Fire Zone ("FZ") is a tabletop roleplaying and tactical game about the experience of the footsoldier in the modern era. It is a game design I've been drafting for some time now for release later. It has also been an immense learning experience - about military game design, realistic and representational game design, game development in general, and how to make a complex subject into a fun game.

I produced three iterations of the Fire Zone manual, including a full graphic mock-up of the final publishable version (with a commissioned painting for the cover, and a professional graphic layout). Each of these books weigh in at 200+ pages (the mock-up is about 275 pages). I began the project in 1995, worked on it full-time for two years, and have kept it as a part time project for the remainder. (I also took a two-year hiatus.)

Fire Zone is a game system that conveys the full spectrum of the modern soldier's experience. It does devote rules to core combat, of course - such as squad-level command-control, small arms fire, movement, cover, stealth, vehicle combat, weapon systems, et cetera.

Furthermore, Fire Zone devotes attention to the "peripheral", non-combat experiences of soldiering. Rules and supplemental information cover combat psychology and battleshock; general military life; the politics of "army" command and bureaucracy; conventional versus unconventional operations; the integration of small infantry units into the full spectrum of frontline operations; detailed air support rules (covering the full range of "air" - from the biplanes of early times to the stealth fighters of the Gulf War); special munitions (e.g. flame weapons, mines, explosively-formed projectiles, et cetera); communications and surveillance; a full range of "tech levels" to categorize equipment and weapons from 1900 right up until now; and so on.

I also built and a large, well-detailed and realistic-feeling fictional game world for Fire Zone.

The rules of Fire Zone are based not solely on other games, but on real-world and historical assessments (and my own experience as a soldier [the black-and-white photos on this page were taken by myself]). I've done painstaking direct research into historical accounts, to avoid the largely derivative nature of other games.

All of this makes Fire Zone sound like a reference manual. (Actually,  some commentators have called it that - including journalism professor who perused the mock-up.) However, I've devoted lots of effort to making the game simplified, fun and accessible. The first few years were devoted to "unpacking" the immense subject-matter - which is why early iterations were long and complex - but later iterations have culled the architecture down while retaining a similar level of representation. They do more with less.

Fire Zone has been an incalculable learning experience for me. (After reviewing my mock-up of Fire Zone, the design director at BreakAway hired me to work on Code Orange.) Once completed I will publish it first as a boardgame then as a computer game.

Also, I've had great fun playtesting Fire Zone with my friends over many sessions (I even documented one session in a one-hour film called Tuk Lai: A Wargame).

Fire Zone has simply been an exercise in how to make a game both engrossingly realistic and very  fun.

(To visit the archived, original Fire Zone website, please click here...)