I've learned a couple of things from reading these books: The first is that war is hell. You put armed men and deadly machines in a high-pressure situation, and someone's gonna get hurt. Or killed. Drake doesn't flinch from depicting what can happen to a human body in wartime. He also doesn't hesitate to show the reader what war does to a human mind. I've never seen combat, and thanks to this author, I hope I never do.
On a lighter note, another thing I learned from reading David Drake is that it's OK to borrow from history. He does this all the time in his works: filing the serial numbers off the Byzantine Empire in one SF setting, or using a time of strife among Greek city states as background for another future war novel. This is something that gamers can do when designing scenarios, and it's something I tried with my own short-lived Chancellor starship campaign.
Since the Slammers books are all about future armored combat, they make a great resource for scenarios in your sci-fi tank games. And while there is a Hammers Slammers wargame, the encounters Drake describes would not be out of place in Dirtside, Future War Commander, or OGRE. I'm curious; has anyone used a Slammers story as the basis for a wargame scenario? Please share in the comments.
