John Prados

PhD from Columbia University. During High School, Prados started to play board wargames, and while at University, he expressed his interest in World War II and the Vietnam War by designing wargames. His first, in 1972, a collaboration with Jim Dunnigan titled "Year of the Rat: Vietnam, 1972", was a simulation of the Easter Offensive in Vietnam that had happened only weeks before. His second game, "Rise and Decline of the Third Reich", earned him critical acclaim, with reviewers calling it "an innovative and challenging game which allows a player to experience the complexity of events in a total war" and "a refreshing change from the sometimes hackneyed design features of many modern wargames." Third Reich won the "Charlie" — the Charles S. Roberts Award—for "Best Professional Game of 1974" and also became the focus of Chilean author Roberto Bolaño's novel "El Tercer Reich" (The Third Reich). Prados designed another eleven games while at university, and two of them were finalists for a "Charlie"; "Von Manstein: Battles for the Ukraine 1941–1944" (1975) and "Spies!" (1981). His game Khe Sanh, 1968, appeared in Against the Odds #2 and was a winner of the Charles S. Roberts award for "Best Modern Wargame" in 2002. He had been a contributing editor for the magazine GAMEPLAY - The Magazine of Games and Gaming. He died of cancer on November 29, 2022, at age 71.