanced, but I also happen to know that, uh, the both of you went to a Warhammer game that was in VR yes, yes, right, yes, um which I imagine played a little bit differently.

Ron: 51:26

very much, so my question is which one of those two better prepared you for war? Definitely the tabletop game. Yeah, because the the vr game is like an arcade shooter it's about having fun.

Don: 51:35

It's a spectacle but isn't that war? You were shooting the spider people, yeah maybe it uh, but I don't think like a soldier.

Ron: 51:42

It didn't actually like the t-rex soldiers I? I think I'm not. I'm not gonna say that I am a better at strategy or anything, because I've played war games. I think I'm good at those specific games, if I'm even good at them which I'm usually not, but uh like, I think you can be good at the game.

Ron: 52:05

It doesn't really translate into a lot of general, you know ability and by the game you mean the board game or the video I guess both right, but I think, like that, any game will train you to do that thing well right if. I'm even playing like. Just because I can play hockey really well, it doesn't mean I'm like a really fit runner or something Right Like. Or it translates into it doesn't mean I can manage my marriage. In fact, probably I can't if I'm playing hockey. I think all indications are everyone's in for a rough time in that partnership, so um uh this is kind of my personal take on it.

Ron: 52:41

I do sometimes wonder, like, why do I play war games? And the reason I sighed earlier was because, like, even in the war game culture there's like two other subsects, there's like Warhammer would be considered like a shooting arcade game. To someone who's really into like historical war gaming, which oftentimes don't have dice and kind of like in the rice bits, uh, uh, um, frame of mind will have a game master right, um uh, to kind of determine what actually happens. Um, the time I felt the weirdest was when I was buying into a world war two war game. I've always, ever, played like sci-fi and fantasy games and then I was like, oh, I'd like to play world war two, and so I like sci-fi and fantasy games. And then I was like I'd like to play world war ii and so I like bought a plastic soviet union army and I was building it and getting it ready and I was kind of excited, the game seemed fun.

Ron: 53:30

But then at some point I sort of lost steam because I was kind of like this is weird, like that started feeling weird because I was essentially like getting entertainment out of like actual combat scenarios that had occurred that were in no way fun for any of the participants. And, um, this was something I kind of started researching is like uh, is this, making light of real human catastrophe, what can be gamed, what can't? Um, these kinds of debates have occurred in the community for a long time also, but I don't know if that's uh, just like I don't even know why we want to play war games at all or even violent sports at all. Right, I like we kind of talked about this a while ago, I think. Which is what does that impulse mean?

Don: 54:12

and one thing that has been striking me, as we've been listening to you talk right there is that a lot of warfare now actually emulates the game. Yes, I was thinking about this too, so like. So we've got drones now right that are piloted by a pilot who's in a box in arizona or nevada, but the drone is in the middle east and and he's looking through a camera and it's just like, you know, call of duty or whatever.

Don: 54:38

And the thing about call of duty or whatever, and the thing about the call of duty that I liked when I played it right, is it like there's no consequences, like you can go through the story a couple of times and if you fail, you get to try again, get to rehearse, um, but you know, like you're dropping bombs on the village and you see the little soldiers run away and it's a little bit like, oh, it's funny, let me you know I'm going to get them, um, but uh, but again in when, when that translates to the real life drone, then, like, those people running away are people right?

Don: 55:08

But to the pilot in, um, you know, thousands of miles away, it's, it's just a pixels on a screen, it's, it's different and there's even been um. There's YouTube videos, um, because of the drones that are being used in the Ukraine conflict, and Ukraine has been posting videos of their successful drone attacks and I started watching a few of those and I can't watch them anymore because of that very thing. Like, politically, yes, I support, you know, ukraine and I want them to win, and so it seemed like you know a political statement to log into their, their video and watch.

Ron: 55:43

But, like, those are people yes, yeah, yeah, it is a weird. Uh, always, I think we want to be careful not to become too distant from the reality of these situations. Right and I think um games have the ability to do that right to widen that distance, to make it a little bit easier to disregard what's actually occurring there. But they can also be fun. They can be pretty cool. You can feel good about yourself, right, doug? Yeah, doug.

Doug: 56:15

Now, you've got to take the pro award. Well, one thing I was going to also bring up. I just remembered it, but it's it's worth talking about. Do you remember in the early 2000s I don't know if this hit either of you um, they were giving out a free game called america's army yeah, yeah, yeah yeah do you remember what ended up happening with that?

Doug: 56:35

no army was using statistics to see gameplay and who was playing. It was a first person shooter, team-based, squad-based real life scenarios. And, yeah, army was using statistics to see gameplay and who was playing. It was a first person shooter, team-based, squad-based real life scenarios and, yeah, army was using information of who was really good at the game as possible right, they would send you a pop-up right like now try it for real, right?

Ron: 56:50

yes, yes, 100 it was insanity.

Doug: 56:55

But yeah, I remember getting my copy of that like cd-rom is like free, like passed out to me did you?

Don: 57:00

did you get the pop-up?

Doug: 57:01

the join now pop-up yes, I did um yeah, and I uninstalled it after that, but um, yeah, I think in different levels. That's there, um, the things I was going to take in is, I think, specifically with warhammer 40 000, one thing that really pulls away. Um, looking at the lore of the game is one year, 40, 000 years in the future.

Doug: 57:22

When you look at anything about the lore, it's kind of the big joke of the game that every single faction is bad guys, like that's kind of the thing because they're so war obsessed and like there's always a reason that you can be at war because war is the only thing that exists, that there's a certain amount of tongue in cheek of like how absurdist it is. That, I think, makes me feel more comfortable with that setting Um, because it's insane. It's just absolute insanity. Um, but the thing that I was actually going to bring it back to was you brought up at the beginning of the podcast, uh, me training jujitsu and and how the idea is is that, like what you train, combat at all times, just in case it comes up. But what's interesting is is maybe that was an initial goal for me in the first six months, but somewhere after that I actually find that I continue to train because the people in the room, like the people that are kind of you know, uh, that you're simulating combat with um are people that I generally have a sense of camaraderie and trust with because, like you're basically offering your limbs and consciousness you know, if somebody puts a joke, hold on you and it always ends with tapping um that there's all of these benefits of community that I didn't expect to be there, that continue to push me to train in that way. And so it's funny because it's like you're not simulating warfare but you're simulating one-on-one combat and I find that because it is so, it is incredibly fun to do and kind of push yourself and to get better at, but I find that actually it's in the barrier of being able to train it.

Doug: 58:56

I don't think there's a single person in that room. I, I hope I had hope. Um, I think that all of us kind of realized that, like, none of us want to engage in combat at any point in time, like, the more that you simulate it, the more you go, and I hope we never have to do this because you realize the reality is so much more dire. Um, it's a really interesting loop and so, in a similar way, I think that's where the gameplay comes in, cause it is almost like a game of like do I get you first or do you get me before? Somebody taps out that there's something there to the inherent game nature that, I don't know, is very human, I suppose, but it does get very scary when it gets extrapolated to where people aren't thinking of the lives of the people that are actually doing it.

Ron: 59:38

Yeah, maybe a game can be multiple things at once. Right, maybe a blend of education, a blend of preparation, a blend of good, old-fashioned rile-me-up entertainment?

Doug: 59:50

Yeah, all being spoken for At least.

Ron: 59:54

Any closing thoughts folks?

Don: 59:57

It's weird to me that a guy can be arguing on Saturday whether or not space marines get plus one in close combat and then, on Monday morning, is in the Pentagon advising the actual army on how to attack China. Absolutely, they almost certainly are.

Ron: 1:00:16

I will say from personal experience I've been in Discord servers with war gamers who do work in the Department of Defense, so that is definitely a reality and it is also the reality that we've got to go. Thank you everyone for being here and joining us here on Uncannery Live. We will catch you next time in an Amplify near you. Adios everyone.

Doug: 1:00:39

Bye-bye, thanks everyone, bye-bye, thanks, ron, thank you.