Paper Time Machines, which takes its title from a famous quote from commercial wargame pioneer James Dunnigan, is the latest volume in a burgeoning scholarship on tabletop gaming and in particular historical tabletop games. Within this new niche Paper Time Machines stakes out an interesting territory. Functionally, it is a college textbook covering a variety of aspects of the form, history, and design of historical board games. Teachers and professors will, of course, find much of value in this book for forming their own lessons, but how interesting is it for a non-academic reader?
Author Maurice Suckling does a good job of making the book approachable to as wide an audience as possible, but as it serves so many purposes inevitably most readers will probably find certain sections are more interesting and/or useful to them than others. That is no great critique, this is true of countless books, but it is perhaps to encourage readers that they don’t need to tackle it cover to cover. The book’s textbook format means that sections are clearly outlined with their purpose and content, so teachers can adapt it easily to their own preferred lesson structure, which makes it easy to grab what might be interesting to you from the get go. While there are benefits to reading the book in order, earlier chapters foreshadow discussions to come, it is by no means mandatory.
Paper Time Machines is split into five sections.
The first attempts to define the parameters of what is a historical board game - no small feat as the extensive sample of potential definitions included in the book shows. It also provides a brief history of historical games which, while brief, contains impressive depth. I enjoyed this section the most, but I’m also exactly the kind of historian who would happily read dozens of different histories of the hobby. I love this kind of thing.
Once the definitions and background are completed, most of the book focuses on game design as practice. The second part is a general guide to the game design process and tools, with the third part digging into how to use these more general ideas for the specifics of designing historical games. Part four is a collection of case studies using several of the author’s own games. This part was interesting, but I felt like I would have gotten more out of it were I already more familiar with his games - potentially something to revisit once I’ve had the opportunity.
The final section ventures away from game design advice and practice to cover several key topics of debate within the historical game scene - the section on the postcolonial turn being particularly interesting. Were I to nitpick I might have preferred for this section to be earlier in the book, it seems to me a better companion to the book’s opening section, but that is the nittiest of nit picks.
I must make a confession - while reading the sections on game design I frequently found myself spacing out while thinking about an as yet theoretical project, frequently putting the book down to type something in my notes app. This puts me in an odd position, because on the one hand I’m sure I glazed over some sections of the text, I certainly did not give it the level of attention I have given to other books I’ve read. At the same time, though, when reading a book that is meant to help you develop your own game design skills, surely inspiring you to focus on your design and not worry overly about the book itself is a significant success. Only time will tell if my design idea fully materializes, but if it does then I should certainly give at least some of the credit to Paper Time Machines.
On the whole I really enjoyed Paper Time Machines. I think going forward I will prefer to use it as a reference work, pulling up sections as needed, rather than reading it cover to cover again. As an introduction to the hobby, to game design, and to historical game design specifically there is a lot of value to be had here. While far from the final word, a likely unachievable goal for any work, it is another valuable addition to an ever expanding subject. Check it out.