Mark Herman

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.

Early life and education Herman was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, the first child of businessman Nathaniel Herman and homemaker Joan Herman. He began playing wargames at age 12, and immediately started to think about creating his own games.

Herman graduated from Stony Brook University in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in history.

Wargame designer After graduation, Herman joined Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) , and apprenticed as a game designer under Jim Dunnigan and be the game developer for October War, a wargame about the Yom Kippur War. The shifting alliances of the Lebanese Civil War proved to be too complex for a small game, and Herman was retasked with creating a small and simple game about Israel's attempt to take East Jerusalem and the West Bank away from Jordan during the Six Day War. TSR immediately halted all current SPI game development, including Conan the Barbarian.

Most SPI game designers, including Herman, resigned. Eric Dott, owner of rival Avalon Hill, immediately set up a new subsidiary called Victory Games Staff members at the United States Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base purchased a copy of Gulf Strike and played it at the base. This was eventually published by Victory Games in 1985 as Pacific War: The Struggle Against Japan 1941-1945.

In 1987, Herman left Victory Games and became an independent game designer, publishing his games through Monarch Avalon and GMT Games. During this period, he created some of his most popular games, including Fire in the Lake, The Great Battles of Alexander, Washington’s War, Empire of the Sun, and Churchill. Herman also created three games to be used by Pentagon planners for officer training on contingencies for combat.

Herman worked with General William E. DePuy on games at BDM International for the United States Department of Defense. 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.

In 1991, Herman was inducted into the Charles S. Roberts Hall of Fame.

Card-driven wargames In 1993, Herman designed a wargame about the American Revolutionary War that used cards to drive the action. The result was We the People, a historical wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1993 that pioneered the card-driven mechanic and began a shift with strategic games including ways of incorporating politics into the designs. and Churchill (2015, GMT Games).

Author Herman wrote Wargames According to Mark: An Historian's View on Wargame Design, which was published by GMT Games in 2024.

Awards 1991 Inducted into Charles S. Roberts Hall of Fame Award 1998: For the People won a Charles S. Roberts Award in the category Best Pre-World War II Boardgame 1998 James F. Dunnigan Award for Playability and Design at Origins '99 2005: Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 (with Stephen Newberg) won a Charles S. Roberts Award for Best World War II Boardgame

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)