"Has Game Design Progressed Since Featherstone?" Topic

Picking up on another thread, do we think that rules produced today have progressed, or are they simply rehashes of what has gone before?

If yes, then examples of original thought would be interesting, if no then likewise.

No. Complete rehashes. If you broaden the base to include Rieswitz' Kriegspiel and all the others it makes it even more derivative. We still largely line up the troops as Wells and Featherstone did (and chess players still do) and roll dice in the same manner as Don and even Wells did. The pip and point of this rule or that is meaningless. Granted you like modifiers, I hate em, but the methodologies are all the same. All the alleged "differences" are no more than deciding to put the lettuce on top of the salad rather than the bottom.

But that's OK! If you like the lettuce on top of the salad that's fine, or if you like olives in it rather than feta cheese, that's OK to. It's a game, it's all make believe.

How can I give you an example of a negative thing.

What does "progress" mean?

The broad form of what a tabletop wargame means hasn't changed since Kriegspiel and roleplaying games haven't changed since DUngeons and Dragons.

"I move my dudes and then they fight" or "My guy goes over there and then fights them".

But I mean, food hasn't really changed beyond "we cook a thing and then eat it" and that's a bit hand-wavy for my tastes.

If we're looking to have discussion and look at the actual craft of how games work now, it's a million light years away from where it started.

I'll throw two out there that I don't think would be even imaginable in a 1960's context.

*The setup sequence from Chain of Command.

*The AI / Reaction system from Chain Reaction.

The stance that "its all the same" would fail to explain why games have come and gone.
If there's nothing new, why did DBA redefine ancients gaming?

Things have not changed but things have moved on. It has been a case of evolution not revolution. We still have modifiers, dice and movement rates, but the games are not the same as they were.

There has definitely been progress and gaming is the better for it.

Yes.
Examples depend on rules type. A few known to us:
By 2002 AWr 1.0 adopted a small but significant technical detail for dealing with rectangular geometric bases in AncMed: use the base width, or multiple, as the measurement unit. This had a major impact on the games, increasing speed and clarity. More than 10 years after others understood the real advantages. In addition the base depth conformed also to the new 'norm', but others have not followed that far.
Curious: we were then accused of plagiarism! When at the same time others were re-releasing exactly the same stuff over and over.
Ambush-Blitz in 2007 ended with fixed alternate turns, instead players gave orders in a non-fixed pattern. d6 were used to set the HQ order activation (many bystanders thought that was pip dice).
In 2016 AWE 10 is the first game without randomizers that also has no predictable battle outcomes, after the invention of the Combat Tiles concept.
Ending with randomness is the basic most important step to raise wargaming level from a dice game to a true mind game. I believe this is the future to the discerning player that wants more from a game.
You may say that nothing of this is your liking, but it's new, it's not the same old engine.

Cards. The way Sam Mustafa uses cards to introduce fog of war, to give players many, many decision points and to seamlessly allow historical events to happen, is simply brilliant. Although Bob Jones pioneered the use of them through Piquet admittedly before Prof Mustafa.

And let's not mention that tired and incorrect canard of "it's just a card game". The games are most certainly not. The cards are simply a mechanism that drive the game, just like order writing used to. Or random event tables. Or rolling dice to simulate musketry.

If using cards reduces all tabletop games to mere card games, I guess then we're all just playing yahtzee, because all use dice. (Except for the aforementioned diceless, apparently non random game. What did Clausewitz ever know about warfare anyway?)

I think games today take "soft" factors much more into account than games when I started playing in the early 90s, with more emphasis on morale, command and control, and training/unit quality.

Define "progress".

"do we think that rules produced today have progressed, or are they simply rehashes of what has gone before? "

Yes. Most people today use a word processor and a printer instead of a typewriter and mimeograph machine… ;-)

I think that what Chain of Command has done for our games is a big change. I know that people have been making scenarios and other kinds of setup for a long time, but in practice, we've pretty much set up on either side and started in. I'm not as attached to the particulars of moving and shooting rules for CoC, but the patrol phase and jump-off points I think are wonderful. I also love the command dice, but I don't know if they are as significant a change from other sequence-control systems, from dice to cards.

andy

I guess it depends on what you consider progress.

From my perspective, there certainly has been. Some mechanics that I like and find innovative include:

1. Song Of Blades and Heroes activation method, which includes a push-your-luck feature (roll 1-3 dice for activating a unit but your turn ends if you fail on 2+ deice)

2. Dice pool combat mechanisms similar to Command & Colors where you modify the # of dice rolled rather than the target number to roll on each die.

3. Figures mounted on stands rather than individually, and subsequently not counting individual casualties but giving each unit a number of hits it can take.

4. Merging casualties and morale into a single number. For example, when C&C units take hits, it actually represents declining morale rather than actual casualties. I like this more streamlined process over tracking casualties and morale separately.

Rules nowadays are definitely much more carefully and thoroughly written. When I look at some of the older rules, I'm just amazed that people ever found them sufficient. There are often gaping holes in the logic or massive ambiguities and room for totally contradictory interpretations. Simultaneous movement was a commonplace back then, and people just assumed, "Eh, they'll figure it out," with regard to multiple opposing units in varying terrain, in close proximity. Written orders were often in vogue, but there were no mechanisms to enforce them. Combats were resolved by things that looked like tax accountancy tables.

I think that some guys nostalgize that era as a time when all gamers were True Gentlemen and we didn't need such unpleasantness as tightly-written rules.

Other guys just love to play the Grumpy Old Curmudgeon card and say that nothing new is good, period, even while simultaneously priding themselves on not really paying attention to what's new, and therefore not knowing what they're talking about.

But in my experience, games nowadays are put together much more thoughtfully and carefully, and most gamers would never tolerate a new game that was written in that old style.

You may say that nothing of this is your liking, but it's new, it's not the same old engine.

Agree 101%.

If you think the games you play have not progressed since Featherstone, you're probably right.

If you think the games you play have progressed significantly since Featherstone, you're probably right.

I can think of recently published examples of both.

Progress suggests direction--and possibly that the direction is desirable.

If you break down what a set of rules does--movement, combat, the recording of losses and morale, command mechanisms--I think most of the tools were in the box by 1970 or a little later. (What are the earliest dates for card activation and casualty rosters anyone can come up with?)

What we've been doing since is making marginal changes--some of which may actually be no-question improvements--and fooling around with the combinations. If I could snatch up the Giants of the 1960's and show them the latest miniatures rules, I think they'd be pleased in some instances, but not often surprised. Mostly, we've already made the progress. Now we're adjusting to taste.

That's not a criticism. We fuss a lot about tank design, but really innovative tanks? The FT-17, the Panzer III and IV, arguably the T-34 and the Merkava. Nothing Henry Ford or Napoleon did was really innovative: it was how they put the existing pieces together that made the difference. I can now represent any level or period of warfare I wish in any scale I wish, and some of the current generation of rules writers are very good indeed.

Sometimes you don't need different tools--just good carpenters and mechanics.

Yes, games in general have progressed a lot. I know I haven't played a simple "line up and roll dice" game in quite a while (not that there's anything wrong with that type of game). I have no doubt Featherstone would be amazed and pleased with all the different innovations many, many game systems have introduced.

IF progress since Featherstone means:

1. More variety in game mechanics
2. More variety in game designs
3. More variety in game paraphernalia
4. Increased production quality in materials
5. Wider coverage of historical eras
6. Wider representation of SF and Fantasy games
7. Higher expectations

then I think the answer is obvious. I can only assume you don't remember what the hobby was like when Featherstone's rules were published or… it is beyond my efforts to comprehend. You can argue whether it is 'better' now than then, but isn't the question, is it?

I don't have to move 50 figure battalions one figure at a time. That sure is progress.

I Think that somwe rules have progressed massively. They achive much more accurate overall simulations with fewer rules. However that is not to everyones taste and some are very similar to the originals.

A better question is has, mainstream taste moved on much from Featherstone. The answere is proably not much. The main sellers are very simple, not very realistic but are much enjoyed by many players.

I started with Featherstone's original book War games.

So in answer to you question Yes and No.

The hobby certainly is glutted with rules sets of all types. The gold standard now is the coffee table book. They look lovely.

My impression and vague memory of the old style Featherstone era games is that armies were made up of the figures available, rather than researched from historical sources.

Also – the only dice around were 6 sided so 4-5-6 was a hit with various modifiers/saves etc. Nobody worried about morale or suppression. Command and control was non-existent.

Maybe I'm wrong and Don had more going on in his rules than I remember. I played his skirmish rules a lot and enjoyed them but there was no morale involved and the to hit numbers seemed pretty arbitrary.

Even some of the more fun skirmishy games that have come out recently have a lot more basis in history than Don's efforts.

He was a pioneer. Without him I doubt we would have had a hobby in the 1960s-70s.

I reckon its a bit like cars. The model T Ford had four wheels, a steering wheel, a set of gears and ran on petrol. It drove on the road, it didn't fly, it couldn't drive on water. Looking at it like that it's exactly the same as my current car, a Ford Mondeo, or Ford Fusion to give it its US name.

Exactly the same but completely different.

> Exactly the same but completely different.

Yer one o dem "simulationists" aint ya?

+1 for Weasel's comments

Mind you, I'm still waiting for that "perfect" set of Napoleonic rules :)

Charles Grant's "The wargame" was my starting point. Even at that time, the WGRG black powder rules alternated movement and shooting (A moves, B shoots) which was a revelation to me. So rules have moved on quickly from Don.

John

Of course rules have progressed = the players may not have ,but rules certainly .
Better printing ,more variety ,wider range of ideas ,etc .
Ok the proofreading likely hasn't but that is across all society .

If you choose to look at it in the largest possible way (it was a game ,its still a game)Then NO But that is a head in the sand approach .
Using that line of thinking has the medical field progressed since the 17th century ? No ,because the doctors tried to heal you then and they try now .

I started with Featherstone and Charles Grant. There are still to day examples of both types of game and they appeal to different types of player.

Games design from the 1960s started from the bottom up:
1 figure = a number of men, how could that figure move in a turn which measured about 6" for infantry, and design up for that. Charles Grant in "The Wargame" spends chapters justifying bath-tubbing. Don't get me wrong it worked.

Games designed later took a bottom down approach, "what can I as a general do" – I don't care what type of shot a battery fires at different ranges, that's the job of a junior officer, have I placed the battery in a position to do the most damage, if you have realistic frontages for infantry, cavalry and artillery that can be harder than it appears.

Both are valid, both are "playable" one appeals to me more.