Oblivious

So I managed to get myself down to our mini-maxiplex, and catch up with something I missed...

(there will be spoilers to follow. REALLY MASSIVE PLEASURE KILLING SPOILERS. You have been warned!)

Thorn!

The letter Thorn. Or Þorn.
Which is probably why
nobody uses it any more.

I put something odd in my new book way back when I was writing the first draft, and forgot to check whether or not it works when you look at it on a Kindle. And joy of joys - it does!

May I introduce... the letter Thorn!

You see, the English language has a long and messy history, both in its spoken and written versions. The alphabet we know, love, and wish-we-could-get-that-damn-song-out-of-our-heads used to be somewhat different. W, for instance, used to be printed thus: VV. Because V is latin for U, and hence... double-U. Plus the letter S was printed in two forms: the short S that we still use, and the long S, printed like this: ſ. This of course leads to all sorts of hilarious moments in Terry Pratchett novels whenever words like Press appear as Preſs. It also leads to the modern German letter ß, which is just a compression of ſs.

Most of our current alphabet descends from the Latin script, but Thorn comes from Old English runes, along with the letter Wynn (Ƿ). Thorn is the Th sound that we still use today, either as in 'Thunder' or as in 'The'. It fell out of use back in the fourteenth century, replaced by Th in one case, and occasionally by Y in the other (hence Ye Olde English etc). It's still used in Icelandic, one of a magnificent 30 letters in an alphabet used by about 320,000 native speakers. (Norwegians, meanwhile, have to put up with having only 29 letters. Which is a good excuse to link to this).

But the most important thing here is that I can use it in my book without worrying that it'll come out looking like some kind of machine gobbledigook. Result!

Things I Learned While Researching: Kriegsspiel

"You have sunk my battleship, your majesty."

(I write novels and make films, so I have to do a bit of research every now and again. And sometimes I stumble across Very Interesting Things. So here's one of them!)

Georg Leopold von Reisswitz was not your typical wargamer.

He never applied paint to an orc or a space marine. He never spent pizza-fuelled weekends conquering distant parts of the universe. Nor did he ever step foot inside Games Workshop. But he laid the groundwork for all these pastimes, because he designed one of the first wargames in history, if not the first.

And he wasn't doing it because he wanted to escape from reality, or prove that he was a military genius despite never having been anywhere near a serviceable firearm. He knew how to fight, and how to lead men in battle. He was a Prussian officer who fought in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.

(Anyone who doesn't know where or what Prussia was is in sore need of a history lesson. It was in eastern Germany, had Berlin as its capital, and held a lot of very bad farming country in what is now Poland. Their aristocracy, known as 'Junkers', lived in constant fear of a peasant uprising and developed their military to a frightening degree in order to defend themselves against it. That military made them big players in 19th century Europe - and eventually the core of the German state that Bismarck created. The downside is that the military culture became way too important, helping set the stage for all the horrible things that happened in the 20th century. But I digress...)

Kriegsspiel - literally 'wargame' - was intended not as a harmless diversion but as a tool to train officers. In peacetime, it's really rather difficult to give officers a way to learn how battles actually work, because it's hard to simulate the chaos and unpredictability of combat.

Soldiers can't run away when their feet are glued to a board.

Firstly, Reisswitz designed maps without hexes or squares, so that units could move much as they would in real life. This was no stylised game like chess: if you order a unit of dragoons to advance 50 paces NNE, then that's what they'll do.

Secondly, Reisswitz removed the random element. Kriegsspiel does not use dice. Instead, there is an umpire who is independent from the players and adjudicates the results, with the aid of various tables provided with the rules.

Thirdly - and here's where it gets really interesting - there isn't a single board. There are at least three.

Each player gets their own map/board, on which they have to keep track of troop movements themselves. The umpire holds the correct, accurate board - and only tells the players of troop movements they would be aware of if they were a commander in the field. The players have to send out  scouts if they want to find anything out - but if a scout is captured by the enemy, they may never know what's over the next hill until it's too late. This restriction of perspective is really the most important aspect when it comes to training: the players have to learn how to deal with the limitations that a commander would face in reality.

By a combination of good networking and even better luck, Reisswitz managed to get the game in front of the Prussian king, who played it along with some of his generals. They spotted the potential straight away. You'd think Reisswitz would be made for life - but while he may have been entirely unlike most wargamers, he did live up to the stereotype in one way. His social skills were... not that great. And there was one aspect of military prowess he couldn't train for with Kriegsspiel. The one most important to a peacetime staff officer: politics.

Jealousy and resistance within the army meant that Kriegsspiel was not used as much as it could have been, and Reisswitz eventually committed suicide in despair. His son picked up where he left off, and kept it alive until it was discovered up by Bismarck-era strategists, before eventually being forgotten until the 1980s. While it can't compare in popularity to anything from Games Workshop, it enjoys a keen fanbase, and can be bought from a company with an amusing name.

For more information, check out kriegsspiel.org.uk.

(Note: there are other games with similar names, but they aren't Kriegsspiel. If in doubt, remember that Kriegssiel has two s's)

(and if anyone ever finds or makes an online version, let me know. Also if Sid Meier ever updates Gettysburg!, which I've just realised was a pretty good RTS implementation of many of the basic ideas)

I used to like trains...

On some tracks you can go both ways at once.
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am convinced that nationalrail.co.uk is a gateway to a parallel universe.

I don’t mean one where the trains run on time and the tube never goes on strike. These are mundane concerns. No, the strange new world I perceived as I booked tickets a week ago was one where the geography of Britain was rearranged into a layout that only the most heavily medicated among us could possibly have imagined.

For example, it suddenly became imperative to use Fenchurch Street station if you wished to travel to Southend Victoria. As anyone who understands the geography of south-east Essex knows, the best station to use is Paddington, which heads in the opposite direction. But I’m only joking; no, of course, you take Liverpool Street, which conducts you a safe distance to the north of the Thames before diving back down towards Southend, thus avoiding most of Southend itself. Such things are common sense, surely?

I also found it suggested that perhaps the best way to travel south to London from the Midlands was to stand on a platform at Rugby for about an hour while a number of other trains passed by going in the right direction and presumably only stopped with their doors open to lure unsuspecting travellers to a mysterious future in Milton Keynes. Given that the train station in Rugby is approximately a squillion miles from the town centre but very handy for the cement works, I declined the website’s suggestion of a stay there.

What other strange geographical traps exist in this other universe? Is there a station under the Severn where locomotives from Arriva Trains Wales and First Great Western re-enact the rising of Owain Glyndŵr? Do SNCF trains sneak across the Channel Tunnel at night to drink wine and laugh at their slowcoach English brethren? Are apostate CrossCountry trains hunted by their former co-religionists from Virgin Trains to be sacrificed to Richard Branson? Is Dr. Beeching chased along the tracks at night by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, vampire hunter? Are there copies of Metro on the seats that contain news of vital importance to the day’s current affairs?

Or should National Rail get their algorithms sorted out? Yes. Probably they should.