National Security Decision Making Game comes to HMGS

If you can make it, I'd strongly recommend this game. I've played NSDM in the
past, and it is great fun. These guys put on a great game.

-Mike

THE NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION-MAKING (NSDM) GAME
COMES TO HMGS!

  Since this year's theme of FALL IN! is Modern War - The 20th Century -
a new but fun game is being offered, a first for HMGS!

  The National Security Decision-Making (NSDM) Game is a fast-paced,
challenging simulation of contemporary politics and eternal strategic
principles.
This five-hour game is
modeled after the simulations which senior government officials use to explore
geopolitical options. Each of the players occupies a role in which he or she
can affect the formulation of national policy in their country. Most players
find the NSDM Game to be intellectually stimulating, vigorously competitive
and unlike any other gaming opportunity they have ever had.

Players receive instruction on the NSDM Game from former game directors and
controllers from the Naval War College. The game is directed by these former
NWC officers with the assistance of a small group of subject matter experts
from other services and private industry.

Players are then assigned to individual roles within a variety of
nation-states. "Real world"
  dynamics take over and inexorably draw these player-states toward
cooperation in some areas and conflict in others. Meanwhile, within each state
the players are inevitably brought into competition as each seeks to obtain
advantages for the interest group that he or she represents.

Concurrently, the game control group injects stimuli that challenge the
players' abilities to react, such as a regional war, an massive disease
outbreak across a continent, or a major earthquake causing heavy loss of life
and property. Here are just a few examples:

** A player in the U.S. cell might be the president, a congressman, a majority
of voters in the Midwest, or the national media.

** Players in the PRC might represent the Communist Party, internal security
forces, the Peoples' Liberation Army, or South Chinese entrepreneurs.

** A Russian player might be president, minister of defense, a spokesman for
nationalist forces, or a leader of liberalizing elements.

** Iranian players might occupy positions within the theocracy, bureaucracy,
industry, or military.

** A Japanese player might be the prime minister, the head of the Japan
Defense Agency, a member of Sumitomo's board of directors, or a MITI
bureaucrat.

And unlike other war games where one "team" of players defeats other teams, in
the NSDM Game all players are individually ranked by the degree to which they
gain advantage for the group they represent.

  Although NSDM has been conducted as a stand-alone, eight-hour
political-military seminar
game at conventions such as Origins, GenCon, DragonCon, Connections, and
RudiCon, a special version of NSDM will be presented at Fall In! 2000. A
five-hour version of the NSDM
Game with enhanced military action will be conducted as a Seminar beginning at
7:00 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3rd.

In the course of the game it is inevitable that several nations will clash.
Specifications of these battles will be recorded, and battles played out as
modern miniature conflicts
  (4-hour games) on Saturday, Nov. 4th beginning at 10:00 a.m.

  REMEMBER - this is a first, but fun new event for HMGS. It will no
doubt be a great success!

For more information on the NSDM game, go to there website at
  http://www.he.net/~nsdm/.