"Inspiring the troops" Topic

One aspect of history I find that wargames are unable to replicate is the quality of leadership. We all like to think we are tactical geniuses, moving our units about with inch-prefect precision, and proving to ourselves how it 'should' have been done, but a huge part of a commander's role is not really portrayed in our games – that of being able to inspire, motivate and rally the troops.

In many of history's famous battles, the role of the leader was not really to come up with all manner of clever tactical ploys, but rather to provide that raw inspiration to their men, galvanising them to endure and fight on to victory.

Sure, we tip our hats to it by giving a certain commander a '+1' to rally or whatever, but that is applicable to which ever player is acting as that commander. Have any of the great minds of TMP thought of / experimented with ways to reward a player for demonstrating leadership / motivational skills?

I pondered the idea of giving the player the chance to make off-the-cuff rallying speeches to his (toy) soldiers – and depending on how inspiring this was – rewarding him accordingly. Of course, I dismissed the idea as being, well, rather silly but am still interested in this aspect of leadership and how to (even slightly) bring it into our games.

Well i like to make broom, broom noises when I move my tanks; bang and explosion noises for guns (and screams for the dying) :)

Not a huge leap to making speaches to embolden my men – though I have to think lead/plastic little men won`t be very responsive :)

In our games we give units commanded by better officers NCOs bonuses or better stats than those not so blessed……

In RPG's sure, in wargames not particularly.

Of course, the boundaries are blurred quite a bit.

I think some of the better Dark Ages rules do do this.Andrew Callans DAIS, Glutter of Ravens, Both are about making use of inspiration. In a numerical way rather than a more RPG way.

Less sure I see this in other periods rules.

It hardly exists--and while I cannot claim to provide a useful example at the moment of how Leadership might be introduced as a factor in a specific gaming context, Green Leader has raised what is likely the single greatest failing in war games, or at least those in which "realism" is considered crucial.

Not to open the debate on what is "realism," but if a player wants to march into that uncertain ground, he cannot make any meaningful progress without considering the degree to which Leadership (which has nothing to do with formal military training or theory) determines success. For this reply to his thread, I equate Leadership with the Character of the General/Leader/Man In Charge.

Dan Morgan at Hannah's Cowpens may have read about Hannibal at Cannae sometime before that action, but no one thinks he was working on some high falutin' plane of tactical genius when he led a militia rabble to one of the signal victories of the American Revolution.

His gift was not "military genius" as most people think of when speaking of an Alexander or Napoleon, but the much undervalued attribute of Character. He understood his men, knew their limitations, and yet he gave them a plan they could follow to win--and this while confined to the back of a wagon by his crippling arthritis.

That his qualitatively inferior force was even willing to try under their circumstances, much less with enough confidence to see it through, could stem from only one source, and that was the Character of the old man who couldn't even stand up to deliver his orders. They believed in HIM more than just his words or plans. This is the essence of Leadership, something impossible to learn from a book, or come by donning a dashing uniform and cocky feather in a hat.

History is replete with such examples, from the Ancients to the present, where the Character of a leader was the robust skeleton over which any intellectual flesh was draped.

To sample the AWI again, and where being a "tactical genius" is bellowed as the common measure of greatness, how many people think George Washington was a great tactician?

The man hardly won a battle--but he won the war. Pointing out the importance of the French Intervention, etc, is to get lost in the weeds, for Washington's greatest achievement was keeping the Continental Army alive, in the field, and ever ready to follow him to every battlefield he would stumble on--but never fall--at least until reinforcement could come. They stayed and obeyed because of WHO their General was, not because of his tactical prowess.

Those few men, the frozen remnants of an army repeatedly hammered through the Summer and Winter of 1776, were the very heart of the revolution. But who believes they pitifully huddled in rags around their fires, with empty stomachs, inspiring themselves to finish the revolution through stimulating debates on political and economic theory?

Marxist historians do, but anyone with half an appreciation of the human element understands these men did not cross the frozen Delaware (three times, you'll recall) thinking of the material rewards due them. They followed--many literally barefoot--because they believed in the Character of one man. His military record (up that point especially) be damned---George Washington would lead them to victory.

Indeed, all the greatest Generals have been those blessed with the ideal combination of Character and military expertise from training/experience. But if I had to choose between a man with the formal military education, and the man I would trust my life to, there wouldn't be a second's hesitation. This same choice has been made beyond numbering throughout history.

IF anyone can find an interesting way to reflect this in war games--whatever the subject or period--the hobby will have become even more appealing by a factor of ten.

TVAG

Virtual – Roll a D6 and on a 6, the bloke gets a +1 is probably as accurate as we'll ever get :-)

This aspect is seen many times in colonial warfare. No one in his right mind would accuse Paddy Gough of being a tactical genius, but he led from the front and basically never lost a battle, regardless of the butcher's bill, and won the Punjab for Britain.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Gough,_1st_Viscount_Gough

Depending on the psychology rules for a system, it might be possible to model this effect that way. WFB had a "Stubborn" rule that meant the unit never suffered morale modifiers, and was sometimes granted by a Hero. Another way would simply be to adjust the quality of the troops involved. Troop quality SHOULD take into account the leadership anyway, regardless of whether that leadership is personal inspiration, tactical brilliance or logistical genius (for that one try Sir Robert Napier's Abyssinian expedition!).

Smaller scope games should go into more detail about individual characteristics, larger scope ones can probably be more abstract.

Doesn't the 'warmaster' style of game bake this in with the command roll? Or any game with a command roll? Command is really a combination of rank and leadership…

Obviously a lot of games have mechanics to model the difference in leadership abilities between different leader "characters". I think this can often be pretty successful, though of course in a very simplified way. In general I am happy to read into a simple die roll and modifier mechanic and imagine the inspirational scene taking place (or conspicuously failing to take place) just as I imagine the fighting occurring when the figures are pushed together.

But as for the player himself being called on to adequately 'inspire' the other players or the guy running the game, I worry it's a bit like asking players to arm wrestle to see which side is stronger in a melee rather than rolling dice.

whitejamest

Yes – it seemed a bit … 'artificial' / 'forced / 'downright silly' when I gave it a second thought.

I wonder though, at officer training academies, would the delivery of orders (rather than just the quality / logic of those orders) be functioned into how well a TEWT went? I mean, if the DS thought: 'bloody hell – what a delivery – the men would certainly follow this fellow through the gates of hell' would they be more likely to allow a 'poor' plan to succeed?

Taking that thought into wargames, I pondered if an umpire could give morale benefits similarly, thus rewarding the player who is 'better' at it, rather than simply some arbitrary die modifier.

Though I guess – if an outsider ever witnessed our attempts at such amateur dramatics – it would make we wargamers look even more ridiculous than we do already!

In my classic ancient rules (The Greco-Roman era) Inspirational leadership is squarely on the shoulders of the gamer. Before the battle each general is required to make a two to five minute speech or address to his troops using the classical Greek or Roman idioms and tricks of rhetoric. Non Greco-Romans are required to make a suitably groveling self abasing prayer to his Gods. Barbarians are required to do the same highlighting their prowess, ancestry etc., The assembled gamers decide which was the best and that side gets essentially a modifier of form -3 to +3 for how good he did. As the game is mostly saving throws it's quite effective. The only problem with this is that most gamers stink on public speaking and it comes out a jumble of "Y'knows," "Likes" "Ummms" and "er-ahs." That's because they only read the battle reports and not the addresses to the troops. The guy who can carry it off well for three or four minutes will usually walk over the enemy. NOT because of the saving throw bonus, but the enemy is usually mentally cowed by his address.

Not to open the debate on what is "realism," but if a player wants to march into that uncertain ground, he cannot make any meaningful progress without considering the degree to which Leadership (which has nothing to do with formal military training or theory) determines success. For this reply to his thread, I equate Leadership with the Character of the General/Leader/Man In Charge.

It is sad that such a central wargame design issue/value in this discussion, like most on TMP, is debatable to the point of avoidance, discussing its game ramifications without ever defining it in design terms.

Tango01 posted a pertinent article dealing with leadership and inspiration on the ACW list:

link

Having taught leadership to teachers and adminstrators in both business and education, it has some very simple elements:

1. The leader acknowledges and addresses group needs. You can see military leaders like Napoleon, Lee and others doing this.

2. The leader acknowledges and addresses group aspirations, desires for accomplishment. [Soldiers, we will be entering a rich country for the taking. paraphrased, Napoleon 1796]

3. The leader synthesizes the various needs and aspirations int a concrete goal that promises to satisfy them all. [above, the Italian army was starving in 1796]

4. The leader commits to that goal him or herself. [He goes with them and leads from the front. [Napoleon at Arcola]

General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked once how he identified good leaders. He said he asks each battalion or company commander to tell him about the officer's unit.

He will generally get one of two responses:

1.The officer will describe the qualities of the unit, its readiness for combat, its general quality in comparison to the expected norm, what it can accomplish.

2. The officer will describe the qualities, aspirations of individual members and the parts they play in making the unit work.

He said the second answer is what he looks for in a leader.

Well, I don't know if this counts, but in my Extravaganza Pirate Games, I have the players recount their "Tales of Valor, Tales of Woe" at the end of the game and let the players decide who had the most entertaining rendition – and that person gets a prize for being most characterful. Heck, my last winner has gone on to minor 'stardom' in TV land – and he was all of 8 years old when he played in my game (I think he's 12 now).

Hmm, I think I will add this to my Robin Hood, Musketeers, and Viking games – fitting for all of them.

I agree that many rules have abstract ways of representing the leadership quality and that's more than enough for me.

Extravaganza Game = a game large enough to require several game masters under the direction of a master game master.

Mechanics. How do you represent bad leadership, for a unit or a force? Egyptian armies, Mexican armies in the MAW, Sepoy Rebellion armies, etc.

Is it mostly reflected by the rout, rally, stand or fail to charge mechanics? Is it incorporated in the fighting tables of the unit (bad Shooting and melee)?

I can see specific modifiers for a army leader, but mostly for unit officers, its general, across the board (British regular officers are +1 melee, and have a positive effect on rallying and such, for example).

maybe have unit leaders who have negative modifiers?

Smokey Roan

I think you might have missed the point. The idea is not to give modifiers to rolls (which would be applicable whoever the player commanding those units was), but to reward the PLAYER who can somehow demonstrate 'leadership' or 'inspirational' skills.

Ottoathome is describing pretty much the sort of thing I was thinking of.

A large part of leadership happens, is built into the unit performance before the battle. [i.e. the speech given by the leader before the battle, regardless of how good it is, will be colored or even negated by what experiences the troops had of the leader before hand] But the question was specifically about "inspiring the troops" on the battlefield which suggests what actions the leader can take at the moment, which are colored by how effective a leader they were BEFORE the battle.

Dear Green Leader

AHH!!! Another person who understands that it's more than a drop of the cube. I've done tis for years and encouraged it for decades. Obviously it requires a bit of role playing , but not as they have in Fantasy games where your role playing is merely another bucket of dice and some carcane rules which you manipulate to get benefits. The rewards have to come from the within the player themselves and what they do WITHOUT the prompting of the rules. That is, they do it because that is the leadership style the player wants to adopt sui-generis and for no other reason than it reinforces is persona.

This becomes quite complex when you get to rewarding failure. For example in one campaign the leader personality of the king of one of the countries, chosen by him was "Man of Sorrows. That is, a person for whom NOTHING ever went right. Where disaster seemed to stalk him at every turn, and the player himself was contriving the disasters, taking the obviously WRONG course at every turn both in the campaign and on the battlefield. His son led a revolt against him, his queen cuckolded him all the time, the church rebelled against his attempts to ensure religious peace, and so forth. It was difficult to umpire and something just didn't seem right about saying, "because you have done so well at screwing up, I grant you a -1 to all the values of your troops in battle.

My suggestion is not to interfere with a player's ability to command his troops – (or on the flip side, to impede a player from failing to make those crucial decisions in-game that another player might make in contrast).

I think it was a comment written in the Warning Order years ago, or another gaming mag that has always stuck with me, which questioned the need for command mechanics at all, or leadership bonuses, unit activation rolls, etc., when if left to the participants themselves, there will always be plenty of opportunities in a game for players to exhibit their own command skills, personality traits, or temerity vs. timidity.

Artificial activation mechanics (or leader bonuses) which effect the roll of the dice, have nothing to do with making actual command decisions – so why not leave this to the players themselves – and then see who actually exhibits good leadership skills in the game setting! (?)

ANY attempts to control, reduce or enhance a player's ability to 'command' based on personality or the actual leader in a historical wargame always skews the history badly. You are basically forcing the player to:

1. Be someone they aren't. I am not Napoleon nor Mack.

2. Forcing 'historical' decisions or worse skewing the decision-making process in ahistorical ways. As McClellan at Antietam I know I can't activate all my Corps, so my tactics revolve around that fact, something that was no actual restraint on McClellan other than his own personality.

3.To play not themselves or a programmed IA, but 'kind of' both where neither works well.

4. Repeat history. IF Napoleon is commanding against Hohenlohe at Jena or playing Frederick William at Auerstadt, who is going to win?

Obviously, some armies march onto the field with benefits from leadership and staff other armies don't. Those are the tools of the leader at the time of the battle. That can be represented without forcing the player to be someone else with decisions and abilities neither historical nor his.

Just as obviously, some battles would never have occurred or been anything like a 'fair fight' without the personalities of the opposing leaders [Yeah, you McCellan and Bragg], but that is not a particular good reason to then restrict the player's decisions in an attempt to make them act like McClellan or Bragg to there is a fair game.

Ottoathome

I think we could have a very interesting discussion about this over a bottle of Scotch. I am a big believer in bringing in 'role playing' type things into wargames – indeed, I would look with an open mind at anything that gets us away from charts, rolling dice, inch-perfect movement, commands which are seemingly delivered by telepathy and the ability to know the exact position and strength of every unit on the table.

Dear Green Leader

I would like that very much, but I'll stick to wine.

"The king doeth wake tonight, and takes his rouse, keeps wassail and to the swaggering upswing reels, he drinks his draughts of Rhenish down."

We seem to have similar ideas and I too have grown tired of charts and dice and all the nittery-nattery kibble that is out there.

My e-mail is sigurd@eclipse.net if you send me a message there we can discuss things. I've made about 18 sets of rules and all of them try and get away from the mete drop of the cube. I'd suggest talking about it here, but I've tried that before and it always ends in disaster one the Vamps latch on to it.

One of the thins that I feel must be part of any role playing for example is its almost complete divorcement from the nuts and bolts of the game. Players have to not be in this endless scrounging for +1's. that's not real role playing.

For McLaddies example of McClellan I have a card in the 144 card event deck that is part of the 18th century game called "The McClellan card." It simply pronounces that in the campaign at a table top battle, regardless of the situation one player or the other has determined that he has lost the game and it is over. This card can be set aside by the umpire in a stand alone game, but in a campaign it is different. But that's only a minor example.

For example of something more to my taste is my game of "Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna: Not just another Opera by Suppe." It is a game of espionage, derring do, shopping, wining, dining, womanizing, seduction and intrigue set in old Vienna of the 1880's. The players all are naval attache's sent to Vienna because having committed various sundry grand mal disasters from their homelands, it is reasoned they are far from the sea and unlikely to be able to repeat them.

Into Vienna at this come 12 of the most gorgeous, beautiful, RICH, and well connected women in the world. You are ordered by your foreign service to contact, wine, dine, romance, entertain, and hopefully seduce them and convince them to use their influence to support your country's aims.

However, each player is also member of a world-wide secret Society which aims to take over the world and they want you to romance one (or more if you have the stamina) of the woman to align with THEIR aims, which may not be the same as your country wishes. One of these is a new and extremely powerful secret Society, "The Minions of Cleopatra" and if you find her and ummm… impress her, then you win the game. The game is not played on a real map of Vienna but a stylized board and the tokens are 10" high models of paper dolls from a book of Victorian fashions.

How you do this is simple. You go round to the various locations and are allowed to look at the three piles of event cards in each. There are 25 locations. Some of these are restaurants, some are Operas and theaters, beer gardens, and museums, art galleries and casinos. Here you can search through the "Rumor and Innuendo" deck which will give you information (most of it completely false) about the identity of each woman and her secret society, her likes, dislikes etc. About 10% of this is true 20& if false. There's about 10 cards in each locations rumor and innuendo deck.

Each location also has an Information deck, which is the inverse, 90% true, 10% false. But here there is a quiz on the face of the card which asks you a question, which if you wish to read the back you must answer. For example, it might ask you "What is Franz von Suppe's full name. If you got this card, immediately you would respond with "Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Demelli, Cavaliere Suppé"

If you did not know this you could propose a question of your own. For example "I was at the Belvidere Palace the other day and I saw the most astounding painting by Gerome, "Truth Rising from her Well. It was gripping, beautiful and horrifying blah blah blah" And depending on how good a line of palaver you put out the umpire might let you look at the other side where you would learn that Donna Diana is besotted with all things American. This would mean of course that you would hustle off to the Beer garden where you happened to know that tickets to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show were for sale."
To gamers who would come out with "At what battle did…." I cut them off and say . "Oh, I neglected to mention, you cannot talk about war or military history, one does not speak of such unpleasantness to the ladies. I would then, in an exaggerated southern accent quote Scarlett O'Hara "Oh wah Mistuh Butlah… all this walk of Waaa is so deperessin' " You can ask any question about art, culture, music, drama, literature, or the like which would be popular in late 19th century Vienna.

If you don't know much about that, not to worry, not to worry, you are allowed to make up something on your own on the spur of the moment as a question and like the example of the painting by Gerome or of a play, lead a little disquisition on it. For example "I saw Frantisek Ferbeshers light opera "The Battered Bride" at the Statstheater , it was quite moving in spots and one certainly can have sympathy with the story but the role of Maltitzia was entirely miscast as a big beefy Mezzo and the it clearly calles for a sprightly Soubrette. As for Pirogi, his voice was clearly off and it sounded like he was singing through a glass of port."

The point being that espionage and such things as seduction and social events were dependent on small talk, conversation, and a gift of being pleasant. So it doesn't matter if you don't really know, so long as you can talk a good line you can gain the entre to get information.

If you can't even do this, not to worry, not to worry, there is a third save. All you have to do is stand on a chair and sing us a song. That song has to be something contemporary in the 1ith century. No MacArthur Park, of I wanna Hold your hand, but something from Gilbert and Sullivan or Italiani I Algieri or the like. We'll even take popular sing-songs like Man on the flying trapeze. But you have to sing it so that they can hear you four or five tables away and you have to sing the words clearly, no mumbling.

The point of this is that when you know what the woman who has become the object of your intentions likes and what her opinons are, you can arrange the perfect "date" which is three gifts, three activities, and three dines , one each of the morning , Noon, and Night, in Vienna . The more you have the better odds you have of "impressing" her. Note that there are 8 players, but 15 women. 1 of the women is of course Cleopatra, twelve are the other powerful women, and two are frauds.
There are other clues on the figures of the women themselves, their names like "The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, Fidelia DeLeigh, Donna Diana, and so forth.

Now.. EVEN if you haven't been successful in your search for events, gifts, and dines, and haven't been able to secure an impressive pile, there is a phase where you can go ahead and put on a good face and attempt to impress the woman of your choice with what you have and how good a front (or grovel) you put on may get you the object of your desires anway.

The point is that players do well who get into the game and keep plugging.

There are no dice, nothing to roll, no charts, all the rules are printed on the locations. The aim is to throw the player back on his own resources and his sprit of engagement, gift of gab, and sociability.

Often, we put player characters in command of a unit. When morale fails, the character calls on his Charisma rating for a "saving" test. Obviously the high ratings have a high probability of preventing failed morale. Add in an "inspire" skill and its bonuses, and the test on Charisma can go even higher. If a unit is basically led so well that it almost never fails morale, you can count on it. Using it well in a game, however, is another matter. And there is always "who rolls better combat dice" as the ultimate factor. No great leader can get any victory out of his men if the enemy outfights them.

There are no dice, nothing to roll, no charts, all the rules are printed on the locations. The aim is to throw the player back on his own resources and his spirit of engagement, gift of gab, and sociability.

I can appreciate that and certainly enjoy role-playing games and such game elements, but how does the above jibe with:

I have a card in the 144 card event deck that is part of the 18th century game called "The McClellan card." It simply pronounces that in the campaign at a table top battle, regardless of the situation one player or the other has determined that he has lost the game and it is over.

Cards are terrific game tools, but they simply replace dice as the chance element and the 'charts' are now on the cards with any rules. That doesn't get rid of those elements, it is simply providing them in a different way with different tools.

I certainly enjoy games that 'throw the player back on his own resources', though what resources are targeted by the game can vary.

You are talking about two different games.

The function of dice and the function of cards are completely and subtly different. This is complicated by the method of draw (top card, bottom card, fan and pick) Dice is different in that the aim of dice in various configurations is to NOT have any result. That is the results are attenuated by successive die rolls. While the odds of any one number on a face coming up are 1/n where n is the number of faces over successive die rolls the likelihood of any specific result is (assuming for the sake of argument a six sided die) is 1/6/6/6/6/6/6/6/… n The aim of the cards is the event. Regardless of the size of the deck the result is still 1/n where n is the number of cards. Thus 1/144 is an enormously greater likelihood than 1/6/6/6/6/6 … Players generally love successive die rolls as it means little bad will every happen to them. They don't like cards because even that 1/144 is a chance they can get creamed. Most of the verbage in rules is an attempt to make the enemy subject to more brutally adverse rules while preserving yourself from them. Illogical, but that's what it is.

As I've said before in my examples of the banality of die rolling, how many times have you seen rules like this.

Bowmen firing on heavy cavalry hit with a 6, but if you have English longbowmen you hit with a 5 or a 6.

Bowmen firing on a dragon hit with a 6 but Elvish longbowmen hit with a 5 or a 6.

Anti Tank guns firing on a tank hit with a 6 but if you have an 88 you hit with a five or a six

Guns firing high explosive hit a tank with a 6 but if you have an Armor piercing shell you hit with a five or a six.

One might as well make a rule that Elvish bowmen firing on a tiger tank with armor piercing discharging sabot arrows hit with a 5 or a six.

There is nothing at all the slightest bit "realistic" about this simply a slightly different means of hitting which can be used from 10,000 BC to 10,000 AD. The rules are merely an iteration of procedure and completely irrelevant to the real difficulty to accomplishing this in real life, but are quite soothing to war gamer egos who feel they have actually done something by picking up a cube and dropping it.

Throwing the gamer back on his own resources means his own personal preparation and a means of decision making based on something other than mere chance. The other difference is that dice create the situation on the table top. The cards, as I have created them impose an unforeseen event upon the situation on the table top pretty much as a meteorite crashing into the earth does. It is an unexpected event you must deal with. Gamers don't like that sort of thing. They prefer a series of die rolls that give them the maximum chance to avoid anything untoward.

On the other hand, that depends on the game. In the game "Morning Noon and Night in Vienna" The object of the game is quite different. The human activity modeled is not combat or even for that matter competition. What you missed in the write up are the following salient facts.

1. There are a maximum of 8 players in the game.

2. There are FIFTEEN women in the game. One of them is Cleopatra, which is like the bonus brass ring at the amusement park, and there are two "fakes" who are not rich or connected or powerful, and 12 other women who are.

3. There is NO definition of winning the game in any graded criteria, so if you "impress" one of the women they are pretty interchangeable. Consider it from you standpoint of career. You are a blundering naval attache eeking out a life in disfavor far from the sea and advancement. If you impress this woman or that is no matter (unless of course you have fixated your attention on an imposter) you can impress her, marry her, and live the life of riley ever after and never have to work a day in your life from then on. So that means that if everyone picks a different woman, all can win. (Though no one ever makes that connection in the times I have given the game). Granted if you fasten your affections on Cleopatra you kind of get "bragging rights" but that really means nothing. Indeed, even if you are particularly awful at trying to arrange your day of dates with your intended you can still win because she just might take a shine to you! Who knows-- "LaDonna Mobile" as the song goes and we have around us legions of examples of the most wonderful women choosing their mates from the most unpromising material.

The point of the game is not in the winning, it's in the playing, and here the gamer is thrown back on his own resources (knowledge of culture, art, humanities, literature, social skills, gift of gab and so forth which most gamers are almost bereft of.

All of the games I design have the dimension of personal involvement. It's the level in which the player "enters" the game and goes from "player to commander." Let's go back to the game with the cards, the "Oh God! Anything but a six!" style. Here the key is that in all of them the player "enters" the game as a commander of an army or the wing (left, right, center) of one. Thus the challenges and questions and situations you are tasked with facing is a question on that level. You neither give a hoot about the facing or formation of the units under your command, only how well the unit can participate in your plan and its own defence.

What would work quite well then would simply be the old Avalon Hill Game Combat results table in the 1 to 1 column where say two infantry regiments are lined up across from each other.

Roll the die.

1- The defending unit across the way is eliminated.
2- Both your unit and the defending unit are eliminated.
3- The defender across the way moves back two moves.
4- Your unit moves back two moves.
5- Your unit is eliminated.
6= Your unit is eliminated.

The above would be quite adequate.

You can make up whatever colorful back story you wish to each of these results but one tall tale is as good as another. All you care abut from the game terms is what happened to the two units in collision.

Each of the others has an over-arching superstructure which informs the game. For example, in "Honey I sacrificed the Kids" the overarching superstructure is that of a world, world view, and culture in which we are faced with the utter dreadfulness of actually doing that to gain the favor of the Gods, but at the same time modify it by making the strategies of the game all those absolutely silly plots we've seen in the sword and sandal epics. where the enemy is forced off a high cliff, or driven over disguised sluices with oil and tar, or rolling pitch soaked logs down on the enemy. Here the player is thrown back on his own resources of invention and improvisation.

In another example, from "The Shattered Century" the rules are designed in such a way as to reflect the idea of continuous front from WWI and players who attempt "blitzkried" are usually flattened in short order. People didn't think that way back then, at least not at the level the player enters the game, which is as a general whose formative experiences were in the trenches. Remember it's an army level game so there's none of this folderol of anarchists and rules for a Mark III B w2823fdl@#$ and a clean different one for a Mark III B w2823fdl@#-S. You get light tank, medium tank, heavy tank and that's it.

If you feel the need to incorporate RP elements in your games, by all means.

Many are not interested [nor see the need] to take on a personage other than the one we're actually bringing to the table.

Most of us are also just as happy to avoid some player's personality "acting-out" during a game, and as a result bringing the whole experience to an unpleasant end.

The function of dice and the function of cards are completely and subtly different. This is complicated by the method of draw (top card, bottom card, fan and pick) Dice is different in that the aim of dice in various configurations is to NOT have any result. That is the results are attenuated by successive die rolls.

Otto:
The chance element involved in dice and cards are the same in that they are the mechanism for providing chance outcomes. Not 'completely different', though that all depends on how both are used. Cards CAN be different in any number of ways, but if used to inject random outcomes in the game, they serve the same purpose as dice…in that way.

As I've said before in my examples of the banality of die rolling, how many times have you seen rules like this.

I think you are confusing the tool with its use. There certainly are very conventional, over-used uses in games for dice, very banal. You provide good examples. That said, it isn't dice than makes the processes you outline banal, but those particular game processes.

Something I have toyed with is the issuing of orders and the chance of confusion therein.
One might give the player a limited number of words he can write or a limited number of seconds to write it (thereby in some tiny way replicating the limited time available to commanders, who in the heat of battle could not send long, detailed commands detailing every possible option) and then the umpire decides if the sub-commander has sufficient detail to work on, or if he will request confirmation (thus wasting time) or perhaps do the wrong thing.

The umpire might judge an order written by a player to his artillery commander to 'bombard the big hill to your front' as clear enough if there is only one 'big hill' there. If there are a couple of options, however, then less so. Also, this order does not tell the sub-commander to stop at any point, thus introducing the chance of blue-on-blue.

Such a method would reward players who have a simple, well-thought out plan and who have the ability to convey this in simple, easy-to-understand terms – using the features on the battlefield so to do ('2nd Brigade will advance to the fenceline to their front and go firm there'), rather than in 'gamey terms' like: '2nd Brigade will advance 15.4 inches'.

Indeed, I think the issue of time should be given much more importance in wargaming than it is: players should not get to sit there and ponder and try to work out every possible alternative – there should, in my opinion, be some sort of time constraint on turns, and games should be played in 'real time' as much as possible. Again, this will reward an intelligent, decisive player with a simple plan, rather than the chap who just happens to roll the dice better.

GreenLeader,

What exactly would you want to achieve by rewarding players' inspiring speeches? As a player, I'm not sure I'd want to turn up to a game expecting it to be a conventional test of one's skill at pushing toy soldiers around, only to find that it was an improv drama session. (There are some very good reasons for the "+1 for being Napoleon" approach, but I shan't rehearse them here.)

Having got my scepticism out of the way, here's some more constructive comment. ;-)

I have seen or heard of games for warfare in which such oratorical skills were a vital element. In particular I think of a convention game of a Samurai battle in which the players had to don headbands, put their leader figures out front, and then challenge and insult each other. The players who did best at this got some bonuses of some kind in the ensuing combat. I think I have seen similar done for Greek hoplite warfare, with the addition of sacrifices and auguries; maybe Dark Ages as well (Vikings etc). These seem to me to be good contexts for making this an important phase of the game, where it is a recognised standard feature.

In more modern, less ritualised warfare, it's more difficult. I'd suggest you look at matrix games.
link
These offer a nice halfway house between formal rules structure and freeform player creativity, and give the referee plenty of leeway for rewarding unquantifiable player talent with die roll modifiers. You could make a point of stressing the value of inspirational leadership when you brief the players; smart ones will pick up on your cue and respond suitably.

Hope you find this suggestion inspiring. :-)

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
link
bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk

Dear Green Leader

Yes I mostly agree. I know that one of the best pieces of equipment I ever bought was a one minute timer. I bought it as a lark, but I used it one battle and I was astounded how much it sped up the game. I introduced it one session and gave the players three minutes to actually move their troops. They had all the time in the world they wanted to talk about what they wanted to do and the strategy of it, but once they announced they were ready to move they had three minutes to complete the actual movement of the troops. If at the end of the three minutes they tried to move another unit, the unit was removed from the field. I was amazed, as I said as to how it speeded the game up. It was by at least a factor of 3, that is it took one third less time to actually move the troops.

Now this is not a hard and fast rule for everyone. In the game I am using the maximum number of stands a player can have in his army is 31. The stands are big, 4.5" deep and 8" wide with 36 30mm figures on them, and thus there are a lot of troops on the field, but with that maximum of units on one side it makes the movement a lot easier. However there are still times when players run out of time. But at least there is no shilly-shallying. I have actually had to remove only about one or two units for breaking the rule in the two dozen or so games I have had using this timere. It certainly puts a premium of decision making.

Your statement on orders is correct, though I must say long ago I abandoned written orders or vey "verbal orders" as too problematic. I was particularly good at writing these and had success with them though I did have one order I rworte which told a sub-commander to "move the cavalry to the left of the gun on the hill, and not remembering, that there were two hills each with a gun on them and of course my subordinate chose the wrong hill. But that is quite realistic. My reason for abandoning them was it simply took too long and slowed the game down too much, and-- yes-- I had people who attempted to write a doctoral thesis. but I gave up orders primarily because I realized that in war very few things occur simultaneously. But that's another discussion.

The other question is how time is handled and more improtant the "theory" of time in a game. For example in my battle games (that is tactical table top actions) a turn is roughly an hour. A lot can happen in an hour. The turn also is taken to represent a piece of tome that is not necessarily contiguous. The action engendered on the table top does not last say from 5:001 to 05:600, It is assumed that within that hour troops in contact can be firing or meleeing in short sharp conflicts of short duration, less than a minute, to longeurs of standing around doing nothing in particular even if the enemy is in close proximity. As for troops not in immediate contact they are usually standing around not doing anything in particular. Within this range of particular contact (8") one side or the other can charge, retire, reform, fire or do all sorts of different things which come under the rubric of "combat." and the game does not flow second by second. This includes all sorts of other things as well with staff officers scurrying around sergeants pushing men back into line, none of which need concern us. The key is not time but what one wishes to do within that time. Thus the advantage is with the player who has initiative. If you DO NOT have initiative it is assume you can't really do anything impressive and you are largely sitting in place. Thus a player without initiative can move all his cavalry two measures (16") and everything else 1 measure. A player with initative can move his troops as far as his leedle ole' heart desires, so long as you don't enter difficult terrain or come within 1 measure of an enemy unit. This is shocking to most gmers used to idly-piddly moves, but it makes sense. For example, What is the general length of the famous "fishhook" of the Union line at Gettysburg- 3.5 miles. What is the distance a man can cover at a good walk in one hour -- 3.5 miles. That means in an hour, if the unit doesn't hit rough terrain, or have to deploy because it comes in close proximity to an enemy unit, it could march the entire line in one turn. It's true, I've done it and I'm by not means an in-shape walker or hiker. But most gamers like the "iddly-piddly" because it protects them from danger and you have these long boring "do-se-does" of units who can react to the movements of enemy units miles away.

But you are perceptive in seeing that the question of time is central to the game or at least the thinking of movement, fire and reaction within this dimension of time.

As for ChrisBBB2, if you read all of the classical texts on warfare, Heroditus, Thucydides, Dio Cassius, Caesar, Livy and Tacitus, all of these authors devoted large amounts of space and either parchment or papyrus to recording what these leaders said so it must have been important otherwise they wouldn't have wasted the space. Besides, these addresses were part of the culture of the combatants and they expected their leaders to voice them.

Napoleons famous addresses which began "Soldiers…." is no less a part of Napoleonic warfare than the folderol of tactics and rules that most gamers stuff their minds with, and in fact probably FAR more instrumental to the success of Napoleon than his finesse with column line or square.

But to return, Green Leader, what I find a bit more important than time, and less esoteric is what I refer to as "the gaze." That is, what does the player see, not only on the table top with toy soldiers on it, but "sees in his mind" as he stands there as the leader of the side. What I mean is not only his ocular senses, but the ebb and flow of attention that he applies to the game with regard to what questions and decisions he must handle and how they flow from one to the other, or arise chaotically out of nowhere. For example, what does he do when his subordinate has chosen the wrong hill with the gun on it, or how does he know he is "winning" (or not) in the game and what the drift of his mindset is. This is most evident in the course of the game. In "Oh God! Anything but a six" there are wide and wild swings of fortune and many players, especially newbies, used to most rules, assume that once they have had a setback or lost a critical die roll they are doomed. Then in the next phase they see the situation radically reversed, and they begin to understand that it's not the typical "roll a die to roll a die to roll a die to roll a die, to get a result." The game was designed for swift movement and the piling up of conditions and results. The event deck also imposes time limits. For example there is a card called "Portrait Opportunity." The player is allowed to, within the space of a minute, to come up with a witty bon-mot, or an extravagant piece of derring do or heroism, or extreme rashness which will go down in the history books and give him a victory point. It has to be original too, you can't steal the line form Wellington to Uxbridge when Uxbridge asks Wellington what his plan is for the battle and Wellington answers "Why to beat the French, to be sure."

One thing besides that always befuddles me is how poorly players construct Victory conditions for the game. it's almost an afterthought and rarely clearly definable (and hence almost always unobtainable. In my games I made a purely abstract system of points. Players win the game on Victory points.

One source of victory points is "strategic points" which are six small tokens and each side can distribute three of them wherever they wish on the field. These can be placed anywhere, even on an opponents side. If you have a unit on these at the end of the game you get one victory point.

Another is "Vital units" which are the "camp" "headquarters, and line of retreat. These again can be distributed anywhere but only on a players own edge or in a town or on a road within three measures of their own edge. If you have a unit on these at the end of the game you get one victory point.

Another is the Critical loos victory points." If you eliminate an enemy unit in the game you roll a die and if you get a 1 or a 2, you get one of these cards which you keep on your person and they count as one Victory point Each. There are eight of these and they cannot be lost once gained.

Another is the "Mission Victory cards" which are not always in play, but are given by the umpire if the player accomplishes something like "holds this bridge till turn four" or gets to this promontory by turn 3 etc. Each one gives one victory point and unlike the Strategic point or vital units can be taken and retaken.

Finally there are the special opportunities through the event deck like the "Portrait Opportunity" above or the MacClellan card.

Thus the determination of Victory is a clear abstract calculation. The person with the most victory points wins. You subtract the smaller total from the larger and the difference is the degree of victory. In my campaign game (Functionaries, Munchkins, and Flunkes) this superiority is translated to Strategic Victory points and go towards calculating who wins the campaign. Note that victory points gained through the Event Deck or the campaign cards not only determine victory in the battle but often count as strategic Victory points as well.

I think this is the most underdeveloped parts of most games, almost as little considered as time.

Otto, mate, I never said inspirational leadership wasn't important. But I don't pretend to it myself, and I don't really want to play games where my efforts at it are a crucial part, as opposed to my ability to make and implement sound tactical plans based on tactical factors rather than oratorical ones.

GreenLeader: what do your players want and expect? We can agree that time pressure is important in war. The question is what you want your players to get out of being put under time pressure. If a player finds a particular tactical situation particularly challenging and fascinating, is it better for him and for the game to make a rushed decision as the seconds tick away, or to enjoy mulling over his options, think them all through, and make a considered decision? I'm sure the answer is "it depends", but it does matter. If you want to inflict something unusual on your players, such as bonuses or penalties for oratory, or time limits on their decision-making and moves, make sure you explain up front what you're trying to achieve and get their buy-in.

I say that because I have myself inflicted unusual, gimmicky stuff on players in the past, things that amused me and explored different angles, but that annoyed the players because it wasn't what they wanted. I'm not saying the angles you're exploring aren't interesting and important – they are! – but your players' interests need to come first.

Hope this helps.

Chris

As for ChrisBBB2, if you read all of the classical texts on warfare, Heroditus, Thucydides, Dio Cassius, Caesar, Livy and Tacitus, all of these authors devoted large amounts of space and either parchment or papyrus to recording what these leaders said so it must have been important otherwise they wouldn't have wasted the space. Besides, these addresses were part of the culture of the combatants and they expected their leaders to voice them.

Considering when those gents wrote and why, most of those rousing speeches certainly were important for the literary drama and such, but they probably weren't made to the troops years before. Alexander is going to make a speech and be heard by 50,000 men on the dusty plains of Gaugamela? Or Caesar's speech to the thousands of defenders of Alesia? Napoleon wrote "Soldiers, We will march into…" he didn't say it or sing it. He spent a good portion of the night of December 1 traveling from campfire to campfire and the 'rousing speeches' were simply talking to the men. He seemed to have a powerful memory for soldier's names and accomplishments. Just being in the vicinity was enough to inspire the men.

Whatever 'inspiration' is generated by the commanders on the table top, through roll play or die rolls, in the end, the inspiring acts are meant to have an effect on combat and morale… so that is where it will apply. Players can grade each other on rousing speeches [which sounds like fun] but in the end that gets them a +1 in combat?

Yaquinto Games years ago did a tactical Civil War board game where leaders could make 'Grand Gestures' which could have a variety of outcomes, from nothing to actually discouraging the troops as well as inspiring them. And of course, the effort to 'lead from the front' could be fatal. I took that and expanded it to apply to several table top games including On to Richmond and F&F. The results also depended on the leadership ability of the commander. A poor leader had less hope of inspiring the troops and more in discouraging them. They could even get a morale boost if a really poor leader had his spooked horse carry him away towards the enemy line or really discourage the troops by "a round of canister appliqueing the poltroon across to the front line." We had a lot of fun with it.

Inspiring the troops is either before the battle or during it. Which do you want to represent. The ancient miniatures game "Hoplomachia" has an interesting take on 'inspiring the troops' where there are several things you can do to raise the morale of hoplites going into battle.

link

ChrisBBB2

If you re-read my post, you will see that – though I briefly pondered the idea – I dismissed the notion of making players make rousing speeches as being a bit silly: so I am not trying to convince anyone it is a good idea, only wondering if anyone has tried it, or has any rather better ideas.

In terms of time constraints: I think that it adds a teeny-tiny bit of realism to the game – a commander in real life does not always have the time to sit and mull over every possible option, so why should a wargamer? 'He who hesitates is lost' afterall. I have no doubt it will annoy a certain type of player, but equally I find it intensely annoying to sit there waiting as some bloke takes an hour to move a few units. And don't get me started on those who 'pre-measure' every possible option, flapping tape measures around all afternoon.

Otto

Good point on victory points. In my Boer War battles, I make any battle in which a British battalion routs off the field (or surrenders) an instant 'Major Defeat' for the British player(s), no matter what else they might have achieved. This, I think, more accurately reflects the feeling of the period, and has the effect of making the players treat their battalions with a lot more care: if a given battalion attack stalls and the men are left there, pinned and taking losses, the British players have to drop pretty much everything else and extract the battalion, for if it breaks and routs, they lose.

Without this in place, too many players will continue with what they are doing and simply ignore the stalled / suffering battalion and not give a damn if it breaks or not – which is historically inaccurate. It also means the scenario can essentially completely change halfway through the battle which makes players think on their feet and realise the importance of maintaining a reserve (again, something that most wargamers have no need to do). Players can gain just as much satisfaction from a 'failed' attack but one in which they manage to extract a battalion or save the guns, as they do from a successful attack – and I find it also makes for a much more interesting game.

Dear Green leader.

Yes that is a good point in the game you created for the Boer War. It emphasizes that very much depends on context. While not a colonial player myself I have participated in many games of the period and when dealing with this period I once had a suggestion for a player who was a colonial players. In the game the native player got points for every White man killed. Big points. However reminiscent of the guy in Syria, he also got points for getting his own men killed. These people were not "his own people" in our sense but they were members of other tribes and clans of middling and doubtful loyalty and if he got the white man to kill off these people of less than steller loyalty, (or not of his tribe or family, he was killing off people who weren't going to "belly up to the trough anyway."

But to return to your point it is quite cogent. Context and the specific situation counts for a lot.

Again on the point of the oratory. The point is that the sources we have for the ancient world are all we have and as none of us was there any theory other than what is presented is on extremely shaky gorund. I have always considered it the height of idiocy and arrogance to believe that we knew what the people back then were saying and what was on their mind far better than they did. That's the picture we have and that's the image to recreate. Actually in the times when I have used it, most gamers gamely took on the task and surprised themselves as to how good they did. A game is supposed to challenge the player and put him in an uncomfortable place from which he must extricate himself. That's the challenge of the unknown and in a real sense the dilemma of man. We are always unleashing forces we cannot control and then having to "get the genie back in the bottle or Pandora back in the box. The states are considerably less dire in a game than real life, but the game quickly becomes extremely boring if there is no challenge, or all the difficulties are known and it's simply applying a known and cutout solution to it.

Games are merely artificial difficulties raised up for no other reason than to be overcome, which have almost no relationship to the putative or real difficulties they model. Further as we study history we soon realize that "using good tactics" in no way guarantees you anything. We can all castigate Grant for attacking at Cold Harbor. However while it certainly was a fight against long odds, his army at Chattanooga all on its own got away from him and stormed missionary ridge on its own authority and won a staggering victory. Terrible tactics and ordered by no one, but it won. Could have happened at Cold Harbor. War games have about as much relationship to real war as the fencing rules for a Three musketeers game do to real fencing. We can't put gamers in charge of armies, but we could truss them up in a fencing suit and let them try it out for real-- against a champion fencer. The result would be hilarious

Dear McLaddie

As my father used to say.

"Vass you dere Charlie?"

Otto

Indeed – VP should be very much scenario specific. In the case of a modern-war skirmish, for example, the 'Western' player could be considered to have suffered a 'major defeat' (or whatever) for losing just one man, or failing to get a wounded man extracted.

I find that most wargamers are 'fearless' commanders, in that they really don't care how many men they lose in order to 'capture the hill' – which is completely ahistorical in virtually all settings.

GL, I wasn't implying your ideas were silly at all, just offering a cautionary note about possible implementations. Buried in my first reply to your initial question was what I thought was a useful and relevant suggestion concerning matrix games.

Chris

Dear McLaddie

As my father used to say.

"Vass you dere Charlie?"

Dear Otto:

Did your father ever tell you what he meant by that?

Yes My father was a colonel in the Artillery and on the General Staff of the Austro Hungarian Army in World War One. The occasion was when one of my war gaming buddies was lecturing him all about the Austro Hungarian Army in World War one.

It's the height of arrogance and idiocy to think that you know what the people 2,000 years ago knew what they meant instead of what they themselves wrote. The Ancients are quite capable of speaking for themselves.

Dear Green Leader

Right you are. But I can make a case for the generalized idea of victory conditions that are NOT scenario dependent. In either case both can be "right" but let's leave "right" out of it for the moment. Again it is scenario dependent when you view "scenario" as game itself. Myself I don't care for skirmish size actions and I like big "army gams." Even my modern (between the wars to mid WWII) games are "army level games" and the victory conditions are the same battle to battle. However in the type of game you are speaking of, certainly yes, the loss of even a single man might be a disaster, especially in games of the modern era where the news cycle intrudes into minute questions and have political consequences. Indeed, in situations like that we do not have 1,000 ft tall generals but we do have 1,000 ft tall generals, presidents and newspaper correspondents who intervene and micromanage from on high.

Perhaps the best way to understand this is by considering the nature, NOT of history or war, but of the game. That is the game itself. There's three ways or attributes of a game or ways of looking at it.

At its simplest, its most basic, a game is merely a series of objects in precedence. An object can be any materal thing, troops, terrain, rules, die rolls, writing orders, even deciding which hill with the gun on it to send the cavalry next to is material object and the only difference one to the other is the order or precedence we introduce them in or enact them.

In a different way I believe there are "true gams" and "real games." A "real game" is a game that requires a back knowledge of reality to make it work. A true game requires no reference in reality to work. Take chess, which is a true game. You could wrap up a set purchased from any toy store on planet Earth and write out the rules as a series of anagrams and drop it on Tau Ceti 4 where the intelligent bees of that planet could decipher it and play it without having to have the slightest idea of what a bishop or a knight is or does and it has absolutely no relation to reality. As we know, bishops don't move cattey-cornered up and down the street in repetitive diagonals, nor do castles move at all. Doesn't matter that the castle was once an elephant or a bishop a boat, the form of the piece is merely arbitrary and the movement just as arbitrary and self referencing. On the other hand for a more complex game like most of the wargames we do the satisfaction, indeed the legitimacy of the game depends on our knowing what a tank is or an airplane and the specifics of its movement and power in the game more or less invocative or evocatve of what they are in real life.

The third definition of a game is an external definition where the first two are internal definitions. A game is an activity voluntarily engaged in in which a subset of the rules of reality are included and for the universe of the game are the TOTAL rules of the reality in which we live and can be abbreviated, stylized, or completely arbitrary, and that this subset of the rules of reality is non-existent before the advent of the game and dissolves once the game is done. To shorten that a bit, it is a completely artificial creation which has only at best a notional connection with reality and gets into what I said in a previous post about games being merely constructs of artificial obstacles made for no other reason than to be overcome. The last real and extremely tenuous connection with real life war games had was squished out of it when we abandoned spring loaded canon. It's far closer to actually firing a gun than a die roll is.

The best example of this is my infamous (to guys like McLaddie) example of a Joe Moreschauser Game. Moreschauser's rules are really the first rules which synthesize and systematize games as merely an expression of arithmetic values ascribed to the objects we call stands and soldiers. (Note of all the war games Moreschausers comes closes to being a true game. Thus you could make a game from his ancient rules of Mongols versus Russians, where the Mongols are the horse-archers and auxiliary Chinese foot soldiers, and the Russians use T-34's tanks and kalishnikov's. As long as the "stats" for the Mongol Heavy Cavalry are the same as the T-34's the game is as valid as any other no matter how jarring it may be to our sensibilities. The game will work for us, and by the way for the intelligent bees of Tau Ceti 4.

Sorry to have gone so far around the mulberry bush to get here, but it's the best way I know to show that ANY game is merely a collection of objects (rules, minis, terrain, dice, decisions) in procedure. What I important is that for ALL the objects in reality that we could or might include we chose among them and include that which we want to use and exclude that which we do not AND we arrange these objects in a procedure or iteration like a computer program to produce the flow of the game. This makes "the game" and each game is just as valid as any other collection of objects executed in a procedure. Thus Monopoly is a simulacarum, a completely artificial and arbitrary representation of the real estate market, but no one in their wildest dreams would imagine that it is a REALISTIC representation of the same. But it is fun to play for many people. One can change the objects within the game and one comes out with a different game. Thus one has those dreadful rip-offs of Monopoly which focus on sports teams or different cities, all of which merely change names, and things like Biblopoply which seems to be the same sort of tiresome rip-off but actually has several new features which change the game subtly. Likewise in the various ethnic varieties of chess (Tamurlaines, Shatranj and do forth which do the same to the old favorite.

This is the important question in the subject we are talking about, which is what the construct of that artificial reality, or subset of the paradigmatic rules of realty we model. Hence in a game like you are speaking where the loss of one man can be catastrophic, or in the games I am speaking about which have the same methodology of Victory battle to battle. But gain even those are "scenario dependent" because one chooses the scenario boundaries ahead of time. As I said, I don't like small skirmish actions where the loss of one man would be entirely possible as a determinant of victory where on an army level it would render the game ridiculous.

One final thing on this point which I discovered when I made the definition (years ago) that games are really simply objects (chosen from all the possible objects in the universe which includes concepts) is that the essential other quality is procedure or precedence. Because of the physical nature of the game and of ourselves, we must do one thing at a time and what must be done first must be completed before the next thing can be done. You cannot start on the 4th object while the first one is still open because that would mean that no object could ever be completed and the game move forward OR it would mean that any object once done was truly closed and could not be re-opened later on. It would violate causality because of our own human limitation and mean that a soldier killed several turns ago might not be killed at all. In real life everything happens at once and once done is done, and in our game reality this must hold true as well and since we cannot do everything at once we must make abridgements even more restrictive than reality, which of course is unrealistic.

I think this is why we have so many problems with our rules and attempt to do things that really can't be physically done and are beyond our instrumentalities. In a smaller scale it's why I gave up on any sort of sequence of action which is a modified IGOYUGO. Thus for example in my "Oh God! Anything but a Six" series, the sequence of action is

1. Player who had initiative last turn draws the next EVENT card for the turn.

2. Determination of initiative for this turn.

3. Side with initiative moves.

4. Side without initiative moves.

5. Simultaneous combat (all types, fire, melee whatever)

6. Rally

Obviously a very slightly modified IGOYUGO, and there are sub processes (other objects) to each step and advantages accruing to each side.

On the other hand in my "The Shattered Century modern agame)

1. Defender moves
2. Attacker fires (defender makes retreats to lessen casualties if he can)
3. Attacker moves
4. Defender fires (attackers makes retreats to lessen casualties if he can)
5. Attacker close assaults
6. Defender close assaults
7. Resolve close assaults.

In my "Yo-Ho-Ho" game (not a pirate game, bu tan 18th century sailing ship game)

1. Slowest ship on either side moves first and completes move as desired.
2. Next slowest then makes move as desired stopping when he wishes.
3. Simultaneous combat.

Note that all of these sequences of action have various objects and are executed in a procedure. The rather strange procedure for Yo-Ho-Ho assumes that the fastest sailor can do what he wants and so moves last. Thus if you want to get to a stern rake you can do so, but you STOP once in that position and fire away in the combat phase. As there is no pass by fire or stuff like that it achieves the same result in that you can avoid such things by your greater speed, but at the same time slower ships can cover each other

I put this in only as an example of how the selection of objects (rule of faster or slower ship) is a selection from all the objects available for inclusion in the game. If on the other hand you put in a rule about pass by fire, then it would change the game somewhat. Thus all games are the collection of the objects we desire.

It's the height of arrogance and idiocy to think that you know what the people 2,000 years ago knew what they meant instead of what they themselves wrote. The Ancients are quite capable of speaking for themselves.

Otto:
Is it arrogance to insist that those who lived scores to hundreds of years after the event were quoting what was actually said for the reasons the participants said it?

It isn't difficult nor arrogance to understand that "Heroditus, Thucydides, Dio Cassius, Caesar, Livy and Tacitus, who devoted large amounts of space and either parchment or papyrus to recording what these leaders [and themselves in Xenophon's and Caesar's case] said" wrote for a variety of reasons other than direct quotes or actual events.

Heroditus and Xenophon lived through the times they wrote about and you don't see long speeches by generals to the troops before a battle.

Caesar was writing pro-Caesar propaganda for himself… and Livy, Polybius, Tacitus and many of the authors wrote scores, if not hundreds of years after the events they 'record.' Those speeches were a central part of the dramas of the day… a style just as Homer followed Ballad styles writing about events long past.

It isn't arrogance to conclude that there is more going on that accepting at face value those speeches as 'what really happened and what was really said'. As you note:

The point is that the sources we have for the ancient world are all we have and as none of us was there any theory other than what is presented is on extremely shaky ground.

That is a theory too… as you weren't there. What about things said by those who were there concerning such recorded speeches? Does that have any weight in the discussion? some theories are on far shakier ground than others.

Yes My father was a colonel in the Artillery and on the General Staff of the Austro Hungarian Army in World War One. The occasion was when one of my war gaming buddies was lecturing him all about the Austro Hungarian Army in World War one.

I appreciate the clarification and it is always a good question, but not one to shut down discussion and nix any and all theories about things no one living can experience…but to consider the evidence at hand…when we weren't there and never can be.

If you want to consider only those those things that contemporaries have experienced first hand, there is an excellent discussion going on about "So, how much fire does it take to fully suppress a squad?" by those who have been in the military and in fire fights.

Getting back the the thread question,

If we want to consider inspiring speeches, here is one given by Colonel Wallace as recorded by Lt. Grattan in his "Adventures with the Connaught Rangers" at Bussaco. Of course, Gratten was writing many years after the events--but at least he was an eye-witness no matter how he might have embellished for drama's sake: page 33:

In a few moments Dunne returned almost breathless ;
he said the rocks were filling fast with Frenchmen, that a heavy column was coming up the hill beyond the rocks,
and that the four companies of the 45th were about to be
attacked. Wallace asked if he thought half the 88th
would be able to do the business. " You will want every
man," was the reply.

Wallace, with a steady but cheerful countenance, turned
to his men, and looking them full in the face, said,

"Now,Connaught Rangers, mind what you are going to do ; pay attention to what I have so often told you, and when I bring you face to face with those French rascals, drive them down the hill — don't give the false touch, but push home to the muzzle ! I have nothing more to say, and if I had it would be of no use, for in a minit or two there'll be such an infernal noise about your ears that you won't be able to hear yourselves."

This address went home to the hearts of us all, but there
was no cheering ; a steady but determined calm had taken
the place of any lighter feeling, and it seemed as if the men had made up their minds to go to their work unruffled and not too much excited.

Wallace then threw the battalion from line into column,…

Now I'd like to point out, however rousing the men found this,

1. It was to a battalion-sized group @400-600 men, the size that many officers felt was the size limit where a single voice could be heard. [e.g. Ney, Dundas and Friant.]

2. It's pretty short. Wallace doesn't have time for long speeches about home and hearth.

3. Wallace was giving instructions to his men as to what to do and what to expect in the coming action. It may have been inspiring but it was basically the game plan for the up-coming action… Which Wallace does carry out successfully.

4. This is a far more prevalent model for inspiring speeches in the European military from the Middle Ages through the 19th Century. The speeches like Henry V's or Marc Anthony's in Shakespeare's plays are drama, but lack the military instructions that so many of such speeches actually included.

Again, there are the speeches/instructions that are before the battle, often read to the army after being written by the commander and those during a battle, which generally involve much smaller forces.

Dear McLaddie

You prove my point. You say "Is it arrogance to insist that those who lived scores to hundreds of years after the event were quoting what was actually said for the reasons the participants said it?"

If you're really going to believe this then all of history for you is a fairy tale and there are no reliable sources, and just make it up.

You prove Sam Mustapha's view of you.

You prove my point. You say "Is it arrogance to insist that those who lived scores to hundreds of years after the event were quoting what was actually said for the reasons the participants said it?"

Otto: That was a question, so how are you answering that question?

Is it arrogance to insist that we must take what was written at only face value and nothing else because we weren't there?

OR this one:

Is it arrogance to suggest that there is more evidence than just those speeches and other ways to analyze such accounts?

And how does either view make history into a fairy tale?

If a good number of the writers of those ancient accounts 'weren't there' either, why shouldn't that be part of the discussion?

You prove Sam Mustapha's view of you.

Otto:
I am not clear what Sam's view of me actually is. Sam is a smart guy who obviously makes games that a number of people enjoy. I enjoyed the one game he designed that I've played. I've admired his rules writing and have said so more than once.

I have also pointed out whenever he insists that wargames can't be simulations, how he continues to talk about game design as though they do while promoting his designs as capable of "simulating Napoleonic battles" etc. etc. when apparently having very little idea about how simulations work.

His response has to been to attack my character and translate that to "I don't like his games" or that I don't like him. I admit that did annoy me enough to write what I did [I regret finally losing my temper with such evasions] that finally made him decide to quite TMP because Bill wouldn't 'shut me up.'

So, back to the topic at hand?

Not with you. Green Leader yes if he wishes.

Okay, Otto.

Green Leader:
Originally you wrote:

One aspect of history I find that wargames are unable to replicate is the quality of leadership…

I pondered the idea of giving the player the chance to make off-the-cuff rallying speeches to his (toy) soldiers – and depending on how inspiring this was – rewarding him accordingly. Of course, I dismissed the idea as being, well, rather silly but am still interested in this aspect of leadership and how to (even slightly) bring it into our games.

I guess what I have found is that off-the-cuff rallying speeches, such as the one Wallace gave above, but others, have always been to relatively small groups--within ear-shot during battle. They tend to have two elements:

1. A lot of the impact of such speeches/efforts to inspire revolve around what the troops think of the leader already, what has happened off the battlefield. Reynolds inspired the troops at Gettysburg in a way Howard didn't and couldn't. It's the existing relationship and trust which is tough to provide the player if he is giving an inspiring speech. Wallace had the respect of his men, so he didn't have to say much to increase their determination to follow his instructions.

2. Such speeches were usually in reference to a specific action the leader wanted to occur, whether rallying, charging, standing fast, advancing etc. When Napoleon wrote his first bulletin to the Army in Italy 1796, it was to inspire them, but what he wrote was [paraphrased]'We are going to go attack the Allies, March into the Po Valley and we are all going to benefit.' When Frederick takes the flag at Koln [IIRC], he simply said 'follow me' to hestitating troops. His lead was all that was required.

3. The troops morale overall is a big factor. How hard does the leader have to push to 'inspire?' When I played football in college, I joined a team that had just come off of a regional championship [Humbotlt State U in California.] In the locker room at half-time, he didn't have to say much at all to get us worked up. We had a winning streak, even if I hadn't been part of it. My high school team had two bad defeats. The coach had to work very hard and over days to effectively raise our morale.

So, in portraying this, whether players giving speeches or other methods, there are what I see as three factors in the dynamics of 'inspiring the troops.'

1. The quality of the leader/follower relationship before the engagement affects the chances of inspiring the troops.

2. The inspiring is rarely general with no goals, but overwhelmingly related to specific actions on the field.

3. The existing level of morale when the inspiring is attempted influences how much inspiring has to be done and the odds of success.

The quality of the leader is a finite thing, established before the battle in the minds of the troops. Then the specific task, circumstances, and morale at the moment are what that quality is applied to.

I gave two examples, there there a lot of ways to portray that quality without necessarily relying on a die modifier or even die roll. Some of that has to do with how much of the game you want to make detailing leadership quality.

I think McLaddie makes some good points about the "soft skills" of leadership.

The night of the battle of Edson's Ridge on Guadalcanal the Marine Parachute Regiment and Edson's Raiders were holding off a Japanese assault that lasted almost all night. If the Japs had broken through there was no one to stop them from taking Henderson Field and the 1st MarDiv HQ area. The Marines were in a hasty defense and most of the fighting was within hand grenade range. Later in the night, some Marines started falling back. They were intercepted by officers and NCO's who told them, "Get back to your fighting hole and die", and they did.

I would not exactly call that inspiring leadership. So what motivated them to return to the fight?

The best Company Commander I ever had was a real bastard. He was not the kind of guy you "liked". However, he pushed us beyond our limits, trained us to a high degree, got us to work together (not easy in the 1970's era) and instilled in us what I can only call an Esprit de Corps (personally I don't like that term). He led by example and did everything we did and more. Having done 2 tours in VN we respected him even if we didn't like him.

One time after being in the field for 10 days we came back late on a Friday night. Normally you clean up and turn in your weapon and then get liberty. However, it was announced there would be an inspection at 0900 next Saturday morning. While everyone was spending half the night getting ready for inspection I snuck out and hit the Red Barron and Harbor Light bars outside Camp Geiger (maybe someone remembers them?).

The next morning I put on wrinkled utilities, brushed the mud off my boots, put on the cover I kept inside my helmet and didn't shave. This was my immature FU to the inspection. My squad leader was pissed. At inspection my weapon was spotless but I was written up for at least a dozen "offenses" and was told to report for Office Hours the next morning. I reported in all squared away with my LT (a great guy). The Master Sergeant with a big smile on his face (who was always out to get me) read off the charges. The Captain asked my LT about me and he said I was a good Marine (I was his radioman) and then the CO chewed me out. I was expecting 2 weeks KP, 30 days confined to base, etc and was regretting my poor judgment the previous day. However, after a good ass reaming and explaining the error of my ways the Captain told me I am a good Marine and he likes me and would let me slide – this time. Not everyone that went in front of him was so fortunate.

I didn't think I got away with anything. I came away learning a real leadership lesson. From that point on I was the best "barracks" Marine I could be. Whenever someone talked negatively about Capt. German I told them we're lucky to have the bastard and there is no other CO I'd want now that we are getting deployed. I'd have done anything for him because I knew he'd do anything for us. By the way, he gave very mediocre pep talks.

Wolfhag

Wolfhag:
That's a terrific--and first-hand account--of the off-the-battlefield relationship building that is what the leader has to work with on the battlefield. It is that combination of discipline with the positive 'you're a good marine' that you see among the skills of effective leaders.

I forgot to address the ancient commanders, though I don't have as deep a knowledge of that history. A number of the 'pep talks' and speeches that are recorded were spoken to the gathered subordinate commanders. They were the ones that relayed that to their commands [The same thing is recorded with Frederick the Great before Luethen by a campfire.] That inspiring talk could then influence the subordinates' ability to inspire/command rather than a single unit in a game.

Thanks McLaddie,
Time for some motivation!
YouTube link

Wolfhag