"On the lighter side perhaps...?" Topic

If field games rules were judged in the same way that wargames rules are…

What would gamers make of soccer?

"These rules are too complex!"

"He`s made this rule up about being offside – this has nothing to do with the game, which should really be about scoring goals!"

…and as for County Cricket or American rules football?

"These games take far too long to play.. after we deduct time for setting up, putting away and getting ourselves a pint or two and some snacks, we are only left 45 minutes of play-time available to us!"

Conversely American wargames rules would require 3 minutes of discussion after every die throw, and then 5 minutes looking at figure ranges.

I do judge field games by the same standard, which is why I don't bother with them.

Well yes, the actual players may be having a good time but I'm bored out of my skull. Far too high whiff factor (the number of actions that don't produce any result divided by the total number of actions taken. link )

I claim the referee is completely incompetent and has no real understanding for the rules. Despite that, I also believe he is cleverly manipulating them in favour of my opponent.

That's what the two have in common.

Home field advantage would turn into house rules advantage.

The food at events would be better.

Osprey book of Baseball Helmets

Female commentators would be worshipped.

gtlns

(Game too long, nobody scored)

;-)

American rules football? … we are only left 45 minutes of play-time available to us!"

Which, unfortunately, will take about 3-4 hours to actually get through, thereby wreaking havoc with the television schedule.

Still more fun to watch than baseball…..fifteen minutes of excitement packed into 3 and a half hours…

If wargames were like soccer there would be 59 phases of movement and one phase of combat. Combat would be one roll of the die and then that was the end. At the end of 60 phases and no one had suffered any loss of objectives the game would be decided by a friendly die roll.

Snort!!!

Soccwer, what kind of @#%@$ sport is it when you hit the ball with your head. Try that in bowling and see what happens.

Actually I don't care, I'm not interested in sports at all, I don't know how touchdowns make a home run.

As for football, give them all the drugs they want, give em swords, and let the lions take care of the survivors.

The rules in professional sports are mostly there because players don't know how to behave like gentlemen.

In friendly games, you can get away with a lot less rules.
I still remember the soccer games we played as kids on any grass field in the neighboorhoud. There were no goalposts – instead, we used jackets to mark the goal, and height was sort of by mutual understanding depending on the length of the kid being goalkeeper. The bounds of playing fields were delineated by "where the high grass starts", or whenever two players dribbling near the edge of the field felt tired and called it "out" by mutual agreement. The size of the field was also in some cases more an irregular heptagon rather than a perfect square pitch.

That is the spirit we should have in wargaming – not the tendency to capture everything in rules, including the length of the commercial breaks.

FWIW, I think a game like cricket or baseball is much more "wargaming"-like in its rules, due to the highly discretized nature of the game, and the built-in structure of IGO-UGO. A free-flowing game like soccer, which ideally is only interrupted when a goal is scored, is much less suited to capture in a set of discrete rules.

Dear Phil

I think there's more to it.

The rules in professional sports are there because of the money. Money ruined sports.

Otto

Money comes (directly or indirectly through willingness of advertisers to sponsor certain events) from fans. Fans (observers) ruined sports.

In wargaming, you have a high particpant to observer ratio. In pro sports you have an obscenely high observer to participant ratio. In real sports, such as Phil Dutre describes, you (often) have an infinite (or undefined, depending on how you handle x/0) partipant to observer ratio.

Also, in wargaming, you get to be both a participant and an observer. Best of both worlds.

I am happy for all the rules and the fact that video review has now encroached on baseball. It keeps those type of people occupied and away from Australian Rules Football and Rubgy.

blah, blah, drunken mumble
I don't know the words
for good old Collingwood!

Gridiron football has always been IGO-UGO, which is probably why it is the easiest/most popular/most prevalent to be implemented as a tabletop game.

I am a big fan of gentlemens' rules for tabletop games. I don't poo-poo on structured rules, but then again, I don't get into competitive environments (tourneys) where they are necessary.

I have also seen gentlemens' rules done poorly so that newcomers have pretty much zero chance of joining in. This often gets compounded with something being designated a walk-up game at a convention. Both of those apply equally to wargaming and pick-up sports (OK, you all wouldn't be ticked at me for rushing an obviously unprotected quarterback if you told me only one rush per series (basically, one team's turn at advancing the ball in gridiron) before we started playing…).