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Jim Dunnigan, widely nicknamed the 'Dean of Wargame Design', is a pioneering American tabletop game designer, military simulation expert, and defense commentator who defined the modern civilian wargaming industry from the late 1960s onward. He founded leading simulation publisher Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) and bridged hobbyist game design work to professional strategic analysis used by U.S. national security institutions.
Key moments
1967Published his first commercial wargame Jutland for established publisher Avalon Hill
1969Released the wargame 1914 for Avalon Hill, then departed to found his own independent game company SPI
1971Launched the diplomacy-focused conflict simulation Origins of World War II, as SPI rose to dominate the global civilian wargame market for the rest of the 1970s
1975Inducted as one of the earliest wargame designers into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame
1976Released his well-known hypothetical North America invasion scenario wargame Invasion: America
1980sBegan formal collaboration with U.S. defense agencies to build professional strategic simulation tools for Cold War conflict analysis
1990s to presentPublished multiple revised editions of his authoritative reference work Complete Wargames Handbook, and remains active as a public military affairs analyst
Game Industry Naming Norm Breakthrough
Dunnigan pioneered the practice of printing individual wargame designers' names prominently on product covers at SPI, at a time when nearly all tabletop game publishers treated creative staff as anonymous behind-the-scenes workers. This shift turned high-quality game design into a recognized, respected public career path for hobbyist creators, rather than an uncredited production task.
Cold War Civil-Military Simulation Bridge
His experience building accessible, historically grounded conflict games for mass civilian audiences gave him unique credibility with U.S. defense planners during the later Cold War. He helped design scenario tools for strategic nuclear and conventional war analysis that avoided the overly abstract, disconnected modeling common in prior exclusively military-run simulations, creating long-running pathways for civilian gaming talent to contribute to official national security work.
Foundational Influence on Modern Game Genres
The core design systems he popularized including hex grid movement, unit-based combat rating systems, and turn-based sequential action became standard foundational mechanics that later spread far beyond wargaming, into early tabletop RPGs, digital turn-based strategy franchises, and modern 4X strategy game lines that remain commercially dominant today.
James F. Dunnigan (born August 8, 1943) is an author, military-political analyst, Defense and State Department consultant, and wargame designer currently living in New York City.
Career
Dunnigan was born in Rockland County, New York. After high school, he volunteered for the military instead of waiting to be drafted. From 1961 to 1964, he worked as a repair technician for the Sergeantballistic missile; his service included a tour in Korea.Afterwards, he attended Pace University studying accounting, then transferred to Columbia University, graduating with a degree in history in 1970.[1]
In college he became involved in wargaming. He designed Jutland, which Avalon Hill published in 1967, following it up with 1914 the next year, and PanzerBlitz in 1970, which eventually sold more than 300,000 copies.[2] Meanwhile, Dunnigan had founded his own company, initially known as Poultron Press, and which was soon renamed to Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI).[3] Dunnigan created SPI to save the magazineStrategy & Tactics, which at that time was published by Chris Wagner.[3] Dunnigan had been contributing material to the magazine since its second issue in February 1967, and when Wagner was having financial challenges with the magazine he sold the rights to Dunningan for $1.[3] Dunnigan took over a windowless basement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where he published his first issue, Strategy & Tactics #18 in September 1969; every issue included a new wargame beginning with that issue.[3] Dunnigan also designed the game Sniper! (1973).[3] Dunnigan later designed Dallas: The Television Role-Playing Game (1980), which was the first published licensed role-playing game.[3] In 1980, Dunnigan was forced to leave SPI as the financial situation at the company was deteriorating.[3] He left SPI to write more books, begin modeling financial markets, and pursue other projects.[4]
Between 1966 and 1992, he designed over 100 wargames and other conflict simulations, ranging from 1969's Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker about the student takeover at Columbia (which he witnessed as a bystander[5]), to the gigantic War in Europe, to the online Hundred Years War with his long-time partners Albert Nofi and Daniel Masterson, which has been running since 1992.
In 1979, he wrote The Complete Wargames Handbook (first edition), and in 1980 How to Make War.[4]
Dunnigan contributed to Three-Sixty Pacific's Victory at Sea but, he claimed, was not allowed to finish the computer wargame's design, although it was advertised as "James F. Dunnigan's Victory at Sea".[6]
With his partners from the Hundred Years War, Daniel Masterson and Albert Nofi, Dunnigan founded the online military news site StrategyPage in 1999, of which he is the editor-in-chief. Podcasts of his commentaries on history, military affairs, and the contemporary world are regularly posted on StrategyPage.Com and as at Instapundit.com
Dunnigan regularly lectures at military and academic institutions, such as the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group, in Newport, Rhode Island.[7]
Awards/recognition
At Origins in 1976, Dunnigan was inducted into the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame.[8][9] In 1999 Pyramid magazine named him as one of the millennium's most influential persons "at least in the realm of adventure gaming".[10] He was honored as a "famous game designer" by being featured on the king of diamonds in Flying Buffalo's 2008 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck.[11]
Books
The Complete Wargames Handbook, first edition, 1979
The Complete Wargames Handbook: How to Play, Design and Find Them, Revised edition, William Morrow, 1992. ISBN 0-688-10368-5. (online version)
Wargames Handbook: How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames, Third edition, 2000. ISBN 0595155464.
How To Make War: A Comprehensive Guide To Modern Warfare, first edition, 1983
How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare for the Post-Cold War Era, 3rd edition, William Morrow, 1993. ISBN 0-688-12157-8.
How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare in the Twenty-first Century, 4th edition, HarperCollins, 2003.
Digital Soldiers, St. Martin's, 1996. ISBN 0-312-14588-8.
Dirty Little Secrets of the 20th Century: Myths, Misinformation, and Unknown Truths About the 20th Century, William Morrow, 1999. ISBN 0-688-17068-4.
The Perfect Soldier. Citadel, 2004. ISBN 0-8065-2416-2.
Co-author
As editor and co-author
The Russian Front: Germany's War in the East, 1941-45 (also published as The Russian Campaign), Arms and Armour, 1978. ISBN 0-85368-152-X.
With William Martel
How to Stop a War: The Lessons of Two Hundred Years of War and Peace, Doubleday, 1987. ISBN 0-385-24009-0.
With Austin Bay
From Shield to Storm: High-Tech Weapons, Military Strategy and Coalition Warfare in the Persian Gulf, William Morrow, 1991. ISBN 0-688-11034-7.
A Quick & Dirty Guide to War: Briefings on Present and Potential Wars, 4th edition, Paladin, 2008. ISBN 978-1-58160-683-6.
With Albert Nofi
Shooting Blanks: War Making That Doesn't Work, 1991. ISBN 0-688-08947-X.
Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You About the Greatest, Most Terrible War in History, William Morrow, 1994. ISBN 0-688-12235-3.
Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific, William Morrow, 1995. ISBN 0-688-14947-2.
The Pacific War Encyclopedia, Facts on File, 1998. ISBN 0-8160-3439-7.
Other works
(contributor) Wargame Design: The History, Production, and Use of Conflict Simulations, Simulations Publications, 1977. ISBN 0-917852-01-X.
Foreword to H.G. Wells's Floor Games (Skirmisher, 2006)
4.James F. Dunnigan. Hobby Games: The 100 Best Green Ronin Publishing, 2007^
5.According to Dunnigan he was a student at Columbia University that season and, although he has not participated in the action, several of his friends did. Some of these worked in the school newspaper and asked Dunnigan to make a game for the first anniversary of The Spectator. Quoted in James F Dunnigan. Wargames Handbook Writers Club Press, 2000^
