""The figure is only a token!"" Topic

You still seem to be talking about two completely different topics? A conversation concerning your "gaming experience" is a totally different conversation as to what a figure represents.
Regards
Russ Dunaway

A conversation concerning your "gaming experience" is a totally different conversation as to what a figure represents.

Old G.

A totally different conversation? So your gaming experience has totally/absolutely no relationship to what a figure represents in a wargame?

What I meant is that if you abstract the representation of the figures too much (change the scale, use a pebble, use a piece of cardboard), you also change the nature of the game.

So, is anybody actually doing that? Can you show me examples of people using pebbles to represent Panther tanks?

This is one of the oldest straw man arguments in the hobby: "If you don't think about the figures the way I do, then you might as well just be playing chutes and ladders."

(For whatever reason, it's usually Chutes and Ladders in the argument, don't ask me why.)

And yet that applies to pretty much nobody. Nobody is using pebbles to represent Panther tanks. What they are doing is what I've been mentioning for three posts now, and which you've carefully avoided answering every time: they're proxying figures or using approximations, if they don't have the exactly correct tokens. And they're using fictional units because they're playing fictional or What-If scenarios.

So I'll ask for a fourth time:

Where, exactly, do you draw the line between somebody doing it "correctly" and somebody "lessening the game" by not using the right tokens? How exactly accurate does the token have to be, to meet your standards of correctness, so that we're not lessening the gaming experience?

Please, no straw man arguments about pebbles as Panthers, or dragons at Waterloo or whatever. Just define your assertion: "if you abstract the representation too much." How do you define "Too Much" ?

* If I'm using F-4 Wildcats to represent F-6 Hellcats?

* If I'm using Panzer IIIs to represent Panzer IVs?

* If I'm using generic Confederate infantry because I don't have the historically correct figures and units for this battle?

* If I proxy in a few Austrians because I don't have quite enough Russians for this Napoleonic battle?

Dear Garth in the Park

Your question is

"Where, exactly, do you draw the line between somebody doing it "correctly" and somebody "lessening the game" by not using the right tokens? How exactly accurate does the token have to be, to meet your standards of correctness, so that we're not lessening the gaming experience?"

The Answer is.

"The line is drawn where the individual playing the game (and that is the only opinion that counts)considers it sufficient enough to make the game work (that he can and wants to play in it)."

If the player he is with across he way finds it an abomination to play by using M-1 Ab98C/239/120/105 C tanks for M-1 Ab98C/239/120\105 C tanks, that's his problem.

A good friend of mine, an iron worker, during lunch played a game with a fellow worker using various sized bolts and rivets to represent men and used coin toss heads or tails to decide combat. Worked well for the situation.

It is up to the personal aesthetics of the gamer.

Otto, Phil and I hold exactly opposite positions in this discussion; I'm not sure how you can agree with us both, unless you've misunderstood one of us.

Phil says that the playing piece matters, and you can't use a pebble to represent a Panther tank, without it greatly diminishing the playing experience. And you wrote that he was "absolutely correct."

Now you say:

The line is drawn where the individual playing the game (and that is the only opinion that counts) considers it sufficient to make the game work… A good friend of mine, an iron worker, during lunch played a game with a fellow worker using various sized bolts and rivets to represent men and used coin toss heads or tails to decide combat. Worked well for the situation.

It is up to the personal aesthetics of the gamer.

So you're now saying that Phil is wrong and I'm right: That I can use a pebble to represent a Panther tank, without diminishing the game.

Nope, you're both right. For each of you. If in order to make your gaming universe work you require superdetailed pieces and cannot use a unit unless you have the exact representation of the historical unit down to the last detail then you are right, to you. If on the other hand your gaming universe works if you use a pebble, then you are right. As I said it's up to the personal esthetics.

You, and maybe Phil is too, confusing two qualities of the war game which are quite distinct and completely irrelevant to each other. There is what I will call for this discussion the "ART" of the hobby, and the other is the "GAME" of the hobby. The "ART" of the hobby is the standard to which your figures or tokens must be painted for you to use in a game. Your standard of this may be entirely different than others. You may hold that Player"A"'s Nappys are the ne-plus-ultra of representational realism, while "B"'s are barely useable, while "C"'s which are spray-paint4ed krylon blue and that is that, and are by the way Confederate infantry in the catalog, as unacceptable (or pebbles). It is all to what the player wishes.

On the other hand there is the "GAME" which is absolutelyunconncected with any sort of representation you put on the table top. The rules as I gave examples of exist and are attached to the representations by mere convention. These rules will function well no matter what they are (viz, a game of chess with a Staunton Chess set is just as workable and valid as with a beautifully detailed one of the Napoleonic wars with museum quality figures.

What Phil is talking about is that in his opinion the use of pebbles diminishes the game. He is right in that for him ART+GAME yields a quality of experience that iw diminished by the use of substandard tokens. This is correct as the TOTAL experience of the game is a sum. One could easily say "great game, bad figures" and for him that would be his taxonomy and evaluation.

On the other hand the "GAME" of a Board Game of a Napoleonic Battle would be just as valid if you took large hexes and large cardboard counters and mounted figures on them. Again, the game will work, but the value of aesthetics is dependent upon what the player wishes to behold in his experience. For some gamers, a "GAME" is not valid unless it is akin in complication to a command general staff exercise, or a graduate course, and the representation be damned.

You see the game goes down to personal aesthetics in both cases. I have no problem with Elf archers hitting a dragon on a 5 or a 6 with APDS arrows. It's merely a vehicle for determining decisions and as interchangeable as any. As for figures I don't put semi-finished or unpainted minis on the table top but that's my own choice.

I also work in Imagi-Nations and so the representations of the "tokens" that I make are at the same moment completely horrendous to a historically minded individual, and at the same moment, exactly, thoroughly, completely perfect representations of their historical counterpart.

It is all in the conventions and desires of the individuals as to what makes a good game. But the game is completely independent of its representations.

But the game is completely independent of its representations.

The game system, even yours, determines what is being represented, so hardly independent, but I agree the how is totally up to the gamer and can involve a lot of Art.

Nope McLaddie, once again you've got it wrong.

There is no such thing as a "game system." It's merely a succession of objects of verbal or somatic motions which establishes completely artificial criteria existing merely to be overcome and which are applied to make a decision which has nothing to do with the actual purported action it represents. The "GAME" as I call it is merely the same one we played in the sand box as kids, only it's less fun because as we grew older we lost the spirit of play.

The rigamarole of determining If a 12lb shot hits an object has nothing to do at all with the hitting of a wall by a real 12 lb shot, and in fact the kid in his sandbox hurling a tiny pebble is MORE akin to real life than any humbug in any set of Napoleonic rules.

As I demonstrated before, the interchangeability of rules (our elves with thermonuclear tipped arrows)proves the complete irrelevancy of the game representing anything. The game represents whatever you want it to. It has NO connection whatsoever with reality. It is all personal choice.

"System" conjoined with "Game" is a term pretty much with the same meaning as the conjunction of "snake" and "oil."

You see the game goes down to personal aesthetics in both cases.

Unless the rules, contrary to the assumptions in the OP, require something more from the miniatures than a footprint.

Two obvious examples are the 'Clix line of games and Heroscape. In my QILS game, the elevation rules (elevation rules are optional for abrupt elevation terrain for which you want complex interactions like climbing and falling or for flying (including long-term undersea swimming); you can represent more mundane elevation like hills and impassable cliffs with the regular terrain rules) likewise require 3D terrain and incorporate the physical attributes of figures.

When you move from rules to scenarios, having units interact with a-posteriori conditions generated during the game, using tokens instead of miniatures means either severely limiting the set of possible conditions or using "tokens" that are 3D, painted, and indicating massive amounts of detail about their pose.

Certainly, these games can be played by working around these rules. If I don't have a d6, I can take the ace through six of four suits (or one suit, but six cards is awkward to shuffle), shuffle, draw, and replace. But that's not the rules, that's a custom work around. Any rule (as many posts on this board give example) can be replaced by another of different form and attributes, but the same function.

There is a substantive difference between using a pink d6 for a red d6 and developing a card mechanic to use instead of a dice mechanic. For some games, you can substitute tokens for miniatures; for others, you have to compensate.

Nope McLaddie, once again you've got it wrong.

There is no such thing as a "game system." It's merely a succession of objects of verbal or somatic motions which establishes completely artificial criteria existing merely to be overcome and which are applied to make a decision which has nothing to do with the actual purported action it represents.

Otto:
Whaa?… You give me metaphysics? When I say "The game system, even yours, determines what is being represented," depending on the scale and game design, that figure represents one or 500 men, or one Princess Sophie. You don't have that figure go from one to one hundred and one Princess Sophies in the middle of the game--unless the game had rules for that magic, whether the criteria is artificial or not.

The "GAME" as I call it is merely the same one we played in the sand box as kids, only it's less fun because as we grew older we lost the spirit of play.

Even in the sandbox, that airfix ACW figure "represented" something particular in my 'game.' It wasn't both a Rebel and Union soldier, both an officer and Private Rex. I don't know about you, but I never lost the 'spirit of play'… as old as I am… I swam in it as a simulation game designer. Any game design is an effort to encourage that spirit in others.

"Nope Ottoarhome, once again you've got it wrong."

For some of us a "game" is an excersize in simulation. Validation is in part that the tactics used in the real world are at least in part represented in the simulation.

No you may play pure fantasy games but I and my ilk do not. To make the claims "I paraphrased yout own posts so they cannot be insulting as you used them. (22 jan 20 2017).

There can be no overaching usefull definition of a wargame save that a particular players find it fun.

Similarly the playing pieces may have required functions that are intrisic to the system being used and hence may need to have a 3D presence and tokenise a real world attriburrs. Alternates may be used as a work round but may not fuctions as efficently as the ine designed.

For fantasy games I can make no comment as physiscs as I understand it may not apply in such cases. Fissile mateial as we know it would not be compatible with an arrow in this reality.

Going back to the original post, Phil's concerns seem to be the way in which gamers choose the size of figures when the rules say "a 2-inch x 3-inch stand represents 100 soldiers" but does not specify figure size. One could choose to put twenty 6-mm figs on the stand or a single 54 mm figure.

Is there a right or wrong approach here? Would figures over a certain size lessen the game for you?

Personally, I'd have no objection to any of the above. I've never tried to tie vertical scale to the ground scale.

McLaddie, a gaming expierence, be it mine or yours, and my preferences as to what I enjoy has nothing whatsoever to do with a figurine being a token or not. Two entirely different conversations with a bit of a narcissistic bent to them it seems?
"what I personally prefer and what a figurine is?" Is two entirely different conversations.
I see every figure of any kind as a token, regardless of my oponion of the figure or the game.
Regards
Russ Dunaway

With due respect to everyone who made thoughtful contributions to this thread, I can see how the 16th century wars of religion came about. I'd hate to see anyone's individual viewpoint displace their love for the hobby as a whole.

How did I miss this one?

Tokens can be three dimensional or not, depending on what you will put up with to engage in the game.

I never liked board games with flat counters. It doesn't matter how aesthetic the rules are. Without miniature "tokens" the game is, well, flat. Lacking interest or connectivity for me.

Milton Bradley games always engaged my interest as a boy, because they came with little "tokens" to represent the playing pieces that were miniatures. You could play Broadsides or Dogfight just as well with flat illustrated top views of the ships or airplanes, and remove "masts" by taking a peg out of a flat counter. The airplanes would be even easier to "fake" with a flat counter top view; the only thing lacking is a stand to "elevate" the airplane. Big deal. But it is a big deal. Having a little model (which I subsequently painted too) is much more fun than a top view, which is why I never bothered to play Richthofen's War again after converting it to 1/72 scale models on three dimensional movement stands. And why I never collected Avalon Hill games but have collected a fair number of ancmed and fantasy miniatures………