"Who's Historical?" Topic

Not the castings: the players.

I would like to propose a simple touchstone. When playing a historical game or reading historical rules, if you come across a certain feature, do you think
(a) "This is completely unhistorical, but it's a very nice piece of play balance." or
(b) "this is a very nice piece of play balance, but it's completely unhistorical."

Note, I do not ask whether or not you'd play the game--just what your reaction would be, in the context of a historical game or rules.

Me for B, of course.

B

Is this like a glass half full or half empty test, when the answer is still gonna be half? :)

Dan

Is this a playability vs. historically accurate question?

I usually come down on the side of playability. I am more into the looks of the game to be more accurate than the rules, to a point. So I would go with A. After all what is the point in having all this stuff when the rules don't work?

However I can very easily find myself in the B camp. If the rule to balance falls way outside of history then I am in the B camp.

B..

A

C. I don't care.

"Balance" is a deceptive term. One might argue that chess is balanced. Allegedly white moving first is a huge advantage, but I'm not a good enough player to say that definitively. That's why I don't play for money.

Balance can supposedly be achieved in a scenario, but then the players step in and ruin things. Bad tactics, bad die rolling, etc.
How many times have you thought you played brilliantly, only to be screwed by your dice?

So, to drop my long windedness, I will say that I look at a battle or scenario only if it will be fun for both sides. I ran a Eutaw Springs game and had my heart broken by no Continentals getting close enough to the British camp to break off to loot it and get drunk. So here is my dilemma. It was certainly "balanced". As balanced as a battle can be. So. Do I run it again and unbalance it so the Patriots get to loot the camp and lose?
I'm only disappointed because I didn't get to use my "special rules".

Winston: "Allegedly white moving first is a huge advantage, but I'm not a good enough player to say that definitively."

Now that's just plain racist! :)

Dan

Whether the glass is half empty or half full depends on whether you're drinking or pouring, doesn't it?

There is no difference between a and b, as both statements do not include any consequences. The difference is what you think first.

I usually only reject to play a rule if its both unhistorical and unbalancing.

My priority will always be historical, but I think the order of reaction is a distinction without a difference.

To be clear, I would not waste my time with rules that are clearly not historically accurate (but making allowance for gray areas where there is no consensus among recognized authorities). On the other hand, there is no point trying to have a game with rules that are too detailed and complex to be playable in any reasonable period of time.

If balance refers to giving both sides some opportunity to win, I consider that should be a function of scenario design, not of rules function. For example, one should not expect a Zulu army to defeat a British force of equal size, except perhaps by ambush.

B, all day every day.

The added challenge of writing a good *historical* set of rules for a game is just that – the game must reflect history, which adds difficulties and limitations that make writing the rules and making it fun to play even harder.

Otherwise, it's a game played using historical toys. Now, that's actually just fine, but it's a different thing, and no amount of window dressing will convince someone who knows a period differently.

Cheers,

Christopher

B, actually it doesn't bother me at all, I just want to play games.

B. I'm in it for the fun. if it resembles or reflects history, that's all that I ask.

I never thought of it that way before.

Dear Robert

You haven't quite hit the problem on the head.

You, me, everyone has a world view conditioned by the times we live in.

Unless you are playing a game which happened within your AGE OF CONGNICANSE (6 years old till now) then you any game you play is unhistorical. You are a person of your experiences and sensations and these are NOT he experience and sensations of someone of 100 years ago or 100 years in the future. In fact, the further you go back in any direction all rules HAVE to be unhistorical and merely game mechanics because we are creating an artificial environment to force players to act like their historical prototypes (make people act Like Napoleon or a French Grenadier and think like them) which they do not think like today, though many many gamers dearly think they are Napoleons.

Ottoathome

We are playing a game, period.

Wargaming doesn't reflect history or combat the same way Monopoly doesn't reflect Real Estate transactions. Sorry, these are both games "hung on" a setting.

It is a game so let's enjoy it for what it is and not try to make it what it is not. After all, we say "I played a game of JR III, not I tried to kill my opponent with a rifled musket"!

Uhoh, there is a tempest forming in my teacup.

Dave

Otto, this time I wasn't the one to miss the problem. I was not asking whether the gamer had an 18th Century mentality, but whether--or how much--solving game problems by unhistorical methods bothered him.
One example: CLS II had a definition of square and a volley fire mechanism which, taken together with the mandatory size and organization of Napoleonic Russian line and light infantry, meant Russian line shot very straight, but could not form an effective square. There were always players who said "well, the historical Russians didn't shoot especially straight and could form squares, but this is good for game balance, and gives the Russians the slightly clunky feel they sometimes had." Others, of course, thought " this is good for game balance, and gives the Russians the slightly clunky feel they sometimes had, but the historical Russians didn't shoot especially straight and could form squares."

Nothing to do with the century in which they were raised, but a lot to do with how we saw the game.

B.

B emphatically.

B for Blutarski.

Wargaming doesn't reflect history or combat the same way Monopoly doesn't reflect Real Estate transactions.

StoneMtnMinis:

Even though that is specifically what the designer[s] of Monopoly were attempting to reflect?

It is a game so let's enjoy it for what it is and not try to make it what it is not. After all, we say "I played a game of JR III, not I tried to kill my opponent with a rifled musket"!

John Hill wasn't trying to give you the experience of killing your opponent with a rifled musket, so if that is what you expected, JR III was going to fail completely.
However, John did write:

"The game is by nature complex, since we are simulating the complex interaction of many factors to produce a realistic effect." [Introduction, page viii]

What you seem to be saying is not that those designers were simply unsuccessful in their obvious efforts to model some aspects of history/reality…but that they were on a fool's errand in the first place, attempting something impossible. This would include a great many wargame designers starting with Grant and Featherstone.

Is that basically the gist of your observations?

Even though that is specifically what the designer[s] of Monopoly were attempting to reflect?

Actually, the "Landlord's Game" (the original 1903 name) was invented to explain the single tax laws of Henry George. It was never meant as an accurate simulation of real estate transactions. Look up Elizabeth Magie.

Perhaps Getto-opoly is an accurate simulation of growing up in the projects?

link

Neither proably, wildly in a curate is unacceptable it ruins the whole concept. Proably means the author could not be bothered to find a better way.

Bowman:

There were several iterations of a number of games from 'the landlord's game to "Monopoly" between 1903 and the Parker Brothers' publication in 1935.

All of the different designers had the same goal in mind: to model and teach the evils of Capitalism. From Mary Polin, the author of the book The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game :

"Monopoly Was Designed to Teach the 99% About Income Inequality"

"Monopoly's story began decades earlier, with an all-but-forgotten woman named Lizzie Magie, an artist, writer, feminist and inventor.

Magie worked as a stenographer and typist at the Dead Letter Office in Washington, D.C., a repository for the nation's lost mail. But she also appeared in plays, and wrote poetry and short stories. In 1893, she patented a gadget that fed different-sized papers through a typewriter and allowed more type on a single page. And in 1904, Magie received a patent for an invention she called the Landlord's Game, a square board with nine rectangular spaces on each side, set between corners labeled "Go to Jail" and "Public Park." Players circled the board buying up railroads, collecting money and paying rent. She made up two sets of rules, "monopolist" and "anti-monopolist," but her stated goal was to demonstrate the evils of accruing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others. A firebrand against the railroad, steel and oil monopolists of her time, she told a reporter in 1906, "In a short time, I hope a very short time, men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller, maybe, have more than they know what to do with."

link

We can debate whether Maggie and all the subsequent designers/tinkerers through to Charles Darrow and his Monopoly were successful in 'simulating' the Capitalist and/or the Landlord systems and whether they did 'teach' the players, but there is no question about their intentions in designing their games.

When folks make statements about what wargames fail to do in regards to history and simulating it without

1. Knowing what the designer attempted to do
2. Knowing What can and can't be simulated with a wargame. [and what we wouldn't want to simulate: e.g. Flight simulators don't detail plane crashes with metal crumpling creating pilot injuries etc.]

simply confuses the issues.

Here is the most recent handbook on the use and benefits of wargames by the British military [Benefits in training and education]:

PDF link

Nowhere will you find them saying that they are learning how to kill their opponent with a machine gun, or making players fightened for their lives or make them go two days without sleep etc. etc. And they will say things like "I played the Tactical Urban Combat wargame." Neither fact negates the ability of a wargame to simulate particular aspects of reality.

Anyone can create a definition of simulating that makes the effort impossible. Decide that the only designs that are actually automobiles have to go 200 miles an hour and a Prius and VW bugs aren't cars, even though they were never designed to go that fast because of other design goals.

No one has to want the history in their wargames nor do they have to believe any design has ever succeeded in portraying military history in any way.

We all play for the enjoyment, the fun--I would think that would be obvious and unnecessary to mention over and over again, unless there is some notion that there is only ONE kind of fun allowed and folks have 'forgotten' that.

…However, ignoring what the designers were attempting to do--and how--stops dead any discussion about historical wargame design and what they can provide.

Which goes back to the op question:

I would like to propose a simple touchstone. When playing a historical game or reading historical rules, if you come across a certain feature, do you think
(a) "This is completely unhistorical, but it's a very nice piece of play balance." or
(b) "this is a very nice piece of play balance, but it's completely unhistorical."

First, it doesn't matter which is said first, the conclusions would be the same… regardless of which you value more. It also suggests that it is an either/or question… which is not necessarily the case some or even most of the time.

Second, I would suggest that such a conclusion is totally dependent on knowing which is which [an attempt at unhistorical balance or the inclusion of historical dynamics]

third, to know that, you would have to know what the designer intended to accomplish with that 'certain feature.'

And I know how often gamers are just flat wrong about what they think [i.e. guess] a rule or game mechanic was designed to do… if only because I do read and ask about what designers were trying to do. A good deal of TMP discussions involve gamers trading their 'guesses.'

…….but there is no question about their intentions in designing their games.

Your comment to StoneMtnMinis indicated that the author(s) specifically tried to reflect Real Estate transactions. This is not supported by my readings of the game and it's development, nor is it supported by your link above.

Your comment to StoneMtnMinis indicated that the author(s) specifically tried to reflect Real Estate transactions.

Bowman:
Well, that isn't what I was suggesting. *Some* stated that as a design objective. What I wrote was 'simulating' the Capitalist and/or the Landlord systems. *Most* of the designers were more focused on representing the Free Enterprise/Capitalist system and how it led to Monopolies.

Lizzie Magie, a Quaker woman from Virginia, belonged to a tax movement led by Philadelphia-born Henry George. She saw her game,"Landlord's Game" as a teaching tool for George's ideas. The game spread as a 'common-folk' pastime game among the Quakers and proponents of the single tax.

Considering how many iterations of Magie's original design were created in the three decades leading up to Darrow's Monopoly, I would say you'd have to match each designer's intent to each creation to be specific, such as the quote that I gave from Magie.

As the game spread from community to community, the name changed from the "Landlord's Game" to others such as "Finance", "Inflation" "Auction Monopoly," then, finally, to just "Monopoly." So did the intent and rules.

The 'Landlord's Game' and 'Monopoly' are very similar except all the properties in Magie's game are rented, not acquired as they are in Monopoly. Instead of names like "Park Place" and "Marvin Gardens," Magie used "Poverty Place," "Easy Street" and "Lord Blueblood's Estate." The objectives of each game are also different. In Monopoly, the idea is to buy and sell property so profitably that one player becomes the wealthiest and eventually a monopolist. In the Landlord's Game, the object was to illustrate how the landlord had an advantage over other capitalists under the system of land tenure and to show how the single tax could discourage speculation.

It is interesting to see how each version of the game was changed to better illustrate what that designer wanted to say. For instance, Louis and Fred Thun added the rules to their 1925 version emphasizing the Monopoly aspects:

"Ownership of a series entitles one to collect double rent on all the properties of that series…"

"Owning one railroad nets $10 USD a ride, two $25 USD…until owning all four nets $150 USD a ride."

Certainly, the general intentions among them all were to capture the varied dynamics of Capitalism in some fashion which led to monopolies around real estate transactions and property ownership.

My main point was that the designer[s] of Monopoly, starting with Magie, had specific design goals in an effort to capture some aspects of reality… and to understand the design one needs to know the reasons it was created and what kind of experience the designer had in mind for the players.

If the designers intent IS to produce a game that he claims is a simulation, yet is really fantasy, such as a simulation of Operation Barbarossa in which the Germans are fully mechanized and motorised with Mk V and Mk VI armor, the author claiming not that this is alternate history but as real as the actual situation,and yes, I have encountered this kind of Harry Turtledove stuff, then I dont care. The simulation glass is already empty, despite what the other features the gamer gets right, say the uniform colors or the geography. In a word, if the designer attempts to simulate a feature or several, yet goes off into fantasy in other areas, at what point is the water in the glass polluted? sometimes it only takes a drop to poison the simulation.