"Process versus outcome" Topic

When you design a game mechanic one thing you have to decide is whether you want to model a process or an outcome. For example, Tank A shoots at Tank B. You can have a bunch of numbers and die rolls (To Hit – To Penetrate – Save – Damage) that reflect a bunch of variables, or you can have one that generates fairly similar results (he's dead on a 5+, disabled on a 4).

Do you prefer one kind of mechanic to the other?

Depends upon the scale of the game for me.

For skirmish, the detailing is nice.

For large, quick play games, the outcome would be better, to keep it moving.

In many games, penetration is fixed – you just need to compare against the thickness of the armor, so no saving rolls either. Basically, this boils down to "To-Hit", and "Damage", assuming the round penetrates through the armor, otherwise the shot is ignored.

saving throws should be for exceptional characters only. not the entire army.

I'm a results guy. No need to go through a long process if the end result is similar to a short process.

I am mainly interested in producing interesting decision points for the players. Rolling four successive sets of dice to deterine a hit, hit location, penetration, damage is not interesting, however there is a case for having a 'to hit' roll and a 'save' throw for the target as it stops the target feeling like a victim (although it slows things up).

In other situations, you may well want to model the process, as the process involves a lot of decisions. Organising a casevac under fire in Helmand is quite challenging, but it is what junior leaders have to do right now, so modelling the process seems appropriate. It does mean I have a whole 'casualty evacuation' sub game in my modern tactical rules, which require the use of variable length bounds for them to work.

I am currently trying to design an interesting Corps level WW1 trench assault game with a bit more granularity than my old 'World War One in Three Turns'. At the moment it involves a fair amount of detail in the planning, prep and bombardment phase, but the actual assault is somewhat abstracted. Essentially they are two different but linked games with different timescales, but Generals spent most of their time on planning and prep, then sat in the dugout waiting for reports to come in.

So, the answer is, it depends, although I do tend to be more outcome focussed these days as for many military activities, the process does not generate interesting decisions.

I agree with Martin. Process can seriously interfere with the flow of a game and doesn't add that much.

It's a false conceit that granularity or 'detail' = 'realism' / 'accuracy'. I find it's the other way round because the outcome allows for all those other factors that may not actually have been engineered into the rules.

I remember one set of WW2 rules that had stats for the slope of armour on the point being hit, and these then had to be factored into the result. But nowhere did it take into account the fact that my Panzerfaust or PTRD-1941 was being fired from a window 20 degrees above the horizontal plane….

There has to be a certain level of 'game' related prcess to make the game interesting, stop it becoming 'roll a 6 to hit' fest and not unimportantly for a commercial product, meet gamer expectation. So a balance has to be struck.

Cheers
Mark

Martin, slightly OT, but I like your concept for a WWI game.

If the outcome was not important then you don't need rules?
That would be just playing pretend….

The process must ensure a desired outcome but for my mind must be as simple as possible or it becomes a simulation/chore not a fun game.

Less fuss more fun!!

I prefer the outcome approach. I cut my teeth on a WW2 wargame called Angriff, back in the 80s which went into the process (detail) on everything from range to armor thickness based on where the round impacted on the tank. Yes it gave me a feel for the technical aspects but, by default, it kinda' left out tactics simply because it took so long to work out the combat results.

I've gravitated to Blitzkrieg Commander and Flames of War these days because I can focus more on the impact of C2 (BKC in particular) and fire and maneuver tactics. (I've also played and enjoyed Spearhead and Command Decision)

Another vote for Martin's "decision points". When the choices being made have no significant effect on the outcome, or once everyone around the table becomes mere spectators to the process (or, as dice-rollers and chart-consulters: servants to the process), the game has gone too far, IMO.

Of course, since fun is a matter of personal taste, no system will please everyone: one man's essential element is another's tedious burden. Ideally, perhaps, a system would allow for the addition/removal of detail-levels so that those that want to go through the process can do so while others can skip to the end and just eat the cake without having to sift the flour…?

"Martin, slightly OT, but I like your concept for a WWI game."

It isn't very original as it is largely inspired by the pre-game bombardment rules used in Great War Spearhead, however it occured to me that this could essentially be a mini-game in its own right (with day long turns) and actually make the planning and getting the toys out a part of the game rather than a setup chore.

To keep the thing playable, that in turn means the actual fighting (using one or two hour turns, not sure which yet) needs to be pretty abstract, especially with 50+ battalions engaged. I'm doing a revision of my old Cambrai game which worked fine for an Army level engagement, so I can keep some of the detail but scale it down to a Corps or so.

wrt the general discussion, I do think process has a place (as I mentioned above) as long as it is interesting. Process can also be synonymous with detail – in a very low level tank game, you probably do want to track each shot, and may even want to do the whole to hit/penetrate/damage thing, but with more than a handful of vehicles it is going to slow things to a crawl. Just depends what is appropriate really.

Part of my question is this – many games have multiple die roll without decisions. For example, in a modern air combat you might fire a missile. Before you roll to hit the defender may choose to fire a countermeasure. What dice and what is needed to hit now depends on his choice (this or that countermeasure, or hope for the best).

But others of the hit-save variety in which there are no decisions, could be reduced (for example) to a single (probably percentage) die roll.

For my Steel Crush SF rules I created a simple matrix. Cross index the targeting and defense values. That yields a kill number. Equal or exceed it and the target is dead. Miss, but get within 5% and it is suppressed anything else is a miss. The outcomes are exactly the same whether you roll hit – save or just D100. But players in play tests have had strong preferences…

A convoluted chart lookup can be just as bad as multiple die rolls. Some times it is simply easier to make two or three separate rolls with simple result determination.

From this topic a couple of months ago:

TMP link

The OP on that thread:

It often seems to me that wargamers are very divided between those who think in terms of "process" and those who think in terms of "outcome."

Just recently, though, I've been realizing that perhaps this is also the reason why so many gamers get so animated about whether or not a game is "historically accurate."

What got me thinking about this is a WW2 naval game that I wrote, but this could apply to anything.

The game has an air combat sub-routine. Originally when I wrote it, it was fairly detailed. Each plane was rated for its maneuverability, and for its Airframe (sturdiness), and then there was a note on the counter if it had weak armament. Furthermore, sometimes you had a bonus if you had "Veteran" pilots, or a penalty for "Green" pilots, and so on.

The routine had each player in a dogfight rolling a d10, adding any modifiers, plus his maneuverability. If he won, then he rolled against the enemy's Airframe to see if he shot him down, merely damaged him, or did nothing at all. (The Airframe number was a To-Kill score, in other words.)

Thus each dogfight required two d10 rolls.

It's not terribly complicated, but we were playing big battles and it took a while and I found myself getting bored with it.

I should point out at this point, also, that in designing this system I had looked at all different sorts of dice, different routines, systems, values, and had crunched tons of probabilities on Excel spreadsheets. So I knew, for instance, that in a typical Zeke-vs-Wildcat dogfight, the more maneuverable Zeke usually got the advantage, but then his wimpy guns had trouble putting away the sturdier American plane. The Wildcat had a lesser chance of getting the advantage, but if he did, his heavier guns usually shredded the fragile Zeke.

All well and good, until one day it dawned on me: When all was said and done, the overall chances of one plane versus another… were almost identical. The Zeke had a 19.1% chance of shooting down the Wildcat. The Wildcat had an 18.7% chance of shooting down the Zeke.

In other words, I could just as easily make the planes' values equal, and resolve all of this with one simple d6 roll. One roll, one teensy bit of addition, and the same spread of outcomes. When I tested it for other plane matchups, it was equally easy to convert.

So I did. I dramatically simplified the air combat system and radically accelerated the game. I then tested it out on a group of gamers, some of whom knew the game, and others were Newbies. I didn't tell them about the math being the same; just that I had "streamlined" it.

Everybody hated it. Many people complained that it wasn't "historically accurate" anymore. People told me that I'd "sacrificed accuracy for playability" and all the usual wargamer clichées.

This fascinates me. The outcomes, of course, are virtually unchanged. What has changed is the Process. Now that players can't go through the process, step by step, they no longer believe that the outcome is "realistic." Even though the outcome hasn't changed at all.

Now that they can't *see* all the factors that are factored-in, they assume that these factors are ignored, and thus the game is "not historically accurate."

The older I get, and the more experienced I get as a game designer, the more I understand that the secret of good game design has nothing at all to do with "accuracy" or "playability," but rather with giving people a good show. You have to give them a satisfying Process, without it taking too long to get through it.

Yes, sometimes 'complexity' can just be due to the way information and options are presented. A chart may be more simply done with target numbers and a few mods, equally long list of mods may be more easily presented with a chart or whatever.

This applies equally to the way rules are written, some really simple ideas can be dressed up in the most obscure prose or excessive verbiage or simply poor layout.

I'm agree with Martin. Player decisions are what make games interesting. Try to limit use of detailed processes only for situations that can be directly observed and influenced by player characters.

For my Steel Crush SF rules I created a simple matrix…

Perhaps it's just faster and easier to roll opposed dice than use the matrix? I guess Einstein meant something like this when he said: "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler".

This whole "outcome vs process" issue is a misnomer. All games are process, and all game mechanics produce outcomes. It is impossible to have one 'versus' the other.

All designers are really saying when they design for 'results', 'effects' or 'outcomes' is they are creating short game processes rather than involved processes.

But of course, that isn't the whole story either. One could make a game nothing but die rolls. Real simple, Yatzee, The Wargame. Doesn't sound all that interesting. The game's 'fun' is all about the processes the players are involved in, not how long they take. Players want that involvement to interesting, whether that happens quickly or not.

Karsta said it. 'Player decisions are what make games interesting." Designer Sid Meiers of Civilization fame said the same thing: "Games are a series of interesting decisions."

Designing for 'outcomes' really means that a designer is shortening some processes so players can quickly get to the interesting, 'fun' processes and decisions.

However, that isn't the only issue with 'outcomes and process.' Shortening the process can not always produce the same outcomes and effects.

A few months ago on the TMP, a designer told of an involved game process he was working on to resolve WWII combat between Zeros and Hellcats. He decided to reduce the process to a single die roll. The The probabilities and outcomes were the same for both the involved mechanics and single die roll--supposedly the same 'outcomes' for both processes.

Only the players didn't respond to both processes the same. A number said the single die roll didn't 'feel' right and its historical validity was questioned. No one ever said that with the longer process. In other words, while the game outcomes were the same, the game 'effect' was quite different for the players.

If you had a button that could produce an orgasm every time it was pushed, the outcome might be fun, but you wouldn't be simulating the sex act or actually achieving the exact same outcome without 'the process'. It is a quality of experience issue. Wargames have quality of experience issues too. That's why designers talk about the 'feel' of the game--and why process is as important as any outcome.

It is a question how much process and where it is in the game that achieve the game experience desired.

Certainly things have to be simple enough to play. So why not just say you are simplifying some processes over others? The 'outcome versus process' dichotomy doesn't exist technically, or in any other game sense.

Best Regards,

Bill H.

[A few months ago on the TMP, a designer told of an involved game process he was working on to resolve WWII combat between Zeros and Hellcats.]

Zeroes and Wildcats, and it's three posts above you.

[The 'outcome versus process' dichotomy really doesn't exist technically, or in any other game sense.]

It exists in the sense that it can be two ends of a continuum, along which people place their preferences for how they want to spend their gaming time.

There are guys who love "From Valmy to Waterloo," not in spite of the fact that it takes half an hour to resolve one cavalry charge… but *because* it takes half an hour to resolve one cavalry charge.

Then there are guys who love "Volley and Bayonet" not because they're reluctantly willing to subsume that charge and seven others like it into a single d6 roll… but precisely *because* it skips over all the process and gets straight to that big-picture result.

Not to be Reductio ad Absurdum here, but… let's face it. No matter what game you're talking about, no matter what kind of battle, period, etc… It all comes down to about three core elements: Figures, Charts, and Dice (or some sort of randomizing agent like cards, whatever.)

That's pretty much all we've got, no matter what game you're talking about: figures, charts, and dice. Re-arrange then however you like, dress them up in whatever historical costumes you like, and call it whatever you like, to create the playing and imaginative environment that is most fun and satisfying for you.

Sometimes the fun is in the process. The trick is getting the balance.

I mean, given any arbitrary Flames of War scenario with equal points, each side has a 50/50 chance of winning. SO….why not forgo the next two hours and just roll a D6 to determine the outcome of the whole game?

Easy Peasy Lemon Sqeasy!

I'm a results guy. No need to go through a long process if the end result is similar to a short process.

That can be taken too far the other way. I don't go gaming anymore; because I roll a d6 AT HOME to tell me whether or not I won or lost that night: so far, I have always rolled up "you lose", so I save myself a lot of process headache by just staying home….

I am reminded of an explanation I heard a few months ago (Radio 4 I think) of how mathematicians build a theorum, comparing what a mathematican would do if they were archetects. It went a bit like this…

The get a great idea. So to see if it has any 'legs' they do some rudimentary work- they build a wall (though it doesn't actually rest of the ground) and paint it quickly. Seeing that the have the start of something they add a bit of the ceiling, maybe a flight of stairs, and another wall and the front door. It's all good so then start to build upstairs. Occasionally once they are happy with a bit of wall upstairs they nip down to the ground floor and build something for it to rest on.

They mostly finish the upstairs, which while completed to a high prctical standard, is rather chitzy, with over-decorated wall paper, flouncy curtains, and stuffed full of chaise loungues and wing backed armchairs. Seeing that the principles work, they nip to the celler and dig the foundations.

You are then shown the attic (the only part most people will get to see). It is an perfect piece of minimalist design. The decore is understated without being boring. The only chairs will be perfectly placed to allow engagement, and the window will let in enough light without being too bright. You'll never see the budget whitewash on the ground floor.

That is what a good game mechanismism- it gives the exactly right level of result.

Take the Naval game above- that seems a fine level of detail. As long as I knew that if two different planes which were different would get the right ratios (ie one side gets a plus, say Spitfire vs Stuka) then that is ok- the air combat is a addition to naval warfare. Now I wouldn't do this to a 1-3 plane per player Battle of britain game, because that game IS about the maneovering. Likewise you wouldn't do Waterloo using 'Sharpe Practice'.

I call the process 'Black Box'ing. I start by working the whole thing through, looking at the stats of each, and making sure the mechanism (process) yields the right result (this is the upstairs build of the house if you like- the idea of the mechanism is the ground floor). I then put all this into a black box, so that all the player needs to know is 'Input A- result 1, input B-result 2'. The inputs are player's decisions- they have influence on the game, but if the outcome is the same (statistically) whether they roll each step or roll once, then roll one. That is what we see in the real world- A colonel orders a formation change, he wants to see the change, not the reasons why.

I think the casevac is a false analogy, unless it has been explained poorly. Yes, junior leaders do make a lot of decisions with that, but thos decisions are all the game-able ones- landing spot, security etc. It is the decision modelling process. That is a appropriate level for a low level game. Now the colonel doesn't care what the 2Lt does- so in a game where you are a staff officer a d6 to see if the section got away is appropriate.

Sam wrote in the other thread:

I didn't tell them about the math being the same; just that I had "streamlined" it.

Everybody hated it. Many people complained that it wasn't "historically accurate" anymore. People told me that I'd "sacrificed accuracy for playability" and all the usual wargamer clichées.

Don't you think that the whole problem would have gone away if you had just told them what you had done? I'v had very similar experiences, but all the new rules have been quickly accepted after I have shown the math and reasoning behind them. This assuming of course, that the math was correct. If it wasn't, the errors were equally quickly found and corrected.

There has been some threads about the matter here in game design board during the last year. I'm still amazed why people can't accept the idea of proper documentation. Just tell the players how the mechanic works and what it is supposed to represent. There's really no reason to keep those as a secret.

Sometimes the fun is in the process

It is the process that generates tension and drama in the game, yes sometimes it is used to sell the outcome to the player.
It makes the player feel he has earned his result rather than simply being told the outcome.

[Don't you think that the whole problem would have gone away if you had just told them what you had done? I'v had very similar experiences, but all the new rules have been quickly accepted after I have shown the math and reasoning behind them. This assuming of course, that the math was correct. If it wasn't, the errors were equally quickly found and corrected.]

Normally with FTF playtesters, there's a whole long dialog about what we're doing and why, whereas with blind playtesters in some other city, well, they're "blind," so I want them to encounter the rules cold, as it were, which is a more realistic "training wheels off" sort of experience, in my opinion, if you want to judge potential customer reactions.

In this case I was sort of experimenting and was curious to see the reactions FTF.

But the interesting coda to this story is: we dropped the game for a couple of months and then came back to it. Most people had forgotten the rules, so it was altogether new. I was using the simplified version air combat system, and this time everybody loved it.

When it wasn't placed right after the more complex and detailed process, they didn't mind the abstraction at all.

So I concluded that the playtesters objected to what they felt was something being taken out of the game, something "missing". Once they'd forgotten that that process had ever been in there in the first place, they were perfectly happy again.

Sam,
I still think you cold have received much more meaningful feedback. My point is, that these kind of explanations should be included in the rules themselves. If the customers can see it, there's hardly any reason to hide it from the blind testers.

Well anyway, thanks for sharing the results of this human experiment with us

Back to Extra's question:
Besides of fear of change, I can see one reason why mechanics, which have multiple dice rolls without player input between them, shouldn't always be simplified: it might be easier for players to see how different modifiers effect the overall odds.

[I still think you cold have received much more meaningful feedback. My point is, that these kind of explanations should be included in the rules themselves. If the customers can see it, there's hardly any reason to hide it from the blind testers.]

Well, there was no rulebook yet. We were designing and playtesting rules. And as for feedback, we've since discussed it many times, and obviously I've submitted it to TMP and it has now been through two long discussions in the abstract.

BUT…. In any event, when a rulebook -IS- done, then there's always the inevitable push/pull of economic factors. On a run of, say, 2000 books, each page added to the book increases its cost by about 5 cents. Deciding what goes on each page, in relation to what graphics, is always very tough. I do often add explicatory little asides in my rulebooks, but I'm cognizant that it's mostly a waste of money. If they increase the size of the book by even just 10%, for example, then that's a thousand dollars out of my pocket.

Since I make only about six bucks net profit on each book sold, that means I need to sell 167 *additional* books to cover the cost of having added all those footnotes or explicatory sidebars, or little asides about why this rule is the way it is.

So the bottom line is pretty simple and brutal: Do I think that adding that sort of thing will result in at least 167 more sales? Are there really 167 guys out there who are on the fence, thinking, "Man, I'm tempted to buy this game… if only it had more footnotes and sidebars about the philosophy behind the rules…." ?

Experience has shown me, No. There are 16 guys like that, maybe, but not 167.

In some systems a Save roll may be valid but not in all. The process will vary with the era being covered and the troop level. You cannot have the same mechanics for all eras and different command (troop ratio) levels.

In skirmish action if there is a mix result in the die roll results during the damage/aeffect tablethen there is no need for a saving roll. That would only lengthen the turn and be hard to justify in a debate.

In high troop ratio level combat I could see a Save roll representing leadership and communications aspects and a action of reorganizng and rallying.

Poisson wrote:

It [Process versus outcomes] exists in the sense that it can be two ends of a continuum, along which people place their preferences for how they want to spend their gaming time.

Two ends of a continuum? So there are game mechanics that are processes without any outcomes, or outcomes devoid of any processes? Technically, mechanically there is no sense in which that is true--not if one is designing functional games. Both have to be present in every game mechanic for the game to work at all.

All game mechanics have both, processes don't reduce outcomes, or vice verse. The only question is how much a game has of each.

There are guys who love "From Valmy to Waterloo," not in spite of the fact that it takes half an hour to resolve one cavalry charge… but *because* it takes half an hour to resolve one cavalry charge.

I don't think so. Having played with 'those guys', they love what they see happen in the game during that half hour--not the fact that 30 minutes have passed. The process vs. outcome dichotomy isn't very useful in understanding what a design is doing or what 'those guys' enjoyed during that half-hour.

For instance, when Jay says he is a 'results guy', maybe he likes Valmy to Waterloo and those half hour cavalry charge 'resolutions' because a whole series of results are generated in carrying out VtW cavalry charge. So maybe the issue is multiple outcomes vs one outcome. Or one, short process vs several, long processes for that final outcome?

But we know Jay is talking about preferring one result vs. several--not that he can actually play a game with no processes.

Then there are guys who love "Volley and Bayonet" not because they're reluctantly willing to subsume that charge and seven others like it into a single d6 roll… but precisely *because* it skips over all the process and gets straight to that big-picture result.

Could be, but that is going for a "big-picture" outcome versus 'seven' smaller outcomes in succession. Many outcomes vs one, not any possible 'outcomes vs processes'.

Not to be Reductio ad Absurdum here, but… let's face it. No matter what game you're talking about, no matter what kind of battle, period, etc… It all comes down to about three core elements: Figures, Charts, and Dice (or some sort of randomizing agent like cards, whatever.)

It is Reductio ad Absurdum. First, if the game is played with miniatures, then that choice makes it impossible to not use figures. As for the Charts and Dice. No, we are not limited to those. There have been rules that were successful without either. The Complete Brigadier is just one.

That's pretty much all we've got, no matter what game you're talking about: figures, charts, and dice. Re-arrange then however you like, dress them up in whatever historical costumes you like, and call it whatever you like, to create the playing and imaginative environment that is most fun and satisfying for you.

That is a choice, not some cosmic limit ordained by the wargame gods. The only limitations are 1. imagination, and 2. what war gamers want and like.

It is also an absurd reductionism because the dice and charts are simply game aids--nothing more. Not the game itself.

The real foundation of game design [and a far less absurd reduction of game design] remains the game mechanics--the real heart of the craft.

And those game mechanics all contain both processes and outcomes.

But the interesting coda to this story is: we dropped the game for a couple of months and then came back to it. Most people had forgotten the rules, so it was altogether new. I was using the simplified version air combat system, and this time everybody loved it.

When it wasn't placed right after the more complex and detailed process, they didn't mind the abstraction at all.

Well, it's great that they love the air combat system, and now don't 'mind' the abstraction at all. It is also fortunate that the gamers forgot their past experiences with the rules.

The fact remains that:

1. When playing both 'processes', the players had a different experience with the different processes, but the 'same' results. That is, the 'feel' of the game was different.

and

2. They doubted the validity of the short, 'big picture' result, but not the more involved process for the same result.

That doesn't mean one design approach is somehow better than another, but is does indicate that the player experiences were significantly different for each, even with the same identical 'results'.

So the bottom line is pretty simple and brutal: Do I think that adding that sort of thing will result in at least 167 more sales? Are there really 167 guys out there who are on the fence, thinking, "Man, I'm tempted to buy this game… if only it had more footnotes and sidebars about the philosophy behind the rules…."?

If you want to reduce the issue to numbers of sales, it misses the point.

If you are selling a game that provides a recreation of some portion of history--that history has to be identified.

*A concern about the number of sales necessary to pay for the seats in a rowboat doesn't dictate whether the rowboat is sold with or without seats. they are included because the rowboat doesn't work without them.

Of course, if the game design doesn't contain, represent or model any history at all, then it really isn't necessary to identify it.

If it does, that history the designer spends so much time researching, and all that thinking that goes into modeling it in the game simply doesn't exist for the player or his experience of the game if it isn't identified.

"I think the casevac is a false analogy, unless it has been explained poorly. Yes, junior leaders do make a lot of decisions with that, but thos decisions are all the game-able ones- landing spot, security etc. It is the decision modelling process. That is a appropriate level for a low level game."

Maybe I did explain it poorly, but yes, the point was that the decisions are quite gameable (and appropriate if the playes are platoon or maybe company company comamnders). To make it relevant to the game however I had to make some quite major changes:

i) rejig the combat resolution so it went from team OK/pinned/destroyed to adding in some sort casualty evaluation from the those results both in terms of numbers, severity with the outcome based on type of incoming fire and cover state/posture.

ii) Then I had to add in the casualty evaluation and evac procedures (which are largely drill, but unless the players have actually been trained to do it, they don't know what the drill is). It isn't something people have to think about in most rules.

iii) Finally deal with the fact that it can easily take 40+ minutes for the Chinook to turn up, which is a bit of a challenge with 2 minute turns, so I had to go for variable length bounds to make it work.

So quite major subsystems really, however the VLBs were quite liberating as I could apply the same logic to the periods between contacts – players just moved by tactical bounds (like Crossfire) until there was another contact then we reverted to the detailed turn structure.

Ended up as a decent simulation, but a fairly rubbish game as there are really only so many variations on 'walk through the green zone until someone shoots at you' you can do. Need to think about scenario generation and/or a campaign system to make it hang together.

Bill, you could sustain an argument in an empty room. I don't know why I bother.

But for the umpteenth time: your various suppositions about what wargamers want and need, and what games have to have, and how and why they have to have them… will remain quite lovely theories until you actually step up, and come out of pocket to design and produce a set of rules, and put them in the marketplace.

(And yes, yes, I know that you helped so-and-so with his game a few years ago, and I know about the boardgame you did for so-and-so a quarter century ago.)

When you're talking about printing and selling thousands of books, and not about seats on imaginary rowboats, or Yatzee [sic], or machines that produce orgasms when a button is pushed…

…more to the point: When you're willing to take the leap with several thousand dollars of your own money, then you can lecture me about whether or not I'm "missing the point" when I make decisions about rulebook content, based upon the expense of said book.

He of the ever-changing name wrote:

[…] When you're talking about printing and selling thousands of books, and not about […] machines that produce orgasms when a button is pushed…

…more to the point: When you're willing to take the leap with several thousand dollars of your own money, then you can lecture me about whether or not I'm "missing the point" when I make decisions about rulebook content, based upon the expense of said book.

If either of you have the plans for the Orgazmatron and aren't putting your thousands of dollars into marketing that sucka, then you're both missing the point. Screw the process. I'm sure there's a gaming insight in there somewhere. (Wrong market?)

Meanwhile, having read through this and many of the other threads (honest!), the one topic I haven't seen addressed is consistency in application. I'm reading through a very nice set of WW2 rules that has a nice C&C system allocating command points to HQ units, thus limiting the number of units each can activate in any turn. A few paragraphs later, I read that those very same units are all allowed to fire on enemies moving in their view with no restrictions. Now I'm sure there's a very nice, tidy explanation for this discrepancy, but without that, it seems inconsistent to me.

If one is working on a set of rules that emphasizes process -- let's use the tank shooting rules for example -- then surely movement, terrain and positioning should be handled as "realistically" if the process of shooting is what's important, shouldn't it? Isn't the load-bearing capacity of a bridge as critical as the thickness of armor? Or is it just not as cool to think about? If not, as a mere player of rules, I appreciate knowing why the decision was made.

Sam, might an online "Designer's Notes" document satisfy both your needs to economize and your audience's desire to understand your thinking? I'd relish being able to purchase a hardcopy set of rules for a reasonable price, while having additional fluff and background available online or available in electronic form. In fact, I wish all rules were in some sort of searchable electronic format! I realize I'm drifting off-topic here, but to relate it back to "process versus outcome", I generally prefer a streamlined process leaning more towards the simple determination of outcome, so long as it preserves the interesting decisions Martin mentioned. However, I would like to play knowing that some thought went into designing the mechanic used, if only to answer nay-sayers that seem to inevitably pop up.

- Bob

Hi

is the purpose of the game to decide a winner? if you don't win enough, do you quit.

Or in the case of the above few posts, is this a discussion that results in a "win" for someone?

I game for fun, but also game for the education involved. One form of that "education" is someone who isn't ME, thinking thoughts and tactics I do not.

While I have published a couple dozen sets, I love to read the work of others. Again "not Me" thinking. The issue isn't that there is only one right way to design a game, and there is no "win" here.

Rocky

"Fun" is the bottom line. If it isn't fun it is disappointment, boredom or work or worse drudgery. The outcome as well as the process must be FUN or there is no point to this hobby….

When you're willing to take the leap with several thousand dollars of your own money, then you can lecture me about whether or not I'm "missing the point" when I make decisions about rulebook content, based upon the expense of said book.

Sam:
So a person's understanding of the technical aspects of game design is based on whether they spent thousands on publishing a game with their own money [even though I've done that] or is just spending the money in your eyes what grants them the privilege of writing about it?

I have designed dozens of simulations and training games for Performance Learning Systems and my own clients that have, I imagine, made quite a bit more money than your efforts, but that was for a national training company and my training group--real businesses, where my livelihood depended on their success.

That fact doesn't make my comments automatically more valid than yours, but it sure as hell doesn't make them less. How about dealing with the technical aspects of the discussion and not how much money you've spent on it in comparison to others.

Games are concrete, technical creations. They are designed to work in particular ways with specific mechanisms regardless of the medium or overall purposes. The technical aspects of the mechanics that make them games are not obscure philosophies, someone's opinion of 'fun' and they remain very concrete, as do those for simulations.

For instance, and I repeat: dice and charts ARE game aids, they are not the game itself--our games could be played without dice or charts and several are. Dice and charts are simply tools used by players. They help players go through the game processes to determine outcomes, which are the mechanics of the game. Different games use charts and dice in very different ways depending on the actual game mechanics. Some designs use them for everything, some don't use them at all.

That is a technical fact of game design. I don't have to spend thousands of dollars to know that, nor do I have to buy the right to make what I would think is an obvious observation.

There are thousands of ways to design games, and as Rocky says, there is no one 'right way' to do it. However, there are some very concrete and technical characteristics shared by all game mechanics, particularly wargames. They are the common building blocks of all game design efforts.

For instance and I repeat, one can't have a game mechanic that doesn't contain both process and outcome. That is just a technical fact, not someone's philosophical preferences. And because that is the basic structure of any game mechanic or system, any discussion of process versus outcome is technically schizophrenic. The notion doesn't shed any light on practical game design, no matter how illustrative it might feel.

If you are offended that I have the gall to 'lecture' you such things, understand that I am continually astonished that such fundamental aspects of game design have to be explained at all, let alone 'proven' to another game designer only by spending thousands of dollars publishing a game.

Doug wrote:

The outcome as well as the process must be FUN or there is no point to this hobby….

Yep…And happily, there are lots of ways to produce that fun and many different kinds can all be satisfied in one hobby.

Sam wrote:

But for the umpteenth time: your various suppositions about what wargamers want and need, and what games have to have, and how and why they have to have them…

Sam:
I haven't said anything about what wargamers want and need--other than there is a great variety of them. You are the one continually proclaiming what gamers want--as with the 'VtW guys'.

I have stated what a designer would have to provide in the way of historical information to successfully produce a simulation or a wargame meant to recreate some aspect of history.

That isn't supposition. That is a technical fact regarding what is necessary for a historical simulation, wargame, or model to 'work'. That's all. No mystery. No insistence that someone has to want that.

Any book on simulation design will tell you the same. Not supposition at all. I have provided any number of examples from our hobby of the problems and misconceptions and design failures propagated when that information isn't provided.

If a wargame is designed to represent something from history, for that design to accomplish the task effectively, the information has to be specifically identified.

That is true of any simulation or wargame. You find all simulations or representative systems include that kind of 'data orientation' to them. As I said, even the representative music of "Peter and the Wolf" needs 'an explanation/orientation' to achieve the composer's objectives. Again, a technical fact, what successful models of history need to work, not a some statement about what gamers want or need. I have no reason to tell them what they want or need. They can figure that out for themselves.

Hi

McL…I hadn't thought to discuss the sims I have done for the government. But you are right, in this.

The point is the basic point of writing for an audience. You must know who the audience is. Thus the flight sims I did for the USAf are quite different than the flying games i do for the fun of the subject.

As for Sam. I do buy his stuff. I am a fan. But I usually have no idea how he gets to some things in his game. As our history at the old CA left him angry at me, I expect we will never have the luxury of discussing things like this.

Rocky

Rocky:
Yes, knowing the audience is important, particularly if that audience has no knowledge of the simulation topic, or a good deal. The information they need for the simulations to 'work' does depend on the goals of the simulation or wargame. Most wargames [in an out of the hobby] have design goals identical to simulations. I am sure the information that USAF flight simulator participants needed is much different than wargames for the hobby--but both need the information.

As for Sam. I enjoyed playing his Grand Armee. In fact that is where I 'met' Sam, on the GA game list. I think he did a great job in the writing and presentation of the rules. I've said so a number of times. When he started insisting that it and all wargames simulate nothing but pushing lead around a table, I was more than happy to play the game with that understanding. I enjoy playing any number of wargames that simulate nothing at all.

My problems with Sam and his with me have never been about his games or historical content--though you are right, where he got the information used to design the games and how it is portrayed is a general mystery--which is not surprising when he insists that wargames simulate nothing at all and it's all make-believe.

It's such blanket statements about the hobby, gamers, and wargame design that I have taken issue with--and have for quite a while.

Sam comes up with interesting design observations and questions on the TMP, which unfortunately he reduces to same conclusions every time: Simulations are impossible, wargaming is all just make-believe, the vast majority of wargamers don't care about history at all, just a fun game, and all wargame design can be reduced to just dice and charts. And anyone who believes differently is badly bent.

So no, with those views, the luxury of discussing wargame design with him is really difficult.

Bill H.

There's one other detail on the side of "process" that's being left out: story. When you model several steps of a process with independant die rolls, you get more details of how a result occurred. While you can fill in the details of a success or a failure from a single roll mechanic, everyone _sees_ how the events unfolded with a multiroll system. For the air combat example from before, the single roll system just tells the players "I hit, he hit, or nobody hit." The multiroll mechanic gives them details on how the "nobody hit" happened. Did the Zeke's fire bounce off the Wildcat's armor yet again? Did the Wildcat finally gain the advantage, only to miss his target?

The multi-step resolution systems fill in some of this detail, giving a better story. If that story is consistently interesting, then it's worth keeping the mechanic rather than trying to simplify it.

"…My problems with Sam and his with me have never been about his games or historical content--though you are right, where he got the information used to design the games and how it is portrayed is a general mystery--which is not surprising when he insists that wargames simulate nothing at all and it's all make-believe.

Sam comes up with interesting design observations and questions on the TMP, which unfortunately he reduces to same conclusions every time: Simulations are impossible, wargaming is all just make-believe, the vast majority of wargamers don't care about history at all, just a fun game, and all wargame design can be reduced to just dice and charts. And anyone who believes differently is badly bent…"

It is not hard to reach this conclusion of his view based on his comments and posts on TMP. This is my problem with his entire game design process Based on the rumors the 'FoG group, this MAY not have thrilled with his Napoleonic design which he worked on for them.

However based on his popularity and the advent of the less than historical reality of the FoW game system, plenty of gamers may feel this way as well. Are they all newbies? Probley not. It seems that their focus is more on having fun rather than examing military history and tactics through gaming.

Different focuses for different folks.

Hi

Pilots are actually the easist audience for me, I understand THEM. We have good times.

It is the group sims for the government that make me crazy. There are whole departments that just try to "game out" every situation. A lot of it is based on the past, of course, and I supply expertise here with air and weapons and such. But the audience is the hard part. Besides the various sims for various levels of command and, god help me, logistics, you also need to consider what some congress critter sees when exposed to the sim.

Some of the pentagon is convinced, and has been convinced since WW2 that a good sim is not only possible, but desired. I am pretty sure Allan has done this stuff as well. But it always amuses me when Sam insists that it isn't possible. Or not amusing. I guess I just disagree, but I am sure my bias is there as well.

Rich was trying to tease me for mentioning our rules, but I don't do TMP for that reason. Frankly, I fall into the old school, that if you are a proper gamer, you do your own because only YOU know what you want the game to be.

Rather, I like TMP for the discussions with other minds on the problems. Everyone one down to the rankist novice gamer can come up with some insight that makes my game work BETTER. Selfish, wot?

Rocky

Rudy:

"Different focuses for different folks." Absolutely. Different gamers want different things and a good number aren't particularly interested in either the history or how a wargame can recreate that. More power to them. I play any number of wargames just for the fun of it, without any expectation of history being created. I play GA that way. And I find historical simulation games a great deal of fun too, for different reasons.

The questions here about Game Design aren't:

*what gamers 'should' like.
*What some vague 'majority' of gamers want.
*That there is only one kind of wargame allowed
*What design goals a wargame designer should have.

The questions, I would think, would be:

*How do we get the games we want?
*How is history recreated on the table--what is possible and impossible?
*What design techniques and methods help in that effort?
*What are the major components of games, wargames and simulations--the things that make them 'work'?
*What do other game designers and simulation designers say and do about the above?

I would think this Game Design list is about how to design games, how to achieve the goals designers have chosen for themselves. And as game design, wargame design, and simulation design are all technical endeavors, the discussion is a technical one, on how to do it.

So it is not about what Sam, as a designer 'should' do in designing his games. If he wants his game to recreate history effectively for the player, he has to include information about the specific history.

If he doesn't, then most likely the wheels will come off the whole effort--in recreating history. It could still be fun for folks. However, if his goal is to recreate some portion of history, he has shot himself in the foot.

That is a technical observation, not a statement of what he *should* design or whether X number of gamers care. From the continual contradictions Sam throws out on the connection between wargames and history, he is very confused about it.

When Sam says that wargames are make-believe, he means that the game design shouldn't be taken 'too seriously', that history can't be simulated, and that game design itself is much the same--whatever feels good and gets you dreaming. And any other view is nonsense. For Sam that is the end-all of every discussion on game design. I know this because those are his final statements on any thread about game design.

That doesn't mean he's incapable of designing games folks enjoy. There are any number of gamers that feel the same way. Terrific. But it doesn't help in discussing the craft of game design or how to recreate history with game mechanics. Or even how to design better games.

For instance, a technical approach would be to point out that many games don't depend on any make-believe or offer it as part of the enjoyment. Poker, or golf, or bridge and chess don't. So, that isn't a necessary ingredient to games. However, it seems to be an element of wargame design. Players role play, being in another time, another environment, being another person.

That kind of make-believe, 'a suspension of disbelief' is essential for simulations and wargames to work, regardless of the format or goals. A Technical statement of fact.

It can be a scientist watching pixels of light dance on a computer screen while he imagines he is seeing galaxies collide across millions of light-years of space. It can be a marine imagining that the concrete building he is entering at Camp Pendleton is actually an apartment building in Bagdad, and the pops he hears are gunfire, not laser tag equipment. If he doesn't 'suspend' his disbelief and act in some respect as though it is real gunfire, the simulation doesn't work and he won't learn the skills the exercise is meant to provide.

The same is true of the flight simulators, as you know Rocky. At some point the participant has to "pretend" the screen with pixelated terrain flying by is real, the simulation doesn't work.

"To work", of course, is another technical term regarding the goals of the simulation. It means the participant has a decision-making relationship with the simulation or wargame that has a 1:1 correlation to reality at chosen points, or the skills and knowledge learned in the simulation won't translate and the simulation is useless.

And there are specific methods of using that 'suspension of belief', of designing for it with specific goals in mind.

That kind of technical application of 'make-believe' could enhance our fun, provide ways to heighten the simulation aspects of our games. This is particularly true if gamers what to recreate some military history, face the same challenges as the real commanders, etc. etc. etc.

Or we can just shrug and say it's all 'make-believe' and such things can't apply or help our hobby. What then happens is that the talented discover one method or another intuitively, but it never gets beyond a particular game under the heading of 'I like' X.

And so gamers will say things every so often like "a wargame should allow one to actually deploy as they did in a historical battle--it's a good reality check" which is quite true, and seem to be a fairly cutting edge thing to consider in wargame design circles [from the evident lack of such reality checks] Yet, decades ago, simulators have produced a list of eight such reality checks that can establish that a system does indeed simulate some portion of reality.

Game designers don't HAVE TO use them, particularly if they don't care to recreate history, but hell, if they want a wargame to actually model some portion of the past, wouldn't those eight tests be of interest to them? Wouldn't what game designers from other industries and disciplines be of interest?

Wouldn't we want to get down to talking about how things work and how designers can best achieve their chosen design goals--including Sam's, rather than what someone 'should' like or want?

Best Regards,

Bill H.

Rocky wrote:

Rich was trying to tease me for mentioning our rules, but I don't do TMP for that reason. Frankly, I fall into the old school, that if you are a proper gamer, you do your own because only YOU know what you want the game to be.

Rocky:
What I think is fascinating, and I wish I could find the article, written in the 1990s about how participants respond to simulations. One of the major simulation issues remained presenting a simulation to a group experienced in the environment simulated. They would invariably challenge the simulation details and rationale.

The problem was that because the participants had a great deal of knowledge in the subject being simulated, they had definite expectations of how it 'should be', regardless of whether the simulation was designed to deal with their issues or not. They basically wanted to redesign the simulation to do what they thought it should. Sound familiar? ;-J

What had to be done was that orientation. These groups were given the information the simulation was based on, what e experiences and practice it was designed to provide, and the the expected outcomes. This almost always defused the groups' concerns. At worst, the participants felt other issues should be the focus of the training or research, rather than questioning the simulation itself.

So, it isn't surprising in the information vacuum generated by most past wargame designs, that you would have that urge. It is a natural consequence of no information. Of course, it also may be that you just like designing games too…:-)

Rather, I like TMP for the discussions with other minds on the problems. Everyone one down to the rankist novice gamer can come up with some insight that makes my game work BETTER. Selfish, wot?

This is true, and I would think what draws us all--selfishly, I am sure, but to everyone's benefit all the same.

I do go off when I am told that what I know exists, doesn't, and what can be done, can't, and what I see gamers saying they want, no one does, etc. etc.

So for that heat, I apologize.

Bill

"Rather, I like TMP for the discussions with other minds on the problems. Everyone down to the rankest novice gamer can come up with some insight that makes my game work BETTER. Selfish, wot?"

If I knew how, I would crosspost this to every thread on every forum. Great post, Rocky!

McLaddie wrote:

[…] When Sam says that wargames are make-believe, he means that the game design shouldn't be taken 'too seriously', that history can't be simulated, and that game design itself is much the same--whatever feels good and gets you dreaming. […]

Isn't that just a valid reality check for a wargame though? No matter how 'serious', it's a game in the end. If it doesn't "feel good", then it's something other than a game, isn't it? I can see a higher bar being set for true simulations, but not for the average wargame. I'm no expert in simulations, but I assume there's a level of consistency applied that would get into all sorts of non-interesting areas as well as the fun bits. Do you really mean to apply that same standard to wargames?

[…] That kind of make-believe, 'a suspension of disbelief' is essential for simulations and wargames to work, regardless of the format or goals. A Technical statement of fact.

This sounds to me like Sam's point -- at least as you've framed it!

[…] "To work", of course, is another technical term regarding the goals of the simulation. It means the participant has a decision-making relationship with the simulation or wargame that has a 1:1 correlation to reality at chosen points, or the skills and knowledge learned in the simulation won't translate and the simulation is useless.

Bill, you seem to be using "wargame" and "simulation" interchangeably. Is that your intent? I don't disagree about the correlation to reality part, but the question of chosen points is, I think, key. I certainly don't turn to wargames to learn history, although I do use them to understand it somewhat. I'm not sure if most historical wargamers are using wargames to hone their tactical skills in preparation for anything in real life, which I think is a key differentiator between "game" and "simulation", or at least "real-world simulation" of the sort that one might be expected to develop actual survival skills from.

Perhaps that's the distinction: You may, if you care to, learn things through playing a game. You are expected to with a simulation. We need some term to differentiate between "simulation" as a general concept and those big expensive kinds used for training, methinks.

[…] That kind of technical application of 'make-believe' could enhance our fun, provide ways to heighten the simulation aspects of our games. This is particularly true if gamers what to recreate some military history, face the same challenges as the real commanders, etc. etc. etc.

I don't see that as contrary to acknowledging that our games are just games.

Or we can just shrug and say it's all 'make-believe' and such things can't apply or help our hobby.

Are they mutually exclusive? Back to the original point of the thread, and getting off of Sam for a bit, while your earlier point about the semantics of process versus outcome is correct, there does remain the question of whether players want to game every process, or are satisfied with reflecting certain outcomes. And even then, to what level of detail? There's no one right answer, of course, other than the need to keep things enjoyable for the player(s).

The game designer has the additional goal of getting others to voluntarily pick up their rules and give them a try, possibly making investments in figures and terrain along the way. I would think the average simulator is something one is told to use, or done as part of "work".

[…] Yet, decades ago, simulators have produced a list of eight such reality checks that can establish that a system does indeed simulate some portion of reality.

Would you mind sharing a link to those 8 checks? I am neither a writer of simulations nor wargames, but I do enjoy the topic!

Thanks,

- Bob

Bill,
Could you write some kind of summary on your views about games as simulations, game design and reality checks, fun in wargames, etc. You know, all these things that have caused heated discussions here at game design forum. Such document would probably answer most of the questions made by Bob above as well.

I find the stuff you are writing interesting. However, trying to find relevant parts from old 1000+ post threads can be quite frustrating. I understand that writing something like that might not be your idea of fun, but please, do it for the sake of our hobby!

Bob wrote:

Isn't that just a valid reality check for a wargame though? No matter how 'serious', it's a game in the end. If it doesn't "feel good", then it's something other than a game, isn't it? I can see a higher bar being set for true simulations, but not for the average wargame. I'm no expert in simulations, but I assume there's a level of consistency applied that would get into all sorts of non-interesting areas as well as the fun bits. Do you really mean to apply that same standard to wargames?

Bob:
Sure, I agree that there is a good amount of 'make-believe' in wargames and simulations--and a desirable thing it is too. However, when technical questions of how to accomplish a game design goal is reduced to 'serious' vs 'feel good', where are we?

No, I don't mean to apply the same 'standards' to wargames that professional simulation designers require--different goals and different purposes.

The game designers are the ones who establish any 'standards' for their creations--standards simply being whatever goals they set out to achieve with their designs. That's it, no more and no less.

However, when those designers set their design goals as 'recreating' a historical battle, simulate combat, modeling Napoleonic warfare, calling their wargames simulations, but ignore what are proven to be fundamental design components for doing just that, I think it is reasonable to say something.

RC airplane modelers aren't professional aircraft engineers, and certainly not as 'serious' about aircraft design. Even so, they don't ignore the principles of aerodynamics because they are just in it for the fun. That's because they see their models actually flying AS the fun. It's their choice. Lots of folks make model airplanes that aren't meant to fly and have just as much fun.

To actually be successful at getting the model to fly, knowing some principles of aircraft design is just common sense. If wargamers want to simulate history, then it's just common sense to know how simulations work.

And if game designers claim they are modeling history, the player is justified in asking how that was done.

[I wrote] That kind of make-believe, 'a suspension of disbelief' is essential for simulations and wargames to work, regardless of the format or goals. A Technical statement of fact.

This sounds to me like Sam's point -- at least as you've framed it!

No. I actually offered that interpretation to Sam. For Sam, 'make-believe' is the end of the conversation--the final reduction of all game design discussions. Anything else is too serious and no fun.

For me, and both game and simulation designers I have met, that 'suspension of disbelief' is the start of the conversation. It is a question of where, how, why and when it appears in the play--and how it achieves the fun, the modeling, the simulation of past and present reality.

Bill, you seem to be using "wargame" and "simulation" interchangeably. Is that your intent?

Yes. Everyone, from the Military to Websters Dictionary does that, defining one with the other. Both wargames and historical simulations [in our hobby] have the same goals in providing players with decisions similar to actual military operations, from the basic dynamics/principles of war in general to specific historical environments. for wargames in our hobby, this can be a minor or a major part of a particular design, but they all share that goal to some degree--it's what make them 'war-games'. Again,I didn't decide that this is what our hobby wargames should be or do. Read any designer's notes or promotional blurb, they all say it, and have for decades now. Any and every game…save for just a few.

I don't disagree about the correlation to reality part, but the question of chosen points is, I think, key. I certainly don't turn to wargames to learn history, although I do use them to understand it somewhat. I'm not sure if most historical wargamers are using wargames to hone their tactical skills in preparation for anything in real life, which I think is a key differentiator between "game" and "simulation", or at least "real-world simulation" of the sort that one might be expected to develop actual survival skills from.

Yes, it is key. A designer chooses the points of reality to focus on. A simulation is just a tool, why folks come to it is another issue altogether.

von Riesswitz designed Kriegspiel as a tactical training exercise--period. He wrote that he was very surprised when players [Prussian officers] found it 'entertaining'. Folks now play the very same rules as a game 'just for fun'.

I have no desire to tell my fellow wargamers what they should to like or must design. My issues are all about what designers SAY they are already designing and players SAY they want--and what they are actually getting.

IF a game designer wants to recreate a historical battle, model [past] real-world combat dynamics in some way, where do you make the distinction between game, simulation, and a 'real-world simulation'? A portion of the goals are the same--the goals that define a simulation. So one finds it 'serious' business and another does the same activity for the fun of it. The design goals haven't changed.

I play computer flight simulators for fun, but the game skills I learned, because it was a functional simulator, proved to be of benefit when I first piloted a sailplane. The game designer's intent wasn't to train me to fly a sailplane. I didn't play the game to learn how to fly a plane. The simulator modeled powered planes, but because it was a functional simulator, I learned some flight skills all the same.

If the designer's goal is to recreate some aspect of reality with a wargame, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that simulation design techniques can be a help, no matter how seriously they are used by other people. It is also very hard to be successful at designing a game that recreates reality while ignoring simulation methodology.

If a game designer has no intention of capturing, modeling, recreating, representing, etc. etc. etc. past military reality, there is nothing to talk about other than game design and fun. Terrific--I enjoy that.

I have seen very few wargame designs in our hobby that don't claim to be offering some recreation of the command challenges from the past. If that isn't simply empty hype, then there must be some technical connections between the game mechanics and real-life, or documented history. That connection, 'abstract/artificial constructs designed to model real life' is the definition of a simulation.

I don't see that as contrary to acknowledging that our games are just games.

It isn't. Who said it was? The flight simulator was 'just a game' to me. But part of the fun was being challenged by actual flight dynamics. However, if by 'just games' you mean that they aren't 'that serious' or 'that complicated' or 'that meaningful', or just games instead of simulations, I disagree. It all depends on just what the designer says he's doing.

If a wargame designer says he is creating a simulation, if he claims to have provided players with the 'real' challenges of command, that the game is 'historically accurate'--maybe they are the ones that need to be told not to get all serious about just games. I'm just taking what they say 'seriously'.

Our games can and do provide all sorts of fun, some gamers could care less about the history and want only a 'good time.' For others, that good time includes the history and facing some of the same challenges tactically etc. as real commanders did. Most fit in between the two.

The hobby is big enough for all of them. But a designer who claims to have offered the players 'the way it was' historically, and then states it's all 'make-believe' is blowing smoke up somebody's pantleg, regardless of what players want. That isn't a good thing.

there does remain the question of whether players want to game every process, or are satisfied with reflecting certain outcomes. And even then, to what level of detail? There's no one right answer, of course, other than the need to keep things enjoyable for the player(s).

Absolutely. There seems to be this idea that all games have to be all things to all players, or there is only one way to design a simulation, let alone a wargame. The hobby is carrying a lot of conceptual baggage which doesn't help either. The 'right' answer is that designers are free to design the games they want and players are free to play the games they want.

The only other 'right answer' for me is that designers have to technically [that means in terms of game mechanics] do what they claim they are doing, because if they don't:

1. It confuses the hell out of any discussion of wargame and simulation design for the hobby

2.designing a simulation can't be technically successful. [i.e. do what they were designed to do.]

3.It leaves gamers unsure of what they are getting, and all games then appear to be all things to all players while achieving much less for everyone regardless of what they want.

4. They can't provide meaningful descriptions of their product. [I love the one wargame promotional blurb that claimed the game mechanics provided 'accurate historical flavor.' Try finding that in the rules booklet.

If I can use the RC Model hobby metaphor for our hobby again, we have designers claiming to build scale replicas of real airplanes that fly, while denying that a knowledge of aero-dynamics or referring to actual design blueprints of the planes are necessary. "It's all make-believe. They aren't real planes after all."

Topics like aircraft design are too serious for a 'fun' hobby. Any crashed models that result are chalked up as the failures of individual designers, who must be unaware of what the customers want. Talented designers, going by blind intuition and trial and error 'discover' successful techniques here and there, but that's it. Some planes fly, but it isn't clear why.

If we want to fly just to have fun, then learn how, if only to avoid the unfun crashes.

The game designer has the additional goal of getting others to voluntarily pick up their rules and give them a try, possibly making investments in figures and terrain along the way. I would think the average simulator is something one is told to use, or done as part of "work".

I think that is a misconception--that seems to be unique to our wargame hobby. 'The average simulator' is being used for entertainment all over the place. Who do you think all these flight simulators orginially were created for? The military and Airline trainers. There is more than one game company that exists simply by taking 'serious' military, scientific, and business' computer and training simulators and turning them into entertainment. And like von Riesswitz's design, often not a lot has to be changed other than the packaging.

I designed simulations as 'serious' training platforms for educators and business people. They had to work, training people for real life, but they had to be fun or they never would have sold, let alone enticed folks to actually 'practice' skills with them. The major and minor issues that many gamers--and designers--see as unique to our hobby, simply aren't.

Guess who has put more thought into game design, the $8 USD Billion a year computer game industry, or our hobby's $20 USD Million a year? Or simulation designers in their $2 USD Billion a year market? University's didn't develop bachelors in game design and simulation design to meet the growing demand in the miniatures wargame hobby.

Those industries and disciplines don't have all the answers and our hobby isn't devoid of them, but there are things that we can learn from the the wider world of game and simulation design.

I'll put up the eight checks in some other posts. This one is way too long as it is.

Best Regards,

Bill

McLaddie wrote:

[…] No, I don't mean to apply the same 'standards' to wargames that professional simulation designers require--different goals and different purposes.

I will use the terms "professional simulation" and "game simulation" to make that distinction for consistency. In my mind, there are many distinctions, but the biggest is in terms of the required resources for both the creator and the "player". Budget and possibly equipment separate the two, as well as a wealth of other assets.

[…] However, when those designers set their design goals as 'recreating' a historical battle, simulate combat, modeling Napoleonic warfare, calling their wargames simulations, but ignore what are proven to be fundamental design components for doing just that, I think it is reasonable to say something.

Even if the end results match the historical record? I'm not sure of the "fundamental design components" that you're referring to, so perhaps I'm missing the obvious.

[…] And if game designers claim they are modeling history, the player is justified in asking how that was done.

Do you feel it is more important that they justify the mechanisms based on simulation design principles, the results, or both? I've just read the pages-long thread on bow pull between Mike Snorbens, Rocky Russo and others, and there seems to be much debate about the underlying principles used in developing the mechanics, but less about the results. While not to the standard of a "professional simulation", isn't that good enough for a "wargame simulation"? If using historical opponents and tactics in a given scenario, historical results are likely, is that not historical, regardless of the underlying mechanics?

[…] No. I actually offered that interpretation to Sam. For Sam, 'make-believe' is the end of the conversation--the final reduction of all game design discussions. Anything else is too serious and no fun.

I certainly won't try to speak for Sam, but I can see how a rules designer might adopt that as a standard response simply to avoid being drawn into those pages-long debates about bow pull and the like! By opening one's self up to defending the rules, particularly in a forum such as TMP, I think a designer is walking into a quagmire! Yet that doesn't mean their rules can't be perfectly valid.

[…]

Bill, you seem to be using "wargame" and "simulation" interchangeably. Is that your intent?

Yes. Everyone, from the Military to Websters Dictionary does that, defining one with the other.

I'm trying be certain of where the boundary between "professional simulation" and "game simulation" is, and whether accuracy (a dangerous word) in results is "good enough" for a historical game. My gut feeling is that it is.

[…] IF a game designer wants to recreate a historical battle, model [past] real-world combat dynamics in some way, where do you make the distinction between game, simulation, and a 'real-world simulation'? A portion of the goals are the same--the goals that define a simulation. So one finds it 'serious' business and another does the same activity for the fun of it. The design goals haven't changed.

Let's change "serious" to "professional" for consistency. I'm under the impression that the underlying mechanics have to have a sound basis on reality/history in the big-dollar professional simulations. I would think that, so long as he is prepared for an onslaught of questions, the game designer could cut some corners in terms of complexity and focus more on modelling the results and still provide a legitimate historical "game simulation". To attempt a feeble metaphor, I'd see a "professional" simulation writer worrying about ensuring that 2+2=4 mathematically, while a "game" simulation caring more that the result was 4. That, to me at least, is the gist of the original question. Perhaps I have a mistaken impression of professional simulation?

[…] The simulator modeled powered planes, but because it was a functional simulator, I learned some flight skills all the same.

Would you say that this flight sim was based on fundamental design components and methodology for simulation? Or is a hack that "feels" right for modelling wind close enough for a game? What level of mix is OK? If I'm understanding you correctly -- and please forgive and correct me if I'm not -- you seem to be saying that there are fundamental design processes and methodology that should be followed if rules are to be described as "historical", and that, without those underpinnings, their claim to "historical" is dubious. Or am I mistaken?

[…] If the designer's goal is to recreate some aspect of reality with a wargame, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that simulation design techniques can be a help, no matter how seriously they are used by other people. It is also very hard to be successful at designing a game that recreates reality while ignoring simulation methodology.

I have no expertise in simulation methodology, so I will defer completely in that discussion!

[…] I have seen very few wargame designs in our hobby that don't claim to be offering some recreation of the command challenges from the past. If that isn't simply empty hype, then there must be some technical connections between the game mechanics and real-life, or documented history. That connection, 'abstract/artificial constructs designed to model real life' is the definition of a simulation.

To be clear: The game mechanics or the game results provided by the mechanic? I liken the game designer's challenge as akin to the software designers writing early incarnations of those flight simulators. They know what a multi-million dollar product can achieve, yet they need to provide some of that in a product that will fit in 640KB of RAM (I'm an old DOS guy!) and 2 floppy disks. (I played MS Flight Sim years ago myself.) And they're not above fast-forwarding through all the straight-and-level flying to get to the interesting landing bits! That's clearly a "fun" aspect, but I think the validity of the degree of "realism" provided is still there. I don't see them as mutually exclusive.

[…] But part of the fun was being challenged by actual flight dynamics

Or the perception thereof!

However, if by 'just games' you mean that they aren't 'that serious' or 'that complicated' or 'that meaningful', or just games instead of simulations, I disagree. It all depends on just what the designer says he's doing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "that complicated" -- for the player, or the underlying rules development and validation process? I would think a good designer can make complicated things reflect themselves using simple mechanics without breaking some bounds of historicity.

[…] If a wargame designer says he is creating a simulation, if he claims to have provided players with the 'real' challenges of command, that the game is 'historically accurate'--maybe they are the ones that need to be told not to get all serious about just games. I'm just taking what they say 'seriously'.

Fair enough. But a lot of the language used to describe rules has changed over the years, perhaps in response to those pages-long debates held in places like TMP.

[…] The hobby is big enough for all of them. But a designer who claims to have offered the players 'the way it was' historically, and then states it's all 'make-believe' is blowing smoke up somebody's pantleg, regardless of what players want. That isn't a good thing.

I think I know what you mean here, but all of our games truly are "make-believe"! There seem to be fewer qualms about admitting this these days, or at least an acknowledgement in many rulebooks that some emphasis is on ease-of-play along with realism. I suppose we could use the term "professional make-believe" to distinguish our historical-playing crowd from those other heathens? :)

[…] The only other 'right answer' for me is that designers have to technically [that means in terms of game mechanics] do what they claim they are doing,

Continuing the software analogy, is using a lookup table of results "cheating"? If the rules author has done his research and built his tables of results, is the lookup mechanic not still accurate (given game tolerances)?

because if they don't:

1. It confuses the hell out of any discussion of wargame and simulation design for the hobby

So long as there are more than one interpretation of history, I think that will be the case, regardless of a designer's efforts!

2.designing a simulation can't be technically successful. [i.e. do what they were designed to do.]

Is what they're designed to do to produce results, or derive results through a process based on simulation principles then?

3.It leaves gamers unsure of what they are getting, and all games then appear to be all things to all players while achieving much less for everyone regardless of what they want.

Designer's Notes are a wonderful thing. At least players can get some insight into what's going on. How those notes are delivered can vary, of course. I do expect to see a bit of marketese in any product though. If not for sales, then out of genuine pride of product.

[…]
Those industries and disciplines don't have all the answers and our hobby isn't devoid of them, but there are things that we can learn from the the wider world of game and simulation design.

I don't think there was anything in this thread suggesting that there is nothing to be learned from such things. I only suggest that the "game simulation" design approach can be focused on the results and less on the means by which those results are achieved. The most thoroughly vetted simulation mechanics can still be ripped apart by critics who find it doesn't match their interpretation of the "feel" of history. I do question whether one can truly state that mechanics are provably correct when the source data is so vague and hotly debated.

I'll put up the eight checks in some other posts. This one is way too long as it is.

I would appreciate it. I'm relatively new to all this -- and easy thing to be here at TMP -- but I'm intrigued at this little world that my boys got me into. I appreciate your clarifications!

Thanks,

- Bob