# Mark Herman (game designer)

Mark Herman (born 1954) is an American game designer known for his contributions to wargames and historical strategy games. With a career spanning more than five decades, Herman is regarded as a pioneer in the genre, particularly for his innovations in card-driven games (CDGs), which blend narrative and strategy through card-based mechanics.

## Biography

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, he was the first child of businessman Nathaniel Herman and homemaker Joan Herman. He graduated in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in history from Stony Brook University, and in 1997 with a master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He was a senior partner for Booz Allen. He was an adjunct professor teaching military strategy and analytic methods for Georgetown University (1998-2009) and Columbia University (2014-2019), and lectured for the U.S. Naval War College, and the University of Maryland.

## Wargame designer

Herman began playing wargames at age 12, and at that age started thinking about creating his own games.$^{:102}$
Mark Herman started apprenticing for Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) in 1976 under James F. Dunnigan,$^{:102}$ and Redmond A. Simonsen. In 1977, he published his first game for SPI, called October War. He went on to design several more games and, after a brief departure, returned to SPI in 1978, during which time SPI was being taken over by TSR, Inc.
Herman was working on a game in 1982 about the Pacific Front of World War II and would read a book each day to immerse himself in that subject, and would use math to do probability calculations for the rival forces, and was also able to get the codebreaking capabilities of the American and British forces integrated into a game he was working on.
In 1982, Eric Dott, owner of Monarch Avalon and Avalon Hill, founded Victory Games, where Herman served as Executive Vice President of publishing as well as a game designer. During his time at Victory Games, he designed popular titles such as Gulf Strike, AMBUSH!, NATO: The Next War in Europe, and Pacific War.
Herman states that he created three games to be used by Pentagon planners for officer training on contingencies for combat. Staff members at the United States Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base bought the game Gulf Strike which Herman designed, and officers played it at the base.
Since 1987, Herman has worked as an independent game designer, publishing his games through Monarch Avalon and GMT Games. During this period, he has created some of his most popular games, including We the People, For the People, Fire in the Lake, The Great Battles of Alexander, Washington’s War, Empire of the Sun, and Churchill.
Herman worked with General William E. DePuy on games at BDM International for the United States Department of Defense.$^{:102}$ Ellis Simpson of Games International described Herman in 1988 as "one of the gurus of modern gaming" for whom "the more controversial the topic, the greater his interest". Herman designed a second edition of Gulf Strike that was published in 1988, as well as the 1990 Desert Shield expansion module for the game. Herman continued to work as a defense and military analyst in the early 1990s, and designed the simulation that the Pentagon used for Operation Desert Storm.

## Innovator of card-driven game mechanics

Herman was inducted into the Charles S. Roberts Hall of Fame by 1991.$^{:93}$
In 1993, Mark Herman and Avalon Hill released We the People, a historical wargame that pioneered the card-driven mechanic.$^{:93}$ We The People began a shift with strategic games including ways of incorporating politics into the designs.$^{:12}$
The game includes Battle Cards and Strategy Cards, which replaced traditional dice-rolling as the combat system. During battles, players alternate playing Battle Cards, with each player’s hand size determined by their General's rating, the number of strength points, and other factors. The attacker plays a Battle Card, and the defender must respond with a matching card to continue the fight or attempt a counterattack by rolling within their General's battle rating. This back-and-forth continues until one player cannot match the opponent’s Battle Card, resulting in a decisive outcome.
Herman was working on game design in the early 2000s at the management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, working with the United States military. Herman designed the game Empire of the Sun (2005) for GMT Games. Herman designed Churchill: Big Three Struggle For Peace (2015).$^{:250}$ Herman wrote the 2024 book Wargames According to Mark: An Historian's View on Wargame Design.$^{:206}$

## Awards

* Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Pre-World War II Boardgame for For the People
* Charles S. Roberts Award for Best World War II Boardgame for Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 with Stephen Newberg
* 1991 Charles S. Roberts Hall of Fame Award
* 1998 James F. Dunnigan Award for Playability and Design at Origins '99

## Selected works

* Gulf Strike (1983)
* Pacific War (1985)
* France 1944: The Allied Crusade in Europe (1986)
* The Peloponnesian War (1991)
* SPQR (with Richard Berg) (1992)
* We the People (1994)
* For the People (1998)
* Empire of the Sun (2005)
* Washington’s War (2010)
* Fire in the Lake (2014) - co-designed with Volko Ruhnke
* Churchill (2015)