"no historical/period flavor?" Topic

According to a recent poll, a major flaw that keeps gamers from playing certain rulesets is "no historical/period flavor".

Which rulesets are guilty of this flaw?

Cold War Commander and the like. All the fun of a Napoleonic rules trying to pass as WWII and above.

A lot of them, sadly.

I dont see that as a problem. It makes the rule set more versatile.

Historical flavor is what you make it in your own mind.

From a Medieval set.

"Bowmen firing on armored cavalry hit with a six. If the bowmen are Longbowmen they hit with a 5 or a 6"

"Archers firing on armored superheroes hit with a 6. If they are Elven Archers they hit with a five or a 6."

"Musketeers firing on heavy cavalry hit with a 6. If they are Prussian Grenadiers they hit with a 5 or a 6."

"Heroes fighting dragons hit with a 6. If they are superheroes they hit with a 5 or a 6."

"Guns firing on a tank hit with a 6. If they are using Armor piercing DS they hit with a 5 or a 6."

So elves firing on tiger tanks with APDS hit with a 5 or a 6 and Falschrim jagers with a panzerfaust can bring down a dragon with a 5 or a 6 too.

It's all in the nouns.

Chess

Black powder.
To generic even with the different supliments. It's a perfectly fine game. And I'm sure very fun in big multiplayer games. But no.

Hail ceasar is even more generic (spaning 3000+ years) but I still feel it captures roman or bronze age egyptian warfare. Better then black powder captures 1700-1890.

+1 for Otto

It's a dream we're trying to recreate.

Historical flavor is very much a personal thing.

We recently played a test run of The Sword and The Shillelagh in the wilds of Luzerne County using an appropriately modified TSATF.

Did it work for us? Yep.

Is it going to work for Otto or Jerry or Mike or The Other Mike or The Other Mike (not THAT Mike)?

Heck, I dunno. I do know it was fun and we sang a couple of Irish music hall songs badly and made a bunch of jokes.

It's a game of toy soldiers. It's what "I" perceive…

My two shillings worth.

Eric

For me, it is not the rules that capture historical flavor. I'm fully convinced that with a few caveats, you can use rule sets for vastly different periods and not even notice.

Rather it is the "trappings" that do this. Names, uniforms, formations, and so on. Consider a rule like Otto's: Infantry hit on a 6 at long range, on a 5 or 6 at medium range."

If the bases are square, and formed in a line, Napoleonics! If they are round with a single figure each and spread out, ANY period with ranged weapons including Biblicals, Samurai, WW2, Fantasy and SciFi.

I've played Bolt Action a few times. It is a fun and silly game. But swap out the figures for cowboys and indians and it will work just fine. Swap them out for elves and dwarves and ditto.

Really it is the prevalence of ranged weapons that makes the biggest difference to my mind. Is the period primarily shooting or largely hand to hand?

It's all in your mind.

Besides, "historical flavor" almost always means "conforms to my prejudices."

A few pints of beer, ale, glasses of wine, or rum tankards should answer the question clearly… or maybe not so clearly.

Polish lance spear points into German Pz !! exhaust pipe is covered in section twenty two, book three or in the summary of unusual rules you need to forget… till the time you need them Read after the aforementioned required beverages are consumed.

I won't name names. I'd as soon put up a post telling some mother how ugly her baby is.

But I was going through a reasonably respectable wargaming book this week and found that the rules for combat resolution were word for word the same in the ancient and the Napoleonic rules. Another book used the same sequence and mechanisms from hoplite warfare through WWII. And they're both good books. They have a lot to say about wargaming, but not much about period flavor.

I'd say two things. The critical bits of warfare aren't the same at all levels, and they aren't the same across time.

When a set of rules runs from Marlborough to the Balkan Wars, it's not going to feel distinct, even though it could conceivably be accurate, and the interesting parts of the war may be happening at a very different level. And what's important at one level isn't at another. Of the two, tactical level may be the more important.

So when someone tries to "adapt" his rules across major period boundaries or to different levels of representation, they may not have felt period-specific before, and they certainly won't afterward.

As always, it depends on what you're looking for. Do you want a fun game system that utilizes your painted figures, or do you want to play a game that helps you learn something about the period? From what I've seen, most people up here prefer a mix of both, just drawing the line at different points.

And that varies too, by period for many of us. I like SAGA for the game and figures, but find even General de Brigade woeful in the, "how did things work?" department. For WW2, sure--take WH40K, knock off some rough edges; eliminate the IGO/USnooze and roll a lot of dice. The system is generic as hell, but the scenery and the miniatures give it the flavor.

I think "generic" systems like Black Powder are neither bad nor good--they're filling a demand. Diamond or Flawed depend on the player, imho, not the system.

For me, Fire and Fury doesn't capture the feel of the ACW. Johnny Reb however is perfect to me.

+1 EC

I agree with Otto. It's all in naming the rules!

A lot of the objections that people have to Flames of War is in that rules they are looking for to give it "period flavor" and they claim are not there, really are there.
Take tank suppression. The rule is called Bailed Out. That's a really dumb name, but the rule works perfectly.

Or Opportunity Fire. It's there, but not named as such. What if a German unit fails its Stormtrooper move? An Italian unit fails Avanti! A portee fails Tip and Run? Why, there they are, stuck out in the open. Opportunity Fire was not as common as gamers like to think.
And what would you call Defensive Fire, if not Opportunity Fire?

It is indeed the nouns. And as Eric pointed out above, we took generic Sword and the Flame, and called Scotsmen Egyptians and Irish boyos Zulus.

It's up to the players to provide the historical formations, tactics, and maneuvers. I was re-reading Featherstone's "The Ancient Wargame" for a little inspiration. His rules are fairly simple by today's standards. But he expected the players to know the relevant tactics, and to employ them. It seems today people try to exploit any given rule-set for their advantage, and then complain it doesn't give an historical outcome, when perhaps they should limit themselves within the rule-set to what could be done historically.

Well, QILS, for one. Zero historical content in the rules. That's not what (I believe) the rules are for.

That's what the scenarios are for.

Thank you Winston, Thank you Eric.

Look at Joe Moreschauser's rules. The rules for the Ancients, Musket, and Modern period are more or less identical. The periods offer different organizations of troops, all stylized, but it's the same rule system.

I also agree that Extra crispy has hit a part of it with "Conforms to my prejudices."

Well, as admirably broad-minded as some people appear to be, I think we can all admit that there are examples of rules that somehow defy the historical realities of the period they are supposed to represent, for instance allowing unrealistic tactics, or giving weapons unrealistic capabilities, or not allowing for capabilities that were in use during a period. Yes, some of these things are open to a fair bit of interpretation – but others are not.

For me, these are the "concrete" examples of not having "period flavor", i.e. a set of rules simply fails to capture the factual reality of a period. However, what most people (and I think I have to include myself) usually mean by "period flavor" is "what they like about the period", and I don't think you can fault people for wanting to pursue the hobby in a way they enjoy. The pursuit of period flavor is probably the driving force behind the vast variety of rules we enjoy today.

For me, these are the "concrete" examples of not having "period flavor", i.e. a set of rules simply fails to capture the factual reality of a period. However, what most people (and I think I have to include myself) usually mean by "period flavor" is "what they like about the period", and I don't think you can fault people for wanting to pursue the hobby in a way they enjoy. The pursuit of period flavor is probably the driving force behind the vast variety of rules we enjoy today.

What the is historical/period flavor? Does it come with a spice rack? A poll that establishes that the major flaw is a lack of period flavor, is only establishing that the major flaw in a game is that the gamer doesn't like it.

It's all in your mind.

Besides, "historical flavor" almost always means "conforms to my prejudices."

I think we should establish what "Historical Flavor" is in game terms--mechanics--information--game play--before we go deciding which games 'have it' and which games don't in some general fashion.

If you look at a set of game rules, where's the beef… excuse me, the flavor? If such inquiries devolve into likes and dislikes, then just ask what our favorite games are and be done with it, without dressing it up with meaningless terms like 'historical flavor.'

To me period flavour comes in the decision points.
As Otto points out the shooting mechanics are pretty much the same.
So it's the command and control and how I get the little men to shoot is important.
If my Roman legions move around and respond to orders the same as mediaeval hosts or Napoleonic corps or Mechanized Brigades then there is a problem.

MY attempt at injecting "historical flavor" into the game comes by the back-story and the outlandish burlesque of the Imagi-Nations forming it. Thus the wars between Faustus the Grump and Princess Trixie of Saxe-Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein. But more, it's nothing less than role-playing as the general in the game. This is done "just because" and not for any game advantage. Indeed to me the real trick is to build in game DISADVANTAGE. Someday I hope Eric Turner will get to see me playing Shah-Na-Na, the Nattering Nabob of Negativism.

At one game we played at Historicon I was fighting against Ed Neeper and Gerry Lannigan, and I reasoned at one point, that I had lost and would not be able to win. So this was the time I began an orderly withdrawl from the field. Gerry Lannigan, my often opponent, understands this and looks forward for these opportunities to play along exactly int he manner of Grant and Young with their Graff von Grunt and other characters.

The problem is I really don't know what the historical feel is for any period before the time I was alive. So I can't really judge if a game has it. I certainly don't want "historical feel" to be something to be evoked by the dentistry of the 18th century or the reather extreme cures they had for syphillus or veneral diseas (involving liquid mercury and some form of a red hot iron wire. I can read things in books, and they can for things like WWII or Vietnam, or today, being quite vivid. Of course I have to admit that I really don't care to immerse myself in those.

Also as a historian I also inevitably ask the questions "tho whom" "how" "where" when it comes to historical feel. I imagine the sensation for a field Marshall was quite different than a grunt.

Forgive me for dragging up this old argument, it's not really fair, but if die example, you had a unit that could fly and drop high explosive bombs in an allegedly ancient game that would be something that had an obviously unhistorical element, no matter what you decided to call it (except an angry God).

I guess I'm not very brave. Someone once asked here "What would you like to have done in WWII?" My answer was "I want to be a lieutenant in the Pacific fleet and be stationed in Honolulu where I was in charge of the Medals and Awards Section, and able to knock off at 5 pm and go swimming off Waikiki with the nurses and secretaries. In my life I've been shot, stabbed, axed, and run down by a car at 60 mph. I much prefer my contact with nurses in a personal, not a professional way.

I wrote my own rules "Oh God! Anything but a Six!" With the idea of limiting what a player dealt with to that an army commander or wing commander in the 18th century would deal with.

When I was graduated from High School, my picture was in the year book as was everyone elses, and underneath in the "vital facts" they quoted, was the comment "Jack leaves for Rutgers, Jill leaves for MIT, and ao forth along with likes and dislikes. For me they put "Otto leaves for the 18th century."

Ah would that I could.

No wonder there are so many stale, generic, cookie cutter rules sets out there, it seems that a large proportion of gamers don't give a rodent's posterior if a game is a good simulation or not.

Oh, Oh, Dynaman8789, now you've done it!!

People are allowed to just use the "S" word on TMP? Have we NO standards??

Yup, I'm a dirty rebel that doesn't play with dollies.

What if I don't like the period flavor a game provides? I've yet to find a fun ruleset that can work in the bocage of Normandy. Grinding and frustrating death, no thanks.

………gamers don't give a rodent's posterior if a game is a good simulation or not.

Gawd!! Deliver me from the threat of a simulation.

Private Snafu, if you don't like the topic why would you want to game it? There are some tactical challenges to bocage that are fascinating.

Before somebody says it, there is a difference between simulating something as realistically as possible and actually doing said thing.

>Gawd!! Deliver me from the threat of a simulation.

Gawd!! Deliver me from the threat of pew pew noises counting as all you need for wargaming.

The question wasn't what games we like or dislike. There is no right or wrong answer there. We like what we like.

My question was what constitutes 'historical flavor' and whether it ends up being only another way to say what one likes or doesn't like.

So far, folks see:

1.It as set of rules simply fails to capture the factual reality of a period, where: e.g. The rules for the Ancients, Musket, and Modern period are more or less identical.

2.It's all in naming the rules! The rule is called Bailed Out. That's a really dumb name, but the rule works perfectly. It's all in the nouns.

3.It's a dream we're trying to recreate. Historical flavor is very much a personal thing. It's a dream we're trying to recreate. Historical flavor is very much a personal thing.

4. It has pretensions of being a simulation if it has historical flavor--or not. "There is a difference between simulating something as realistically as possible and actually doing said thing." So do games with historical flavor work as simulations, or is it that a simulation has to have historical flavor?

5. It's in the game mechanics. "I wrote my own rules "Oh God! Anything but a Six!" With the idea of limiting what a player dealt with to that an army commander or wing commander in the 18th century would deal with."

6.Or it is in player decisions: "To me period flavour comes in the decision points."

There are no real substantive elements in creating dreams and satisfying personal prejudices. And if players don't care about 'historical flavor', which is just fine, they can't add anything to the discussion. As such all those desires and preferences are the epitome of subjective experiences.

However, in game terms, things that can be provided by a designer and seen by players, we have so far among the posts: the quality or focus of

A. The words used in describing game mechanics
B. The Player decisions and limits around those decisions
C. The mechanics themselves

or

D. The failure to differentiate between periods: Generic rules and play.

The problem with this failure is there is a lot of history out there and everyone has a different experience with the sources that constitute our knowledge of history AND folks have had a variety of experiences with rule sets. What strikes me as historical flavor may appear very generic to someone else.

To get beyond personal opinion, we have to establish some observable 'What', Where' and 'How' so everyone can identify when 'Historical Flavor' is added to a design and how effective it is in providing that 'flavor.' For instance, regardless of how silly or wonderful you feel Bolt Action is as a game experience, does it provide any historical flavor in the above A-C indicators of historical flavor? Where and how?

Until *we* can do that, all we are doing is sharing our answers to 'what is your favorite color?'

No wonder there are so many stale, generic, cookie cutter rules sets out there, it seems that a large proportion of gamers don't give a rodent's posterior if a game is a good simulation or not.

How would we know if it's a "good simulation"?

Let's assume you want to read a book about WW2.

- some people like a book simply listing OOBs for a specific theatre, broken down to individual platoons and what casualties were suffered when and where;
- some people like a fictionalized story involving heroic actions that in reality never could have taken place, but do provide an entertaining book.

Both approaches provide period flavour for different people. It's the same with games.

Overall, I do agree that rules themselves are not enough to provide period flavour. Especially the mathematical part of the rules (roll dice, check against result tables, compute casualties, …) have no period flavour whatsoever.
Sometimes morale rules provide period flavour if they use a more descriptive approach. Same for C&C rules.

So yes, most of the period flavour is in the descriptions of troop types, weapons, tactics, random events. Most period flavour comes from the scenario AND THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION ON THE TABLE.

I once played a WW2 game. The umpire had set out the table: only a few hills, and some trees here and there. It didn't feel like WW2 at all – it felt more like a Dark Age skirmish. We added a few roads and period buildings, and suddenly we had our WW2 battle.

If you would replace the scenery elements with random coloured cardboard tiles (and call them terrain type A, B, C, …), and replace units by coloured blocks, and strip your rules from any references to history, most players would not be able to identify what period such a game is supposed to represent.

I'd add deployment and command control to the discussion. It seems to me that those are crucial aspects of historical flavour. Example: I'm mostly an ancients player, but there's a huge difference between a hoplite deployment and what they can do on the field subsequently, and a Roman one – and even they have many different sub-periods…

> How would we know if it's a "good simulation"?

Read a book(s). Preferably a mix of first hand accounts mixed with technical books mixed with scholarly texts.

Gawd!! Deliver me from the threat of a simulation.

A simulation is a model put into effect. All wargames are simulations.

The discussion points are (1) What are we modeling? and (2) How are we putting that model into effect?

Both of those are really two-part questions:

(1a) What is the referent? – The Battle of Hastings? Klingons vs Romulans in Star Trek: The Next Generation? My perception of hillbilly blood fueds? Everything the five Yakuza movies I have seen has taught me about organized crime?

(1b) Which elements of the referent go into the game? – Different load times for different weapons? Short periods of intense violence divided by long periods of tactical maneuver? Bang, bang, zip-boom?

and

(2a) What model do I use for the dynamics of the elements I have selected? – Linearly distributed probability increments? Community consensus vote? Multi-stage probability chains? Umpire opinion?

(2b) How do the players execute the model? – Roll some dice, add them and compare them to a standard? Chart data on a nomogram? Measure things on a surface? Place unit cohesion chits next to figures?

History is very obvious in the first part. People's opinions on what is important in history drive the second. Familiarity with analytical methods constrains the third. Familiarity with mechanics limits and preferences about mechanics drives the last bit.

By the time you get to a set of rules, there a large number of overlapping influences that have nothing to do with history. Depending on a player's knowledge base and preferences they can either make a link (not necessarily equal to the designer's link) back to the referent, refute the link back to the referent, or not care.

Building OOB laydowns, and victory conditions close the loop back to the referent (history, in the case of this discussion). Given the constraints of the rules, how do we represent the specific forces and situation we want to game?

This is why I prefer to use the scenario most heavily for the historical part of the game.

The fact that a ruleset has rules for dropping nuclear weapons from 1940's vintage bomber aircraft does not make a ruleset inappropriate for gaming battles in the Jewish Revolt. Writing a scenario that allowed units to execute those rules would.

"So yes, most of the period flavour is in the descriptions of troop types, weapons, tactics, random events. Most period flavour comes from the scenario AND THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION ON THE TABLE." Phil Dutre.

Nodding with Phil for me.

Read a book(s). Preferably a mix of first hand accounts mixed with technical books mixed with scholarly texts.

Probably still not going to give enough information to provide a "good simulation" (especially as we move further back in time, in general) and then there is the interpretation of those sources.

hmmmm, examples of period flavor for me is stuff like:
in WSS there were difference in Platoon and Rank Firing, Dragoons dismounting vs not in later 18th century and Naps. Artillery generally set up and did not move once the battle began. Stuff like that in the rules is what makes me feel like I am playing an historical period. I do not like to abstract those things out. If I did, I'd play chess or jus flip a coin and declare one side the winner. A set of rules that covers a 300 year span does not interest me, even if it does have a half dozen supplements.

Read the book, saw the movie.

Still has nothing to do with the "feel" of the period.

"Feel" is emotion and sensation. I don't know if I want that. In fact I don't. I don't want a simulation of that moment in Saving Private Ryan when the mother sees the car winding up that long road to the house and he knows… she KNOWS.. then her legs go out from under her and she collapses. Never could watch that movie after that scene.

War games is supposed to be fun. We "play" at war and have our battles, but please spare me the ultimate realism and the simulation. It's why in my modern game, "The Shattered Century" all the countries are imagi-nations, modeled on the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, and the three stooges in "I'll never Heil Again."

I think the scenario can make up for it.

Knew a guy who'd run napoleonic scenarios using Rogue Trader. Batty but he'd put effort into writing the scenarios and coming up with places and names for everyone involved. Felt "flavourful".

I think a good scenario will overcome challenges with visual representative elements on the tabletop. Visual representation does help with the link to history in the mind of the player, but I do not think it is necessary.

Truth in advertising, I play a lot of games with surrogates.

I gave away my Battle of Puebla set and have yet to complete a new one. I have played Cinco de Marso (with VSF) and Cinco de Meiji (with Meiji period Japanese) so far (and fear I may need another one next year) with no problem linking it to the history. The forces exhibit what I designed into the scenario as the relevant behaviours and players call the sides "Mexican" and "French" without a concern for Samurai and Green Martians. The players seem to experience the tactical advantage of the Mexicans and the doomed experience of the French in this battle.

I play this battle more than once a year, and the French win on rare occasion.

That said, I have Zouaves and Mexican military figures ready and am building up the other period forces necessary for the battle. And I don't think I would mix partial representative miniatures with other non-representative ones.

How would we know if it's a "good simulation"?

A simulation does or it doesn't work. The ones that succeed in simulating the chosen elements of reality are 'good'. The ones that fail are 'bad.'

And yes, there are a number of objective methods for validating whether a simulation works or not, be it simple or complex.

Whether that has anything to do with the nebulous 'historical flavor' is up for discussion…

"So yes, most of the period flavour is in the descriptions of troop types, weapons, tactics, random events. Most period flavour comes from the scenario AND THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION ON THE TABLE." Phil Dutre.

So, not the actual game system or mechanics for the most part?

So if most of the flavor are the add-ons:descriptions, scenarios with the rules and random events etc., what parts of the actual game system could or would be providing 'historical flavor?'

> Probably still not going to give enough information to provide a "good simulation"

I'll agree to disagree.

The past is a foreign country; they do things different there. I can't remember who said it (a fast Google check has informed me that the words are from Leslie Poles Hartley, a British novelist). Historians know how difficult is to fix a point in the past and understand it. Something as common as the experience of night, i.e. what means for a human being to pass from the light of day to the darkness of the night, is almost incomprehensible for our present-day minds. We have been born with the social memory of electricity. Even while camping in the wild, we have at our disposal devices that allow us to make light, if needed. That is something that our great-grandparents would have find almost magical -they did, actually, when they experienced electricity for the first time. Check the memories of the visitors of the Great Universal Exhibition at Paris, in 1900, if you want to have a taste about what electricity meant just 100 years ago, a blink of an eye in historical time.

Now, if something so simple, so common, as the experience of darkness meant for our forebears is difficult, almost impossible, to apprehend for our modern mind, can you imagine what would be to apprehend the experience of battle? Historians try to explain it -some historians do, at least- without much success.

Try to imagine: you are a soldier; maybe you have volunteered, maybe you have been forcibly recruited. Never in your life you have travelled farther away than 1 day from your village. Your life experience is limited to a few miles, that you know as the back of your hand. The rest of the world is somewhere that existed -you think- because from time to time some foreigner -meaning someone not from your village- passes through. After the shock of being separated from your familiar environment, you are put together with other dozen young -and not so young- men, dressed with some uncomfortable clothes and yelled by a man called Drill Sergeant -as far as you know, his first name is Drill and his family name is Sergeant-. Say you survive enough to fight in a big -or not- battle. You are put in line. You don't see much beyond your pals at your left and your right, maybe the sergeant, or a corporal; perhaps you are near enough the colours to see where they are. Suddenly, someone collapses near you. You flinch, but your sergeant yells at you and you are so used to fear him that you forgot about everything else but to keep them happy; still better: to keep him from noticing your existence. And then a black object comes towards you -or you think so-; it grows in your visual, moving deceptively slowly… until it strikes. You are fortunate this time and you have been not hit. Not your sergeant, though. He hasn't been as fortunate as you. The ball has struck him in the midriff, obliterating most of his lower body. He has been killed outright, in front of you. The person you have feared most in the last few months is dead. Gone. Maybe in that moment you lose control of your sphincters.

Multiply that experience by thousands. All the while you try to make sense of what is happening in your limited field vision. Because you are not a soldier. You are the CiC. What are your worries? Winning? Maybe… or perhaps, is not losing. Or maybe you will be happy with just your army surviving the onslaught to fight another day. The thing is that time is limited. Night is not far away, and you know that once darkness come to know what it is happening will be sheer imposibility. But what the hell is happening in your left? You don't hear the guns, and you gave the order to attack the enemy position two hours ago. The force you sent: has lost their way? Are attacking but some weird feature in the landscape is impeding the sound to carry away? Or have been already defeated and are retreating? You don't know. Information is non existent or unclear. All of that happens while from time to time some artillery balls bounce near you and your staff.

War is chaos. Games are order. To make one to talk to the other you need to find what part of that chaos you want to order, and then try to find the way to simulate it. Designers does that all the time. That part, though, is not what all of us understand as relevant when reading narratives about that foreign country that is the past. So we found them wanting, lacking of "historical flavour". Maybe that is the problem. Maybe we just need to look for the ruleset that simulates the part of the history that we like to visit.

I agree with basileus66. To get into "the feel" of things is highly subjective.

And, he has hit on the essential problem. "War is chaos. Games are order." it's like squaring the circle or the philosophers stone or perpetual motion.

Fire and Fury
Rank and File

I can't agree that "period flavor" is just the language, scenery, or miniatures. The rules mechanics matter. They have to allow and encourage and create believable interactions between units on the table to maintain suspension of disbelief. Wargamers spend a heck of a lot of time creating rules to "fix" on-table behaviors perceived as "unhistorical" – especially when adapting a rule set written for a different period.

While the evaluation of period flavor is necessarily subjective, the education of the viewer plays a big part. In my own experience, the games I prefer when I first start playing a new period may seem totally insufficient after reading more of the actual period history.

- Ix

+1 for Phil. The rules are only part of it. A lot of the period feel or flavor comes from the scenario, figures and terrain. The visuals are very important.