"How many Reps do you get?" Topic

I was watching a video that suggested only by getting many Reps (repetitions) with a game system could you fully grasp it.

Concept being that you should have 10-12 games under your belt before even thinking of house rules or passing judgement. Likewise, you couldn't be a part time player with 1-2 games per year because you'd get rusty

How many Reps do you get?

Not nearly enough.

I get 20-30 per year. But I write.

One game is generally enough to pick up on QILS.

Depends on the game. I grasp the tactics and strategy (and best practices) of some rules very quickly. On others, not so much.
Factors that affect this (positively or negatively) are rules complexity, flexibility/rigidity, genre, probabilities, precision, and so forth. Simplicity is not a guarantee of grasping— sometime the simplest systems produce the widest range of possibilities and tactical complexities.

I generally find that playing a game once or even just reading the rules is quite sufficient to start modifying them or decide you never want to play them again.

There is odd system you might persevere with, that a few playings reveal otherwise hidden subtleties, or a better understanding of how some obscure mechanisms work.

10-12 seems a little extreme. A few years back I was involved in a 6x6 challenge. link
Six games played six times rules as written. I'm slow to pick up rules so I found the first three games made me familiar with the mechanics and the next three I was able to better focus on tactics and other things. As I've gamed more I would say three to four times with a game should suffice to decide if you want to keep playing as is or start tweaking.

sometime the simplest systems produce the widest range of possibilities and tactical complexities.

What I'm saying is that it's not at all unrealistic to not have a firm grasp of the rules.

Yet another discussion on rules where we don't know what the rules are. I'm not saying that I am "right" and these two posters are "wrong". I am saying that we have three different interpretations of what rules are, with the two quoted posters' interpretations being close, but still unique.

The two posters quoted would make the distinction between understanding that each artillery unit has an ammo marker that increases with successful logistic resupply actions and decreases by issuing fire orders to those units AND having a grasp of what a good strategic and operational sequencing of resupply and fire actions is for the specific scenario we are playing at the time.

I completely agree with that difference. I just don't agree that both are instances of "understanding the rules". I would say that the first issue is understanding the "rules" and the second is understanding a specific "scenario". That leads to this …

How many "reps" did the "original players" get in Real War?

One. the "good" generals and the "bad" generals only get one rep.

Every battle is unique.

We could say that WWI was different than the Colonial Wars that preceded it. Or we could say that "early" WWI is different than "late WWI" or that the Battle of Mülhausen was different from the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

This is why I make the distinction between "rules" and "scenario". The same ruleset when applied to a different situation can create a very different "game" (wargaming event).

My statement about QILS is based on my observation of a few hundred games with several hundred different players is that after 5-10 minutes of rules and scenario explanation and 5-10 minutes of play, people generally stop asking me rules questions. They do, however, continue to ask and privately discuss strategic, operational, and tactical questions up to the last couple of turns.

This is one of the key desires with the game system – players need few "reps" (which I could call turns, not entire games) with the rules, so most of their attention goes to the scenario and milieu.

Videos suggest many things. In absolute fairness, sometimes the things they suggest are true, or have an element of truth in them.

But in this case, the errors seem to be the assumption that the "game systems" have some roughly similar length and complexity, that errors are all of roughly the same subtlety, and that the people struggling to grasp the rules have similar levels of experience and intelligence. These things may be true for the video creator's friends and the rules they play, but there is a wider world out there.

My experience with 2-4 page rules was that a read-through and amendments by experienced gamers got you a playable game, and three games usually turned up all the unforeseen situations or results. Most commercial 24-32 page games are playable, and you usually know in the first run-through if one of their features is something you regard as a glitch. But subtle flaws--how the definition on Page 5 affects the rule on Page 27--the creators haven't spotted either.

I personally hold to Otto Schmidt's old contention that no rule set of commercial length is ever fully play-tested. My suspicion is that after about five years of widespread play, everyone knows the sneaky, preposterous but legal tricks of Warhammer XV or Flames of War XII, which is why editions keep stacking up like back issue magazines. So "many repetitions" may not lead to a "full" grasp, but by that time there's a new set anyway.

It depends on way too many factors to come up with a number, but in general concept, it is true that the more times you do something, the better you understand it and are able to execute it (although at some point you hit diminishing returns).

We play too many rulesets and only play most of them three or four times a year. We would be better off focusing on one rule set at a time. You get all those different rules sets mixed up.