"Notes on a Playtest" Topic

Notes on the playtest

The report on the Battle of Palaver has been posted. This is the third battle in the campaign and some reflections are in order as to how it is going.

On the whole well, but not exactly what I wanted.

I do not mean to imply dissatisfaction with the Narrative campaign system, only that the law of unintended consequences seems to work here in rules design as well as in the game, and especially in real war.

THE BAD
Might as well get the bad parts out of the way first than try and hide them.

LOTSA BATTLES.

The jury is still out on this, but I am not so sure about the difficulty of multiple battles. Last two strategic "intentions" phases we all got only ONE battle out of the congress of intentions. This time we had three, and big ones, too! As the physical limitations impose only one battle a weekend and I can manage only one weekend a month, this means that the three battles engendered will have to be spaced over so many months. This, the first, the Battle of Palaver went ok. I am sure the other two will go well too, the only wonder I have is after the last, the players will have to get back to their intentions phase again and I hope they won't forget how to do it. This is a difficult part of the rules to get around as the table top battle is central to the game. There's little point in putting on a campaign without table top battles, unless you want to play a board game, or as I call them "bored games."

Remember I am a firm disciple of Phil Dutre, who considers the toy solders the only thing and main thing in the game, and the rules ephemeral at best. So table top actions with "the lads" parading around is what we all want. This has been borne out by the gamers so far.

I could rig up some sort of dice rolling system to resolve "excess battles" but that will frustrate the central foci of the game, which is table top battles and pushing little lead guys around, and turn it more into a board game. Besides, whose battle do I chose to play and whose do I do by dice resolution would have a deleterious effect on the games. For example consider the next battle that of Bad Zu Wurst versus Ikea, that will be an army and a brigade versus two brigades. If we weight an Army as 3 and a brigade as one that's four to two, and adding on a d6 could range for Bad Zu Wurst score from five to 10. Ikea from 3 to 8. The range of victory points gained by Bad Zu Wurst could range from 2 to 8 and for Ikea from one to three. That's highly realistic but it is pure asset stripping and does not allow for the tactical finesse or the range of opportunity and cleverness shown in the last batte, the battle of Palaver. The odds obviously are in favor of the abstract resolution for the person with superior numbers, but it does not take into account terrain and so forth. We shall see how this works out. The inferior side has no opportunity to avail himself of luck or especially ability to upset the result, which of course, is the real purpose of battle, in a game or in real war.

THE MIKE PROBLEM

I hoped that I had found a way to prevent the "gang-ups" of four and five players against one to simply get easy victories. This does not seem to be the case. Pete's disinclination to gang up on IKea makes the odds a little less long, but the fact is that with three opponents against Ikea each contributing major forces, Ikea is faced with three "long odds' battle, the first, the just completed Battle of Palaver, which saw one army and one brigade against a lone army of Ikea, and the next two which will see an army and a brigade of Bad Zu Wurst against two brigades of Ikea, and an army of "the United Never Neverlands against two ikea brigades. That means that at the end of the three battles the forces will be as follows….

Ikea – One Fortress, his army and four brigades will be in the bank recovering.

Bad Zu Wurst, One fortress, three brigades, one army and one brigade will be in the bank recovering.

Spam, One fortress, three brigades, one army and one brigade will be in the bank recovering.

The United Never Neverlands , One Fortress, four brigades, one army will be in the bank recovering.

This means that at the BEGINNING of the next intentions turn, Ikea will only have his fortress to fend off attacks. Assume that each side attacks with as much as they can, two brigades (their armies are not recovered till the end of the turn) that means ONE thrust can be countered by the Ikean fortress and two others will attack unopposed. Now… in the dice resolution that would be for each 2 (1 for each brigade) plus a die roll and the Ikeans get only a die roll. It is not extremely unlikely that say Spam could roll a 1 (1+2=3) and that Ikea could tie or exceed that and actually GET victory points, but it is not likely. Very unlikely he could do it three times! Anyway, at the end of the intentions phase everyone gets their army back and the donnybrook starts over again.

The problem is not that this is unrealistic. Any state with four major powers against it woluld be hard pressed to suvive, even if it had a military genius like Frederick the Great against it. Ikeas salvation will depend on the dilatoriness of its assailants.

I call this "The Mike Problem" because it reminds me very much of one players (call him Mike) lament at the end of the IWG that war was so unrewarding. It still is, but the gang-up which is inherent in a game like Mike wanted, becomes particularly painful and unwelcome. Mike wanted a game where one could attack a player and gain from conquering some part of him. That's highly unrealistic and would take place only many years AFTER the wear and tear of the present war. In that IWG you got nothing from this. Here it is still not nearly so bad because everyone is ganing up on Ikea, which is a non-player country, and controlled by me, and everyone likes to gang up on the GM (though they seem to forget how dangerous taking on the GM can be). Still I'm a reasonably nice guy and let them do it.

My concern in all this is not this game but the system. I can imagine how a real player would feel if they were commanding Ikea. It could cause hard feelings, it could break up a club. At LEAST Ikea does not lose points if defeated. which is the desire Mike wanted, that one players gain was another players loss, thus in effect doubling the disparity. luckily the game is rather open ended on that point and Ikea might be able to make points elsewhere through a bit of creative role playing as has been going on.

Next turn I may use Ikea's special ability of Barbarian Allies and Native troops and set them loose on two of the assailants. These two troops, each in their own brigade, have the ability to "plunder" enemy provinces, thus reducing his victory point total by one each. Each country has its own special ability. For example, Swinnland, which bowed out of directly attacking Ikea might decide to use his two revivals to help Ikea revive his forces quicker, thus leading to a longer more drawn out conflict with NO easy victories. That would place it firmly in the purvew of the players as strategies, which is what I wish to encourage.

Granted, being in control of ALL the Non player countries, Hungland, Saxe-Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein, The Colonies etc., could all come to the aid of Ikea, but that being done by the empire would cause hard feelings among he other players to the same degree that hard feelings would be cause to a putative Ikean Player.

THE GOOD-

The bood parts of he game are doing exceptionally well. The easy-going camaraderie and fun continues unabated, though I do not flatter that is due to any genius on my part. It's the players. Still there's a lot of fun. If the "motto" from the first battle of the campaign, the Battle of Picknicov was 'It's Only a picnic!" the motto of Palaver by George and Norm who commanded the Spamish was 'What the heck, it's Lorenzo's Army." which they spouted each time the threw the troops into a desperate charge or hopeless defense. Much laughter was gotten from all about that. The system works well and it makes good playable battles which is the main purpose. The back story is there to be stitched together as we wish.

One other thing. While Mike Lorenzo has given me some anxious moments with regard to a pile-up, that's EXACTLY what you want a playtest to be about. That is, where one guys tries to break the rules and bust the game. That's enormously important when you're designing a set of rules and seeing how they work. So far it's not bad and we shall see what corrections will come about through the agency of the players without having to make somenew rules or structure.

The main success so far I see is that the campaign systems works admirably, easily, and largely incognito thus allowing the gamers to focus on the table top and the little lead guys. That's what I wanted. I did not want a campaign system that required you to play one game to get to play another, which most others out there seem to do.

I am hoping that the guys get into the role-playing and the open ended part of the game as they see that this is the best way to not only get victory points but reduce others score of victory points. I tried to codify this with the IWG but I never seem to have sparked the interest there.

THE UGLY-
This is always going to be in the mechanism and the gears of the game. The replacement and special abilities are ascribed and "there" but somewhat messy. They frequently require a bit of "jimmying" by the umpire, speicifically as to when and where and how. I spoke a little of this in the decision of the umpire in who goes agains twhom for a specific battle. For example, assume there was a four player pile up on Ikea. That is, that Swinnland was more energetic. It would mean that one of the player would get the freebie die roll against the Ikeans, but who? Which of the three or four or five would have to go through a battle to get one or two points and who might get six withonly the roll of the die. So far I as GM assign that or figure it out. So far so good. But that's the weakness of a game where so much depends on the GM, but it is also the strength that the GM can do most of the heavy lifting easily and not drop it to the players to laboriously go through rules after rule after rule.

The Army and Brigade system, tied with the "revivals from the bank" replacement system, and the intentions system all make an easy game which works, and works moderately well so for. One thing that occurred to me was that you could make up an entire game or campaign into a chance deck , where one player turns a card and it says "You are in a battle with the Stoldufian forces. You have one army and has… with everything down to the battle terrain on the card. The next one could be a role-playing question or a poltical challenge etc. Each person simply picks a card and answeres it.It would work seimmingly and as each scenario is complete and detatched, a stand-alone from the next card, no sort of complicated "ubersystem" is needed. The problem with that, while elegant and simple, is that it's essentially sterile. Each player has no input or will in the game and simply carries out the provision of the chance card. I don't think that would be as much fun.

Oddly enough I might find something in workin on my convention game "Bug-Eyed Monsters from Outer Space, they want our women" which I can bend and hammer into something useful. But we shall see.

The major theoretical background to the game has so far, not broken. This is that players, as kings of countries simply determine the policies and general strategic paths for their states and let professionals and clerks up and down the line do the dirty work of implementation, rather than having them do that dirty work as so many other rules try and do. Another successful part is the structural framework being hidden. This means that there IS a strategic map, as well as terrain geomorphs for the typical terrain of each state, but these are not placed in the players hands and used only as an aid or background for the umpire. These are used by me as a framework to set up the battles and terrain etc. By keeping all this stuff in the background the game is marvelously simplified and allows the players to restrict their attention merely to the top level strategic options, or what they want to do. Thus Mike's Sovereigns personality (Sangria IV) wants to carve out kingdoms for his four or five sons, thus initiating in some sense "the pile up." This overriding concern will determine what he wishes to do. Rudolpho of Swinnlands penny pinching ways have been taken over by Pete and he has been pursuing that without any rules specifying he do so, especially as there is no real economic dimension to the game. Even Victory points are not fungable. Winning a battle gives the victor Victory Points, but it does not take them away from the vanquished. The Ikean Native, and Barbarian allies will take away Victory Points from a player but will not give them to the owner of these troops.

The other thing that seems to be working well is that the game is readily able to accommodate players who cannot attend a game or a meeting this month or that, and who may drop out unexpectedly and return later.

Otto

Perhaps part of your problem is the number of players and competing forces. With multiple players each striving to win, you inevitably will get the problem of ganging up against the weaker force. Most wars in history were two sided with sometimes maultiple forces being allied into one or other side.

I never playtested with more than three to a side. For mass battles this was a center and two flank commanders. For skirmish this was a command divided into any grouping of three units. Advance platoon- main body and reserve group.OR center and flanks or two units platoon/company forward and one in reserve.

Anyway I prefered small groups then combine the reports/comments. Plytesting is a vital part of the design system. You should play it solo before and after the input from others is given. Relevant comments should be saved. While they may not work with the current system being play tested, later they may become part of another system.
Make sure your input does not affect play balance. Sometimes a rule change will look ok with one chapter but screw up the balance in another. For example a change in firing may seem ok but could mess up the chapter on movement or morale.

Dear Major B

No, the number of players is not a problem. Everyone gleefully switches sides and plays whichever side without animus or favotitism. The person who commanded Ikea for all the turns of the battle after the first was Sean Thorne who is the "King" of Bad Zu Wurst, who will be playing on his side against Ikea the NEXT battle we have. He fought manfully and courageously to get Ikea to win over his earstwhile Ally , Mike who is the King of Spam. Norm was the King of the United Never Neverlands, who was one commadner and he will be fighting Ikea in a battle after Sean. George who was the overall commander of Spam is the king of Gulagia and completely uninvolved in the war.

I suspect that all of these are going to drop away from the coalition in the upcoming months on their own without any sort of prompting by the rules.

Dear Rudy- Not my experience. Have played with a dozen in a game, nor am I interested in skirmish games or anything with less than 100 figures on a side. The TACTICAL rules of the game, OGABAS, work fine, have done so for 20 years, they have been playtested and proved out over that time and they work perfectly. It is the strategic game I am playtesting. This strategic game is completely decoupleable from the tactical. it is in fact, just a floating "superstructure" over the tactical game. This too has been pretested and playtested in another campaign abut 12 years ago with two players one on each side. Worked well. Not I am trying it with multiple players. I have used it several times in between, but this time I am trying it with a dozen positions, attempting to make a multi-player campaign game that will be useable for roping table top battles together without making the worst mistake of all, which is forcing players to play a game to play a table top game. Thus the "intentions" segment of the game takes about 15 minutes, TOPS between battles.

The real problem, yet to come, are two-fold. Firstis the receptivity of the players to the Victory Point system. Right now they are involved in the game. As I said, each country has its own strength and ruler personality. Bad Zu Wurst, has a crack army so it has +1 to all die rolls for rallying and "to stand". Ikea has the two native brigades and barbarian allies, Saxe Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein can have a militia and Freikorps Brigade. All players get ONE revival from the bank each initiative phase, The Swins get two, The United Never Neverlands has TWO fortresses and and so on. The special ability of Flounce (France) is that it has "cultural hegemony: in this period and starts the game with FIVE Victory Points where everyone else starts with none, so they are halfway there to the 10 points ending the game, and…. winning. I am designing the game with the idea that eventually they will wake up to the victory conditions, especially as they see how hard it can be to get more than one or two from any one battle.

Also the game will test how inventive they are in piloting their countries. I allow a wide range of lattitudes for people doing special things "not in the rules" (Indeed, there's only a page or two of Strategic rules to begin with (and only a dozen pages in the tactical rules, with no charts, diagrams, tables etc. I've tried writing all sorts of larger rules with clever strategies and tricks players to use, but they never went over that well. Either people didn't use them, or thought they could make "atomic bombs." No, it's not a modern game, what I call "atomic bombs" is world beater weapons that can flatten the enemy in a single shot. I find that if you leave it open to the players they will puzzle things out and come up with stuff that is far more inventive and fun and humorous than any serious strategies.

Thus one part of the game I like is the good humor and spirit of play the game seems to engender. There are no arguments and no hard feelings, and players seem to enjoy doing fun things rather than proving they are undiscovered napoleons.

For example, after his defeat in the "Battle of Picknikov" the King of Flounce's intention was "Go off to Sweeta" to look for half a dozen new mistresses." This got him a Victory Point because it was in line with the character of his King's personality. That player hasn't shown up for the last two games, but will come to the third. This is good as it means players are not required all the time, which if you have a game that requires that can lead to its termination right quick.

The actions of the players also can lead to unintended consequences. When I was describing the game to a good friend, she, who is also a wargamer, but lives far away and is not taking part in the game, immediately wanted to take part as he "kidnapped" Princess Trixie of Saxe Burlap, und Schleswig Beerstein" and "role play" in the Harem of Prince Hummus of Ikea. Also, make trouble for the other players. The game allows this, so she is agitating for better fashions in the Harem. She said at one point. Do you know how hot a Burka is to wear? I've done it for a costume party once!"

No, the number of players is not a problem.

Agreed, it's not the number of players per se but I actually said "and competing forces". If you have only two players then they will naturally fight each other. With more than two players, unless you have them in two competing teams you will nearly always get a ganging up situation. "Diplomacy" is the classic example of this.

Dear Major B

Ok I better understand what you were aiming at. To a degree I also agree with you as far as teams. However I have played in enough Diplomacy games, as our common example, to see that it is not always so. Personalities will even n such a bare-bones game like Diplomacy, intrude even when there is no obvious game reason for them to do so. Nor are the "gang ups" always permanent, nor derived from the straight efficacy of winning the game. That is, the "gang up" may be chosen along quite different lines than strategic dictates. Players allow personal animosities and affinities to intrude. "I should attack Austria Hungary in connection with Russia and Turkey to partition it. But I like Jeff who's playing is Austria Hungary and I don;'t like Pat who is playing Russia. Likewise some players will play for insubstantial reasons like "I think it would be cool if Austria Hungary, Turkey, and Russia teamed up as a coalition to conquer the world." But perhaps unlike many other games, Diplomacy is a game that allows for multiple wins and a coalition that can work a two, three, or four way win has just as valid a logic as the more usual reduction of stabbing everyone in the back in turn. It all depends on the personalities of the players. I remember once, engineering a seven way win in Diplomacy (it was done by me getting a four way win, and then on successive turns convincing that acquiescence in the incipient win by players five, six, and seven would be preferable to being one of the losers. This is facilitated by "winning" in Diplomacy being "absolute" it didn't matter if you had only ONE center left, or ten, you were a winner by being on the winning side. In the case of the seven way win, all players had succeeded in gobbling up one or two neutrals and thus no loss of territory.

That is the point in the Narrative Campaign System that provides a safety valve. As I pointed out to Mike, in Spam, the accumulaton of 10 points ENDS the game with the standing ofeach power either above or below that. It is entirely possible to have the game end on a certain turn, with two or more having more victory points. Exampe- suppose three players have 9 points. In three battles engendered side A gets three points, B 2, and C one. All would then be at 10 pts or over and the game would end, but one would have 12, another 11, and a third 10. What their 'winning status" would be is anyones guess. One MIGT say that the guy with 12 won the campaign but… who knows. A case could be made that through other means than accruing excess points in battle to go against campaign victory points, a player could put effort into his country by various means that would allow him to have TWO armies or one in addition to the one he began with. This would be an accrual of "national power" which might not give anything as far as "Victory points toward the 10 as stated" but which COULD be argued would be an enormous increase of international power and prestiege in the ongoing world which did not collapse into a singularity with the ending of the campaign. Indeed, it might be that in the interaction of the game players may make their own victory conditions and their own criteria which by the way is what they do in real life.

So for example let's take a more exotic example. Assume that the aforementioned King of Flounce decides that grinding away game after game for a Victory point here and there is not his cup of tea. He decides to become like Augustus the Strong of Saxony and wants to become the great lover and father 357 (RECOGNIZED) bastard children. OK, but one cannot just say that. In any game a basic principal is that to gain any benefit something must be risked. Thus one "risks" the presence or availability of resources (armies, fortresses, brigades, special advantages) against the hope of success. So to reflect this the Ruler of Flounce (or wherever) announces that he is sending TWO of his brigades to the bank instead of keeping them on hand to repell attacks. He then states that he wants to use the putative cash he saved from this (and opening himself up to belligerent attacks) to build "the nymphenberg" a fabulous palace and grounds where he can carry on his trysts and seductions in luxurious and pleasurable surroundings (including long collonades with full-life statues of his mistresses). Another turn he could do this by using the "ransom" of the lack of two brigades to endow his mistress with her fabulous jewels and the like.

It is when you let the personalities break free of the game that you get the best games.

Any state with four major powers against it woluld be hard pressed to suvive, even if it had a military genius like Frederick the Great against it. Ikeas salvation will depend on the dilatoriness of its assailants.

Otto:
Just an idea, but there was a period where the idea of a 'balance of power' and status quo left the major powers of Europe fighting wars, not for survival, but trading the minor countries and territory. Wars weren't fought for survival or annihilation. The SYW with the goal of destroying Prussia was new, and even then the talk was to simply get Frederick to surrender, take back Silesia and
reduce Prussia to pre-1740 size and power.

So, any war would be a limited war, where the total elimination of a power wasn't the purpose, but to gain territories and glory. That way, even when one nation finds itself ganged up on, it isn't a issue of survival, but loss of territories and face… and victory points.

It would answer the Mike problem and at least be realistic for the 1600-1780s period.

The "balance of power" theory has pretty much been discredited by historical research as an actual modus operandi in European politics in the 18th century. History shows that it is an expression only of fact after a war or as an expression WE use to describe the "equilibrium" of European powers in the 18th century. This "equilibrium" was not intentional as all states wished to destroy "the balance of power" and achieve hegemony, but were presented from doing so NOT because of any intent on their part, but because the circumstances under which the war was generated had changed, and most often those changes had come about because of the course of the war itself. The state of war engendered changed situations that rendered useless some of the presuppositions of the war, or events changed the personalities in charge. War weariness, death of key rulers, attainment of the war aims of some, but not all of the combatants leading to threats of a separate peace. The concept of total elimination of a power was very much in the hearts and minds of the rulers, as the partition of Poland the fate of Lorraine and others shows. The small states shunted around certainly were extinguished as independent powers, and such would have been the fate of Bavaria had Austria had its way, Saxony if Prussia had its way and so on. The Seven years war in particular ended when 1) England had completely shorn France of everything it could possibly want (India, Canada, the Carribean Sugar Islands and safeguarded Hanover, and saw no need to continue any sort of war on the continent. 2) France was exhausted and eagerly looking for a way out, and Louis XV was no longer besotted with Pompadour,but more with the young girls of La Parc Du Cerf, and 3) The Empress Elizabeth died, thus removing the key motivating spirit of the war and was replaced by her son, who idolized Frederick. All personal reasons.

The problem though is not in history but in gamers, who are under the Napoleonic delusion that war can support war. It didn't work for Nappy but gamers think it should, believing all peoples are fungable. They are not. Unless you are expanding your realm within the same cultural-religio-linguistic ecumene, any provinces gained are "keepable" only through a uniting at the topmost level, that is in the person of the monarch as in Austria Hungary. Had revolutionary France for example attempted to permanently occupy the left bank of the Rhine permanently it would have proved as indigestible as Serbia was to Austria. They will obey and tolerate the yoke so long as they are allowed in Serbia to be good Serbs. But if you want to turn them into good Germans, that will not go. This was proved in 1848 when all those minorities attempted to set up their own states and they acquired minorities of their own, which for example in Hungary they attempted their own revolution and independence they expected that all the Bohemians, Slovenes, Moravians, Rumanians, Croats and Zips' to learn Hungarian, eat goulash, dance the Czardas and beome good Hungarians.

But again the problem is the gamers, who being used to the other games put out by hacks in his hobby, assume that the peoples they rule over are fungable and that war will feed war. The problem of course is that is never so. Even totally integrating a small state into one not of the cultural-linguistic- religious ecumene is virtually impossible. Belgium and Holland come to mind.

Prussia's success was possible because Prussian gains were going to be in the Germanic cultural-linguistic-religio ecument of Germany. Once it had gotten all those (and had its polish provinces shorn) it proved far easier to attan a "Napoleonic homogenization" that Napoleon ever found.

Anyway… all this was brought up in a large IWG (International War Game) I ran several years ago where players were told quite up front that war simply did not pay, and conquests at the expense of neighboring states was not going to yield much.

The "balance of power" theory has pretty much been discredited by historical research as an actual modus operandi in European politics in the 18th century.

Well, during the 1600s and 1700s you don't see the creation and destruction of nations and empires the way you do with the Napoleonic wars, it was different.

Wars were fought over who would succeed a throne, whether in Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, or over specific territories like Silesia or Holland or the Western Germanic states.

You've started that with "the King of Flounce decides that grinding away game after game for a Victory point here and there is not his cup of tea. He decides to become like Augustus the Strong of Saxony.[Who then was involved in a war of Polish succession because he wanted the title 'King.'

Some of the 'reason' in the Age of Reason and their limited wars was a reaction to the devastation of the Thirty-Years War and the high cost of maintaining a standing army. That could be built into the economics you have described as well as the victory points.

And as your game isn't historical, the notion of 'limited war' still could be the engine driving the victory points while avoiding wars of annihilation.

Anyway… all this was brought up in a large IWG (International War Game) I ran several years ago where players were told quite up front that war simply did not pay, and conquests at the expense of neighboring states was not going to yield much.

That dynamic should be easy to inject into the game with the appropriate victory objectives/points and cost/benefits of total annihilation.

But again the problem is the gamers, who being used to the other games put out by hacks in this hobby, assume that the peoples they rule over are fungable and that war will feed war.

Yep, our hobby does do a bad job of teaching history at times. Well, as GM, it might be fun to include such dynamics with 'un-fungable' minor territories. Poland comes to mind, with repeated revolts and wars over who was ruling or partitioning their country. "Buffer states" could be a real nuisance.

The problem of course is that is never so. Even totally integrating a small state into one not of the cultural-linguistic- religious ecumene is virtually impossible. Belgium and Holland come to mind.

As GM, you could make it so.

Then you get accused of tampering with the game and not letting the players do what they want, that is you are playing the game for them.

Then you get accused of tampering with the game and not letting the players do what they want, that is you are playing the game for them.

Well, to avoid that, you live with the Bad and Ugly. Any 'test' is to see if adjustments are needed. Any subsequent adjustments are 'tampering' at some level.

So, how badly do you want to fix the 'Mike' problem and the other ugly aspects?

I suspect it will fix itself. That is, that the normal permutations of human behavior will take over and mitigate it.

Playtests are critical to a good game though few rules and games today are playtested. The play test most of them go through is abut six runs through all by avid afficianados of the designer who are there to adulate him and not really test the rules. That is they get the rules to WORK but not to try and make them NOT WORK. This is because most games never get the YEARS of playtesting needed, and no one wants to point out the deficiencies of the game for fear of being tossed out of the "cool table" in the cafeteria and not invited to play the next playtest.

I have found that time itself will bring out both flaws and features of a game. But you have to put the time in to find them and prove the worth or worthlessness of the rules.

Playtests are critical to a good game though few rules and games today are playtested.

I certainly agree with that.

That is they get the rules to WORK but not to try and make them NOT WORK. This is because most games never get the YEARS of playtesting needed, and no one wants to point out the deficiencies of the game for fear of being tossed out of the "cool table" in the cafeteria and not invited to play the next playtest.

That is one dynamic to be avoided. However, I don't think it should take years if effective methods are in place. Certainly the game needs to be played repeatedly, which may take years depending how often folks can get together.

I have found that time itself will bring out both flaws and features of a game. But you have to put the time in to find them and prove the worth or worthlessness of the rules.

I agree. That time can be significantly reduced by employing effective methods for testing the game. [That is what a methodology does, reduce the time and hit-or-miss aspects of testing/improving the design.

I disagree. There can be no effective methods for testing the game except the personalities of the players, AND you have to let them do what they do without interference otherwise you are fiddling with the game and jiggling the results. Like an experiment where mice have to get through a maze to get the cheese, prodding the mice with a sharp stick this way or that does not add anything to the effectiveness of the test. If you want to find out how well the experiment works, you have to let the mice find the cheese on their own, or starve.

This is further complicated, to continue the metaphor, that there is more than one mouse in the maze at one time. Thus each "mouse" must develop a cognitive pattern which embraces other mice not just the relationship of solitary mouse to maze. Further, being humans, the social aspects completely obviate any such "methodological fixes" oen might be tempted to adopt. The logic of behavior and social groupings becomes equally important if not more important than the logic of player to game. For example, the situation of Ikea as an Umpire Controlled entity, where a pile up of four players is one thing, but if it was a player power a pile up on that unfortunate player would have a social dynamic that would be infelicitous in the extreme. I shall not go into a long discussion of player mores and morals on the idea of why it is ok to pile up on a non player country, but not on a player country, and one could certainly go into all sorts of ethical and psychological analysis of why they chose "Ed" to pile up on rather than "Mort."

Even more interesting are those cases I have seen (and documented in some of my writings" where pile ups have been aborted. There was the case of one gamer in a large Internatioanl Wargame who was the victim of a pile up initially but became a prey several were reluctant to pile up on. This was a game that took place many years ago and was more or less begun on false pretenses. It wasn't a game predicated on the equality of players but was clearly one where there was an inner group of what I call "people at the cool table." That is, the insiders. In this game they were five of the twelve powers. The others were all outsiders, disposable people who were there simply to be "stooges" running their countries and more or less futilely attempting to play the game but their fate was determined both by the predispositions of the insiders. This was clearly visibile by simple inspection of the starting line-ups of the powers and positions. Persons in the center of two large continents had almost minimal ground forces but huge fleets. They were surrounded on the periphery by powers with huge ground forces and minial fleets. Like Big Blue and Big Red in Blitzkrieg, the peripheral powers would gobble up the minor neutrals between them, that is "the stooges with big fleets" who had almost NO means of defending themselves at all effectively from a landward assault. The aim of the game was that once the minor neutrals were so gobbled "the real" game would begin. The problem was that two of the seven minor powers refused to be so obligingly "gobbled." One use several highly innovative ideas cooked out of the rules themselves to forestall his doom. Later when he lost heart he turned over his forces to another of the 'I won't be gobbled" players. Now… THAT player survived through something entirely outside of the game at all, and entirely outside of the rules. The game had a newsletter put out by the umpire, but this player published his own newsletter of the game, and it was several pages longer and rather entertaining. One of the "gobbling" powers became enchanted by it and forestall completing the gobbling of the rest of this power because he found it lively and entertaining and was concerned the player would drop out if the power he had was extinguished. This player was allowed to live on and make trouble for the other 'gobbling powers" and write about it, and the animosity between the "gobblers" grew and grew as pressure mounted on this player to wipe him out. Significantly the game fell apart before this happened, and it was because of this division among "the gobblers" and not that anything "the gobbled" could do in the game. By the end of the game , the ONLY one of "the gobbled" still in this play was this player making the newsletter, but even though he had amassed a far greater degree of power he had started with in the game, was nowhere near the power WITHIN the game that the smallest of "the gobblers" had at the start. His survival was part of the PERSONAL factors that had arisen between him and two of the "gobblers" which shows that once a personal relationship was sestablished he was no longer so easy to "pile on" as before.

The terms "Prussia," "Russia," "Austria," "France",
"England" in a game are no more than abstract entities, meaning nothing at all and entirely interchangeable in a way that Bob, Ted, Norm, George, Mike and Jim are not. They remain abstract and impersonal until linkages between them in the game sense are made with the persons of Bob, Ted, etc.,. These occur only over time, OR within a group where Imagi-Nations are in play with each player having his own, and thus the Country of Bad Zu Wurst is played by Sean, and we all know sean, and the linkages become instantaneous, and to attack Bad Zu Wurst is to attack Sean. These linkages can take time to live and grow and send down roots, but given not too long a time (like the case of "the gobblers and the gobbled" above, will occur.

It would be interesting to have a new member join the group and the campaign game and have him take over Ikea to see what that would do to the course of the game. We shall see.

I disagree. There can be no effective methods for testing the game except the personalities of the players, AND you have to let them do what they do without interference otherwise you are fiddling with the game and jiggling the results.

Well, I wasn't talking about interfering with the players at all, I was talking about what the game designer/developer is doing with the information to and from the players. Asking the right questions, looking for the important aspects of play are methods too, particularly if they [the methods] have been tested themselves over a wide variety of game designs.

Personalities are important, but not the whole issue, particularly if and when you are designing a game to be played by far more personalities than you have available to test with. I can say that playing Chess is about personalities, and the better you and your opponent are at it, the more personalities become significant. Games are like that. I have played a whole slew of For The People games and as I and my friends have become more experienced, the more strategies are based on what we think the other player is going to do…i.e. personalities. Even so, I would never simply playtest a game by rotating personalities. [Let alone how you would determine 'different' personalities or the effect they would have/had on a game.]

Like an experiment where mice have to get through a maze to get the cheese, prodding the mice with a sharp stick this way or that does not add anything to the effectiveness of the test.

This isn't at all the 'methods' I was talking about.

If you want to find out how well the experiment works, you have to let the mice find the cheese on their own, or starve.

I guess it would all depend on what the experiment was about. You definitely want to be sure you are going to test the success of whatever goals you set for the design.

His survival was part of the PERSONAL factors that had arisen between him and two of the "gobblers" which shows that once a personal relationship was established he was no longer so easy to "pile on" as before.

The game seems to have been 'rigged' from the start, not only the situation, but the freedom the players had to communicate and use the rules. In that respect, it isn't surprising that personalities ruled… it was designed to give them free reign. [or overlooked. Can't tell which.]

The information "to and from the players" is minimal. The "information" of what is happening is self evident to all. The only "secret" part is the moment of inscription when players write down their intentions in the 20 word limit and hand it in to the GM. No questions are asked. I as GM neither asks the gamers "what they mean" by this or that or give them secondary questions to answer in all but the most essential cases. . The rest is as I said, obvious. To give you some examples.

Example 1.

Spam writes I am going to attack The Never Neverlands with an Army and a Brigade. The Never Neverlands writes I am going to attack Spam with an army and a brigade. I examine both intentions obviously mandate a battle between an army and a brigade on each side.

Example 2.

Gulagia writes "I am going to attack Bad Zu Wurwst with an army and a brigade. Bad Zu Wurst writes I am going to go to my hunting lodge and take my leisure for this turn. I would notify of the player in Bad Zu Wurst that he was being attacked by Gulagia with an army and a Brigade and I would ask Bad Zu Wurst how he would like to answer this attack and let him determine what forces he wished to respond with.

Example 3. Flounce says that he is going to start a scandal campaign against the King of Spam that he is unable to satisfy his mistress. The King of Spam wrote that he is going to "The Colonies" to enlist their help in the crusade against Ikea. Neither involves forces used in table top battles, so I would simply make a determination of the success of either.

The battles engendered in the first two are simply fought out on the table top. Everyone knows what the possible forces could be.

As for "the gobblers game" of course it was rigged from the start. Players however were free to communicate and use the rules, the only problem was that it was impossible to influence the game in any way WITHIN the game.

In a second game, this one I personally ran, a different scheme transpired. I call this in my case studies "The Kill Bill Game." This was a seven player game set in WWII and in this game there was a player who I shall call "Bill." The game was carefully nuanced and had very realistic victory conditions all of which were clear to all the players. In this game four of the seven players wanted to "Kill Bill." It mattered not at all that the victory conditions of three of these four players were heavily dependent on being good allies with Bill, or at the very least neutral. They wanted to "Kill Bill" and it didn't matter that their victory was enhanced if Bill was not so killed. They wished to Kill Bill. the four of them had almost NO victory points that could be gained by "killing Bill". It was as if Britain, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union set out to destroy the United States ignoring Germany, and Japan, and left those free to run wild. The four players wanted to "Kill bill." I remonstrated them several times that they were pursuing a course in the game completely against their own interest. When I asked them why they wanted to do this, they happily admitted they didn't like Bill and wanted to attack him. They complained that their victory conditions did not consist of killing Bill. In the end, Bill cleaned their clocks. The remaining two players in the game who HAD victory conditions for "killing Bill" in fact won the game because the other people had more or less facilitated their victory conditions and were nonplussed.

When I asked the players about this two of them said they just didn't like Bill and wanted him to leave the club. The other two just shrugged- one saying, he wanted to ally with X who was one of the two above and didn't like playing with anyone else, and the other said "You do what X wants or you get shut out of everything." When I pressed him he also said "I like to win, and I'm not here in the hobby to do a lot of work. Everyone wants to be on X's side and being there gets you easy victories."

Later on, when I did the game over again, and put the players into positios they wanted (now that I knew they wanted to "kill bill" they were extraordinarily happy, except they didn't like it that the other players were now trying work with Bill's country (as was their victory conditions demanded) and were upset that they were attacking THEM and not Bill.

The point being that you can let the players do what they want, or you can try and straight jacket them by the rules and they will either do what they want or not play at all.

It is the interplay of personalities that colors the game, all games, every game.

But then I tend to play with guys who make up their own victory conditions.

The "information" of what is happening is self evident to all. The only "secret" part is the moment of inscription when players write down their intentions in the 20 word limit and hand it in to the GM. No questions are asked. I as GM neither asks the gamers "what they mean" by this or that or give them secondary questions to answer in all but the most essential cases. . The rest is as I said, obvious. To give you some examples.

Otto:
That's fine, but I am not sure what that has to do with 'testing' something. It sounds like you are simply playing the game. Your hopes for what the game would produce and the results good, bad and ugly are what you detailed--that was the test analysis. Then you talked about how you might improve play. That's what tests are for: To see if it works as intended and whether it can be improved.

The point being that you can let the players do what they want, or you can try and straight jacket them by the rules and they will either do what they want or not play at all.

So, if the plan is to let the players do what they want, which certainly can be a game design goal, what exactly
were you testing?

They complained that their victory conditions did not consist of killing Bill. In the end, Bill cleaned their clocks. The remaining two players in the game who HAD victory conditions for "killing Bill" in fact won the game because the other people had more or less facilitated their victory conditions and were nonplussed.

When I asked the players about this two of them said they just didn't like Bill and wanted him to leave the club. The other two just shrugged- one saying, he wanted to ally with X who was one of the two above and didn't like playing with anyone else, and the other said "You do what X wants or you get shut out of everything." When I pressed him he also said "I like to win, and I'm not here in the hobby to do a lot of work. Everyone wants to be on X's side and being there gets you easy victories."

Later on, when I did the game over again, and put the players into positions they wanted (now that I knew they wanted to "kill bill" they were extraordinarily happy, except they didn't like it that the other players were now trying work with Bill's country (as was their victory conditions demanded) and were upset that they were attacking THEM and not Bill.

It is the interplay of personalities that colors the game, all games, every game.

Sure, whether a collaborative game or competitive, personalities color a game. So, what are you testing exactly? Are you are simply testing how individuals play the game, or which players should play it, or which country? Or was it just testing how the victory conditions worked? It does sound like you were asking questions after the game and before then next one.

Of course playtesting is playing the game, the entire game. That's the only way to do it. Anything else is mere rubbish. My objective has always been "does the system work wellenugh" that it can run on its own, or does it need constant peeking and poking by the umpire. If the latter then the game is broken and a new way has to be found. There is no higher purpose to any game other than the enjoyment of the players, but this enjoyment has to be communal. That is, there can be no "gobblers" and "gobbled" where the pleasure of the former is dependent on the pain of the latter.

A game is a thing unto itself. It is not contingent on some other entity, nor is something else contingent on it. A game is enjoyed for the thing itself and that is the end of it. Nothing is proven, nothing is validated, and therefore it exists and is judged by the pleasure and entertainment it gives the players. My concern (which is not my major concern in this playtest) about "pile-ons" is only that such things can be obviated naturally. Were Mike to arrange a pile-on versus a player country I would simply tell him privately "knock it off!" I don't have to do it in this case because Ikea is a non player country, and he's attacking the GM which will bring its own "knock it off" after I've let him have his fun for a few sequences. That's easy to do as because I am the GM I determine the order of combats, As leader of the coalition Mike will always go first and face the best the Ikeans have to oppose him with. Fellow travelers will go last where the builk of the Victory points will be earned (by opposed rolls). Thus the hangers on will get three to five points per action while Mike will do a lot of fighting and get only one, maybe too. He will soon see the lack of utility in the strategy.

Of course playtesting is playing the game, the entire game. That's the only way to do it. Anything else is mere rubbish.

Uh, yeah. I wasn't suggesting anything else, although I wouldn't say anything else is always rubbish.

My objective has always been "does the system work wellenugh" that it can run on its own, or does it need constant peeking and poking by the umpire.

It sounds like one of your goals for testing the game is to eliminate [?] the need for an umpire. I am assuming the questions asked of the players after the test game and your conclusions [good, bad and ugly] have to do with those goals.

Nah, you can never eliminate the need for an umpire. Someone has to do the heavy lifting The players for sure won't do it.

I don't ask questions of them. I simply observe what they do and how they act towards the game. If you ask questions of them you have to disentangle what they say they are doing from what they really are doing. You can only observe and trust their actions not their statements.

I don't ask questions of them. I simply observe what they do and how they act towards the game. If you ask questions of them you have to disentangle what they say they are doing from what they really are doing. You can only observe and trust their actions not their statements.

Otto:

I appreciate the time you are taking to explain your playtest.

As I said before, I was speaking of the questions you asked/the discussions you had with the players after the game, not during it.

My objective has always been "does the system work wellenugh" that it can run on its own, or does it need constant peeking and poking by the umpire.

Nah, you can never eliminate the need for an umpire. Someone has to do the heavy lifting The players for sure won't do it.

Now I am confused. If the goal is to have the system work well enough on its own, why is the umpire be still necessary?

And if they are necessary, how is the system running on its' own--and/or what is the Umpire doing while not peeking and poking? If the umpire is necessary for the system to work, I assume by adjudicating rules, then how is the system running on its own?

If you are designing a system that requires an umpire…what are the benefits and downsides and what constitutes it 'running on its own?.' I am not clear about that at all.

Dear McLaddie

Sidney Painter , one of the great mediaeval historians of the twentieth century, in writing about the medieval view of Kingship remarked that the "preferred or the idea of the good king" had power, but hesitated to use it, and preferred not to. His power was used to safeguard the society by its presence and occasional use, not it's constant enforcement. You have an echoof this in one of the bulls of Pope Clement when he is telling Phillip of France that he will not legitimize his bastard son. The Pope says, "It is not that I do not have the power, I have more power than I know what to do with, but that I chose not to exercise it in this matter." I find that the mere presence of an umpire prevents the players from stretching or using (and abusing) what they can do in a game.

Secone, the theory of "The Narrative Campaign" is that most of the thing game designers usually cram into a game (maps, orders of battle, economics, rules of diplomacy, and details of movement supply etc., simply create a corpus of dead weight no one really wants and which will act like a lead weight. Oh players will SAY then want it but when it actually comes to manipulating these things, few players have the stamina to do so. In this case, the case of this game, all that is shoved into the dust bin. Thus the "heavy lifting" in this case is the umpire keeps all the stuff in his head and simply develops the situation out of his imagination. Further, table top battles ALWAYS go better evenif the umpire sits there like a bronze Buddha and says nothing.

The thing being tested is how the rules, the very minimal rules (there are only really two pages of them) work with the players, and the ability of the game both to be regulated but also to allow for wide freedome of action of the players OUTSIDE the rules, or rather in areas where there ARE no rules, but which could be part of the game.

In a real sense the rules are not there to evoke or evince a cartain result, but to prevent the players from driving he game off the tracks while at the same time allowing them as much freedom of action. This is why "the rules' itself are irrelevant. It is the personalities and proclivities of the players that must be managed. In a real sense you've got to create an environment where they wish to go along with the rules rather than viewing it as an impediment to be overcome.

The thing being tested is how the rules, the very minimal rules (there are only really two pages of them) work with the players, and the ability of the game both to be regulated but also to allow for wide freedom of action of the players OUTSIDE the rules, or rather in areas where there ARE no rules, but which could be part of the game.

Otto:
Sorry about not getting back to you until now. Understood. Many of the great games, like chess or poker, have minimal rules, but what goes on outside the rules, such as strategies, 'tells' and such are as important or what make the game dynamic rather than simple tic-tac-toe boring. Diplomacy is like that.

In a real sense the rules are not there to evoke or evince a certain result, but to prevent the players from driving he game off the tracks while at the same time allowing them as much freedom of action.

So, even with minimal rules, the rules do create those 'tracks' and your tests are to establish how solid the rules are in avoiding player distortion while providing as much freedom of play 'outside' the rules as possible.

Right? Looking at the good, bad and ugly, I wasn't clear on what the targets were for the play test.

"Driving off the tracks" is a metaphor for "wrecking" that is making the game unplayable. There are no "tracks" in the game. The playtesting is of how well it limits but does not quash the human tendency to self destruction. The rules don't create them, they are already there as human tendencies to power, violence, and unsociability.

The target is the production of socially pleasant interactions. The game is the excuse.

There are no "tracks" in the game. The playtesting is of how well it limits but does not quash the human tendency to self destruction.

Otto:

Thank you for the explanations. It is always valuable to see how others are approaching game design. You certainly have put in a lot of work and thought into the campaign.

My metaphor for those limits you speak of was 'tracks'.

Not at all, no need for thanks. The milieu of games is really quite open ended. This is especially true when you are a historian and consider real life historical questions and developments. For example the drift in war aims which would be quite close to what we are talking about here. How many examples are there of nations going to war for certain causes or goals, but as the war goes on these original goals and aims shift, or become irrelevant and sometimes entirely new ones take their place. This is not only in war but in all human activities. The law of unintended consequences may entirely change the situation. Therefore there is something highly unrealistic about games which purport to impose the straight line path. For example World War Two began not as a crusade against Hitler and Dictatorship, and especially not "to make the world safe for democracy" but an attempt to stabilize affairs in central Europe, NOT because anyone who could do anything about it gave a fig for the condition of central Europe, but only because they could get on with solving their own problems and let central Europe take care of itself. Likewise the Seven Years War began with one set of goals and conditions for all involved and ended on entirely different ones. One is well advised to heed the words of the Athenian Envoys to the Spartan Ephors as quoted by Thucidydes- "Do not be hasty in involving yourself in the affairs of others. Consider while there is still time the inscrutable nature of war and how when prolonged it often ends by being a matter of mere chance."

This is even before you get to the personal dimension as embodied by the mind of the prince or the politically significant in a country. This is especially true when one considers he influence of a Pompadour or a DuBarry on the ruler and the politically significant classes, all empowered by the personal desire or whim of the personality.

It's why I begin with the personalities of the players before I even get to the rules.