Unionists of Scott County, Tennessee (w/ David Thompson) | Board & Book #5
Transcript
Hey gamers, this is Liz Davidson from Beyond Solitire, and I'm here with my favorite recurring guest and co-designer, uh, David Thompson, uh, to talk about a game he's designed with someone else, uh, and that would be Rebels Against Rebellion, uh, designed with Trevor Benjamin. And today we're going to take a different approach to it because we're doing a board book. So, we're going to look at the research behind the game. Um, so David, why don't you tell us about Rebels Against Rebellion and what's what the topic is?
Yeah, sure. I will say though that also sitting on my table is some some Gettysburg books. So we could have had a very different discussion this morning.
Give it a few seconds about our baby.
Okay. Yeah. So So Rebels against Rebellion. Um it's a game that that Trevor and Benjamin and I uh have designed. It's being published by Flying Pig and it is about a very obscure teenytiny corner of the American Civil War. It's about um a a county in East Tennessee called Scott County and it's about when Tennessee seceded their secession from Tennessee. So this game takes place over a couple of years uh 1861 to 63 when the people of Scott County were defending themselves against the Confederacy and like secessionist gorillas.
That's amazing. So you actually went to Scott County as part of your research forc. Is that correct? I did. Yeah. Uh I didn't I mean I probably would have gone anyway. Uh but during the research process and you and you and I have talked about this before. So the general my general approach to researching historical games is I do all of the research before the design starts, right? And so I usually do like an initial pass through most of the material and then I do like a second pass where I I'm looking at the material primarily it's like as it informs the design. And what I re re realized in that initial pass is I kept running into instances where I'd find references to books that I was completely unable to obtain. Right? So I I tried all the normal, you know, like go buy them online, right? Oh, can't do that. Okay.
Uh Ohio has a very very good interl loan and despite that I was unable to get um some of these references to books at you know different state libraries and stuff like or state university libraries and stuff and so I kept like running into these walls of like I have references to material that I just could not find. And so, um, yeah, so essentially by necessity, uh, I got in contact with the historic society in Scott County, Tennessee, and because a lot of the material was referenced back to them. And, uh, so I just travel I I organized with them because they are super tiny and I had to organize with them so they would be open when I got there. It's like open by appointment.
And um and when I went down there, I was able to to acquire some of these reference materials.
That's really awesome. Um so this is a board and book. I mean, you might have chosen other media. Uh but for those of us trying to follow some of your research at home, what is your first recommendation?
All right. So I thought we would set the stage with stuff that's not specific to Scott County, right? Things that are actually acquirable by humans. And so, uh, um, two things that like, uh, Stuart Ellis Gorman kind of said, hey, if you're going to get into, because I'm not an ACW guy, like I'm of course like like all Americans, I know of course about the basics. Um, I could probably talk at a high level, but I needed to start digging deeper, right? So, um, Armies of Deliverance. I've got some glare there, but um Armies of Deliverance by Elizabeth Vin. Uh Stuart suggested this one because it it does a good job of like a holistic, you know, highle uh summary of the Civil War, but also it has sort of unique take on the uh her view of Unionists like in their role in the Civil War. So, nothing to do with Scott County specifically. as a matter of fact, it's not even referenced in there, but um just kind of a very very high first initial scene setter. So that's that's one thing that I just wanted to mention in passing. And then there was another book called A Savage Conflict. And this is by uh Daniel Sutherland. And this is specifically about gorillas, the role of gorillas in the American Civil War. And so, uh, as we'll discuss, right, the game is, you know, the loyalists, the the people of Scott County are 100% a gorilla, uh,
sort of force, and they're fighting against Confederate regulars, but also secessionist gorillas. So, I knew from a design perspective that, uh, I had to lean in and identify like how are we going to be able to model or like evoke this concept of gorilla conflict. So, this savage conflict uh text was the one that I just to kind of get a sense of like what was the role of guerrillas in the civil war and and the only thing I'll say about that u before we kind of move on to the actual Scott County stuff specifically is it largely frames the guerilla conflict in like three ways. One is gorillas that are irreg or irregulars, whatever you want to call them, that were like sanctioned, if you will, by the Union and the Confederate side. So almost like independents that were affiliated.
Then you have like these bands of independent gerillas that were largely like ideologically aligned to the Confederacy or the Union but um not necessarily like formally integrated. And then you have like bushwhackers like like evil people on both sides that just took the opportunity of conflict to do horrible things to people right in the name of of whatever they were they were claiming to be part of. So that was another sort of like initial text before I started deep diving just to give myself like a highlevel overview.
That's really interesting. You know, it's funny. Um like I know perfectly well there were girls in the Civil War, but you never think about it because it's always like oh the blue and the gray. We think about big pitch battles. We think about pickets charged and you and I have been thinking about that a lot. Um so yeah, that's actually something I haven't been thinking much about. Um, I also want to note that uh for those of you who watch this channel regularly, David and I have a playthrough of u the few turns of Rebels against Rebellion and you can actually see those large Confederate armies coming through and kind of interrupting the flow of the rest of the combat.
Yeah, we had to do um we had to do something interesting. We had to to how do we model like again this idea that there were confederate huge Confederate regular units that would march in occasionally into Scott County and sort of like slap around the the Scotty County loyalists and then they would always have to leave, right? Because if you know anything about East Tennessee and the in the in the Civil War, those Confederate units were doing all sorts of things, right? And so they couldn't they didn't have time or the ability to um just like garrison inside of Scott County and and try to fight the rebellion that way. So in the game that's how they have the Confederate side has to like deal with supply and they can't stay there and all sorts of challenges to to um kind of model that that approach.
Yeah. I feel like um the Scott County situation is very much a using a cannon to kill a mosquito kind of situation.
Yeah. Right. Right. And I mean and and it's an extremely as like both sides mechanically use the same actions, but like from a play perspective, it's extremely asymmetric because you have the PE the Scott County player, they just are trying to hold on, right? Just do what do whatever you can hold on. Guerilla tactics, hit and run. And then you have the the Confederate player who's got again these super powerful units, but you're very restricted in how you're able to to use them. Very constrained. [snorts] That is really interesting. All right, so we've got some of the background laid. So if we read these initial couple books, but um yeah, let's move in. What is our next our next reation?
Okay, so if we zoom in, uh one thing that I wanted to get a sense of for myself early on was what exactly was the reason that the people in East Tennessee did not want to secede? So, real quick, little tangent like February uh I think it was February of 61, Tennessee held its first secession vote referendum and the t the state voted not to secede. Um East Tennessee and middle Tennessee. So Tennessee at the time was basically divided into three regions like formerly divided. It was east, middle, and west. East and middle voted not to secede. West wanted to secede. Um, after Fort Sumpter, the sort of the feeling in Tennessee changed. Middle the middle part swung. And so when they held a a follow-up uh vote, the West and Middle vote assisted in the East overwhelmingly still wanted to stay with the Union. Um, and then of and then Scott County was by far the most wanting to stay with the Union. Right? So I talked to you about this before, but the vote was like 500 wanted to stay. 500 people in the county that voted wanted to stay in like 19 wanted to secede. So it was overwhelming. Um so I wanted to understand why the people in in East Tennessee wanted to stay with the union.
And so I read this book. So this is the first book that's really starting to zoom in to the East Tennessee situation specifically. So it's called War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerilla Violence in East Tennessee 1860 to 1869. So very specific. Um, this is by this is by null Fischer. Um, it does a really good job of deconstructing the socioeconomic sort of situation in East Tennessee. And essentially what it comes down to is there was a lot of different like politics that were going into this. Uh, slavery was directly and indirectly a factor, but essentially what it comes down to is the people of East Tennessee largely speaking did not own slaves. Um that's mostly because of the terrain and the type of like farming that was going on.
And so there was no socioeconomic reason to have slaves. So they didn't own slaves. And because they didn't own slaves, it made more sense for them to want to stay with the Union from just from a purely economic perspective. So I try to be very um and one thing I should note, I've got it sitting here like so I wrote this little historic booklet for the game. It's like 40 pages long to provide just historic context for the game. And uh I wanted to be very clear because I think there's a chance that I think there's a very strong chance that people will come to this game and be like, "Oh, the people will in Scott County were all moral morally and ethically driven by anti-slavery sentiment to fight against the rest of Tennessee." And that's that's not true.
Right. So the people of Scott County had all sorts of different reasons that they wanted to to stay with the Union. Some of those were directly tied to slavery and some of those were indirectly tied, but largely speaking, East Tennessee um wanted to stay with the Union because it made the most economic sense for them. So that book that's the book that I used to sort of do all the research on that on that piece.
That is very human.
Yes. Right. Right. Yes. Imagine this. The people of Scott County were humans and they had a whole bunch of different reasons and that's, you know, that's essentially the bottom line, right?
That's very funny. So, one question just raises for you. You're talking about the vote in Scott County being 500 to like 19.
Yeah.
That's such a small amount of people.
Yeah. So, Scott County was a very, very, very young county when the Civil War kicked off. I think it had only been a county for maybe like 10 years. And it was formed largely because it was such a big open area that needed a postal presence, right? And so when they picked Huntsville, the town of Huntsville, Tennessee, to be the county seat, they picked it because it was the centermost point in the county, not because it was like the biggest town or anything like that. And so there was like they formed it out of necessity just because of like the size and and how much the postal service had to support. And so like I think it was formed in 49 or 50, right? So we're talking about a very young county, covers a ton of area and it's very sparsely populated and all and and if you know the geography of East Tennessee, like Appalachian, East Tennessee, it's very rugged, like mountainous, heavily forested area. And that all of that plays into this conflict, this gorilla conflict, right?
Sparsely populated, heavily forested, rugged. um you know creeks are your main line of communication like roads almost don't exist right so um that's the sort of environment we're talking about
I guess my question then is like why did anybody bother like why would Confederate regulars even bother to go into what sounds like a wasteland with 500 people in it when they could be doing something that seems like it's more strategically I
vital
I'm sure okay so there was a lot of things that were also going on in East Tennessee uh that were unionists. So so Scott County was clearly not the only place that had a unionist activity in in like East Tennessee, North Georgia, North Alabama, western North Carolina, all of that area. All of that sort of like Appalachian southern part had a lot of unionist activity. And some of those things were like people from that area were doing bridge burnings like they were destroying key bridges to stop the South from moving like logistics and stuff. So there was a lot of like legitimate unionist activity that the Confederacy needed to be concerned with. But I'll tell you in the case of Scott County, I think Scott County just pissed off the Confederacy because they declared themselves they declared themselves a free and independent state, right? They were like, "We want to secede from you. You won't let us you you Tennessee can secede from the Union, but you're not allowing us to secede from you." Right? And that immediately made the the the Confederacy angry and they immediately moved troops in. Um, and so I think I think part of it was like legitimate like when for example the the Scott County Home Guard tried to establish itself as a actual Union regiment immediately the Confederacy went in and attacked. And so some of it was like legitimate military sort of choices, but a lot of it was, I think, just sheer like, "No, you're not going to be allowed to do this and we're going to show you who's boss."
Whoops.
So, how did you find out about this in the first place? I feel like it's so it's it is pretty obscure. It's cool.
Yeah.
Like what uh what turned you on to this as a topic?
I So, I mean, you know, I'm from Georgia originally, right? So I grew up in the south. I mean I left I left Georgia when I was 18 but then was I was in Texas for a while etc. So I mean all obviously I knew about the Civil War like anybody that grows up in America does. Um but I I feel like I feel like the Civil War is like always represented in this hyperreductive way where it's like North versus South. South bad South slavery, right? And it's like, okay, wait, there's part of the South that was not like that, right? There were very much these pockets of unionists. And I looked across the board game land, the war board game landscape, and there's like zero of those stories told. And so, and now I'm I am you and I are are part of this problem. Like, we're making our own little Gettysburg game. Of course, we're making it our game, which is different than all the other ones, but but you know, you look across the landscape, you're like, "Okay, there's 48,000 Gettysburg games and there's zero about loyalty." Union I loyalists in the south and so I was just like ah well let me find a good story about that topic and and you know craft a game about it and I looked and I mean the most obvious one that people will have heard of is the um what's it called the free state of Jones right because it was a movie and Matt McConnA was in it and it it's a similar story though that movie has some serious historic historicity issues but um no and I when you know this is also relatively close to home, right? Like East Tennessee is not far from
Huntsville, Alabama, where I lived, uh, for like 14 years, and it's not far from North Georgia. So, I just it it was something that felt close to me. Um, and it was about a a story that just had not really been told from a from a game perspective, obviously.
Yeah. As a Southerner, do you find that nuance that you've been researching comforting in some way? I think about that as somebody with a lot of Confederate soldiers in my family tree and like having grown up in the South as well. Um I um I don't know. I just like seeing a little bit of nuance, a little bit of like not all the Southerners were 100%.
Yeah, I think it's important. I mean I think it's important that like it's extremely nuanced, right? So, uh, there were Unionists in the south, there were pro-slavery people in the north, there were, you know, people again, it's like it's everything now is like in this hyper extreme uh um reality that like I feel like we live in right now. And it's like so you're either you're either with the South or you're against them and they were all about slavery. And it's like, well, there's a lot more nuance to that. Generally speaking, you know, I I don't really agree with anything that was happening from the from the Confederacy's perspective. Um, but I do feel for like there there probably are genuinely people in the South who are like I just want to understand the historical part of my family play without like glorifying it. But it's hard. It's I it's hard to find that um that ability in the modern day, right, where everyone feels like everything has to be like one extreme or the other. Um so the answer to your question is yes.
Like it's nice to be able to find these these pockets of of stories in history that are that are probably forgotten in some ways because they are so nuanced.
Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Um, are there other stories that you thought about looking at along these lines that you would be willing to make another game about?
Yeah, I So, yes. I mean, they're a little bit more challenging, right? There were like I like I mentioned there were there were areas of Georgia that did the same thing. There was a place in Georgia that seceded. Uh they didn't want to join the they just wanted to be their own thing, right? So they did not want to join the union. They just wanted to be their own whatever um thing and left alone. Um but there were pockets of Alabama, etc. This one stood out to me because um for better or worse, I felt it made for a better game, right? Because it was a more straightforward topic to to model. uh some of the other ones were more challenging. There wasn't like actual as much in terms of conflict, right? So the things like that. So this one just stood out uh when I when I was researching all the different possible options, but I'm sure there's plenty of others. And of course, like I mentioned before, the other one that would be the super lowhanging fruit would be the free state of Jones and in Mississippi.
Yeah. All right. So one more media.
All right. Well Well, I've got I've got I've got um media. Yes. I've got this is the book. It's called Enclave and it's Scott County's unique role in the American Civil War. This is by Ben Garrett from the Independent Herald in Onida, Tennessee. Now, this is interesting. This is the only book that's specifically about this topic that you can go I think I literally bought it at Barnes & Noble. Okay? So, if you want to go like get a secondary source that's super cheap and easy to find and all that kind of stuff, this is the book for you. Now, let's talk about the actual quality of this book.
So, I bought it and I started reading it and it's very disjointed and and I guess it's intended to be that way. Uh, I didn't really understand this when I bought this book. I just I bought it because of the topic. I read it. I tried to read it cover to cover. It's not chronological. It's not logically laid out. It's just all these disperate like
sh uh topics about the, you know, it just jumps around and I'm like, "Okay, this is really good information.
It's horribly laid out. there's no cohesive narrative. And I was like, why is it written like this? Well, here's here's what I came to to re to understand uh when we when we talk here, and this is the last like major secondary source that we can talk to. Everything after that like crazy super niche. But one of the people that we're going to talk about in a minute is called um let me just make sure I get this right. Uh Paul Roy. So, put a pin in that. We'll come back to Paul Roy in a minute. But Paul Roy was the uh editor for the Independent Herald. Right? So this is this newspaper, small newspaper in an IDA, Tennessee. So he would periodically write articles in that small newspaper about this topic.
Well, Ben Garrett, the person that's credited on this book, is a modern-day editor there. And as far as I can tell, he never credits Paul Roy anywhere in this book. And I'm 99% sure that every one of these articles was written by Paul Roy. And so the individual articles are really good. There's no cohesive narrative. So you could not buy this book and read about the conflict as a cohesive hole because it doesn't provide that. It just provides a bunch of disperate articles about the topic. So, I would warn anybody not to buy this book if you're looking for something to tell the cohesive story.
Yes, it sounds like there's very little to tell the cohesive story.
Yes, I think that's very true. There is no
there is no I mean now that that's we Yes. Okay. So, now let's deep dive. Okay. Now let's talk about um three people, three authors who were absolutely critical once I went to the historic society and it was able to access their material. So I'm going to talk about three people. One person is a lady by the name of Esther Scott Sanderson, uh Paul Roy, who I just mentioned before, and Henry Clay Smith. So these three people combined uh they all were born in um uh in the early 1900s, late 1800s, they all had books published somewhere between about 1950 to to the late 70s. And they all wrote about they were all from the area. They were all local historians. They all wrote about Scott County, the surrounding area in general, but with a a focus oftentimes on the Civil War. And so it's their materials that I was finding constant references to that I could not acquire on my own.
Um, so Esther Scott uh Sanderson wrote five books I think she's credited with writing. All were like super super tiny presses but did actually get published in some cases. Um, typically she would write about the people of Scott County and then she would dedicate like one chapter per book to the Civil War. And generally speaking, the material that she would uh write about is also um covered by the other two authors, Henry Clay Smith or Paul Roy. And it's difficult to to determine whether or not she was doing a lot of original work or just sort of like largely circular sort of writing based on their on their stuff. So I wanted to mention her first. Um the next one I'll mention is Paul Roy, which I already talked about him.
He was the author of the Independent Herald. He did write a lot of different articles, but the most important um book that he wrote was he wrote this book. This is the quote unquote book. Okay.
Oh my god. So, this is uh compiled by RPA Roy for the Scott County Historic Society, number 69,
and it's 400 pages of just they just had to print it off for me and bind it for me. There is no like actual book of this. This is just this is just the Historic Society's PDF that they'll print off for you if you're there in person. Um, and you can see, it should not be a surprise to anybody that can see the the video of us is that's actually watching. This is the singular most important text I had available to me. He dedicates entire um sections of the book to the Civil War. And it's sort of like the Bible that I had. There's an entire chapter, it's chap titled chapter two, but it's 150 pages called the soldiers. And it's literally biographies of people from the the county, individual biographies of people that were in the Civil War. Um, so this is this is the singular most important text. If I had to pick one, this text by Paul Roy was the sort of Bible.
That's amazing.
Um, yeah, it's just awesome. And then the other one I mentioned to local historian Clay Scott Smith. It's the exact same thing. It's another text uh dusty bits of the forgotten past and it's also typet and edited by membership of the Scott County Historic Society. Right. So, it's another of the exact same thing. Um so, those were these were like my my precious, you know, texts that served as the as the Bible. Um, the last things I'll mention that were also important too were um there was in the late 80s through I think the early 2000s there was a a local like uh there was a bank called the First National Bank in Scott County and they published something called the the First National Bank Chronicle which was like a local newsletter and they would often put um historical stories in there and so that newsletter had a ton of uh of stories that I referenced and it was it ended in 2009 and then it was sec succeeded by the Scott County Chronicle which was put out by the historic society which did the same. It was like a little newsletter that would have the occasional story and so I have all of those like every one of those printed off into these like little oneoff you know documents that I've used and so that is that is it. I have like the entire archive of all of those.
I feel like this is also an accidental advertiser for how important local historical societies actually are.
I couldn't have done it without I mean like literally like there would not it literally could not exist. The game would be a a shell of itself. It would be it would you'd be like Wikipedia entries because that's all I had. I mean like literally I have this one enclave book that I told you about that I couldn't have make sense of the story by you know by itself and that's it. So if it had not been for the historic society literally both in terms of them printing I mean it's from them right it's not that they gave me access to it it's it's literally theirs um this game wouldn't be possible.
So were there [clears throat] so before you made this trip uh were there times where you were like desparing of your ability to get the game made? Like, did you know that your trip to Scott County was going to yield this much?
Yeah, I I was getting frustrated by my ability to find the material, right?
And I was I was struggling from two perspectives. One, I needed to be able to understand like from a more textured perspective what the hell was going on, right? Because you, you know, there's only so much that highlevel, you know, two-page summaries can give you. Um, also I needed to understand the geography better because I was really limited in getting detailed maps of Scott County. Mostly I was looking at like the um atlas that goes with the War of the Rebellion like post civil war um official literature and that map is just not detailed enough, right? It has like two roads going through Scott County and a couple of towns. I was like, "This isn't I where I can't even the places that actually were critical to the conflict at the time that they changed names like they weren't represented on maps." I was like, "Okay, I've got to find these creeks." And so the last sort of like amazing thing that happened to me when I was at the historic society is um I had been there all all day talking to the people. They were amazing. They helped me with everything I needed. Um, but they they walked me over and they pulled open this drawer and pulled out a map tube and they took out a map and it was the original map from 18 50 like late 1850s and it was there to show like all of the parcels like how they were divided. And so it was like the holy grail of constructing the map for the game because I had an actual period
appropriate super zoomed in depiction of Scott County. And so I mean the game would exist. Sure, there would be some version of the game I would probably have have pushed through and made something. It would be just and who know from a gameplay perspective it would have probably been fine, but it would not have nearly the same level of of detail and and reflection as what I was able to achieve with these.
So I'm assuming I know the answer to this because when we went on our tour of the Minnesota Historical Society during SD His North, the people there were so happy to show us the collection. and they were like pumped to to to let us see the goods.
Um, but were the people of the Scott County Historical Society excited to see you? Baffled to see you? Like how how much traffic are they getting down there?
They were very baffled. And so, you know, I had reached I I'd mentioned I had to reach out. I found them through their Facebook page and I found the like the president uh and I was messaging him on Facebook. Uh, like I mentioned, he had to he we had to coordinate my visit because he had to go and open the historic society, right, which is in like the one government building in in all of, you know, all of Huntsville, Tennessee. And um it was like upstairs in that in that one building. They had opened it up for me. So, you know, three guys from the historic society were there. Um, I came in, but when I organized my trip, I didn't tell them. I just told them I was researching the topic and they were fine with that. And then I came in and I felt awkward because I was like, I owe these guys. Like, why is this weirdo from Ohio driving down to research Scott County in the Civil War? And so I felt like I owed them a reason. And so I awkwardly was like, "Yeah, I'm working on a game about this." And they looked at me like I was an alien. And and I I just kind of like left it alone. I didn't mention it or anything. I didn't mention any details. And then at the end, so hours later after all this had gone on, I said something like, "Oh, I'll bring copies of the game to give to you if you're interested." And one of the guys was like, "Oh, I don't play video games." Um, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, no, this is a board game." But but I mean, these guys were probably 80, you know, seven late 70s, early 80s. And so it's it you know the whole thing I'm
sure of them like they probably left and they're like okay that weirdo he's who who knows why he was actually here. He's never coming back you know whatever. But but they were amazing. I mean, they could not have been more helpful. And you know, that it was it was funny to hear the number of times I heard, you know, I'd ask a question about like a very nuanced question about a specific person or whatever and their response was almost inevitably like, "Well, my dad told me," and then they would launch into a story that they had been passed down through generations, right?
Oh, that's really cool.
Yeah. Um, this actually leads me to one question I had been kind of mulling over, which is, you know, in um our our video where we're playing Rebels Against Rebellion. There are a lot of like little individual people who have a bit of personality and who are really important to the course of the game.
Um, how did you choose which individuals to represent and like are those people that kind of shown out of the historical society records? Yeah, it literally what so essentially what I did is uh I read all of the documentation from the three authors I told you about and what you would find is there were recurring themes about specific people, right? People who clearly left enough of a legacy to be mentioned across the texts. And so, especially with Paul Roy with his person byperson accounts, um there were from a gameplay perspective, what I needed to do was associate individual key personalities with locations. Um that was easy to do because you would have like oh you know Dennis Traml the son of an American war revolutionary was a key you know anti-slavery figure that lived on this creek and he this you know like the story would come alive when you're reading it and it was like okay well I know how to put this in the game. he's he's at his home and when the Confederates tried to come to his home, he defended it. And so that's that's an easy thing to put into the game. And so it's kind of like um as you're reading the material, you just sort of flag like, oh well, this kind of has to be in the game. It's not even really a choice.
Like if I'm going to make a game about this topic that the history has sort of driven me to the to the obvious conclusions.
Nice. How did this research process like you like to research your games? is something that actually made us friends from early on. Um, what how does this compare to other research experiences that you've had uh in the course of a now getting long career making games?
You know, each each one is like each each time I because because I choose to take on niche topics oftentimes, right? Like I don't typically do like these strate zoomed out strategic things that have 48,000 secondary sources. Um they each have like their own challenges. So you know I think back to when I was working on Pablo's house and it was a similar challenge where uh to get to the level of detail I needed I needed to go to primary sources and those primary sources are written in in Russian in so translation became a challenge getting access to the access to the there was a period not to tangent too much there was a period after the the Soviet Union fell where Americans had brief access to a lot of um former Soviet Russian whatever war records and that's since not that's that access has since been basically taken away but in that period we actually had access to a lot of those primary sources they're still in Russian so I had to do translations and blah blah blah um you know when I when I was working on soldiers and postman's uniforms Lucy and I went to my wife and I went to dance uh to go to the actual site so we could I could understand the geography and so each one like each game has their own like sort of challenge allges and opportunities. And so I think with this one, uh, I was surprised, you know, you think like, oh, I'm doing this in America. It's the American Civil War. This won't this will be not easy,
but this should be relatively easy, you know, compared to some of the other topics I've done. And, uh, it wasn't, right? And the other thing that I did do, and way to really talk about this because it's kind of outside the scope of this, is when I went down to Huntsville, I went to as many of the battlefield locations as I could to get a sense of the geography for it. Not that the game is zoomed out enough that it's kind of not important, but uh I just want to get a better idea of like what the topography did matter for these battles. And so I just wanted to see that for myself. So whenever possible, going to a place giving a better sense. But yeah, I think just like we've talked about getting these access to these primary these these sources from the the local historians in this case was the biggest challenge. It's and it kind of was a little bit different than some of the other things I've dealt with.
That's really cool. Um, if people are looking to get into this topic, um, you know, we kind of went from, you know, broad overview to, you know, as close to grain lure as we could get. Um, but if you already know something about the Civil War, which of those books is just the best one to start with?
I mean, the problem is the best one you won't have access to is the truth of the truth of it, unfortunately. Um, I will, this is self-promotion. I will say that I tried to do as much as I could in the historic book that I wrote that comes with the game. And I'll make that book available as a PDF for free for people uh when the game comes out. So, uh, I even write like I close the book with appendix 4 is called researching Scott County's role in the civil war. So, it talks about exactly the process that we've discussed today. Um, none of these really I mean unfortunately none of the books that we've discussed can really provide people with this understanding, right? you're probably probably this enclave book is going to be unfortunately your best choice and it's like the only real option that people will have without going to going through what I went through for the research. And I know that's not a satis satisfactory answer, but it's kind of the reality unfortunately.
Well, I guess tourism to Scott County, Tennessee is going up. Those guys are going to be baffled. Um, so, um, I am so glad we had this conversation. I feel like this I feel like this reveals in some ways why making games about historical topics is so important. Like, you know, you're really popularizing something that people would never have known about or had access to otherwise. I think that's really cool.
Yeah. Yeah. And one thing that's come out of it for sure, I am highly confident that I have the l biggest collection of books on this topic outside of Scott County, Tennessee.
Amazing. [gasps]
Oh man.
So David, thank you so much for coming and talking to me about this. Uh we're gonna go now work on our very obscure game about Gettysburg.
That's right. That's right.
Um, but for those of you out there, uh, please, uh, check out the Kickstarter for Rebels Against Rebellions coming out for Flying Pig. It's going to be live for a little longer and I'll have a link in the show notes and you should check it out.
Thanks, Liz.
Thanks, David. All right, everybody. Please like, subscribe, comment, ask questions. Most of all, happy gaming. Heat. Heat.