Alongside my academic research, my main form of public engagement is designing and publishing educational games related to my research interests of insurgency and counterinsurgency. I use my games to synthesize historical and political science research on conflict into a more accessible format for the general public, students, and policymakers. Much of my work is published with GMT Games and has already reached thousands of players across the globe in the last few years. My games are also used in classroom settings across a wide variety of educational institutional ranging from AP World History high school classes, undergraduate college classes, to the counterinsurgency course at the Army War College. One of those institutions wrote an article about the experience of my games in the classroom: insidegmt.com/playing-the-british-way-at-the-university/.
I am currently working on other games that more explicitly illustrate the dynamics of several key political science works on civil wars (e.g. Petersen 2001, Kalyvas 2006, Staniland 2012, Weinstein 2007) and my own research agenda focusing on the Vietnam War.
I am currently working on other games that more explicitly illustrate the dynamics of several key political science works on civil wars (e.g. Petersen 2001, Kalyvas 2006, Staniland 2012, Weinstein 2007) and my own research agenda focusing on the Vietnam War.
Published Educational Tabletop Simulations
The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire (2023), GMT Games
Summary:
Now up for its second printing, The British Way synthesizes historical research of the past two decades on post-WWII British counterinsurgency campaigns that concludes the "British Way" of counterinsurgency was more focused on coercion than winning the population's "hearts and minds." The British Way includes games covering the main four British campaigns immediately after WWII: Palestine (1945-1947), Malaya (1948-1960), Kenya (1952-1956), and Cyprus (1955-1959). Although often lauded as a period of successful counterinsurgency, the games help players visual the arguments of recent scholarship by focusing on the various forms of violent (e.g. reprisals, forced resettlement) and nonviolent coercion (e.g. curfews, intensive searches) used by British forces in their attempt to crush anti-colonial resistance. Building on my own dissertation research, although several of those tactics proved effective under certain conditions, the games illustrate why such indiscriminate coercion generally backfires. To illustrate the international connections between colonial conflicts, The British Way also includes an "End of Empire" campaign that covers how other colonial crises impacted the conduct of British counterinsurgency and efforts by the British officials to selectively shape the narrative of their conduct as more benevolent than actually occurred. The historical booklet accompanying the game includes four comparative articles on British counterinsurgency, extensive background notes for all the event cards included in the game, and designer notes on how the history translated into game mechanics.
Link
Bibliography
Sovereign of Discord 1961-1963: A Fire in the Lake Expansion (2023), GMT Games
Summary:
This expansions extends the Vietnam War game, Fire in the Lake (2014), by GMT into the lesser studied 1961-1963 period that preceded direct American intervention. Utilizing cutting-edge historical research on the Ngo Dinh Diem regime and the NLF insurgency, the expansion offers an opportunity for players to explore the Strategic Hamlet Program and the role of external assistance and advisory efforts on both the insurgent (North Vietnam) and counterinsurgent sides (United States). In addition, the expansion updates the base games depiction of the American War in Vietnam (1964-1972) by adding additional event cards and scenarios inspired by recent research on the Vietnam War on civilian victimization, social issues, and the role of women as participants and victims during the war.
Link
Bibliography
The Guerrilla Generation (2026), GMT Games
Summary:
Inspired by Jeremy Weinstein's Inside Rebellion, this game offers players four insurgencies from Cold War Latin America representing different types of insurgent organizations: Tupamaros in Uruguay, FMLN in El Salvador, Contras in Nicaragua, and Shining Path in Peru. Each game provides an overview of the history and major strategies of the insurgent and government factions in the conflict alongside events detailing social, external, and key individuals that influenced the course of the conflict. The El Salvador and Nicaragua games may be combined for a "Resisting Reagan" Campaign scenario that illustrates the transnational dimension of the Central American crisis by adding mechanics on the struggle between the Reagan Administration and Central American Peace Movement (CAPM) social movement to influence Congressional approval of aid to the region. Using extensive secondary sources and human rights reports, this game will be of interest to regional specialists or those interested in exploring different insurgent organizational structures and their effects on conflict dynamics.
Link
Bibliography
The British Way: Enemy of My Enemy Expansion (Forthcoming), GMT Games
Summary:
The Enemy of My Enemy Expansion extends the content included in The British Way by adding components to explore two additional conflicts: the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt and the 1942-1945 Japanese Occupation of Malaya. The former game allows players to see how the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) and accompanying British repression played a critical role in shaping the historical trajectory of British Mandatory Palestine. The emergency regulations that allowed many of the coercive techniques used by British forces during the revolt was inherited by the state of Israel and continue to the present. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya allows players to explore how British special forces worked with local communist resistance during World War II to oppose Japanese occupation of the peninsula. The title of the expansion references the British use of local irregulars in both conflicts to resist a common opponent. In both cases, the local irregulars (Jewish armed groups in Palestine and Communists in Malaya) went on to resist British rule using resources previously supplied by the British themselves. Those conflicts are featured in the original The British Way games allowing players to see the long term impacts of strategies on a future conflict.
Link
Bibliography
Combat Commander Vietnam (Forthcoming), GMT Games
Summary:
Combat Commander Vietnam explores military effectiveness of all major sides in the Vietnam War at the platoon to company level. Players may experience small-unit combat through historical well-researched scenarios and a random scenario generator capable of generating a variety of plausible military engagements calibrated to the different periods of the war. Extensive research of all major participants in the war including secondary sources, primary sources, and foreign language sources informed the design. Sufficient distance from the war has enabled the design to leverage hundreds of sources including memoirs, oral histories, archival research, and translations of accounts in French, Lao, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese. The various factions of the war are presented on their own terms. For educators interested in military effectiveness or those curious about small-unit cohesion during Vietnam, links to digitized interview collections of US soldiers at the company level from the Army War College used in the research of the game will be uploaded here upon the game's release.
Link
Bibliography
The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire (2023), GMT Games
Summary:
Now up for its second printing, The British Way synthesizes historical research of the past two decades on post-WWII British counterinsurgency campaigns that concludes the "British Way" of counterinsurgency was more focused on coercion than winning the population's "hearts and minds." The British Way includes games covering the main four British campaigns immediately after WWII: Palestine (1945-1947), Malaya (1948-1960), Kenya (1952-1956), and Cyprus (1955-1959). Although often lauded as a period of successful counterinsurgency, the games help players visual the arguments of recent scholarship by focusing on the various forms of violent (e.g. reprisals, forced resettlement) and nonviolent coercion (e.g. curfews, intensive searches) used by British forces in their attempt to crush anti-colonial resistance. Building on my own dissertation research, although several of those tactics proved effective under certain conditions, the games illustrate why such indiscriminate coercion generally backfires. To illustrate the international connections between colonial conflicts, The British Way also includes an "End of Empire" campaign that covers how other colonial crises impacted the conduct of British counterinsurgency and efforts by the British officials to selectively shape the narrative of their conduct as more benevolent than actually occurred. The historical booklet accompanying the game includes four comparative articles on British counterinsurgency, extensive background notes for all the event cards included in the game, and designer notes on how the history translated into game mechanics.
Link
Bibliography
Sovereign of Discord 1961-1963: A Fire in the Lake Expansion (2023), GMT Games
Summary:
This expansions extends the Vietnam War game, Fire in the Lake (2014), by GMT into the lesser studied 1961-1963 period that preceded direct American intervention. Utilizing cutting-edge historical research on the Ngo Dinh Diem regime and the NLF insurgency, the expansion offers an opportunity for players to explore the Strategic Hamlet Program and the role of external assistance and advisory efforts on both the insurgent (North Vietnam) and counterinsurgent sides (United States). In addition, the expansion updates the base games depiction of the American War in Vietnam (1964-1972) by adding additional event cards and scenarios inspired by recent research on the Vietnam War on civilian victimization, social issues, and the role of women as participants and victims during the war.
Link
Bibliography
The Guerrilla Generation (2026), GMT Games
Summary:
Inspired by Jeremy Weinstein's Inside Rebellion, this game offers players four insurgencies from Cold War Latin America representing different types of insurgent organizations: Tupamaros in Uruguay, FMLN in El Salvador, Contras in Nicaragua, and Shining Path in Peru. Each game provides an overview of the history and major strategies of the insurgent and government factions in the conflict alongside events detailing social, external, and key individuals that influenced the course of the conflict. The El Salvador and Nicaragua games may be combined for a "Resisting Reagan" Campaign scenario that illustrates the transnational dimension of the Central American crisis by adding mechanics on the struggle between the Reagan Administration and Central American Peace Movement (CAPM) social movement to influence Congressional approval of aid to the region. Using extensive secondary sources and human rights reports, this game will be of interest to regional specialists or those interested in exploring different insurgent organizational structures and their effects on conflict dynamics.
Link
Bibliography
The British Way: Enemy of My Enemy Expansion (Forthcoming), GMT Games
Summary:
The Enemy of My Enemy Expansion extends the content included in The British Way by adding components to explore two additional conflicts: the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt and the 1942-1945 Japanese Occupation of Malaya. The former game allows players to see how the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) and accompanying British repression played a critical role in shaping the historical trajectory of British Mandatory Palestine. The emergency regulations that allowed many of the coercive techniques used by British forces during the revolt was inherited by the state of Israel and continue to the present. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya allows players to explore how British special forces worked with local communist resistance during World War II to oppose Japanese occupation of the peninsula. The title of the expansion references the British use of local irregulars in both conflicts to resist a common opponent. In both cases, the local irregulars (Jewish armed groups in Palestine and Communists in Malaya) went on to resist British rule using resources previously supplied by the British themselves. Those conflicts are featured in the original The British Way games allowing players to see the long term impacts of strategies on a future conflict.
Link
Bibliography
Combat Commander Vietnam (Forthcoming), GMT Games
Summary:
Combat Commander Vietnam explores military effectiveness of all major sides in the Vietnam War at the platoon to company level. Players may experience small-unit combat through historical well-researched scenarios and a random scenario generator capable of generating a variety of plausible military engagements calibrated to the different periods of the war. Extensive research of all major participants in the war including secondary sources, primary sources, and foreign language sources informed the design. Sufficient distance from the war has enabled the design to leverage hundreds of sources including memoirs, oral histories, archival research, and translations of accounts in French, Lao, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese. The various factions of the war are presented on their own terms. For educators interested in military effectiveness or those curious about small-unit cohesion during Vietnam, links to digitized interview collections of US soldiers at the company level from the Army War College used in the research of the game will be uploaded here upon the game's release.
Link
Bibliography
