What Is Wargaming
There seem to be almost as many definitions of wargaming as there are wargamer, but the key elements are that it is seen to be an adversarial activity (which can include solo play), where players have to make decisions in response to an evolving situation, and live and work with the results of those decisions for the rest of the game, and that there is a degree of abstraction in the representation (i.e. people aren't using real kit or doing whole detailed tasks). Stated like this wargaming, often in the guise of "tabletop exercises" is applicable across almost the whole of the public and private sector, not just within the military. My main interest is in "manual" wargames - those which are played on a table top with physical components - not on on computers - and which help to create a tactile and social experience. The resources section below links to a number of general information sources on wargaming.
WARGAMING AND AI
That said, there is a lot of interest at the moment about how AI can be applied to wargaming - and to manual wargames as well as digital ones. I have done a number of projects in this area, both in terms of mapping out the roles of AI in wargaming, and in developing systems that use AI in order to generate a synthetic information wrap around a wargame so as to help immerse players in the the social media environment that their actions would be generating in the real world. I have also been doing some work around using ChatGPT (and other LLMs) to run matrix style wargames (essentially structured discussions/arguments), and to provide in-game advisors on both the rules of the wargame and on the tactics of the opposition. Some of my published work in this area includes:
- Synthetic Information Wraps - my IT2EC 2022 paper on our work for UK MOD on the
ASMSW and AI4II projects, and our IT2EC 2025 extended abstract and presentation on the latest phase of this work with the POBL project. - My chapter on Wargaming and Just War Theory in a new book on Just War Theory and Artificial Intelligence presents some of my thoughts on the role of AI within wargaming. Due late 2025.
- A white paper on the Military Uses of Conversational AI, including wargaming.
- I'm documenting my Matrix Game Simulation work and other wargaming related AI projects on my Substack at https://substack.com/@urbanwargamer/posts, and there is an introductory video on the MGS concept based on a talk and demo I gave at VCOW 2025.
- Also on Substack is a ChatGPT approach to doing Synthetic Information Wraps for your own manual wargames.
I firmly believe in practicing what I preach, so I have created a bot which contains all of my research to date into urban wargaming (see below), and AI and wargaming, and which also has all of the rules of the games I'm producing.
You can chat to it at Virtual UrbanWargamer.
WARGAMING AND XR
I have always had an interest in using virtual space for wargaming - not computerising the game, but using the social place as somewhere to play a manual game remotely, but with more immersion than afforded by something like Tabletop Simulator. I've developed a number of spaces in VR over the years, but recent advanced in Mixed Reality (MR) are finally making the whole thing do'able for minimal cost, and delivering a very "real" experience. I'm documenting my work over on
Substack, and the latest post on progress to date is entitled Mixed Reality Wargaming. The image below shows my co-author Andy existing virtually in my games room trying out a wargame with me.
URBAN WARGAMING
The focus of my PhD is the wargaming of urban conflict. As part of this I have been looking at the unique characteristics of urban conflict and how they are currently represented in wargames, identifying the potential gaps and deficiencies in current representation, and then developing new games to hopefully address, or at least shed light, on those gaps and deficiencies. I am doing my PhD "in public", so I'm posting material as I develop it on my wiki, and I also post regularly on Twitter/X as @urbanwargamer. See the wiki for all of my presentations, papers and publications, but here are a few of the key ones:
wiki, and I also post regularly on Twitter/X as @urbanwargamer. See the wiki for all of my presentations, papers and publications, but here are a few of the key ones:- My Fifty in Fifty Years list of key urban warfare texts
- An overview presentation on the PhD that I gave in early 2024 as part of the Georgetown University Wargaming Society's on-line lecture series
- My comparative paper on the wargames of the 1968 Battle of Hue, published in the Journal of Strategic Security, and later as part of the book Urban Operations.
- The presentation I gave at ConnectionsOz in late 2024 on Developing a Typology for the Representation of Civilians in Wargames.
The wargames that I'm currently working on as part of the PhD - and for which playtesters are always welcome - include:
- The Urban Calculus, a highly abstracted, pol-mil playable systems model of urban conflict and its impact on society and global opinion
- The Operational Level Urbanised Campaign system (OPUC), a Corps/Div level game with scenarios in the Baltics and Ukraine
- City & CEMA, a Bde to Bn level game focussed on the fight for individual towns and cities, area based with hidden information, with scenarios in the UK, Baltics and Ukraine
- Brick by Bloody Brick, low-level Pl/coy level modern urban rules, again with hidden information, drones and other facets of modern urban combat
- One Page Urban, a simple set of solo rules for refighting classic WW2 (and slightly later) urban battles such as Ortona, Aachen, Manilla etc
- Rubble Town, a solo, card-based, "beer-and-pretzels" game to introduce some of the key elements of urban combat
The aim is to publish each of these as print'n'play under a Creative Commons licence.
WARGAMING SERVICES
I operate as an independent consultant and practioner within the professional wargaming space, and can undertake a variety of assignments and projects (not just restricted to urban wargaming!) including:
- Wargame design and development;
- Wargame training, delivery and evaluation;
- Wargame research;
- Contributing ideation and design, and supporting development, on projects at the intersection of AI (esp. conversational AI), XR/virtual worlds/metaverse/AR/MR and wargaming;
- Through the POBL system, delivering synthetic information wrap alongside LVC training and wargames;
- Supporting existing teams with an extra pair of hands for wargame design, delivery or evaluation;
- Acting as the customer-friend on wargame related projects.
Always happy to have an informal chat about potential ideas and opportunities, just drop me a line at david.burden@daden.co.uk.