"Is Barkerese a myth?" Topic

well difficult to argue. Not sure what the Fog Index is of the Barker rules….

But there is a bit of an enigma here because the books he has written (Airfix Ancient Wargaming) and articles in Military Modelling were well written and lucid so not sure what happened when rules were needed….

He was a victim of rules lawyers and tournament players. WRG 1925-50 is also a model of clarity.

For more clarity on the subject, try reading his DBA rules…..

It's a myth.

His mountain of contributions to gaming – articles in just about every magazine you can think of for 40 years are as UK John notes well written – reading the Airfix purple primer was like having an enthusiastic gamer in the room handing out endless useful tips.

The legalise of the rules is due to the rules lawyers – the kind of guy who says "well, it doesn't say my elephants can't get into canoes and travel upstream, so that's what I'm doing".

As WRG were THE tournament rules every stupid one-off breach of good sense ended up being codified into the rules in order to help the umpires cope with a bunch of petulant 30 year old 20 stone children. Maybe that was a mistake – maybe those people should have been barred – but then you get non-stop arguements and I guess even tournament organisers want to enjoy themselves :-)

What they said; Barkerese definitely exists, but appeared gradually over the years, chiefly as a symptom of the target audience rather than the author's natural writing style….

"Barkerese" so far as it exists is an attempt to codify the rules in as concise and clear a way as possible. IT is complex because after 40+ years, Phil is pretty well aware of what the rules lawyers will do if there is a loophole.

It is interesting to note that several recent sets of Ancients Rules (other periods as well) suggest you should play like a gentlemen, and then leave glaring holes that the unscrupulous can use. Not good enough when playing strangers.

One of the most frustrating things for me in the develpment of DBMM was the regular comments from Phil that a change to a rule would not fit in the space available. As a result the writing became even more terse and compact.

Barkerese is an attempt to convey the maximum information in the minimum space but for the vast majority of players all it manages is to cause the maximum confusion with the minimum words.

I always look at PB's texts and smile- not because I think it gobbledy gook or impenetrable but simply because of the huge effort it must entail to say something very carefully in the minimal amount of words to avoid the meaning being twisted and contorted by cheats. Once figured out its all clear enough and more words would simply create more openings for twisting and if I am being generous perhaps misunderstandings.

I think with most rule sets if you want to break them you can and maybe an appeal to gentlemanly play is a better approach. I have about given up on playing ancients using DBM and now FOG as the whole ethos of the game system is spoiled not by the writing styles but by the assumptions of uber-competitiveness.

This never seems to be a problem when playing Malburians for example.

Bruntonboy, not bad observations, I would comment that DBMM is the least broken ancient sets in the sense that if I play strangers (as I did today at Wintercon) – I know that the rules will cover it…

I have played 'gentlemen' sets, and that's fine among the people I usually play with, but if you need/want to play strangers in a comp setting, I would far rather play Barker rules than (for example) Rick Priestly ones…

Barkerese (X): defeats analysis in good going. If beaten by criticism, flee.
Recoil from WADBAG (S), If doubled by Publishers(I), wait 15 years then deploy new Barkerese(X) as rear rank. Destroyed by Sue(S) in any combat, except where also receiving Rear Support from an Element of Sue(S), in which case advance full normal move accompanied by supporting Sue(S) element.

No, I don't think Barkerese is a myth. I read his comments on the DBMM yahoo group, and can see that he has a perfect understanding of his intentions, and can easily explain them. Sadly, that same lucidity does not come across in the rules (including DBMM) that I have read. I have great respect for Mr Barker, but I am tired of reading his 'condensed' prose in rules sets. If DBMM were as long as Hail Ceasar, and written in the style he writes his explanatory emails in, it would be the best set of rules ever.

But it isn't, so I'll stick with Mr Priestly from here on out.

I don't think it's a myth.

As others have said, it is an auto-immune response to rules lawyers and uber-competitive tournament players.

I don't have any great problem with it – mostly because I am more interested in playing than winning so tend toward the gentleman model even for DBMM.

Bobblanchett- well done sir. Bravo! One of the most entertaining posts on TMP in quite sometime.

I'm a great admirer of Mr Barker and his contributions to the hobby,but I never did understand his obsession with publishing space. As an editor myself I'm always looking for ways to simplify language, but not at the expense of the reader's understanding (no double negatives thank you). Mr Barker has always seemed determined to keep rules production costs as low as possible, but I for one would have been happy to pay for a few extra pages of clarity offered in simple fashion. I think the rules lawyers made it even more complex, but Mr Barker's determination to condense,condense,condense is the language root of Barkerese.

Priestly is great if you are playing the bloke from round the street who you play with all the time – but it doesn't work if you are playing people who aren't gentlemen. DBMM does.

As an editor myself

As an editor yourself, doesn't

I for one

set your teeth on edge?

Barker has ed up his HFG project with his refusal to stop tinkering and his pandering to rules lawyers.

I don't do tournaments, and I avoid rules exploiters like the plague. Barker's 'tight' writing is wasted on me.

It doesn't matter at all WHY he wrote the way he did, it just matters that he DID. So it is most certainly not a myth, but fact!

I find several problems with Barkerese.

His need to say it all in one sentence, length be damned.
His use of obscure prepositions and conjunctions.
Constant tinkering.
Ammendments which consist of "Page 17, paragraph three, line 4: delete 'must', insert 'cannot'".

Last but not least, every new Edition, from 6th through 7th (with all the .X sub editions) through DBM were touted as "the most extensively play-teste rules EVER!" If that were true, there would be no need to completely redo those Editions every time a new printing was needed.
I get attacked by the Disciples of Phil for pointing out how past history must be a solid prediction for DBMMMMM. It annoys them when I say I have no need to read DBMMM, all I need do is bring up the past. Isn't DBMM up to 2.0 now? And counting? 'Nuff said.

I suppose it's Cool to know that you are in with the in crowd, and already have a heads-up on DBMM 2.5 or DBMM 3.0, when some are still struggling with DBM 1.0.

Am I the only one who sees something "sinister" in changing the rules with every new printing,. so that everyone with a perfectly good copy of 1.0 has to buy 1.1?
Am I alone in Seeing Doctor Evil at work?
"One million dollars!!!!!!!"

I for one concur with the OFM

Why didn't he just publish thicker rules?

Or a slim copy for grown-ups, covering the basics with a seperate volume of commentary to thwart the cheats, for the benefit of those who chose to play competetively…

Top 5 reasons to avoid Barkerese rules:

1) Reading them seems uncomfortably like working
2) Playing them is NOT working for me
3) He still has not gotten the point that the perfect, unmisunderstandable, nonabusable, all-encompassing rule cannot be written (try chewing on that, editors)
4) Any ruleset that needs not only a a 2.0 but also a 2.34 must be seriously flawed, especially when you know 3.0 is just around the corner.
5)They are written to accomodate the kind of player I try to avoid like the plague.

A couple of additional thoughts.

Phil's aversion to using extra pages is an oddity in itself. I suspect that post-WWII paper rationing may have been a key element in his early conditioning. He may also own a crystal set.

Phil long ago made the decision to try and fight rules lawyers by tightening loopholes, and tightening them some more, and again some more. In doing so he made sure that the rules lawyers were increasingly a core constituency in his audience. Everyone else looked around for something easier to play.

The better response would have been to tell them to play nice or shove off.

Many years ago I asked Phil why he created such complex lists. He told me that, prior to the lists, tournament players were showing up with the most outrageous 'greatist hits' armies. I recalled meeting a man who boasted of owning an Arab army featuring every naptha-thrower who ever existed, and I knew just what he meant.

I did either a Fogg or a Fry readability test on some paragraphs from WRG 6th once. The readbility level as I recall was undergraduate level but his English is perfectly good.

My problem with Phil's rules was when I read them I had the feeling of being tested for an examination to enter the bar! With the exception of Tax and Customs codes I've never read anything as obscure as Mr Baker's rules. Even Foucault is easier to understand.

I think we have to cut him some slack with the impoundments sheets…these were distributed for nowt so it was in his interest to keep costs down by making them fit on one sheet of paper.

Of course now with t'internetmail it isn't so important.

I always thought that Phil should have had a technical-manual writer to redo his rules.

Ah, Mr Sage. Good to see you making full use of your vocabulary.

I think it's beautiful.

Yes, really.

A maximum of clarity using a minimum of words.

My favourite errata ever was: 'p.[xx], paragraph [x], after [word] insert ',''.

all those commas were vital though, as they usually indicated an exception sub-clause to the rules.

The big problem with the rules as written – the English is more perfect than that wot most of us speak 'n' write.

But put the rules against all he has written and you have 10,000 words against several hundred thousand perfectly clear and even, sometimes, chatty. Sometimes authoritarian when putting down a criticism in Slingshot.

The convention competitive tournament crowd can take any perfectly clear, English language, declarative sentence and beat it senseless in a few minutes, and to pulp in a single on-line thread.

There are those who cannot understand what PB is trying to say and there are detractors who don't want to understand. It's the latter that led to the former.

I am of the 'those that don't want to buy'.
My Chinese translated directions for operating a multizone DVD player were more gratifying and understandable.
Why should I, as a detractor, have to spend hours poring over each paragraph like it's the 'Book of the Netherworld' just to play a self-styled simple game.
Work(W) in free time, unless at the office, but on an official break, not including the weekend and not not on non-holiday days, causes the rout and removal of Fun(F) every time.

Correction brucka post line 6 word 4: Unrecognized formation; Fun(F),;' remove any reference to Fun(F) in this and subsequent editions.

Though I am sorry to hear that Mr. Barker did this to the language to remove ambiguity(!) and to curb rules lawyers.
Sad. Seems like it could have been a fun, simple set of rules – why I bought DBR initially and abandoned quickly when my printer ran out of ink making addendums/corrections and explanations the first year.

"When a single element
or an element of a group
entirely of Skirmishers
and/or Light Horse
is contacted by the front edge
of an element of an enemy group,
it must immediately pivot
and/or shift sideways
to conform to that element,
unless either defending
a fortification, an obstacle or the edge of a terrain feature,
or its recoil would then be prevented by friends."

DBR 1.1 rulebook, page 18, section "Moving into close combat", second paragraph, first sentence.

@Griefbringer
Sorry mate this is perfectly clear to me.

Not sure what the equivalent phrase is for the light, conversational style adopted by Rick Priestley – "Priestleyesque" perhaps?

If you want a good one look at the superior grading in DBMM version 1. It is a single sentence that has been expanded to a full page A4 flowchart by players to help make sense of it.

hmmm james

Maybe you have hit on a solution here – publish a Visio progamme for all the operative rules?

It is not a myth. The writing is not clear. It is not concise. It is convoluted run on sentences.

Well, I'm completely new to all this (hello, everyone :-), but I already have a couple of favourites from DBA 2.0:

"
Except in the side's 1st bound, a move uses up an extra PIP for each of the 3 cases following that apply:
…
(b) If all the element of a group to be moved starts more than 1,200 paces away from the general's element, or both starts 600 paces away and also either beyond the crest of a Hill, beyond a BUA or a camp, or in or beyond a Wood, Oasis or Dunes, or if the general has been lost.
"

That's:

If A, or (both B and (beyond C, D or E, or in/beyond F, G or H)), or C.

Now, technically, that first "or" is superfluous, because a list of alternatives is minimally defined as "X, Y or Z." Not "X, or Y, or Z" as here. Of course, if it were removed, some would complain :-)

Anyway, I don't see what the general having been lost has got to do with being more than 1,200 or (exactly?) 600 paces away. Wouldn't it have fitted better on the end of c) as in:

"(c) If the general's element is in a BUA, camp, Wood, Oasis or Marsh, or if the general has been lost."

And:

"If its total is less than that of its opponent but more than half:
…
Psiloi. Destroyed by Knights, Cavalry or Camelry in going these count as good. If not, flee."

From a few paragraphs later, it looks as though an "if" is missing. But even then I'm not sure if there's a difference between "if in going these count as good" and the shorter (and therefore preferable :-) "if in good going."

Good going differs for Camelry and Psiloi. One mans bad going sand dune is a another camel's good going.

…and another's camel dung.

@colinhow
Sorry, but again it is clear to me. Except in your first bound of the game, it is going to cost you an extra pip if the general is dead, a long way away, or closer but crap terrain intervenes.

I agree that the 600 paces is open to exploitation by some players.

Over the years I developed a black-belt in Barkerese, but the DBMM rules left me cold.

While there was an attempt to break some of the copy into dot points (and stick a whack of diagrams at the end), the presentation and clarity was just not up to speed with best practice.

(The game itself is OK, 2.1 helped, but it still could be much better.)

It's interesting to note that PB commented that WRG back in the day produced what he believed was the world's first rules book type-set by professionals.

By today's standards, something like Sam Mustafa's Lasalle is the cutting edge of presentation and clarity.

Regards

David B

Barkerise is not a myth, clearly.Phil's style is Phil's style. However I don't find it too diifcult most of the time. Some bits certainly remain contentious and often discussed during a game but after playing lots of DBMM I have found the Yahoo group is great for getting clarity of interpretation on most of those. I love DBMM and the variety of close and challenging games it always delivers.
What is more questionnable is the sniping by the FOGsayers . Surely every rule set, even and probably especially the glossiest have lots of sections that are subject to debate and interpretation by the players. No difference to DBMM. Phil said at the outset he wasn't aiming to produce the simplest set ever, he wanted a quality set that may well be his last large project. Probably roaming OT here but it seems a lot of these posts are simply designed to allow Phil bashers some venting time. As always if you don't like it don't play it as long as you enjoy whatever set you use it doesn't matter.

Clear enough to me too colinhow but I take the point.

Even a set as concise as DBA can be open to misinterpretation or different ideas of what is meant. I remember years ago over on the Fanaticus DBA site asking what happened when an elephant recoiled into another elephant, some of the replies seemed to use tenuous interpretations of English grammar to make the rules say what to me they quite clearly don't say.

Another example is that everytime I've played DBA here in York if you took the other guy's camp that counted as two elements of the four needed to win. Over in Leeds my gaming friends play campaigns and capturing the enemy camp doesn't affect the battle but gives you more victory points at the end of the game. I don't think my Leeds mates are playing the "orthodox" way but when they explained their interpretation of the wording I can see where they are coming from and it works perfectly fine and we have fun campaigns.

That said, I think 6th edition was fine as far as "Barkerese" went, DBA is a masterpiece of concise writing that is sometimes twisted out of shape by tournament players, DBM went down the slippery slope a bit and DBMM, well just one look at the page of grading factors put me off.

The other extreme is the Field of Glory style of writing where every rule is clear and well written often with illustrations. Great….but it's well over 100 pages long with the index from hell. There's just too many rules for me and I don't want to carry around a big hard backed book and to have to learn its contents, all hundred plus pages of 'em just to play a game. Frankly, I can't be bothered. (I actually play DBA and Impetus now).

It's easy to knock Phil but IMO he's a giant of the wargame world and us Ancient players owe him a lot.

It's easy to knock Phil but IMO he's a giant of the wargame world and us Ancient players owe him a lot.

For as long as I can remember there has been an "anti-phil" faction – never understood why.

I've never (as far as I know) met him, but his contribution to ancients is immense – the rules of course, but also through articles and the hugely influential WRG army books which I doubt would have happened without the phenomenal success of the rules. And that's a good phrase "phenonenal success". If anything ever came close to being a universal set of wargaming rules then it was WRG Ancients. And what an incredible effect DBA had 21 years ago – it seemed for the next five years you couldn't pick up a wargames magazine without readng about a DBA variant (or two !). That's influence.

@AlanYork & Mechanical

It was perfectly clear to me too, but when I came across these bits (and maybe others) I knew what was meant by Barkerese. Up till then I was wondering what the problem was.

Funnily enough, the rules remind me a bit of patent claims which are supposed to be clear and concise. But "clear" doesn't necessarily mean "easy to understand". It means unambiguous (in this case). :-)