Game Idea Bot

game idea bot

Game Idea Bot is a twitter feed that several times a day tweets out randomly generated game ideas. As you might expect, a high percentage are just crazy … others, not so much.

The Four Eyed Dog Is Dead Taiping Rebellion Rules

The Four Eyed Dog is Dead is a set of free wargames rules for games set in the Taiping Rebellion.

For what it’s worth, the Taiping Rebellion is one of the least known — and at the same time, deadliest — conflict in world history. Taking place in China from 1950 to 1864, best estimates say that the Taiping Rebellion resulted in between twenty and forty million dead.

Largest Model Railroad of Russia

 

For some great eye candy, here is a video of what bills itself as the largest scale model railroad of Russia in the world. The layout features many of that country’s iconic buildings and sites.

Why The French and Scots Never Adopted The Longbow

If you’ve ever wondered why the French (and Scots) could get their butts kicked by English Longbowmen but never get around to adopting the technology, a new paper in the Journal of Law and Economics could explain it. It costs $10 to read the article, but the abstract alone will have you thinking:

“For over a century the longbow reigned as undisputed king of medieval European missile weapons. Yet only England used the longbow as a mainstay in its military arsenal; France and Scotland clung to the technologically inferior crossbow. This longbow puzzle has perplexed historians for decades. We resolve it by developing a theory of institutionally constrained technology adoption. Unlike the crossbow, the longbow was cheap and easy to make and required rulers who adopted the weapon to train large numbers of citizens in its use. These features enabled usurping nobles whose rulers adopted the longbow to potentially organize effective rebellions against them. Rulers choosing between missile technologies thus confronted a trade-off with respect to internal and external security. England alone in late medieval Europe was sufficiently politically stable to allow its rulers the first-best technology option. In France and Scotland political instability prevailed, constraining rulers in these nations to the crossbow.”