"Rules Critics - 'History', or 'Wargaming History'? " Topic

Gotta go with OSchmidt on this one. I have far more seductive things to focus on. I'm in Iraq now, and eager to go home. Got here as the war wound down. Now I want my gorgeous wife, dogs that will yipe when I arrive, buddies, beer, green grass, kids laughing. And when The dust settles I'll play a GAME with my soldiers. I've played with beaucoup rule sets since I started gaming in the 70's.. Zero are realistc. Thank goodness. They look cool parading around in line/column/square/skirmish and cavalry charging, cannon roaring. My toys for my games. It could have been chess (which I like), or swimming or bicycling, or softball, but my preferred past time is playing games with my toy soldiers.

If it ever becomes a quest to garner some 'feel' for realism, I'll give it up. I've seen 2 wars in my life. It doesn't come close to equating my Napoleonics to that experience. Just my toys that I game with.

Over the years I gamed with guys that were emphatic about some rule, incessantly carrying on about 'realistic' (what are you kidding?) wargames… Jesus help me man.. get a life. Pull up your pants, brush your teeth, drop 40 pounds, go have sex and join the rest of us. Its fun, but still GAMES.

Phil Dutre, you're spot on also.

A few comments if I may. Sam wrote…

"I'm content to judge the game purely on the basis of whether it works as a game: is it consistent and easy to learn? is it challenging and does it replay well? and most importantly, is it fun, and do I feel as if those three hours were well-spent?"

If a wargame, if any game does not meet the basic criteria above it is a failure as a game. If it passes muster then gamers can argue from their own prejudices whether or not it is historically accurate, whatever that is.

Sam also wrote…

"It's the wargaming history that makes people believe that a game with percentile dice and lots of modifiers is "historically accurate," but a game with d6s and saving throws is "just a game." I've never heard any of them explain why their particular way of arranging figures, dice rolls, and calculations is historically accurate, but some other guy's isn't."

D10s have absolutely nothing to do with historical accuracy. Those who think so are wrong. They are no different than D6s. It's just that they can provide the same outcomes more efficiently. What I wrote and will continue to write is, every time a gamer has to determine the number or color of d6s, as well as modifiers, then must determine how many saving d6s at what modifiers, to roll, the play of the game slows. Comparatively, a single roll of two modified opposed d10s can create a matrix of 100 possible outcomes, with sufficient deviations from the norm, without the time consuming drama of searching out and rolling multiple dice.

Finally a few words on the knowledge or lack of knowledge of Napoleonic wargamers. When I became interested in Napoleonic miniatures gaming in the late 50s there was no internet, dealers were few and far between, information was scarce and difficult to track down and there were no copiers.

The result was I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours in libraries reading and copying from books which could not be loaned. I still have the tracings of dozens of uniforms which I then hand colored with water colors as well as maps of battles. Fortunately I lived in Baltimore and had access to the Pratt, Peabody and Hopkins libraries and on occasion I could take the train to D.C. and go to the Library of Congress. The necessity of gathering information this way meant that I absorbed or learned by osmosis lots of information regarding the Napoleonic era. This resulted in myself and gamers of my age having extensive knowledge of the Napoleonic era permanently imprinted on our brains.

Today the acquisition of knowledge is different. Because of the proliferation and availability of information today's gamers are a product of a different, though certainly not wrong, era of knowledge and education. As best as I can understand they look on knowledge as something to be used not absorbed.

Many think they know but don't have the depth of knowledge to know and sadly seem uninterested in gaining the knowledge. Rather they simply re-ask the same questions on this and other sites on an as needed basis. What they don't do is absorb, dare I say learn, the information for if they did they would know rather than have to ask over and over again.

Bob Coggins

When you play a wargame all you are doing is playing within the rule set defined by the game designers predispositions. If a designer "privaleges" this or that factor or phenomenon of a spcefic period then it's in the rules. If he does not privalege that factor it's not. Some designers try and make it more "realistic" by complex and ponderous modifiers, some by arcane game mechanics. None of which means that it relates to history or what relly happened, or was causal or significant to the same degree the game designer has decided. So all you are gaming in any set of rules is the "feel" of the period as determined by the game designers prejudices, and what he thinks the "feel" was.

There is nothing wrong with this. If you don't like the "feel" of this game designer you can choose another.

There is a difference between relation of fact and hypothesis of causality. That in May of 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue is a fact. Why he did it and the motivations behind it were, and the effects that flowed from it are a subject for debate and interpretation.

With the exception perhaps of Kevan's objection to the "Black Powder" blunder rule, I have yet to hear anybody use any real, actual examples of games that are "inaccurate" or ahistorical. It's just the usual fictional straw man arguments about imaginary games with wooden blocks or dinosaurs at Waterloo, etc.

And even the Blunder rule could be justified quite simply as "historical" by saying: "A more vigorous commander issues more orders to more subordinates in a shorter period of time. Thus there is a higher likelihood that somebody will mess up one of his orders."

Since a "blunder," by definition, is something that is accidental or not intended, I don't see how you could possibly simulate or model it "accurately," anyway. All you can do is make rules that interpret the role and effect of blunders in war, and then randomize them to give the players the friction and uncertainty of command.

Did Blunders happen in war? Absolutely yes. That's a fact. How should the game handle them? That's interpretation.

I once did a horse-n-musket game in which it was possible for infantry to sometimes move faster than cavalry. I included a little designer's note on the page explaining that all movement rates are randomized to reflect the uncertainties of blah blah blah, and also the time and distance between the sending and the receiving of an order. I never heard anybody complain about it. Do I actually think that cavalry was "slower" than infantry? No. Did it make the game historically inaccurate because sometimes, rarely infantry might move faster? Obviously I don't think so; battle is full of unexpected things and uncertainties. That's just the style of challenge that I like. In fact, to me – and I suspect to a lot of people – incorporating that unpredictability makes the game more historically accurate, since it takes away the player's ability to know things in advance: something that gamers enjoy, but their historical counterparts rarely did.

But if your belief or interpretation is that cavalry must always move more quickly than infantry, period… then such a rule is ahistorical or inaccurate.

If I thought it would persuade anybody, I'd offer historical examples of mounted forces being held-up and moving slowly… and infantry forces scooting around quickly. Was it the norm? No. Did it happen? Yes. There are plenty of "facts," if you want them. The question is: what, then, do you do with them?

But it is a rare person whose opinion can be changed by an encounter with an undesired fact.

I learned an incredible amount about WWII not by spending years researching in archives and libraries, but simply by learning to play SL/ASL. Moreover, learning to read and understand the rulebook was the near equivalent of going to law school. I count the experience as legal training. It's not just a game. Wargames can serve as convenient repositories of accumulated knowledge and facts and they can make learning fun.

"But it is a rare person whose opinion can be changed by an encounter with an undesired fact"

Vigilance and honesty are good qualities in many studies, particularly the study of self.

Moreover, learning to read and understand the rulebook was the near equivalent of going to law school

Haha so true. I remember enjoying SL back in my teen years. Then ASL came along, and we played it over the course of a few years, but I don't recall enjoying it. The only memories I have are games bogging down while looking up rules.

Glue the figures to checkers and call it Napoleonics.

The late Rocky Russo and I collaborated on a couple of games. Our personalities were very different: but we both held realism and "feel" as paramount, with playability a close second. Abstraction was to both of us a swear word: we modeled as many of the weapon and tactical effects as possible. With that game design paradigm in place, the final product had to make historical outcomes possible. We tested the rules by playing many historical scenarios based on well known battles, to see if the same tactical confrontations and decisions could/would provide a historical outcome. When the game did that, and felt "right", we considered our work "done" for practical purposes….

"The late Rocky Russo…"

Sorry to hear that! Just the other day I ran across some of his posts and was wondering why we hadn't heard from him in a while. He brought a unique and interesting perspective. He was a shooter for sure ! He's in wargaming Heaven now !

Sam wrote…."I once did a horse-n-musket game in which it was possible for infantry to sometimes move faster than cavalry."

There are rules which have command mechanisms which make certain infantry formations move faster than cavalry all the time.

in terms of the blunders, Maurice does the job quite nicely with the blunder card removal decision rather than every command decision being a 1 in 36 chamce of blundering.

And sometimes, the 'feel' isn't about historical accuracy nor anything to do with the period at all, it is purely about the players command perception. Maurice is the first and only ruleset i have played where I have actively thought that my command effort was being dragged into an irrelevant area of the battlefield against my will and I needed to refocus my command effort back towards my battleplan.

jerome getting sucked into fighing over hougemont at waterloo all day was obviously because he was playing Maurice!

I've heard this before.
Race an infantry attack column v a cavalry regiment over 36 moves with an even dice spread and a command rating of 8.
The Infantry will move 792 inches at an average speed of 26.4 inches per move. Or 22 inches per turn if you count command failure as a 0 move.
The cavalry will move 918 inches (an extra ten foot) at a average move of 35.3 inches. Or 25.5 inches per turn if you want to count command failure as a 0 move.
That's if the infantry spend the whole time in column.
You could add another 72 inches for march column but how much moving around the table do you do in this formation?

All History is interpretive, and probably written by the winners.

Even the good guys get it all wrong – just look at Oman and how Column vs Line was cocked up for generations despit his well – meaning lecture and publication on the topic.

When you get wargaming ego self-strokers its even worse. Most of them seem to have a very limited actual knowledge, and base their vast wargames opinions on a very few readings of texts, and possibly a load of period films/discovery channel!

Just let them go play in a corner by themselves. If you are having fun, its all only a game, and highly subjective when it comes to applying history to a game.

YOur other point concerns appreciation of level of play. thats really hard to solve, as there its not about history, its about closed minds and lack of intellect or vision. So yes, at brigade level your squares dont take up any more space on the table, so dont need to be represented as such on the table – with each side a mile or so long in scale!!!

Personally, I find i don't need a blunder rule. I can blunder quite well all by myself, even in a solitaire game.

I have a standing house rule that allows subordinate non-player commanders to react to what they see around them. We rate COs for Initiative (or the sometimes conspicuous lack thereof) and then roll d100 for a result. The combination of the roll (higher is a more aggressive response) and the rating gives the response or lack thereof.

I've played Black Powder and was not impressed with the Blunder rule. If you REALLY want to do a blunder rule, how I do it in "Oh God Anything but a Six" is I let one or two units of an army be moved by the ENEMY. Much easier and far more dramatic.

Playing a game focuses the mind.
Where does the game take you? In your imagination, to the battlefields of history? Or back to the rulebook over and over again?

To the battlefields! (I find Carnage & Glory rules to be very helpful in focusing the imagination. Less need for the rulebook and less rolling of a die equals more immersion for moi!)

I am sorry to hear about Rocky Russo. He was a fine gentleman and thoughtful game designer.

It amazes me how this question comes up in so many guises on the TMP.

I have no expectations for a wargame other than what the designer claims his wargame does. I certainly don't expect it or criticize it for not doing what I think it should.

For instance, the authors of Black Powder say this in their rules:

The Black Powder game is first, foremost and most decidedly an entertainment. Naturally, we wish our game to be a tolerably convincing representation of real combat; however, no pretence is made to simulate every nuance or detail of weaponry, drill or the psychology of warfare.

That is what I can reasonably expect from the game. It may succeed or fail in my estimation. The real problem is that nowhere do the authors state HOW they achieved that or determined that it succeeded, so any estimation I might attempt may or may not have anything to do with theirs.

And there are those designers that say such ideas are nonsense and wargames don't represent anything in history, it's just a game.

There again, my expectations of what the wargame should do have been set by the one who created the game. It would be rather futile, not to say stupid to expect anything else from the design. If I play such a design, I have no business complaining that it doesn't recreate historical battles or present anything historical when that wasn't the intention and the designer didn't think it is actually possible.

If I agree to play a wargame, I play it. I don't kibitz about it.

The game designer Rolf Koster, in his book A Theory of Fun For Game Design said this about games: Page 152

The fact that playing games—good ones, anyway—is fundamentally a creative act speaks very well for the medium. Games, at their best, are not prescriptive. They demand that the user create a response given the tools at hand. It is a lot easier to fail to respond to a painting than to fail to respond to a game.

And like painters, successful game designers are the ones who do achieve those intented responses.

As Rolf observes:

No other artistic medium defines itself around an intended effect on the user, such as ‘fun.' [or learning, or understanding BH]

He concludes:

The closer we get to understanding the basic building blocks of games, the things that players and creators alike manipulate in interacting with the medium, the more likely we are to achieve the heights of art.

Criticizing game designs for not being what we want or claiming it's all just 'feelings' and whatever flavor one likes, keeps us from understanding those basic building blocks.

Hmmm

Maybe it's like the Bill Cosby system: "This is Bill Cosby comin' at you with music and fun, and if you're not careful you may learn something before it's done. So let's get ready, OK?"

You can certainly learn some things about a period by playing the games, and most gamers are inspired enough about the period to read up on it.

As for those who want to argue about the quality of the history, the same arguments happen among historians about each other's history. So, move on.

As for those who want to argue about the quality of the history, the same arguments happen among historians about each other's history. So, move on.

Omemin:
Hmmm. With some significant exceptions, there is little similarity to arguments among historians and what is generally seen between wargamers. What gamers might 'learn' is rather problematical, depending on the game.

What I was saying is that if you sit down to play the game, play the game, rather than waste everyone's time giving your opinion about. If you don't like the game, then don't play it… That critiquing can be done any time, and probably with more coherence if one has played a game or two with the rules as written…

That's all.

Bill H.

After years of research I sat down and designed a carefully constructed representation of the real events on a battlefield influenced by the commanders verified by detailed reconstructions.
I then tried playing a with battle them and they sucked horribly both as a game and as history.

I then went back to my figures glued to checkers rules and they were still good fun.

But one place I disagree with Bill, I do learn from games. Every time I play I learn that swapping to plan B midway to cunningly take advantage of the enemies stupid mistake results in me having to finally adopt plan Z in a vain attempt to avoid total ruin.

JeffsaysHi:

;-7 Well, that is learning something. I was thinking of the history involved, and I just said that what is learned is problematical because there is some bad history out there.

Learning to stick with 'Da Plan' is an important military principle, but even there, depending on the game, some are very opportunistic in play, so in that respect, you got a good design.

And after years of designing simulations, I know that your sucky simulation was just a failure of design, not research, maybe the limits on the design options you were aware of, rather than any problem with simulation games in general.

That is why I paint…to release stress, not to argue with a rules lawyer what is accurate and what is not.

I guess one could take out his figures into the local gravel pit with a 12-pack and shoot at them with his pellet-gun. It would be about as accurate and productive as arguing, it would definitely relieve stress, and may actually result in a level of satisfaction heretofore unknown. Bring a friend.

Interesting topic even with a bit of topic drift thrown in. I find myself (rather to my suprise) in the "game first history second" camp. The reason for this is that if the game mechanics don't work then the game doesn't get played and the level of history doesn't get seen.

I also don't hold with the view that the length of time a person has been drawing breath for (or wasting oxygen for depending on your view point) has any relationship to the validity of their opinion. It might show a relationship to their life experience but then again…….

Now as to historical accuracy in wargames I agree that a rules writer brings their personal views to the table when they write rules. However, there are some issues that do need to be reflected and which do mean that wargaming teaches something about history. The things they teach often seem blindingly obvious to most of us, but to others they can be a revalation. So lets look at a few examples. Tactical decisions for a start. If your forces are mainly equipped with close combat weapons and your opponent has effective range combat abilities but very little close combat ability your making decisions about how to close to melee as fast as possible. This reflects history. If the rules give negative modifiers for being disordered and your line of attack has rough terrain between your troops and the enemy then you start to make decisions about use of the terrain again historically accurate thinking. This is the sort of "flavour" good rule mechanisms bring into play.

Games that do this and have a good mechanism for penalising players who don't take these kind of factors into account are both poor games and poor history (assuming that they purport to have any historical accuracy in the first place).

Clearly wargames cannot reproduce the kind of stress, fear, pain, morale turmoil, fatigue etc that actual combat engenders. As a result they will always be "only a game" but that doesn't mean that some players, some of the time cannot learn some history through the medium of a game.

Gaming is annoying!

Don't get me wrong, I love my hobby but it always amuses me to see the old boys arguing over rules and history in the club, usually because of losing.

A game is at the end of the day, a game. It just depends what you want from it. I agree with the 'feel of it' theory, no matter what your experience is of said event. However the issue with this is that it's all subjective. Does this matter? Shouldn't do.

I have issues with IABSM but I still play it because somebody put the time into getting the game ready.

History should play a part in 'historical' wargaming. If not, why bother? If history isn't important then we might as will play 'Mega Romano Blitz' with SS troops battling Romans. But on the same level if its to historical then why play the game. It just becomes a simulation and if we play a simulation of Waterloo, well we all know how that ended!

As I said history has it place and deserves a respected nod when gaming. As a modeller as well I have been to too many shows where history is being ignored and blatant mistakes are occurring.

Rules are the interpretation of their writers which are interpreted rightly and wrongly by us!

What I do hate is when rule writers hype up that stats of equipment of the nationality of their home nation……this ticks me of!

We just playtested a set of WWII naval rules that my group has been working on in fits and starts for over 15 years. As we discussed what to fix and how to fix it, I was struck by a point of view that was prevalent.

Yes, the history is the main thing. The question is how to get that history into the game and still have it playable and fun.

With that in mind, it seems to me that, since the history is so important in design, then there should be history to be learned in the game.

Perhaps the same problem applies as with human history and experience. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, but there are a lot of false lessons that we learn as well. Sorting the one from the other is the tricky bit.

I actually find attempting to write scenarios and rules forces me to reconsider the history, it becomes a learning experience in it's own right. As soon as I start to refine my wish list of what I would like to include into what I can practically include I have to rethink what I thought I knew about a period and the way things were done. Maybe we should set problems in rule design as part of the history curriculum at school and college.

Elenderil,

Others have reached the same conclusion. From the introduction to Professor Philip Sabin's history courses at King's College London:

"Each student must complete an individual project (analogous to a course dissertation) by designing their own complete mini-simulation of a historical battle or campaign of their choice. . . What makes this project so educational is that the students must develop a deep analytical understanding of the dynamics underlying the real battle or campaign."

Maybe we should set problems in rule design as part of the history curriculum at school and college.

Elenderil
Yep, War Artisan beat me to it, but Philip Sabin just published a book on just that methodology: Simulating War.

Perhaps the same problem applies as with human history and experience. There are a lot of lessons to be learned, but there are a lot of false lessons that we learn as well. Sorting the one from the other is the tricky bit.

That is why designers should be explicit on what history and what lessons are being presented. The designers are claiming to have already done that 'sorting', so they should pass it on, instead of letting the players guess…that 'tricky bit.'

Neil Thomas in his book and rules Napoleonic Wargaming pointed out that it is easy to write a book on what happened at Waterloo. It is much harder to write a 2,000 word analysis of why Napoleon lost. Games are much more the latter than the former. Lots of analysis and synthesis goes into designing a wargame, and a lot of it isn't self-evident or self-explanatory in just playing it.

Bill H.

I read Philip Sabine's Lost Battles a couple of years back and thought why didn't I know that academics were thinking like this years ago. I guess the issue is that perhaps they weren't.

I used to do a fair bit of work in Schools taking a team of volunteers in to do a day on the ECW. Between sessions where they tried on the clothing and armour or did pike drill with mini pikes what I found really got the kids to think about the issues was to use simulations of the big political issues where thoee big issues were scaled down to a level that meant something to the kids on a personal level. To some extent a good set of wargame rules forces us to consider a limited set of historical issues by doing a similar thing while keeping things enjoyable.

Elenderil:

Sounds like it was a wonderful, hands-on learning experience you provided. Yes, simulations don't just familiarize students with the facts, names, places etc., they let them experience the dynamics, the relationships between those sundry facts in ways similar to the original participants.

That is the power of simulations if done right. They engage folks on a whole different level of learning.

Bill H.

Elenderil:

Sounds like it was a wonderful, hands-on learning experience you provided. Yes, simulations don't just familiarize students with the facts, names, places etc., they let them experience the dynamics, the relationships between those sundry facts in ways similar to the original participants.

That is the power of simulations if done right, providing meaningful/accurate information. They engage folks on a whole different level of learning.

Bill H.

Elenderil:

Sounds like you provided a wonderful, hands-on learning experience for those students. Yes, simulations don't just familiarize students with the facts, names, places etc., they let them experience the dynamics, the relationships between those sundry facts in ways similar to the original participants.

That is the power of simulations if done right, providing meaningful/accurate information. They engage folks on a whole different level of learning.

Bill H.

Drat this thing. It stutters… I get an error message saying the post wasn't complete, but then later shows up.

Well, what I posted is soooo important, it had to be repeated…

We all must live and game in a social way, maybe best to learn to detach when such a person breathes their fire.
I agree on both sides of the line about Fun versus History.
Immerse yourself in your chosen period and understand the times and behaviour. Then write your rules. But write rules for a game, not the computer-crunching simulation of boredom. It's got to be fun and maybe help us understand why Tomato No Sao ate his way through the Shogan's mako before stealing his horse, his concubine and a copy of Whizzer and Chips.

Kaze:

Of course it has to be fun. Who has ever argued for anything different???? Where did you get the "Fun vs History" business? What, history isn't fun? Or including history can only produce 'computer-crunching simulations of boredom?' And maybe help us understand?

Is that why history is included in our historical wargames: 'Understanding--maybe?' Come on. I play historical wargames because facing some of the challenges faced by the actual participants in history is fun on a number of levels, and I play wargames because they are fun even when they include no history worth the name.

What isn't fun is when a game promises that history and then presents anything but that in the name of 'fun.' It is just as annoying as a game that promises fun and offers nothing but 'computer-crunching simulation of boredom in the guess of a history lesson.

I think that kind false dichotomy between fun and history creates real problems for all wargamers…both in fun and history actually provided by our wargame rules.

Wonderfully put McLaddie. It seems that for a game to be fun to some people it has to be ludo with miniatures. I personally derive no fun or pleasure in a game that does not present me with decisions at least somewhat similar to those faced by the real commanders. What is no fun is people playing only for the game part, where the rules are just a thing that frames their drive for victory in a game, which could be any game.

Is a simulation of boredom more or less boring than real boredom? Sorry just a bit bored here and sudenly went all metaphysical. :-)

The real problem is that in any situation two (or more) people can watch the same event unfold and see it in a different way. that is because the thing they observe is filtered througn each individuals preconcieved ideas. Be those bias, lack of understanding, or a pre set cultural attitude. That is what makes attempting to understand why people in the past did things in the way they did. It is also why gamers of different ages and attitudes see the same rule in different ways.

I used to explain bias in historical accounts to school kids by asking about the outcome of a football match (thats Soccer to our US readers). Take two teams say Manchester United and Manchester City and ask the kids if the result, or a specific referees decision was "fair". Sit back and wait for the argument to start. Then point out that they are talking about an event that lasted for 90 minutes was in clear view of the spectators and could be rewatched afterwards. No one was shooting at, or cutting chunks out of anyone, no smoke and confusion and still they cannot agree on the fine detail of what happened. Why would history (or in this case rules analysis) be any clearer?

Bang on Elenderil, when on a forensic's course we were tought that. Fact is in gaming terms, that no two actions in battle were/are the same. To qoute the late Brigadier Peter Young. "Six to hit, six to kill, better you are, the more dice you throw, I threw alot of dice"!
Quite often we are distracted by the toys on the table and what they look like. Unless you can put out a full sized brigade, you ain't gunna see how it would really look.
A line of infantry, for example, would only form a couple of hundred metres from contact at best, until then its lots of little columns.
Whatever rules you use, the dice are the storey tellers

Right on Sparta!

Be those bias, lack of understanding, or a pre set cultural attitude. That is what makes attempting to understand why people in the past did things in the way they did. It is also why gamers of different ages and attitudes see the same rule in different ways.

Elenderil:
Metaphysiclly speaking, I don't think a simulation of boredom would be as boring as the real thing…but that could be my bias showing.

Actually, you kinda smeared a number of issues together.

1. Yes, our perceptions can get in the way of understanding those events and perceptions of the past participants, particularly when we only have their records to work from. But folks do it all the time on a number of levels. Certainly many wargame designers are willing to claim that for their games.

2. However that may or may not have anything to do with why gamers see a particular set of rules a different way. You'd have to know the history involved and the designer's 'bias' to determine how gamers are interpreting the rules.

The gamer may hold to a different historical view, or they may not care, or be using a different set of unhistorical criteria altogther… [e.g. not enough dice being thrown] or they may not understand what the rule was designed to do in the first place. That happens all the time, the gamer deciding it's a 'bad rule' when they are mistaken about what it represents.

The real problem is that most wargame designers never provide enough information to determine any of those questions….

I used to explain bias in historical accounts to school kids by asking about the outcome of a football match (thats Soccer to our US readers). Take two teams say Manchester United and Manchester City and ask the kids if the result, or a specific referees decision was "fair". Sit back and wait for the argument to start. Then point out that they are talking about an event that lasted for 90 minutes was in clear view of the spectators and could be rewatched afterwards. No one was shooting at, or cutting chunks out of anyone, no smoke and confusion and still they cannot agree on the fine detail of what happened. Why would history (or in this case rules analysis) be any clearer?

1. Actually, I think this example completely misses my point [not that you were necessarily addressing it] and a good deal of historical anaylsis too. You asked the students value judgements about 'what happened' at the game, not 'what happened.' For instance, there didn't seem to be any debate about either the presence of the referees or their actual calls, just the issue of fairness.

We can debate whether Ney did a 'good job' as a commander at Waterloo, but nobody is going to debate whether he was phsycially present and giving orders to large numbers of troops during the battle.

No one will accept someone's historical view of the battle as 'bias' if they say the French I Corps' first attack captured the crest of the slope and broke the British line, let alone whether the attack was 'successful' or not.

2. It is the same thing with historical wargame design. There are all sorts of 'value judgements' involved in creating one, where the designer's 'bias' will show, and that's just fine…but if they have infantry units moving 1/3 of the speed that Napoleonic troops practiced moving at, and all evidence says they did march at, it isn't someone's 'bias' showing, with any other view/bias being just as reasonable. It's just bad history.

As a designer, I may have a bias towards one historian's interpretation of why infantry moved at that rate, and I may have my own ideas/bias about how to portray that within my wargame, but to ignore it is not bias, let alone creating a viable 'historical wargame.'

Whether gamers like playing it or any other wargame is certainly an issue of personal opinion and bias… and more power to us all in that regard.

However, suggesting any and all portrayals of history in or out of wargame design is just someone's bias negates most of the work historians have been doing for the last two hundred years. Such an idea would threatening to reduce a good many Doctorate canidates to tears if they considered the thousands of footnotes and references they had to provide in their doctoral thesis… to suggest such work is just making a list of bias is to disagree with most all hitorians on one or more ways.

We are all in it for the fun, and each of us has our own 'bias' as to what consitutes fun for us. And of course, the historical wargame hobby exists to provide that fun, all sorts and in all qualities. However, to suggest that because that is true everything created in the hobby is therefore simply bias is to degrade a lot of what MOST designers are trying to accomplish as well as negate a good portion of the foundation of that fun. It is the difference between fantasy wargames and historical wargames.

Paul,

I'm seriously considering publishing our home grown rules my boys and I play. Your comments below capture our approach perfectly! If we do publish them I'd like to include them.

Gotta go with OSchmidt on this one. I have far more seductive things to focus on. I'm in Iraq now, and eager to go home. Got here as the war wound down. Now I want my gorgeous wife, dogs that will yipe when I arrive, buddies, beer, green grass, kids laughing. And when The dust settles I'll play a GAME with my soldiers. I've played with beaucoup rule sets since I started gaming in the 70's.. Zero are realistc. Thank goodness. They look cool parading around in line/column/square/skirmish and cavalry charging, cannon roaring. My toys for my games. It could have been chess (which I like), or swimming or bicycling, or softball, but my preferred past time is playing games with my toy soldiers.

If it ever becomes a quest to garner some 'feel' for realism, I'll give it up. I've seen 2 wars in my life. It doesn't come close to equating my Napoleonics to that experience. Just my toys that I game with.

Over the years I gamed with guys that were emphatic about some rule, incessantly carrying on about 'realistic' (what are you kidding?) wargames… Jesus help me man.. get a life. Pull up your pants, brush your teeth, drop 40 pounds, go have sex and join the rest of us. Its fun, but still GAMES.

If it ever becomes a quest to garner some 'feel' for realism, I'll give it up. I've seen 2 wars in my life. It doesn't come close to equating my Napoleonics to that experience. Just my toys that I game with.

Wartopia:
Where did Paul write this? As blind as I am, I didn't find it on this thread.

Howsomever, I don't think Paul has to worry, other than about those emphatic guys. First, I have yet to read a meaningful [read practical, technical] definition of 'realistic' as applied to wargaming, anything that translates out to other than 'I like this' game, its 'feel' and/or 'flavor' etc.

Second, the rather nice thing about wargames specifically and simulations in general, is that they purposely don't 'equate' to reality or the real experience of war. In fact, they exist for the explicit purpose of avoiding that necessity in research, training, education, and of course, fun.

I am grateful to all those who have chosen to experience war in serving this country and am very glad Paul is back with his family and free to play with his toys at his leisure.

Bill

Where did Paul write this?

top of this page, assuming my post doesn't start a new page

serving this country

his country, no?

McLaddie, Very good points well made mate. I do tend to use shorthand phrases and terms and merge concepts together when writing at speed.

I totally agree with you that the physical nature of what happened in general terms is a given fact. Although, sometimes even some the physical facts are open to debate when the viewer is deeply embedded in the event (schrodinger's cat might be an extreme example but the confusion of fighting in combat can play havoc with accurate recollection). But by and large I don't have any issue with those physical facts of who was present on a given battlefield. After all those events did happen and there is a "true" version of them. Sometimes understanding what that "true" version is needs layers of interpretation, personal bias and poor recollection in the witnesses account taking into account.

In my footballing analysis there is often a widely varying view of even some of the concrete facts, such as was a linesman well sighted on an incident and so able to give an accurate off side decision.

What I was driving at (in my typical roundabout way) is that if people are reading different accounts of the "true" event complete with different interpretations and bias then their understanding of what a given battle should feel like in a set of rules is going to differ. On top of that a designer has to decide what aspects of the battlefield experience to focus on and at which level of command and control. To be honest sometimes it amazes me that we can actually play a game without having arguments about historical argument. I suppose the bottom line is that we have to hope that the debates that do occur are good humoured. Which generally they are.

What I was driving at (in my typical roundabout way) is that if people are reading different accounts of the "true" event complete with different interpretations and bias then their understanding of what a given battle should feel like in a set of rules is going to differ. On top of that a designer has to decide what aspects of the battlefield experience to focus on and at which level of command and control. To be honest sometimes it amazes me that we can actually play a game without having arguments about historical argument. I suppose the bottom line is that we have to hope that the debates that do occur are good humoured. Which generally they are.

Elenderil:
Of course there are biases, interpretations that conflict in the historical accounts, or even current accounts. That is a major goal of historians, or even the study of Forensics… to resolve or counter such issues to come up with something closer to 'what really happened.'

And wargame designers are going to have their own interpretations, and then gamers are going to bring theirs to the table too.

So how do we handle this? Well, at the moment we do have arguments, discussioins, or we simply avoid the issue altogther and pretend it doesn't matter or can't be resolved.

The way most folks interesting in clarifying and resolving such issues, which are the norm for life, let alone the study of history is:

State what your interpretation is and clearly identify what is being interpreted… that is the evidence the person is interpreting. Pretty simple, but you don't see it happen much in wargaming, particularly from the designers.

" After all those events did happen and there is a "true" version of them."

Three big problems, though:

1) In most of the cases that matter to wargamers, it's virtually impossible to know what the "true" answers are.

For example: a Prussian battalion of 600 men opened fire on a French battalion in column. How many casualties did they cause? For how long were they firing? At what ranges? How tired were the men? How much ammo did they have? What direction was the wind blowing and did that effect the smoke for one side? How many Prussians had a clear shot and how many were obscured? Were they firing dead-on, or at some oblique angle? And so on and so on…

In 99.99% of the historical cases, we have no idea. At best we have somebody's memoir that says something like: "We advanced toward the Prussian line. Their fire grew increasingly hot. I saw Sergeant Mauvant fall…."

2) How do you know that the example you've just looked at, is representative of some sort of "norm"? Historical events are unique and discrete, and occur within particular contexts. A historian can find the information for individual cases and say, "In this case, this is what happened." Game rules, however, are written to establish normative structures that will be repeated many times over, in increasingly fictional environments. (Each turn of a Waterloo game that you play, is increasingly less like the historical Waterloo, since you're steadily moving away from whatever historical set-up or premises you started with.) In other words, it's the opposite of History.

Since you can't know the answers – the details – to 99.99% of the questions that go into knowing "what happened," then how are you going to say that whatever game mechanics you've written are "accurate" or even representative of some typical process?

The Prussians fired. The French broke and ran. So…. do we know why the French broke and ran? Is it just because the Prussians fired on them? If so, then should our game have a rule stating that every time Prussians shoot, the French will run? Of course not, so then we begin to speculate… well, perhaps for this reason… or that reason… or under these special conditions… and perhaps that was an unlikely outcome… and so on.

The game rules that result aren't the representation of the event. They're a set of interpretations inspired by an event. And interpretations, by definition, are idiosyncratic.

What should be the basic odds of the French breaking and running, when the Prussians shoot at them? 10%? 15%? I'd love to know how somebody picks the "accurate" game outcome for something like that.

3) Even if by some miracle we could know the answers to all of those questions, then so what? We still haven't done the most important thing, which is to write the game rules. Knowing all the answers doesn't tell you any of the things you need to make a good game out of it.

What kind of dice or randomizer do you use for the shooter? What sort of mechanism to represent his fire? How do you represent the effect of the fire? How do we break up game-time and thus how long do we imagine a "turn" represents – i.e., what portion of the above story is represented by each step of the game sequence?

None of the tools at a game designer's disposal have anything in common with the historical events that inspire the game. There is no way to represent continually-flowing time, for instance. A game has to break it up into steps or phases, which immediately throws any semblance of realism out the window, since historical actors rarely knew what was going to happen next, or in what sequence. There is no way to represent the physical flexibility of historical units and formations, since we have solid bases of metal figures that must be picked up and put down and thus occupy fixed spaces. The best we can do to represent the randomness of human behavior and responses is to inject some sort of artificial randomizer like dice or cards, but of course there were no dice or cards in the historical battle, so all of our game mechanics are linked to something that wasn't there.

Or let's try a simple experiment: Somebody design a game based on catching a cold.

You're on a bus. Somebody is sneezing. What are the odds of you catching a cold?

You're on the bus. Two people are sneezing. But the windows are open. What should the odds be now?

Now you're on an airplane instead of a bus. What odds now?

And so on.

Compared to knowing about what happened in Napoleonic battles, we know a LOT about the pathology of the common cold. The raw data is all there. Tons of studies, statistics, etc. This should be easy.

So let's see a game mechanism that accurately depicts the chances of catching a cold.

Captain Cornelius Butt wrote:

1) In most of the cases that matter to wargamers, it's virtually impossible to know what the "true" answers are.

For example: a Prussian battalion of 600 men opened fire on a French battalion in column. How many casualties did they cause? For how long were they firing? At what ranges? How tired were the men? How much ammo did they have? What direction was the wind blowing and did that effect the smoke for one side? How many Prussians had a clear shot and how many were obscured? Were they firing dead-on, or at some oblique angle? And so on and so on…

In 99.99% of the historical cases, we have no idea.

I don't think this refutes McLaddie's point so much as it demonstrates how badly most wargamers get distracted by concentrating in excessive detail on factors not of main importance to the historical participants.

2) How do you know that the example you've just looked at, is representative of some sort of "norm"? Historical events are unique and discrete, and occur within particular contexts.

Are you seriously suggesting that there is something uniquely mysterious about military history that makes it less amenable to numerical and statistical treatments than, say, economics or psephology? It seems a good deal easier to establish numerical norms for tactics and operations than for almost any other field of human endeavour, not least because armies spend so much effort in trying to do just that.

So let's see a game mechanism that accurately depicts the chances of catching a cold.

Many years ago, Dahl and Nygaard (the fathers of object-orientation, among other things) wrote a remarkably simple model of contagion in a population, and AFAIK strikingly simple epidemiological models continue to be used. The difficulty isn't the mechanism, it's haggling over the values fo the variables.

All the best,

John.