The Matrix Games Handbook: Professional Applications from Education to Analysis and Wargaming

by John Curry

Matrix Games are an established way of running seminar type narrative games in the professional environment. This handbook is the most comprehensive set of papers to date on their use in education, training, research and innovation. The book starts by exploring the origins of Matrix Games, with contributions on the development of the method. The second section of the book has a sample game about NATO and Russian posturing on the Baltic Sea. Many wargames explore war in this contested area of sea, but a Matrix Game is used to explore a conflict short of kinetic. In the theory section, some of the underpinning philosophy of Matrix Games is outlined by Chris Engle, the inventor of the method. Along with some of the emerging themes from using narrative based games. Education has applied the technique of Matrix Games in teaching. This section includes examples from around the world from language training to military education. The final section outlines more applications of Matrix Games including operational analysis problems, innovation and using a Matrix Game to explore contemporary conflict by Professor Rex Brynen.

298 pages, Paperback

Published April 14, 2022

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

See:
John Curry, Irish historian

Reviews

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this to better under matrix games, and it not only helped, but helped me structure my first one.

To explain: Matrix games are a kind of hybrid role playing and tabletop games. Each player represents some decision-maker. Each turn they determine on an action... which they then simply narrate and justify. Other players, plus a referee, then collectively determine if the action took place. They argue, compare notes, and either come to a consensus, or let the facilitator make a ruling.

Turn after turn consists of these narrations and discussions - here you can see the role playing dimension. A tabletop element comes in to represent the actions.

For a very brief example, a Matrix game could be about contemporary European politics. The French player announces they would like to raise immigration restrictions. They explain this by (say) pointing to recent Islamicist violence, then showing how the French state has sufficient capability to erect (for example) virtual geofencing. Other players could weigh in to see this as plausible (Italy: it makes sense given rising immigration challenges), while others might offer counterarguments (Germany: this is logistically impossible). If players can't settle, the facilitator either issues a ruling, or rolls dice to settle it. If Paris succeeds, then they or the ref play an "immigration restriction" counter on the French part of the board.

Or, as one writer puts it,

Basically, each turn a player says what happens next. Other players may disagree and say what they think happens. Then some dice are rolled to see which happens. (p. 130)

The philosophy can be put this way:

Rather than explore what happens when we are told: “here is a set of tools, go solve this problem”, Matrix Games provide a means to “explore what problems there might be, how to characterize them, and how to devise a set of tools that you think might solve them.” (p. 221)

This Handbook dives deeply into Matrix games, starting with a combination history and overview. They seem to be a small development in the gaming world so far, with roots in transatlantic wargaming, both amateur and that involved with various militaries.

The Handbook offers a wealth of practical ideas for creating and running games. For example:
-giving some players a secret bonus, or problem, at the start (42)
-a rule of thumb: initial turn should take an hour, while successive turns drop down to 40 or 20 minutes (107)
-generating gaps in scenario briefings, so that players will have to generate their own (141)
-facilitators creating ad hoc characters (I'd say non-player characters) or forces to temporarily embody a certain dimension of the world (266)
-use high or low die scores to add more to results

There is also a good checklist (48) and a sample turn sheet (80).

Four stars for people interested in gaming.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matrix Games are a mean by which we can explore the strategic narrative of emergent futures. Despite much of the book being written in terms of war-fighting, they are a technique that can be adapted for most emergent futures. All it takes is a dramtic narrative, a small number of actors, a core problem to resolve, and away you go. Actually, it isn't as easy as that, but it is as simple as that.

The core tool of the technique is the competing narrative. If you are wondering what that might be, think about how history books in 100 years time will describe the process of Brexit. There are a large number of factions, each with their own internal narrative and objectives, all with a vision of how the UK should emerge post-Brexit. This is the type of puzzle that Matrix Games are designed to examine.

The game is unlikely to unearth a solution. We are usually talking about wicked problems - those with no easy solution. What the game can do is to uncover a set of insights into the problem that will help you to understand the core issues at stake. If the same game is played a large number of times, different results will emerge each time, but the contours of a dominant result may start to emerge. In organisational terms, that is where to deploy resources.

The book is broken into five sections. The first section considers the history of the matrix game. It is important to understand how we arrived at where we are today. The second section covers how to design and run a matrix game. This is the main section of the book. It is where the cover price is justified. The third section is on the theory of matrix gaming. I found this interesting, but my attention started to wander a bit as I read it. The fourth section examines the use of matrix gaming in education. Desite not having an interest in this subject, I found the pieces to be quite engaging. The final section examines the professional application of matrix games. I found this section to be very variable - from having my close attention to causing me to let my attention wander.

Drawing the five sections together, we have a nice little introduction to matrix games. As with all professional techniques, the proof of their utility is how they are palyed and how useful the insights generated prove to be. I have to admit that I am a convert to the technique. I have been for about a decade and a half. I have designed, delivered, and played matrix games in a professional context. Which makes me an advocate for the technique. Not everyone agrees with me, but they can more than adequately make their own case themselves.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to rate this one because it's hard to say what it's really trying to achieve. Calling it a "handbook" is a bit of a stretch, as it's mostly a discussion of the history of matrix games and speculations on possible future applications. From a handbook I would expect more focused how-to than this.

So there's a lack of focus throughout and this is compounded by the very poor standard of editing. I know the three "editors" listed are more in the "curator" sense but a lot of this book hasn't been subjected to a basic grammar check or, it seems, any independent proofreading. There's extraneous words and malapropisms throughout (presumably leftovers from earlier drafts) that leap out at the reader and sometimes make it hard to understand exactly what the authors are trying to say; some of the authors are worse than others and one gets the sense they were left to their own devices without much oversight which is kind of inexcusable when there's supposed to be a team of three editors. One or two such errors I could overlook but the book is littered with them.

Overall I have to give it 2 stars because it's surprisingly amateurish from a team of so many professionals and I don't think the labelling of it as a handbook is reflective of what you're going to get.

[John DeRosa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprising not well edited...more of a string of rambling thoughts. It’s true value were the links to matrix games for implementation.