Dear Folks -
Just saw last night that Tom Clancy has passed away, aged 66:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-03/tom-clancy-spy-novels-jack-ryan-espionage/4995084
I still remember reading how Larry Bond gathered together as much declassified information as he could about all the naval vessels in the world, plus their armament & equipment, which GDW published as the Harpoon ruleset.
Tom Clancy, who was at that time a nerdy wargamer, heard about Larry and travelled across the country to meet him. (Loren has a story about meeting Tom, too.) They cooked up the idea of a "silent drive" for a submarine, gamed out what could happen using Larry's simulation rules, and Tom ended up writing The Hunt For Red October.
After that, he and Larry gamed out a possible European and Atlantic third world war, and they co-wrote Red Storm Rising.
The US military were reportedly rather appalled. First, they were shocked at the suggestion that Russian paratroopers could use a covert merchant ship to invade Iceland - especially since it was so effective. But they were mainly shocked at the level of detail involved - particularly the amount of what they considered "military secrets" in both novels.
Eventually they realised that the stats in Harpoon were all publicly available, It's just that no-one (other than Janes) had every collated them before. Well, that and Tom was a good listener when fighter jocks and other military types began telling sea stories. The US Navy began using Harpoon as a teaching device at their academy; apparently it was the best naval simulation outside of their Cray supercomputers. (This strikes me as somewhat ironic, given that GDW began life as SimRAD, designing simulations for use by university professors!).
Anyway, I think it's just a nice thought: if GDW wasn't, neither would Jack Ryan have been.
;-)
R.I.P., Tom.
Just saw last night that Tom Clancy has passed away, aged 66:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-03/tom-clancy-spy-novels-jack-ryan-espionage/4995084
I still remember reading how Larry Bond gathered together as much declassified information as he could about all the naval vessels in the world, plus their armament & equipment, which GDW published as the Harpoon ruleset.
Tom Clancy, who was at that time a nerdy wargamer, heard about Larry and travelled across the country to meet him. (Loren has a story about meeting Tom, too.) They cooked up the idea of a "silent drive" for a submarine, gamed out what could happen using Larry's simulation rules, and Tom ended up writing The Hunt For Red October.
After that, he and Larry gamed out a possible European and Atlantic third world war, and they co-wrote Red Storm Rising.
The US military were reportedly rather appalled. First, they were shocked at the suggestion that Russian paratroopers could use a covert merchant ship to invade Iceland - especially since it was so effective. But they were mainly shocked at the level of detail involved - particularly the amount of what they considered "military secrets" in both novels.
Eventually they realised that the stats in Harpoon were all publicly available, It's just that no-one (other than Janes) had every collated them before. Well, that and Tom was a good listener when fighter jocks and other military types began telling sea stories. The US Navy began using Harpoon as a teaching device at their academy; apparently it was the best naval simulation outside of their Cray supercomputers. (This strikes me as somewhat ironic, given that GDW began life as SimRAD, designing simulations for use by university professors!).
Anyway, I think it's just a nice thought: if GDW wasn't, neither would Jack Ryan have been.
;-)
R.I.P., Tom.
