"Experimental Games" Topic

I sometimes do "experimental games" and armies. When you work in Imagi-Nations you get to do this a lot. But I am also talking about other things as well including armies that "push the envelope." These can be methodologies of war and conflict not necessarily based on violence. One example might be an extravagant extension of "flower combat" of the Aztecs, where things are wars of display and ostentation almost as in a sprots match with real and consequent effects as a result of these non-violent confrontations. Another example might be combats between alien races. Many of these do not reach further than the "gedenktexperiment" phase.

I do them because quite often when testing wild or outlandish hypothesis, one can get interesting things to use in war games, and sometimes when advancing a principle to enormous proportions, a different insight as to the workings of a game.

One game I designed that I am working on to the point of building armies for it examines the principle of absolute superiority and the response to it. Imagine three peoples, A, B, and C. They are constructed so that it A always beats B, and B always beats C, but A and C cannot fight each other, so B cannot for example deflect A to C. The point is to see how A reacts to its absolute superiority, and C to its constant ineriority, and B to it's middle position, sometime inferiority to A, sometime absolute superiority to C.

Now… please do not assume that this is either historical or through some superiority, or through some victory conditions like "If C kills enough of A it's rated a victory. No, let me make this perfectly clear. Side C is just a bunch of natives with primitive shields and spears and B uses dinosaurs under a "mind control" so C is pretty much "lunch." Only rarely can C break the mind-control and even then it's a minor annoyance.

The question asked also in this is the character of victory and how players respond to it. A is in relation to B pretty much as far as victory Is concerned as B to C only the causes of the difference and absolute superiority are not the same. Here it is the nature of B's forces, developed as a response to the civilization of B's own particular biology which while quite adequate to defeat and keep away C (who has vast numbers) are not at all adequate to "A"'s forces product of their own civilization.

Hi

I have read your post a couple of times and thought through several responses – alas you ask too much!

I know you are into 'imagi-nations' – in all fairness the 'character of victory' and the 'player response' will depend on just how DEEP you have (or are) going into 'your' world.

An outsider cannot fathom the depths of your creation so easily.

In skirmish like games it could be resolved with the help of objectives.
In this case absolute superiority in combat wouldn't prevent any side to win the day by fullfiling it's objectives ahead of others.
Only thing to get right would be defining objectives according to cultures so that they are meaningfull to the party having them even if other cultures do not share much interest in these peculiar objectives. Thus in case of 3-sided encounter each would have diferent objectives to fight for , possibly primary ans secondary objectives for each A,B & C . Aswell as some objectives based upon opponent cultures ( what might be of interest to C going to fight A could be different from interest in fighting B and so on).

on bigger scale, it could do aswell with how many of them do exist and how much teritory they may actually use on long standing basis.Kinda attrition warfare mixed with diplomacy outcomes and how one may exploit any superiority on long term management ( beating an army but not being able to keep the conquested teritory do not give much more then some loot , even less if said army escapes in the wilds with some of your gears ).

On other matters do A,B & C be homogenious or heterogenučous political entity would offer other variables. How would coalitions mixing some of each culture last and fight each others taking advantage and disavantages of each 3 components in order to establish dominance ?

Dear Ravacol

No, these aren't skirmish games. Second three way contacts are not allowed. It's either A versus B or B versus C, never A versus C.

I see you understand part of the picture when you say "Only thing to get right would be defining objectives according to cultures so that they are meaningfull to the party having them even if other cultures do not share much interest in these peculiar objectives."

This…

"on bigger scale, it could do aswell with how many of them do exist and how much teritory they may actually use on long standing basis.Kinda attrition warfare mixed with diplomacy outcomes and how one may exploit any superiority on long term management ( beating an army but not being able to keep the conquested teritory do not give much more then some loot , even less if said army escapes in the wilds with some of your gears ).

However is not so much in play.

As I said, the key in these games is not so much to guage and measure the game, but measure the players in the game and what their reations are and how do they cope with the results, especially if depending on the side they always lose. For example, Assume that B is always pacifist and never the aggressor. C even though wildly overmatched is always the aggressor. What is the result in the players impressions (not the game) if they are the aggressor and always get beaten.

As to the mogenious or heterogeneous nature of the side all are assumed homogeneous and there is no dissent from the "myth of the society" that holds it together. Tampering with the myth is for other experiments.

For example another idea in these armies (which can be switched around easily, is what is the effect of technological change-- RAPID technological change, that is in the same battle! This is not representing that it ACTUALLY happens, but that just for an example, assume both sides begin with say simple bows. By turn 3 side A has developed complex bows, by turn 6 longbows, by turn 9 crossboes. How does the game change? This will give an idea of how rules or technologies change with regard to results over time. It's not a real battle of course, merely playing with the idea of changing rules, though the rules could be reflecting o anything that will jiggle the modifiers of one side or the other.

Another experimental game I made a while ago was a naval building game. It was a big vast game and I will try and compact the description here. Basically it assumed that both sides were engaged in a naval building program, matching the other side and other neutrals. To get a clearer picture, assume it's the countries of South America, but DON'T go getting visions of the San Palo etc. Just asssume that the countries are what they are on the map but are not realistic editions in the rules. The player is part of a team which starts out with a nominal navy of one or two old crocks and a few other even older crocks. your task is to manage a naval building program for the country for the next ummmm years. The other team is in the other country, let's say you are Brazil and the other guy is Argentina. Chile is there, but it's controlled by the umpire. Each turn you are required to negotiate and work with your fellow team members who have responsibility or army, education economics blah blah blah, all of who want to divvy up the resources a certain way. Also the umpire drops in crisis and emergencies, and unforseen events. The question in the game is how does the building program proceed, what twists and turns does it make, how does it proceed, year by year, and if and when you go to war-- are you for example going to war long before your program is ready etc. Here again the war is not really that important but the interplay of the players is, AND the most important is the comparative history. For example on turn 3 Brazil did THIS because Argentina did THAT! Brazil thought Argentina did THAT beacause of ABC but actually Argentina did it becase of MNO, and when Brazil by turn 5 figured out that it was MNO and not ABC, and that the action was not an anti-Brazilian move, what was the response of Brazil etc. Through all of this there could be a war at any time, and players had to make careful plans as to when their naval program would come to fruition (if at all) in time for the war, or in fact, what if no war came.

But again the winner of the war was irrelevant, (though the players did not know that), the thing desired to see was how people reacted over time to stimuli and unplanned and surprise events.

In another example, a good friend of mine, Walt O'Hara at a convention made a game about space marines attacking an alien race on a planet. However the game transpired that the aliens (represented by large bunny rabbits) did not attack or fire ont he marines and in fact only lightly defended themselves in a non-aggressive manner. All of the actions of the bunnies seemed incongruous and at variance from what one would expect (they were actualy the bunnies way of making contact or trying to make contact) and the game was to see how long the players would go before someone said "wait a minute, something doesn't make sense here." The game then showed how players would react to this observation, would they stop firing, try to find out what was going on, continue to slaughter the bunnies even if they KNEW they weren't hostile? (several did!)

Experimental games can be fun.

But troubling.

Otto

Otto

Dear List

Oh yes,, one thing… I forgot to mention. Fairness plays no part in these games.

Otto

could A & C come to contact B in the same event ?

On the reaction part , teritory fighting could still offer some experimental things to watch at I guess:

if A attacks B to chase them out of teritory , B loose teritory needing to get one of C ones , but A being too small in number must forbide one territory leaving it to the wilds ,thus immediatly taken over by the overpopulated C without conflicts but a choice upon which one A gives away.

With B pacifists, they would only take over teritory to flee A , needing to rebuild their 'colony' while suffering delays' each time C raiders launch unsuccessfull raids while having to see the new colony raised and a new one to rebuild from scratch each time A fall upon them.

On technologie part you could have teritories rated with a single digit value and effects upon who occupy it :
A always at max , B getting +1 each time the colony survive a turn without too much delay and seeing tech level crumbles down each time A 'miss a dino lunch time' while teritories under numerous C would be reset to 0 tech level when under their control ( or possibly loose tech levels each turn until 0 is reached ?) . Pacific action from B against C could be getting some tech from other territories back home before C occupation burned it all.

If A objectives is feeding the herd , it will be repeating task yet with some incertaincy upon delay or scale ( food hunt or B-farm occupation/conquest for instance )

if C overwellmingly agressive they would always try to get in unocupied teritories and launch regular full scale attacks against B from surounding teritories be it B teritory or B-tech parties .

It does end up with a loop game that cannot end nor see victors while having much action to game.

Dear ravachol

I apologize, I used a loaded word which did not fit. When I say "B" are pacifists I did not mean they will not fight, I mean't only that they will not engage in aggressive wards, that is against their neighbors.

Nor can A and B combine.

Please note there are also NO territories changing hands. This is not a campaign game.

The game is an experiment and studies ONLY the tactical and attitudinal disposition of players on the table top when playing the game, just like the other experiments. There is absolutely positively no game to be won here by creative strategies or ingenious tactics, that's one of the reason for the absolute "fiddling" of the values so that it is impossible for A to lose against B and B to lose against C and likewise it Is impossible for C to win in any meaningful sense against B or B against A, unless the advantaged side willingly does absurd and completely self-destructive actions against the disadvantaged.

The games are designed not to be played for the "internals" but for the "externals" and such term "externals" means simply the overview theory of "the game" and the attitudes of the players when faced with these situations. That is the fact that when they are B they cannot lose in any sense, and when they are C they cannot win in any sense.

Now you might think this is totally bizarre and obtuse, but it is not. The purpose in studying these things is to understand how players will react to things they think are basically unfair, willingly unfair, and absolutely unfair and the application on this is how will players react when they think a rule Is unfair, but not absolutely so, or they think it is so but it is not. Similarly, if players think a situation is unfair or a rule is skewed, what "gamesmanship" or psychological orientation will they undertake to remedy the problem. I can assure you simply quitting or refusing to play the game is not it. In the iterations we had of B versus C players avidly sought out C even though they KNEW that they could not win, and in fact that likely anhihilation to the last man was possible.

These things are critical to understanding how to write rules successfully and portray things so that they not be mis-interpreted, mis-understood and provide a game that offers innovative alternative strategies.

Let me give you another example. In a game at a convention I had what seemed to be an ordinary battle between Ottoman Turks and Imperial forces of Landsknechts in the early 16th century. The Turks were told their victory conditions were "to defeat the Imperial forces." But that was very hard to do as the Imperial forces had more troops than the Turks, AND were heavily entrenched, AND could not be outflanked. A few abortive attacks on the Imperial position soon showed the impossibility of attacking, and the Turks became confused, disoriented and continued asked me to clarify the Victory conditions, and all I would respond with was "The task of the Turkish Army is to defeat the Imperial Army." The game was given four times over the whole course of the convention each time with different people, though toward the end I had players who played before asking to sign up (always for the Turks) because they had a new idea. The bewildered players kept asking if this strategy would work or that strategy would work, or
"How can I defeat the Imperial Army?" and for successively more detailed descriptions of what "defeat" might be, to all of which I was singularly unhelpful. One team actually said that they felt they had defeated the Imperialists simply by maintaining an "army in being" against such a position.

Now I normally don't like to play head games on my players, and in this case I was not, but the point was I wanted to know what exactly players thought "victory would look like" in a game, and the only way to get that--- really--- without a lot of bull and bloviation-- was simply to put them through it. We can all talk a good line when we're not in the wringer, but when we are…

Significantly, Two teams who ran the Imperial Side did some checking and figured out that if they left their entrenchments they would crush the Ottoman army as it was really quite weak, but neither did so simply because they reasoned that they had already won the game why risk it, though several players said that they were absolutely bored with no real action and craved taking a risk.

The methodology is also interesting in studying the problem of unsolvable problems in games.

In another game, again at a convention I did an experiment to test what the reaction of players to "substitute" troops was. in this case the game was a normal game, very evenly matched however I said that I had inadvertently left one box of stuff home, and that contained some of the officers for the game (the game relies on major officers like wing commanders etc.) Each officer has a rating from 1 (worst) to 5 (best). The ways these values can be applied here need not concern us. However for one side the story about the "missing figures" mean't I had to substitute some officers from a fantasy army for the real officers for the Renaissance Armies (this time Landsknechts against Swiss and Italian City State forces). On the one side I substituted three "5" rated officers for three allegedly "missing" officers- and all of these "5 rated" officers were female figures.

In the game if a unit took casualties there was a chance of officer casualties. and one player on one side ALWAYS took the female figure as casualties even when he could just have easily taken a male casualty with a 1 rating the lowest. On the third time I asked him why he was systematically taking his best generals (though represented by female figures) rather than the much lower rated male figures, he shrugged and said "it felt right."

This was the first time I had done this and it alerted me to a whole dimension of game design I had not dreamed of, namely that not all things will be taken equally at face value and there were psychological predispositions and views that would color what we thought was a imply bare narrative of rules.

Otto

Otto,

It seems to me that you do like to play head games with your players (even though you state that you normally don't like doing that).

While there is something that can be learned from this, it's generally not fair to the players…hence why scenarios for games that have lopsided forces generally provide for easier victory conditions for the lesser force.

What you are talking about is not the same as "lying" to the players via their orders (your Turks vs Landsknechts would be an example of that) or information (for example, lay out the German forces with all Tiger tanks, but when they actually show up and are spotted, they're Pz IVs), but in both cases, you (as the GM) have actual victory conditions laid out (unknown to the players during the game) so that the folks that play can know who "won."

As to your original issue, be careful how you design the game/scenario, because if players know from the get-go that there is no way to win, they will act differently.

Rob