What should I work on next?

06 December 2007

Another New Feature for the Journal! Huzzah!

Well, I have found at least one way for the work of myself and my best chum to finally see the light of day: the Telephonic Difference Engine Web! I have saved a snippet of our work on the Web and made it available to you, my readers, via a link on the left hand side of this journal.

Strictly speaking, the timeline and other information we have developed are an alternate history project, and not (shudder) Victorian Science Fiction. However, much of the most interesting bit does take place during Her Imperial Majesty's long reign, so I felt inclined to include it here. I think many of you will find it fun.

The first installment of the original 58 page long (and yet to be near completed!) document is a Table of Organization and Equipage for the Army of the Republic of Texas. The Texicans, though a bit rough about the edges, have been staunch allies of the British Empire for many years. I hope you appreciate the work in progress and enjoy it.

Legalese:
Please note that the authors of this material are reserving their intellectual property rights in the creation of all the documents that I am planning to post, and they are related to solicitors (something we usually keep quiet about!). Also note that in future posts there will be political and military events included. In America, we are entitled to our own political views, and we expect that right to be respected. We have no real agenda involved, we certainly don't want to promote real wars(!), but we felt that the events we describe make an enjoyable setting for some of our planned wargames, and perhaps even for a book or two (or more). But first I shall have to do something in regards to my overusage of parenthetical commentary.

I hope you enjoy it!

2 comments:

Ike said...

The pages on the Republic of Texas Army are outstanding and very interesting to read. I have a couple of points to make, however. First, the gun crew size in the artillery is grossly small; 3 men couldn't handle a 3# battalion gun, let alone a 24-pound field gun. Should have crews of 12 to 30, depending upon the caliber of the field piece. I don't have any qualifications to speak to emplaced fortification artillery, but suspect their crews ought to be the same size or larger, until mechanized methods of bringing ammo from the fortress' magazines is developed. Second, your cavalry organization has no provision for horse-holders, remounts and farriers; all essential to horse cavalry operations and the TO&E positions can be kept just re-named to mechanics and machinists of various types to keep the mechanical monsters running. Third, your logistics (quartermaster) people and equipment are entirely omitted. This element becomes increasingly critical as the army transitions from cap and ball with horses to machine guns and quick-firing artillery with tanks and armored cars.

Great gaming stuff! and I look forward to reading more of it. It'll be interesting to see how the campaign shapes.

J Womack, Esq. said...

Ike:

You are absolutely correct in the number of omissions and reduced number of crew we used in our TO&E. The organization is actually set up for use under TSATF rules, and not necessarily to any real numbers. Perhaps I need to make that more clear, but in trying to make the reading entertaining as well, we have tended to omit more 'metagame' writing.

I am glad you enjoyed it so far. Please check out the two new items I added this evening.