"The ruleless wargame" Topic

We are mulling over in Society of Daisy, the idea of a rule-less war game. The structure of the game is quite simple.

Side A writes down it's general orders in no more than one 40 word paragraph, and keeps it secret.

Side B does the same.

Both sides reveal their general orders and the players NOT the umpire discuss how the move turned out, and what happened.

The umpire is there as an independent observer who makes GENERAL observations and recommendations as to "which is too optimistic a movement for the time, or "that is a bit too improbable for the situation"

If the players agree, the move stands, casualties are assessed etc, retreats made,

If the outcomes do not agree, than a simple die roll or decision maker (laying out four ordinary playing cards
determines which version has happened. One side gets his version accepted the but other side gets to "interpret" that version that is actually execute in particular the movements and positions of the troops.

Once again the umpire has veto power over those steps if one side or the other is trying to "jimmy" the intent of the other side too much.

We're thinking of testing out at "The Weekend" this year with a Seven Years War Game.

Check out Battlegames #33. I wrote an article about similar experiments we did in our gaming group, albeit with ideas from matrix-gaming.

Structure is more or less as follows:
- players in turn get to formulate an argument what will happen next on the battlefield. Some discussion about the likeliness of such an event follows.
- umpire decides on a probability and rolls the dice to see whether event succeeds, and to what degree.
- An alternative for the umpire roll we also used is voting: all players vote to see whether something happens.

We found that such games work best if you have 4 or 5 players, not linked to any particular side. All players can formulate things to happen to any unit on the battlefield.

It takes a special mindset though. Players should be more interested in the development of the overall story rather than focus on 'my side must win'.

The name muggergame (terminology from Wargame Developments, IIRC) has been used as well for this type of game.

Hey Otto, it's you!

I didn't realize when formulating my previous reply :-)

If you're interested, I can send you some of the materials we used for our previous games we organized along these lines.

This is indeed very close to Matrix Games, as Phil says.
You each make an argument and have a discussion about who has the stronger argument. It does need an umpire.

This is being done as a "gedanktexperiment" (Thught Experiment) but with a little more, (obviously it's not pure thought) with the idea being to see how a battle is formulated and flows In the players minds, and to see it visualized on the table top . The idea is to take observations and impressions from this with the aim of critical criteria for the design, modification, and improvement of games. The idea is to determine what players deem important and what items require more detailed treatments than the merely cursory. I'm hoping to get two players whose only task in the game is to take notes and observe how the game runs so that we can use these for evaluation after the game.

I and others in "The Weekend" group in tossing around stories and other social things in "The Munchie Pit" last year were talking about what people THINK is important, but that we noticed they don't seem to act like it's important when you get into a real game, or in another way, what is their "vision" of what will or ought or might happen to what actually does happen and the implementation of it. While one or two gamers noted that it could actually morph into a different type of wargame, which I doubt sincerely, I do think it will give us a clearer picture of what player expectations in a gaming experience are. This also came out of a second discussion on the bugbear of what people mean when they say "A game feels right" in describing a specific set of rules. We figured the best way was not to try and play whack-a-mole on this but get a mix of that expectation or "feel" and then start evaluating or constructing rules.

We often do crazy stuff like this on Daisy or at the Weekend.

When I played Paddy Griffith's 'muggergame' at CoW many years ago, we had a most stimulating discussion about the tactical situation he had set up, but spent so long engaged in historical debate that very little progress was made on the tabletop display.
A great discussion, but hardly a successful game.

A great discussion, but hardly a successful game.

The discussion was the game.

The tabletop display was a decoy.

What if you used Skype and had a panel of 4-5 special guest players (if you use Phil's muggergame) from elsewhere in your city or country , maybe another war-game club/group, discuss the situation? Or perhaps be the tiebreakers if your group or umpire can't agree? Maybe you could get Phil himself that way, or other TMP denizens. :^)

The Muggergame is probably the closest thing to what the OP describes, there are more structured approaches to 'rule less' games such as matrix games (mentioned above) but also Jim Wallmans 'dialogue game' which is a bit more like consequences.

In the latter each player describes what happens from their own point of view, but poses a problem for one of the other players. In subsequent rounds the dialogue includes a solution to the problem as well as setting new ones.

But with gentlemanly players, all you actually need to do is talk about it although you do need a mechanism to resolve conflicting views (umpire, dice throw, rock/paper/scissors or whatever).

The OP is essentially describing an open version (as in, no hidden movement) of free kreigspiel, so it should work fine.

I'm a bit baffled by the idea of having "structures" in a "ruleless" game; surely any idea of structure implies a rule of some kind.

Many years ago, at sixth form college, we experimented with free kriegspiels, where the sole rule was that the umpire's decision was final. For these we did not bother with terrain or figures, and typically we used the format to explore topics (strategic nuclear warfare, hostage rescue, guerilla campaigns) that did not lend themselves to normal figure games.

It all worked very well; in some situations it would be handy to have a whiteboard or similar to record the state of the game, where this isn't straightforward enough for everyone to remember.

In my experience, most additional rules, such as requiring three arguments, or taking it in turns to argue for or against a point, merely clutter the game without simulating anything.

It does, of course, require players with good imaginations, and a strong umpire.

All the best,

John.

Rule-less and the umpire makes only general observations with a simple dice roll to settle the seemingly small disputes--have I got some of this right?
I am reminded of another seemingly rule-less game: George Jeffrey's Code Napoleon. George, as the GM, would settle disputes with the simple dice roll, give seemingly simple explanations about the what, when and how of Napoleonic combat and tactics--but "behind" him was the fairly lengthy set of rules and George's own knowledge of Napoleonics--that knowledge that guided him in the calculation of probabilities and so forth--the rule-less games which was backed by a huge date base and rules set.
Follow: Ned Zuparko and I have done many a SUTC game--described elsewhere-a double blind skirmish game--where the rules are opaque to the gamer--but they are there, in the proability charts and in the umpires knowledge of the period being gamed--item--I cannot impart to the gamer the many tactical tricks, the field craft , done by the WW2 participants, such as the arming of Japanese grenades by hitting them against something solid, producing a distinctive sound that the marines would be ready for, as well as the Japanese trick of simulating rifle fire by the noise made by the cracking of bamboo sticks
Indeed, Ned participated in a kriegspiel for a history of WW@, specifically the Eastern Front, playin a German fieldmarshal, with the "game" being the discussion, with a view to the interaction of the players, filtered by the historian as "umpire"--mote that this "umpire" was backed by his expertise in the era--the rule-less game backed by those opaque rules
In a word, the seemingly simple calculation of probabilities or the settling of disputes is not that at all unless the players hold the same world view
A refresher--the reading of Machiavelli's The Art of War--which is a dialogue about war and politics in general, is needed--
In another word, I do not buy into the seemingly simple idea of a rule-less game as either a discussion or a miniatures game without the active participation of not imaginative gamers, but more importantly, informed gamers--novices and the ignorant need not, nay, cannot, apply

I ran a few kriegspiels many years ago which were ruleless. A die was used to give a range in which the result fell- low was bad for the attacker, average about what could be expected, high exceedingly good. A company charging a regiment would always be bad, but a good roll might mean the local commander aborted when he realised what a massacre he was heading into, or for the defence firing wasn't as good.