Talk:Game Designers' Workshop

System 7
If anyone can add information about GDW's System 7 then great. Right now it is very conspicuously absent. I can't give any date myself (started in late 1970s?) or I'd add it right now. It was a miniatures combat system for Napoleonics Era warfare, including both rules and the "miniatures" themselves. In yet another insightful and clever innovation from GDW in its heyday, it tried to make the pageantry of painted miniature lead figures available to would-be miniatures players who either couldn't afford the expense of large collections of lead or lacked interest/patience in finding so many figures and rather tediously painting them all. The normal convention for lead miniatures in gaming is to glue ranks and columns of the figures onto "stands", which are simply cardboard, metal, or wooden strips that serve as bases to help the lead figures stand vertically without falling over on a miniatures table. Equally important, in most game rules the stands also imitate the size and shape (if they could be seen from above) of the actual historical formations the painted figures represent. Typically, one stand represents one company of a particular type of infantry or cavalry unit. System 7 sold packages of cardboard counters rather than lead figures. The cardboard counters were shaped and proportioned to represent specific historical units of various nationalities of that era. The graphical designs on the tops of the counters usually indicated the nationality of the unit by its dominant color with detailed markings inspired by the historical uniforms worn by units. While it was still somewhat expensive to assemble a large collection of System 7 "miniatures" to play interesting-sized battles it cost a small fraction of what it would take to purchase all the lead figures for the same battles. Not to mention the time spent painting the figures, of course. Obviously, the cardboard "miniatures" aren't as attractive as well-painted lead figures, but that's the trade-off. 69.17.65.50 12:11, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

System 7 Napoleonics was published in 1978 and won an HG Wells Award for Best Miniatures (much to the chagrin of the "true" lead miniatures manufacturers). The system was designed by Rich Banner, while the rules were an adaptation of the Fire & Steel rules by Frank Chadwick. The 7 in System 7 referred to the purported scale (7mm). The Napoleonics suffix to the name was to allow later (planned) versions in other eras (for example, System 7 ACW, or System 7 Modern) but which never reached beyond the "concept" stage. AmasaJoslin (talk) 03:29, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Boardgamegeek.com citations deleted
The boardgamegeek.com page used as a citation was a user editable wiki page that was only created 7 days after (on 17 March 2007) the previous edit of the wikipedia page (10 March 2007) and both contain these identical passages:


 * The company was originally established June 22, 1973 by Frank Chadwick, Rich Banner, Marc Miller, and Loren Wiseman. Originally their main effort went into the Europa series of monster wargames, of which Drang Nach Osten! was merely the first, but they brought out a considerable number over the years.


 * By rough count, GDW published one new product every 22 days for 22 years. The designers attributed the company's demise as much to burn-out as to financial difficulties.

Unless time's arrow has reversed its direction of flight the boardgamegeek user copied, without attribution, unsourced information from wikipedia to an external site so that information cannot be used as a citation on wikipedia. Waerloeg (talk) 10:25, 20 April 2014 (UTC)