"Review: Tabletop Wargames - A designers' & writers' handbook" Topic

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Thanks for an interesting review

I've just started on it – the thing that made me buy the book was on the page facing the introduction "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

@Phil: I know he mentions Andrea from Ganesha Games, but I am curious whether he mention Neil Thomas. Neil is particularly critical of some of Rick's designs, although he never mentions him by name nor his rules.

It lost me as soon as it said games as games not as simulation. It depends what you are looking for I guess.

OTOH, that very notion is what's piqued my interest. :) Different strokes… Thanks for the post, Phil!

@Dale,

What were you thinking of, specifically? I think I have read most of Neil Thomas stuff but I never picked up on that.

I'm not convinced that Rick made much of a contribution. Describing Bolt Action as a company sized game was a bit of a faux pas.

From the author, who used one term, "heroe", for two different things: a class of non-magic characters and one type of that class for humans. Really an expert in game design! ;-)

Thanks for the review, Phil. Had been wondering about whether to get the book or not and you've given me enough info to make up my mind.

Cheers!
Aaron

Here's another review:
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@Whirlwind: In the opening of Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815–1878 he goes into the concept of 'double jeopardy', where a penalty is applied twice. The two specific examples he gives of bad game design are found in Black Powder, for instance.

I own quite a collection of books on wargames and wargames design. Most such books focus on historical wargames, and how to transfer historical reality to the gaming table. What always bugs me a little bit in that approach, is that the game itself seems to be a side effect. It's as if the historical foundation of the wargame should be good enough to entertain the players, irrespective of the gaming mechanics. I always felt that a miniature wargame is foremost a game, and should work as a game. The game might be inspired by military history, and should bear some resemblance to it, but if it doesn't work properly as a game, then why bother?

Phil:
While I agree that "if it doesn't work as a game, why bother?", I am interested to know which books you are thinking of when you write "Most such books focus on historical wargames, and how to transfer historical reality to the gaming table."

I have not found that to be the case. Most all deal with representing history the same way Priestley does: To quote from the book: "[…] works so well because the game feels right, not because it conforms to some mathematical formula."

The way the phrase 'feels right' is tossed about by hobby designers, it seems to mean nothing much at all other than 'I like it' rather than having a specific relationship to history at all or wargame design. There are other design methods and approaches than 'feels right' vs 'mathematical formula'… Seems just another form of game vs simulation.

The 'feels right' allows for simply sloppy history, sort of a permission to pay little attention to specifics, like Priestly describing his own BA as a company-sized game. It's all fantasy and whatever feels good is right. That isn't history, let alone representing it in any meaningful fashion.

Having said that, the book does provide far more thoughtful and specific attention to game design [just game design] and rules writing that I found enlightening.

Thanks Dale. I'd picked up on his dislike of the "double jeopardy" in a couple of the rules but I'd thought that was just such a widespread design phenomenon that it was a much wider criticism. Since in one book (An Introduction?) he'd recommended that budding fantasy/SF players go down to the nearest GW, I thought he must have liked the design.

Thanks for the review. I'm one of those who simply can't resist tinkering with rules. I like the bit about, "feels right". I may pick this one up.

If you are looking for a more mathematical view of wargame design, you might want to take a look at the series Secrets of Wargame Design (Vol. 6: Skirmish is the latest) from Wally Simon, a mathematician and statistics guy by trade and wargamer by hobby who merged the two when creating his multitude of home-brew rules (some great, some…well, some of his work was really esoteric). Now he's mostly known for the Wally Simon Basement flea market at HMGS conventions, but he had prodigious output of 12 issues a year for 25 years.

Full Disclosure: I edited the series, cherry picking various articles from his PW Review newsletter than ran 1970s to 2005. Those I picked provided inspiration, at least to me.

Here's a sample article from Vol 1:

PDF link

Available from On Military Matters (and Caliver Books in UK).

Rick Priestley is my spirit animal, so I will definitely be picking this up.

Ew.

If you are looking for a more mathematical view of wargame design, you might want to take a look at the series Secrets of Wargame Design

There are lots of ideas and mechanics in Wally's articles. He is, though, squarely in the "feels right" camp, FYI.

After reading Phil's glowing comments, I had to go back and skim through Priestley and Lambshead's work again to see if he and I had read the same book. I had earlier read the book and dismissed it as being of extremely limited utility. My issues with the work are numerous, but the most serious shortcomings derive from its painfully limited scope. The authors restrict themselves from the very beginning to the very parochial frame of reference of the British Club Night Competition Gamer, giving little consideration to any style of game not played on 4' by 6' table with the most popular miniature sizes and six-sided dice. Air and naval games are granted only a couple pages of general description since, according to the authors, their practitioners are "a subgroup within a niche within a subset". Napoleonic naval wargames, which are characterized as "less satisfying", are dismissed with a single short paragraph (which I take personally, as a lifelong Napoleonic naval gamer who finds the subject endlessly fascinating).

The book covers a variety of topics related to the actual nuts-and-bolts of game design and do so in a very pragmatic way (which could be useful to a budding game designer who may not have realized that some of the aspects discussed here even needed to be addressed), but without going into any of them in any great depth. In addition, there are some topics central to game design which are dismissed with a few pages, or mentioned only peripherally; for example, the specifics and importance of an iterative test-and-revise process, or a thorough understanding of probability (which the authors find "tedious and boring", and the domain of the "geek who reads maths books for fun" (which I take personally, as a geek who reads books about math for fun.)

Perhaps that's all that could be expected from a relatively slender volume (157 pages), a significant portion of which is taken up by (admittedly breathtaking) photography of wargame miniatures. Unfortunately, that space could have been put to better use since, with the exception of a handful of charts, we don't come across an illustration that actually relates to anything in the text until page 136.

The authors also cling to a few outmoded and discredited design concepts, like the idea that movement should be scaled to the size of the miniatures, or that brute-force "bucket-of-dice" mechanics are "elegant", or that playability and "realism" (I assume they are actually talking about "complexity" here, which no thinking game designer would confuse with "realism") are mutually exclusive properties that require "balancing".

I could rail on about their active discouragement of innovation ("most successful games currently in print use tried and trusted mechanisms"), or their insistence that point systems are necessary (even though "they don't work" . . . the authors' own words) or their profligate use of exclamation points (hardly a paragraph goes by without one or two!!!) but instead I will settle for admitting that after reading the comments of the reviewers I realize that this book is, nevertheless, in spite of its shortcomings, a practical guide for those who aspire to design a playable, if somewhat generic and Priestley-esque set of wargame rules with a pasted-on theme, and nothing more. For that aspiring designer, the book is actually quite useful, and good value.

To add to Phil's review, Rick and John's book cover a great number of things, important things in game design. Even though it is basically a book about how These two designers approach their subject, it is a valuable addition to the hobby. The chapters are:

1. By Way of Introduction
2. A Question of Scale
3. A Language of Design
4. Alea Iacta Est
5. Presenting the Game Rules
6. Skirmish Games
7. English as She is Writ
8. Expanding the Rulebook
9. Campaigns as Wargames

While the first two chapters address the typical issues involving wargames, simulations vs entertainment, scale, tabletop limitations etc., the next several chapters deal with less common topics found in such design books.

First there is the chapter on "The Language of Design", relating terms that Rick and his group have developed to describe the technical aspects of design, such as ‘grit', 'tight or clean' rules, 'domains' etc. While the terms are confined to just their group, the terms and ideas are insightful on a number of levels. They point up the unavoidable need for technical terms to describe complex game relationships.

And though Rick may denigrate a ‘mathematical' approach he still has an entire chapter on probability, die roles/rolls and the math involved. The chapter on presenting game rules is unique, and therefore all the more valuable and is the one on the language/words used in writing game rules. They demonstrate the value of experience and how it can be passed on to others. The comments on how and when to expand the rulebook is also a useful chapter to those wanted to design games.

The surprise was how short the chapter on Skirmish games was, six and a half pages, easily the shortest one in the book. Considering Rick and John's background, I expected them to have had more to say about the topic.

The least satisfying chapter was on the question of scale. This is not because Rick and John are in the ‘Feels Right' design camp, but how they

1. Juxtaposed that approach against some ‘mathematical' approach which simply meant any design that attempted to use fixed scales—not particularly mathematical at all—certainly no more so than Rick's approach detailed in the book.

2. Failed to describe what appeared to be the two core tenets of their approach to ‘scale': HOW a wargame ‘feels right' and HOW it achieves ‘credibility' are never described in game terms…certainly not addressed in the chapter on ‘The Language of Design.' Which leaves the reader without a concrete sense of what it means to design for those qualities other than ‘it feels good', which may simple be the brand of beer you've had.

3. Misuse or misrepresent other wargame designs in an effort to justify the terms, rather than describe what the terms mean, particularly in relationship to Squad Leader and John Hill's approach to game design.

I think War Artisan's observations have merit around this topic.

Regardless, many tabletop wargamers are closet designers, modifying rules unrepentantly, if not designing their own rules, I would say that Tabletop Wargames is definitely worth the money.