The Might of American Seapower
The might of American Sea Power

The Spectrum Wars

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie" while picking up a cudgel.
-- Jeff Fisher

Back in the summer of 1998, some high-school students had an email argument over which color was the best. One was Anselm "Andy" Wooden, of Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. One was Alexis Stratton, of Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. One liked Red, one liked Purple. The argument grew heated, and, being high-school students, they took it a bit too far. Friends were brought in on both sides to support a variety of shades and hues. Anselm stuck to his guns, and declared that "The Red Imperium" would triumph over all the other colors of the Spectrum.

And thus was born The Spectrum Wars, one of the truly great war games on the Internet. Well, in MY opinion, anyway. Since several of the friends who had been brought in on each side of the argument were ardent wargamers, the argument was turned into an extremely free-form game of world conquest, wherein each player simply made up stories about how their respective nation was doing. The few rules that existed were created by Anselm Wooden, or his friend Marcus Johnston, a college student who attended the same church. Marcus collected these stories and published a regular newsletter called "Le Journal Rouge", and forwarded email copies of these newsletters to several of his friends at college. The result was:

One of Marcus' college friends was Martin Hohner. Martin thought the game was a lot of fun, but something was missing. Martin wanted to WIN the game, and that was impossible as long as anyone else could simply write an article for the newsletter claiming to have destroyed his entire military. Also, Martin knew an awful lot about the real-world military forces of the various nations in the world, and he was honest enough to play as if his position in the world had a realistic military. Unfortunately, his position was Central America, which doesn't have much of a military, and no one else was similarly restrained. One player claimed to have a fleet of over 100 aircraft carriers. Martin suggested that he write a new set of rules, defining the various positions with set economies and military strengths. Since the game had gotten rather silly lately, with players making ever-more extravagant claims as to their military power, this suggestion was met with wide enthusiasm. The result of those rules was:

This game was also a lot of fun. However, Martin had been rather rushed in writing the rules, and the positions were not very balanced. The various players were inexperienced with the new rules, and the game was going slowly. One of the new innovations for this game was the creation of an impartial "Moderator" position, who did not play a position, but acted as Umpire. The original Moderator was Marcus Johnston, but he graduated from College and lost his email access. Martin Hohner resigned his position and took over as Moderator, but the long delay in switching moderators (and Martin's eventual burnout under the heavy workload) led to the game slowing down even further and dying. In a desperate attempt to save the game, Martin gave his old computer to Marcus, and offered to write a NEW set of rules so the game could start over again. The result was:

This game changed the rules slightly, balanced the player positions more evenly, and clarified many of the ambiguities that made the original rules hard to understand. This game went much better, but trouble was again on the horizon. Marcus returned as Moderator, but eventually moved out of the country to accept a job in South Korea. He was replaced as Moderator by a team of two co-Moderators, Anselm Wooden and his friend Matt Hutchinson. Anselm and Matt tried their best, but they were too young and inexperienced, and the game slowed down again. Eventually, however, the players managed to hammer out a peace, partly through sheer exhaustion, that ended the game with a definable conclusion. The players still wanted more, however, and so Martin Hohner went back and rewrote the rules and starting positions yet again. The result was:

This ended up being the shortest official game on record. Oh, Seth Thomas (another friend of Anselm Wooden) ran a pair of short-lived unofficial games at the same time as SW2, which lasted a maximum of 2 turns each, but those don't count. This game saw Martin Hohner return as Moderator, with his college friend Nathan Bax as co-Moderator. Nathan Bax resigned quickly, and was replaced by Ryan Calhoun, another high-school student from Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, who was a friend-of-a-friend of Anselm Wooden. No sooner had Ryan Calhoun taken over in his new task, but the game ended in thermonuclear war that destroyed the planet and left no winners alive. Martin was again forced to junk his plans for a substantial re-write of the rules in order to start a new game as quickly as possible, and so we come to:

This game was intended to be a quick re-run of the SW4 rules with only minor changes, and with Martin Hohner and Ryan Calhoun returning as co-Moderators. Unfortunately, it died almost immediately due to a combination of moderator and player burnout. The pressure of playing two games nearly back-to-back, creating two websites back-to-back, and problems with player departures at inconvenient times caused this game to end almost at once. The game lay dormant for over a year, but then returned unexpectedly as:

This game was the first one in a long time to not be instigated by Martin Hohner. The old Bloomington-Normal High School segment of the players was entering college themselves, and a couple of them became nostalgic for the good old days. One of them, Danny Reid, volunteered to take over as Moderator, partly because he wanted to use his duties of writing newsletter articles as practice for his journalism classes. Martin Hohner agreed to return as Webmaster, and several of the old hands also came back as players or advisors. This game also marked the return of Seth Thomas, the designated Whipping Boy of the first three games, as a player. Unfortunately, Sethy's bad luck remained, and he ended up getting sandwiched between two powerful positions controlled by Martin Hohner and Chris Yarwood, two of the best players in the game. Martin came up with a devious strategy to aid Sethy against Chris, but Chris got wind of the plan, and Martin found himself for the first time forced into becoming a puppet ruler, coerced into backstabbing Sethy yet again. A long, drawn out standoff ensued, with two major alliances each hamstrung by internal dissent and well-founded distrust, lining up their armies on the Chinese-Korean border for an epic staring match. The stalemate was finally broken by an audacious invasion of Australia, and one of the alliances fell apart. However, by this time, most of the players were getting burned out, and the moderator as well. Out of sheer exhaustion, the game was called as over, and the Spectrum Wars seemed dead once more.

However, hope lives again. After two years of limbo, The Spectrum Wars lives again. A new game is in the works, and is planned to begin sometime around Christmas 2003. If you wish to join the game, please register at the SW7 Design Webforum and help us design a game you'd like to play.

Website Created and Maintained by Martin A. Hohner.
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