"Campaign Books for Wargamers - what do you like to see?" Topic

I'm considering turning some of my work on campaigns and associated research into books for hobbyists. I'll be starting with the French Revolutionary Wars but other topics would follow.

What do people find themselves frustrated by when reading books on campaigns. For me it is lack of full uniforms guides, full OBs at different stages of the campaign and good maps with each locality shown.

What about you? What would you like to see?

OB's with best available strength estimates, overview maps, battle maps, arrival times or availability comments would be good.

And some description of how and why events progressed as they did.

Critical analysis of commanders and operations would be interesting also but that can require a more scholarly aptitude to pull off. In lieu of writing your own brief analysis, then include references to standard works on the campaign and analysis.

What Kelly said

Uniform info is easy to find, what we need are:

1. tactical maps – ideally readable, with militarily significant features and elevations marked, and the locations of key units at various stages (for battle maps).

2. strategic maps – as above, but with important stuff like major fortresses, magazines, roads, rivers and fortified lines marked.

3. OB info – unit strengths, command structures, artillery allocation, transport (ideally lift and bridging capacity).

4. what Kelly said about campaign analysis narrative.

The better Osprey campaign guides do this, the worse ones don't and/or are riddled with obvious typos and unreadable or utterly useless maps.

It is interesting that the replies so far do not mention uniforms, probably because, once players are deciding on a campaign they will already have read up on the combatants and got information on uniforms.

I would echo the other comments in asking not just for good OBs but with the best suggestions of what this meant in actual numbers being fielded by each unit.

Hohenloe

The vital element of losses and casualties, without which no battle account or campaign can be fully appreciated.

Pretty much covered this for me with Kelly and Martin's posts.

We need readable maps not period ones as these are not normally readable. Scale should be included ideally. Something like this would work well:

link

Likewise if you are going to use period illustrations provide a new key. I found many of the illustrations in Kiley's artillery book unusable because of lack of the keys. Yes, they we there but not really readable.

Would these books be targeted at wargamers?

If so, good scenarios that are derived from the original campaign battles. They should not necessarily contain the exact same terrain and oobs, but should provide an equivalent tactical challenge.

For me, uniforms are the least interesting part for understanding a campaign. Uniforms are just clothes people wear and have nothing to do with the tactical or strategic aspects of a campaign. The only added value I can see is what the actual (mix of) uniforms were, not the ideal theoretical uniforms for the parade ground that were proscribed by regulations but no-one followed anyway when in the field, certainly not after the campaign was well underway.

What I like to understand – but many descriptions of campaigns are lacking – is the actual deployment of troops during movement. E.g. on a campaign map, one might have a big banana-like shape indicating what unit occupied which towns, but what does that mean? All soldiers in town garrisoned? All soldiers in lookout posts at the frontline? Half the unit in reserve all the way in the back?
Cfr. road movement. Corps such and so is moving from this town to that town. What does that mean? Are they all in one column along one road? Are they spread out along different roads? When do the first subunits arrive, and when the last? Etc.

Another aspect is the functioning of the general staff during a campaign. How did they operate? Often, we see descriptions like "Napoleon wrote an order and it only reached Grouchy the next day." But that is rather meaningless if one doesn't have an understanding of the process of how an order was composed, how it was transferred, how it was acted upon when it arrived, how it was translated into orders for the subunits etc.

Such things have strong connections to tactical doctrine, but linking tactical doctrine to actual deployment and movement of troops is hard to figure out for the average wargamer.

What Kelly and Martin said.

I agree with the points mentioned above especially with regard to maps. I particularly agree with Phil Dutre above.

Uniforms and organisation are important but are best left to specialised books rather than cluttering up a campaign book.

A few illustrations do add atmosphere but I really hate the way the Osprey books, for example, are full of space saving useless and irrelevant photographs and pictures which are of no benefit whatsoever to the reader.

A good OOB is essential.

I must say its amazing how often locations mentioned in the text aren't present on the maps…..

Maps that don't fill two pages and are difficult to read without breaking a book's spine.

Take note, Osprey!

I agree with Arthur1815!

My thinking was that developing a book/article/guide to a campaign is an exercise in choosing what to leave out. However, with the advent of the net, you don't actually need to leave much detail out. You can make that material available as a download for those so inclined.

I agree with everything thats been said and would just like to add that maps need to tie-in and illustrate whats being explained and referenced in the text.

I hate:

- when places are referenced in the text and yet not visible on any accompanying map

- when the map is buried at the back and I have to keep flipping back and forth to understand what is going on and where

The map thing.

Time and time again you read books that have pages of detailed stuff about which formations were where and the place they moved to. But without any of these places being shown on a map, or any reference to the relative postions of these towns and villages, or even how far apart any of them are, it is all just meaningless gobbledygook!

Those with aspirations of running a wargame campaign (instead of reading about a campaign ala an Osprey book) should consider taking a look at Wally Simon's Campaign Secrets of Wargame Design (Vol. 4). It contains a dozen different articles covering campaign systems that Wally used from the 1970s through the early 2000s -- amazing that the same problems in game design still crop up.

Many of his efforts were rather clever and some rather innovative, like Dot Wars -- a simple live-off-the-land, raid-like system that can be adapted to just about any period where attackers and defenders devastate the countryside…using a dot from a pencil. Or the Rhombusia system for colonization efforts.

Anyway, full disclosure: I edited the series (up to five volumes, with the 5th published in March 2015). I selected and edited the best articles from his monthly PW Newsletter -- Vol. 1,2, and 5 had a cross-section of articles on all periods, while Vol. 3 (Solo) and Vol. 4 (Campaign) concentrated on specific topics on all periods.