Wargame SITREP 25-01 ~ Coming to terms with JADO (Joint All Domain Operation, designer Gavin Hu, War Drum Games, 2024)

Late in 2024 I acquired four base games in the Joint All Domain Operation (JADO) series designed by Gavin Hu from War Drum Games (2024). The JADO series is published in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and, though available in the U.S., has no official English-language translation.

Fortunately, an international cadre of wargamers has risen to the challenge and made informal translations of JADO from Chinese into Spanish, Japanese, and English. Although I leveraged several of the English language translations in my early plays, to assist myself in better learning and understanding the game I am working on my own translation. Given I do not speak Chinese, to translate the JADO rule books I am dependent upon previous translations and various translation apps or AI-enabled translation programs. In doing so I find myself acting more as an editor than a true translator.

As I wrote in “Informationized Land Warfare the JADO Way (Joint All Domain Operation 01 Land East China Sea Block 01B)” for the Armchair Dragoons (2 Jan 2025) the language used in the JADO rule books is sometimes not what a U.S. wargamer might expect. As I am working my translation, I decided first to keep as much of the designer’s language (or rather, the rough translation of it) close to the original in order to (hopefully) preserve the designer’s intent. That said, in order for me to better understand the rules, I am making some editorial changes.

Sequence of Play

One of the first changes I implemented was to standardize the terminology in the Sequence of Play in JADO. The game is played in a series of ROUNDS. Each Round has a sequence of STAGES, with each Stage broken into STEPS. If a further break down is needed then ACTIONS will follow Steps.

Troops

When running the JADO rules through several translation programs, it seems that the word “troops” was often being returned where “unit” would make more sense to me. So that became another standard change.

DOD Dictionary

As I work my way through the rules for JADO I am finding some terms that look very close to standard DOD terminology, such as “Electronic Support.” Words (phrases?) such as that usually render in a manner that make it clear what it is referring to, but other times it is “close but no cigar.” I decided that, as necessary, those words/phrases will be rendered according to the DOD Dictionary way.

See the future

One issue I have with the JADO rule books are they are not very well illustrated; the few graphics used are not always the most intuitive. Working my own translation also means I am working up translated graphics. By itself that is a huge boost to understanding the game system.

Translate, Read, Write, Learn

Translating JADO is a time-consuming task. I can certainly play the game without the additional burden, so why am I investing the time? The truth is that JADO has caught my interest and I want to explore the system more fully. To do so I need to digest the rules and the only way I can do so (to my personal satisfaction) is to work on my own translation. In the process I am internalizing more of the rules and discovering many more connections in the game system.

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Feature image “JADO rule 2.4 Radar Cross Section”

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