"Rules - what's important but difficult to get right?" Topic

I've been thinking about how I rank or prioritise different aspects of the rule sets I play, the things I like and don't like etc. My initial thoughts are on my new blog:

wipeoutwargames.com/blog

In short, here are half a dozen key aspects of rules that I would guess are particularly important to players, but can be very difficult to get right (or will drive players away if not what they like):
- troop quality
- morale
- interaction between players in the other's turn
- fate/luck
- visibility of one side to the other (when not in contact)
- the ability to outflank or surprise the opposition.

Would you agree? What other factors do you have strong views about (i.e. that really make or break a rule set for you)?

Regards,
Phil

Players having 100% control of their troops. Doesn't happen in real life shouldn't happen in a game.

Playability. If a set of rules is over complex then you can spend so much time on a turn that nothing happens.

balance so it becomes a game and not an exercize in reenactment.

The most important thing is that the game can be played to a satisfactory conclusion in sufficient time to hit the pub before last orders.

Clarity. Well edited rules in language that can be easily understood.

Troop visibility. Once a unit is sighted, either by movement or firing, every unit on the opposing side suddenly knows where it is and can fire on it.

12 Pt Times Roman Bold, 3/4 in margins, No abbreviations, 6 pages 2 sides. All rules, illustrations, examples, cover art, tables charts, side notes and designer drivel to fit on that, and written in clear conversational English. If you can't fit it in that, get out the red pen and make it look like Jack the Ripper has had at it, and start over.

As for anything more, it would be an insult to have to go out to a pub to socialize with my friends. They can have all they want from my personal wine cellar through the game.

I agree with your list and would add armor penetration rules.

Making player choices meaningful, and not impeding the ability to make those choices.

The creation of a suspension of disbelief.
For me, a wargame isn't just a game. It's a means of telling stories set in military history. I want to have the feeling of "being there".

Next, the game must be able to provide an enjoyable experience between friends.

If a ruleset is not able to capture the above two goals, everything else is void.

I agree with Mark, but rolling a die and, "oh, I rolled a six--my battalion halts" doesn't work for me. I want to know why.

@JefferyW3 Yeah I hate that.

Variable movement is one way to reduce control. So your battalion did move, but only 8", not the 10" you had hoped for (6" + D6). Why is easier to imagine – slow commander, pretty mistress, big fence that's not on the map etc. etc.

Another is some sort of order system requiring a die roll – pass and it changes immediately otherwise next turn. But delay is 1 or 2 turns at most.

These days I will not play any rules that cannot be played from a single sheet, double sided, 12 point minimum QRS and the army roster. Any game that requires constantly consulting a large folder of rules charts, modifiers, etc is more than I have time or energy for these days.

Make the rulebook itself as long as you like to explain everything clearly, but if the essential mechanisms needed for actual reference during play don't fit on a QRS and a troop roster the game is too complex for me. NB I am OK with multiple data on the troop roster sheet.

Also the rules should absolutely be clearly enough written that it is possible to play without argument about what the rules actually are. After twenty years DBA players are still debating some of the same rules, such as "crossing an enemy's front".

A game should also be playable to a decisive conclusion within a reasonable time span. These days I really need to be able to set up, play and take down in about 4 hours, 5-6 at the absolute most. I have played games where at the end of that time the forces had just begun to establish firm contact and identify friend or foe.

Also rules need to allow for the possibility of those "one in a million" chance happenings. I am thinking things like a shell that hits the one flaw in a battleship's armour and detonates in the main munitions magazine. The tricky part is that this shouldn't happen every game, but there should be some chance of critical success or failure happening. Veterans who bereak and run before contact, peasant levies who stand firm.

Meaningful Fog of War is another big one. No real commander ever in the history of warfare has had perfect knowledge of the troops under his command and those of the enemy. There is always some uncertainty as to disposition, equipment, morale, location, etc. It is important for a game to model this uncertainty. Surprise attacks for example are very difficult to pull off in a war-game. As soon as the game is scheduled the players know there is going to be a battle. Ask me to deploy my troops in column of march and start moving them across the table and I will imediately suspect an ambush scenario.

And definitely game play must be fun and enjoyable. If the game is not enjoyable, why bother wasting our time on it?

What is important depends on what your players want to get out of the game. I'm not sure that anything listed above other than clarity and meaningful choices are universal. And clarity can still mean a few different things, as can what makes a choice meaningful.

I think if you know what you want out of these aspects, none of them are hard to implement. I think a lot of the time we don't bother to think those issues through and end up in tail chases (implementing the same thing in different ways in different parts of the rules) or with malformed requirements (inherent conflicts – I want to be intimately involved in the action when it is not my turn and I want to be able to get up and go pee whenever I want).

Given that what is wanted is variable (and to an extent unknown) to players, the best you can do as a designer is to be clear about how your game works so players can evaluate whether or not they like what is presented.

I create uncertainty by not rolling for "morale class" until the moment in the game when the unit first needs to check morale. You have the scale of possible morale, that is a given, but the actual morale this battle is not known until tested for.

I demand granularity. Element basing is boring. Individually based figures behave like individuals, thus helping form personalities within a unit over time.

Rules ought to reflect enough detail to make visible details on the figures matter, but not to excess. I've played/designed games where even the style of helmet mattered. That was too much. But soft or metallic armor, and the amount of coverage, suits the needs for differentiation.

Weapons systems need to be modeled. I dislike, bordering on hatred, the resort to abstraction. E.g. don't go making Roman legionaries more effective in melee because they can throw two pila, let them throw two missile rounds instead.

Do not take "the fog of war" to the extent of dominance. The core feature ought to be reaction to the enemy's movements. Once a unit is committed to combat, most are unrecoverable and must fare as they may, the commander/player cannot expect anymore out of them.

If the game isn't fun, I don't care how "accurate" it is….

Morale, casualty rates, firing for effect versus suppression, knowing when to say "sure, that's important but the game will suck".

I try to hit a point of "you can do some things of your choosing but you can't do all the things" in my games. Sometimes it even works :-)

edit: If I am buying a game, if I can't either stat up my own guys or run some sort of campaign, no buy. I don't need both but give me at least one, so I can feel some investment.

Morale, and unit cohesion, or the loss of it in battle, due to casualties, being outflanked, etc.

Providing a decent level of granularity in units, weapons systems, tactics, etc. to make the game interesting, and yet still be quick to play.

Players even knowing where all their troops are or what they are doing.

If you ever want to really have a simulation you have to eliminate these things.

Mainly thinking of WW2 and Modern rules here, about platoon level: I'd like to see rules that start by assuming everyone can do everything. Early scenarios demonstrate real tactical lessons, so those unfamiliar with the period can learn how to move troops and plan effective attacks and sensibly defend. Gradually add rules to build in fog of war and reductions in capability, and work towards realistic (or actual) scenarios.

And build in a modern understanding of combat psychology (suppression etc). But keep it all quick and simple!

All things ammo and reloading. If you get to complicated it becomes an rpg

RPGs are not necessarily complex. And that's another thing I'd like to see. Too many games follow the PvP chess model without considering other modes of play. RPGs manage to have one referee and one player without any concept of 'cheating'.

Great War Ace shows a definite preference for "bottom up" game design. I prefer the opposite, "top down" game design.

I think that for anything above 1:20 (and even that is pushing it)figure to man ratios element basing is the way to go. If your element of game intereraction represents 500 men acting as a unit it doesn't matter much what any given individual is doing. What matters is what the group does. Modeling the pila of a Roman legion as two rounds of missile attacks at close range only makes sense if you also model indivual sword strokes. In my Ancients games I am concerned with MASS actions, not teh actions of individuals. A game turn represents a long enough period of time and action that discrete rounds of flinging the pila simply don't make sense.

I love abstraction. As soon as you place miniature soldiers on the tabletop instead of using real live human beings in genuine life or death struggle the game is an abstraction. Paintball, Airlift and fencing are abstractions, as is SCA heavy weapons combat. None of them are actual life or death combat. The question is only one of how much abstraction and what level of granularity you want.

I join Great War Ace in not determining unit morale until the first morale check is made. This adds great uncertainty, realism and fog of war to the game. I may know that the Imperial Guardians are a unit of great elan and likely to score a high morale, but there is still a chance that today their esprit is low.

Getting the sum of the parts to work together to gain a believable result.

A proper command and control system. So many rule sets let you do whatever you like as long as you roll low or high enough and ignore the fact that the army commander is 4 miles off, doesn't know what is going on and can't possibly have sent orders in the time available. I am quite happy to have some scope for lower level commanders to exercise their own initiative, but systems that make the commanding general omniscient and able to control units anywhere on a vast battlefield with no time lag and no transmission of orders, just don't cut it for me. This is the biggest problem that I have with rule sets like Black Powder and no amount of cheesy, old school nonsense in such rules is going to overcome that problem.

Having had my big whinge, I'll also add playability and clarity. The best written rules that I have come across are those of Sam Mustafa. Charity prevents me from nominating the worst.

Modeling the pila of a Roman legion as two rounds of missile attacks at close range only makes sense if you also model indivual sword strokes.

Well, we do! Our massed combat system treats each individual figure as part of a separate melee event, each turn. You'd think this slows down the game. It doesn't.

A quick comparison of combat values, with a modifier for flank or rear attacks, roll 2d6 on the combat results table, apply the results (either defender or attacker eliminated, or pushed back, or routed), and move to the next one.

Since most units are treated as the same armor class, i.e. same combat value, the comparative combat values run in a series, making calculation at a minimum.

The visual effects of a massed "battle" in contact with its counterpart, or Romans versus Celtic masses, are quite satisfying for those who love skirmish games, yet want/need to play massed (historical) battles as well and do not want to give up their beloved "granularity", i.e. what each of their individual miniatures is doing and how they fare in the battle.

We developed stories, histories, of some noteworthy individuals who seemed to "behave" consistently. For example, my friend's "priest" figure led his medieval peasants, carrying a massive cross on a long pole. The priest's history was heavily weighted toward eliminating/routing all who initiated combat with him, no matter how badly the odds (combat value-wise) against him. A knight, or pair of knights would charge into him, and the player running the knights would (almost) invariably roll snake eyes or threes against himself, removing the knights or routing them off. Frequently, this prodigy of "miraculous" behavior in the priest would result in the peasants either surviving or actually winning their melee. You cannot get this sort of involvement without the granularity of individual basing.

Another aspect of the game's granularity is that the melee results create decomposing formations and battle lines. The player cannot prevent this. Miniatures advance or get pushed back, and the resulting flank attacks and two to one combats create holes and chaos. And it is PRETTY….

Ground scale in regards to both the scale of the castings and the scale of the building terrain used. This also applies to linear terrain such as rivers and roads with bridges and fords.

The building scale is only valid (28mm building for 28mm castings or more often 15mm buildings for 15mm castings ) when you are playing skirmish 91 to 1 ratio gaming. Using the same scale for both at a larger troop ratio `:20 or 1:50 for example will make the buildings so much out of scale. This is more common now with the trend to larger 15mm buildings with removeable roofs.

Back in the old days when I designed a lot of rules, it was clearly a problem then too even if the solid cast building were smaller ( in comparison to today). Using a ground scale of 1:50 for example (1 inch = 50 yards) A simple inch and a half wide building such as a factory or mansion would cover at least 75 yards of ground area. With the more common four inch long bridge would cover over 200 yards or a three inch river/stream would be 150 yards wide.

So that is why in 1981 we developed the objective zone concept. It allowed for buildings to be used on the zone template.
Still for today's designer pf anything other than skirmish games, this can still be a problem.

So, let me get this right, (adopting John Cleese voice from Life of Brian – what have the Romans ever done for us):
Except for troop quality, morale, interaction, fate/luck, visibility, surprise, control, playability, balance, time, clarity, brevity, penetration, choices, realism, fun, fog of war, granularity, firing for effect vs suppression, campaign options, unit cohesion, psychology, simplicity, ammo, believability and scale…
What's so difficult about making a set of rules that pleases everyone…?!

Go on, who's going to be Eric Idle…?