"THE PRIMACY OF THE TABLE TOP BATTLE" Topic

My campaign continues to hum along. So far it has outlasted every other one I have run or been in. Three years so far.
The ONLY thing different about this one is that it rests on the primary of the table top battle. All actions engendered MUST be resolved on the table top.

I am suspecting that is the crucial element along with almost no heavy lifting on the part of the players.

Further, as SOME players (about half) are close enough to attend the table top battles, the rest are too distant and interest among the former group is much higher than among the latter.

This dovetails nicely with other experiences and especially Phil Dutre's thesis that "It's all about the toy soldiers."

One point of the rules that seems to be important is that a loss of a battle is irrelevant. Victory points in the campaign are gained only by WINNING a battle, and no matter how heavily one side wins, the other side has absolutely no immediate affects imposed on it. Thus a player who loses his entire army (which has never happened) in the next battle can have his full army back. So its a non- zero-sum game in that aspect.

There is more than enough o keep the inactive player who is in proximity to the table top battle interested and the same for a player who is far away and cannot attend the battles. There is much for both to do. However it just seems that unless the figures are out the terrain staged and people are involved in a table top battle, the interest goes way down.

This is why I have reframed the campaign system more a s a "kit" or "tool" for the umpire.

You know, I said as much the last time Bill wanted to run a poll on campaigns. He left off "it's important that they generate battles" as an option, because he didn't think I was serious.

If a campaign does not regularly generate good table-top battles, buy yourself a box game, and be done with it.

Dear Robert

Agreed.

There are many war gamers who do not need a battle to take part in a campaign with interest, but they are very few and far between.

Otto

I would say that a campaign where there is no ramifications for losing isn't really a campaign at all. What you have is more like a set in tennis but even there you have fatigue in the players that has an effect. a campaign without ramifications removes all the very decisicions that the commander would need to make…is this battle worth potentially losing if it means I lose the war or will it attrition my opponents more even if they win. It destroys any semblance of the need to husband troops and exacerbates the very problem of the ahistorical fighting to the last man that the campaign battles seek to redress. You shouldn't call this a campaign at all. It misleads. Call it a league game.

Dear Mick

Wunnerfull wunnerfull wunnerfull but worthless. The simple fact is that if gamers have to suffer the effects of a loss from one battle in the next then they simply will not play. Your words are mere gameo-pieties which SHOULD be but the simple fact is that people aren't in their hobbies to do work and sweat and they simply won't play. The game I designed does have an effect on the loser but it is attenuated and not noticed. There is another part too. Historically an army that won a battle was almost as wrecked as one that lost, and this attenuates the disparity.

In my game there are strategic units, armies and brigades. The maximum you can have in a battle at any one time is a brigade, two brigades, one army, or one army and one brigade. Winner or loser any armies and brigades used go to the bank where you can revive one per turn per country so to recover an army and a brigade would take two turns, So there is a consequence for losing a battle. A country has one army and four brigades. So if in one battle you use an army and a brigade, if you have another battle before you can revive your army, you have to give battle with two brigades, maybe against another army and a brigade which is like going into battle at 4 to 2 or two to one.

I as gm toss some terrain the way of the lesser side to even up the battle or give them a few special freebies. If I don't why should the lesser side come to the game? They're not in it to lose and if they don't have a chance to win why play the campaign. Yes whatyou are saying is eminently correct from the point of reason and history but completely irrelevant as far as player participation and wishes go.

That's why winning victories gives that side victory points. The game ends when one of the twelve players gets 10 or more victory points by campaign turn end, and the highest total gets the total victory. A person who loses a battle gains no points but doesn't lose them either.

Players don't care about history they want to push toys around on the table top.

It's the same thing with going into a campaign and expect that players will bond together to bring down the front runner. Never happens, they rush to lick the boots and turn the jackal to the front runner, preferring to get a strip of flesh off his latest victim than balance of power.

Interestingly enough, this is similar to the approach for the Battle Masters game of the ''90s. The built in "campaign" is simply a series of scenarios involving the full forces of both sides, with each battle weighted differently for victory points. The early battles are worth very little, but the rest jump in value so that the tide can change drastically, and the final battle is typically decisive. (So, yes, IIRC, the last battle really decides the winner, but at least the progression of the game "feels" as if the others actually matter. Of course, it's a light wargame intended for kids, so that bit of "wasted conflict" can be forgiven.)

I don't understand your game at all. Losing an army to the bank doesn't mean that the army returns at full strength for the next. What am I missing?

As it stands, my real objection is not your means of generating games and league game points, just the term of "campaign" to describe it. Campaigns can be lost in a first game and by all means start over if the situation got lopsided and grant the laurels to your victors.

Dear Mick

OK here's a sequence from the actual game. The campaign begins. Both Ikea and Spam have one army, four brigades and one fortress in their resources. Fortresses are a sort of "get out of battle free" card.

First turn The Kingdom of Spam attacks the Kingdom of Ikea with an Army and a Brigade (the largest force possible).

Ikea can respond with whatever he wishes so long as it is legal. He responds with an army and the Brigade. So there is a battle, straight up, even.

In the battle Spam gets seven TACTICAL victory points of various types.(taking terrain, strategic unit, killing units, accomplishing missions) The Ikeans get five. Spam having more has won the battle. Spam has two more than ikea so Spam gets two STRATEGIC victory points. These count toward ending and winning the campaign.

All units of BOTH sides (army and a brigade of Spam, and Army and Brigade of Ikea) go to the bank.

NEW TURN-

Spam wishes to attack Ikea again. However it's army is in the bank, along with one of its brigades. It has three brigades left. So it attacks with two brigades. (cannot attack with three or more brigades, that is not a legal combination.) So it attacks with two brigades.

Ikea is in a like position. However it wants to preserve it's brigades. So it counters with its Fortress, which prevents a battle.

After these intentiions are made each side gets to revive one unit of its choice from the bank. Spam and Ikea both revive their army (which is the most powerful unit in the bank). leaving their brigades in the bank.

The army on both sides can't be used in the turn they are revived and can only be used NEXT turn.

At the end of the second turn, the two brigades of Spam and the Fortress of Ikea both go to the bank.

So now Spam for the NEXT turn has one Army, one Brigade, and of course it's own fortress. Ikea has one army, three brigades and no fortress.

This very simple system provides for constantly changing force pools to cerate strategic situations from, reflects supply, and a strategic situation where supply, losses, replenishment and so forth is handled with absolutely no record keeping. At no time does a player who wins a battle get to face an opponent with an overwhelming numeric advantage, UNLESS it is in a sense the opponents choice.

Now, assume that Spam and Gorgonzola are allied against Ikea. In turn 1 the sequence is as shown. However assume Gorgonzola attacks at the same time with an army and a brigade.

The first table top action against Ikea initiated by Spam takes place as written. However Gorgonzola attacking with his army and brigade can now only be countered by a maximum of two brigades. So when this happens the player either has special abilities or might have situation cards to play in defense, or the umpire will make up terrain favorable to the Ikeans, or impose more difficult conditions against the Gorgonzolans. For example "the usurper" card, if held by the Ikeans can be played which means a revolt has taken place in the land of the power played ( in this case Gorgonzola) and the power must reduce its force to equal to the enemy. Thus Gorgonzola would have to attack with only two brigades.

Of course there is nothing that prevents a player from facing up to an attack by an army and a brigade with a single brigade, but that would be odds of 1 to 5, or even attacking that way.

The system ensures two things. First that the campaign can always be won, and second almost every battle is an even battle. No one is forced to sit there for eight hours and get pounded to pieces by a hugely superior enemy .

Second you can win the campaign in a single battle. In the tactical rules "Oh God!!! Anything but a Six!!!" you decide battle by abstract victory points. There are three "strategic points markers for each side which they distribute wherever they wish within some restrictions. There are Strategic units (camp, HQ, and Line of Retreat) similarly distributed by their owners ) There are a third class of Victory card called Critical unit loss. Whenever any unit of an army is eliminated you roll a die and if a 5 or 6 you get one of these cards to add to your total. The other six you get if you have units on them at game end. There are a maximum of 8 Critical unit loss cards. Thus there is a total of six victory points disposed by each side and 8 more available to both sides.

As the campaign ENDS if any player in the game gets 10 victory points, but the highest victory point wins the game (the game does not end till all players have had their battles adjudicated). Thus if in a battle Swinnland manages to hold ALL his strategic points and ALL of his Strategic Units, and Gulagia has lost all of his own,( regardless of critical unit loss) then one side would have 12 points (his own six, strategic points and units) and the other side would have none (lost all of his own and captured none of the enemies) then Swinnland would have 12 point to zero in tactical points to 0 and would get 12 strategic Victory points and not only ended the campaign and won it.

See, quite simple.

I must admit though that most gamers don't like this system. They prefer a system where they can constantly beat on an inferior foe battle after battle with little chance they themselves could lose anything. It has the universal detriment that one of its design principles is that you have to win battles to get victory points.

Finally… Assume a 12 player game. 11 of the 12 players decide to gang up on the twelfth obviously in just four attacks of an army and a brigade the twelfth would be stripped of resources. It is here the umpire (me) takes a hand and simply sends ALL the resources used against it to the bank and tells the owners of those countries to go pick on someone your own size. I do not do this formally but through the game mechanic. For example. One of the Ploys" available is the BANK LOAN card If the BANK LOAN card is in a players hand he can use it to restore ALL his units immediately. If the BANK LOAN card is in the bank it is automatically used to restore the hand of the player with no resources to his full strength. There are other cards which help in various ways and so forth.

Remember that the most important part of any campaign is the participation of the players. if players are discouraged or de-motivated the campaign will die quickly. Further, life trumps everything in hobbies. There has to be a way to run the game with some slots unfilled or ALL slots unfilled. If any power or position is not filled and it stops the game, then the game will never succeed. The game has to be able to run itself.

My system (called "Functionaries, Flunkies, and Munchkins") allows that, and with NO record keeping, NO having to leave a game set up which the cat can disarray, NO complicated rules, complete ease for special actions or private projects and input (wanna try and research a technological improvement, or a secret society or develop some advantage? Go ahead) and NO map.

No map…definitely not acampaign. No logistics, no real attrition, no decision to risk the army to relieve a siege, or protect a province. This is not a campaign, it's a league game. A good and useful league, I grant but not a campaign. The risks for each and every game remain the same and basically even. If your opponent commits more troops, the points at risk will be balanced out in the next game when you can commit more than he can. No real ramifications from the force allocation choices unless you are love, and he is only a game from set or match.

Most Campaigns are best played with binary sides of teams of 2-3 players with an overall commander per side. There iwas rarely a three sided war or campaign that did not get resolved sequentially in a two sided struggle. I can't even think of a battle where there was three distinct mutually hostile sides. Side switching and treachery,yes, but a triangular battle or campaign? Hen's teeth.

Mick et al,

I think it all depends how you define what a "campaign" is. Wargaming is a big hobby and can accommodate many players with varied interests.
I admit to being biased and I suspect that no one who has posted would be interested in these but I would still maintain these are a set of "campaign" rules. link
Interesting thing is that they follow the spirit of the original post. They are a vehicle to give broader meaning to to your individual games but it is definitely all about the toy soldiers. I have several games going for three years now.
Just a different point of view
Cheers

Joe Legan

PS At the risk of nit picking a three sided war would be any of the multiple "peace keeping" operations the UN has been involved in primarily in Africa or the Balkans . Fortunately I can only think of one or two that could really be considered wars.

My campaign is designed to provide interesting battles to wargame. In fact the campaign is designed from the wargame backwards.

This is fine for a solo campaign, but not so good for a multi-player game. To make it interesting for the other players the campaign has to make some sort of sense, there has to be some reward for winning a battle and each wargame has to come to a conclusion acceptable to both commanders.

I found that the best way to achieve this was to have a series of mini campaigns. In my case 1813 is the grand campaign, and each phase is similar in size to the Waterloo campaign.

At the start of the mini campaign both armies are full strength, and have four days supplies. They must halt at least once every four days to resupply, and must be within one days march of a depot to do so. They can have as many depots as they like, but must detach one infantry brigade to garrison each one. If they run out of supplies they lose attrition casualties and can not initiate a battle.

The campaign map is simplified and shows exactly what the wargames table will look like. So each commander can choose the type of battlefield he wants.

At the end of the first wargame all casualties are transferred to the campaign order of battle. When a corps does not move, and is in supply, they receive one "casualty" (400 infantry or 100 cavalry or gunners) back for each day for each corps.

In addition they can concentrate infantry casualties in one brigade of each corps. There are four brigades per corps.

There is one major addition. Brigades can never be brought up to full strength during the mini campaign. They will always retain at least one "casualty".

The wargame rules rely on morale, skirmish and firing. They are graded 1 for elite, 2 for regular and 3 for conscript. These grading's add or subtract from their fighting and morale ability. Each casualty moves them down one grade.

So after each battle the brigades which suffered casualties are reduced in ability. They recover to a degree if they are allowed to rest, but they never recover completely.

The overall effect is that the losing corps recovers sufficiently to be able to allow for reasonably balanced wargames, but they are less effective and more likely to lose their morale and rout.

Most mini campaigns last about 6-10 campaign days. Most provide 4-6 battles to wargame. The final battle is always good fun, as both armies start the wargame with considerable battle casualties. Their morale is very brittle and the whole corps can break and run if one brigade fails its morale.

I have used this system for about 9 years and it is still my only source of battles to wargame.

You will find the campaign rules here

link

And the campaign diary blog here

link

Dear thistlebrow.

You do have a motivation for winning the battle. As I said, you get Strataegic Campaign Victory points for winning a tactical battle. The more you win it that is the larger the victrory over the enemy the larger number of Strategic Campaign Victory points you get and the sooner you win the campaign.

Dear Ottoathome

I did not mean to imply that there is any lack of motivation in your campaign rules, and I don't think I really did?

I just wanted to explain how I use wargame casualties to reflect subsequent effectiveness, and how I reduce them in order to allow for reasonably balanced wargames during the remainder of the campaign.

It is quite difficult to get this balance right. I believe historically that the commander who won a major battle and inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy usually went on to win the campaign.

Equally I have found that if all wargame casualties are carried over to the campaign it is extremely difficult for the losing side in a major battle to have any chance of winning subsequent battles/wargames.

If the aim is an historical campaign this does not matter much, except to the player who has the losing army.

However it is a lot of work to set up a campaign, and a shame for it all to end prematurely due to a run of bad dice in the first wargame.

Dear Thistlebarrow

None taken. I just thought you missed the point an how the reward for winning tactical battles is accumulated.

Your subsequent remarks are quite true. In real life the commander of a defeated army has no choice but to soldier on and continue campaigning under severe liabilities. Worse, a loser of a big battle might not HAVE to soldier on under the liabilities because he is removed from command and sent back in disgrace to his estates, and an entirely new and innocent commander put into his place who hasn't lost a battle at all and he gets to soldier on. Highly unfair, what?!

But wargamers don't have to play and as you note time and again they will simply stop playing. Although one might be playing Frederick the Great in a 7 years war campaign who gained immense renown for his dogged defense through thick and thin, few gamers want to do that.

That is the problem, we must graft the NECESSITIES of real command to the REALITIES of a game undertaken for pleasure and in which there is no penalties for not playing.

There are few players who will bravel soldier on.

I've run many campaigns and international War Games in my life and one of the most interesting and illustrative is the one I call "The Stooges Game."

The Stooges game was an International War Game where there were 11 players. Each player was the king of a country.

The game was organized allegedly as an equal game of all players, however covertly it had been organized as a "stooges" game where four players were "the elect" and there were seven stooges. This game was kind of like the old Avalon Hill game of Blitzkrieg where there were Big Red, and Big Blue and five smaller neutral states. Thewhole game as organized as a "gobble up the neutrals" (the Stooges) who played thinking they were equals, but covertly the four "Elect" had all the advantages. this became clear when one saw that the three "Elects" had small landmasses, but HUGE armies, and were located on the periphery with only ONE neighbor (a stooge) and the stooges were all in the center of the continents. Further these elects had huge armies where the "stooges" all had teeny tiny armies and huge navies. The effect of Navies would come into play only later in the game where armies were powerful immediately. So it was clear the Stooges were hour d ouvers. The game began as expected with alliances and non aggression pacts being made with the stooges which were immediately violated and there was mass slaughter. Most of the "stooges" were quickly and brutally slaughtered. Two of them held out gamely as best they could. Again the attempted peace treaties brutally abrogated.

One of the stooges lasted to the end of the game. This was done by canny play and inventive use of the rules, but the main reason was that he produced a newsletter. There was a newsletter in the game published by the Umpire, however on a lark this one player produced his own, and it was rather humorous and well done. Well one of the Elect liked this and forbore from wiping out this stooge because he liked the newsletter and was afraid he would stop publishing it if he did. This caused intense chagrin in the other two elects who wanted him to finish this stooge off. Eventually he did, but by that time the stooge had managed to make life a little uncomfortable for the two remaining elects. Eventually they got so mad they informed the umpire they would quit if Elect No.3 did not do what was greed. Here the game ended as the umpire had ALSO become entranced with the completely off the wall newsletter. When the game ended the literary Stooge was fifth out of 11th, but the spread between him and the lowest of the elect was about 10 to 1. If the elect game scores were 100,100, and 100, he was 12.

Many years later the umpire revealed that the whole game had been made AS a stooges game. That is it was designed to end when the last stooge was wiped out, and there was to be no "second round match off " between the three elect.

The point being that it was rigged fromt he start. The cause of the downfall of the game was that the "victimns" proved to be too tough, and one of them survived by means that were though not illegal, purely out of the rules.

A second IWG, and one completely different in style organization and form was set up which was between the four "Elects" no stooges. One of the players in that game, who had been the guy in the former who took a shine to the "illegal" newsletter as one called it, did very well in this second campaign, and the others did not play after two in turn lost to him and didn't want to make the uphill fight and carry on. The third dropped out because he wasn't going to face it alone.

The relevance of this second one to the first is that across BOTH games only ONE player in 11 would soldier on and fight through thick and thin and not drop out after one defeat. The only ones who played wee those guaranteed victory by the initial set up.

A second stooge in the first game fought back in a more traditional manner, convinced two other stooges to let him control their large fleets, which he then swept the seas of the miniscule fleets of the elect. This meant that one of the elects (on an island) could not get his armies into play quickly and had to have the umpire cheat and move them onto the mainland of one of the other countries.

This is what I mean when I say that very few gamers, perhaps 1 in a 100 will stay on to fight doggedly after a serious defeat. This is one reason why you can't impose too many penalties on a losing side that will impinge on its ability to resist on the table top. No one will take a beating time after time where they have no hope of winning, but at the same time 99 out of 100 wargamers will find a game where they can beat on a hopelessly weaker foe with glee time and time again.

@joe Legan:

>I think it all depends how you define what a "campaign" is. Wargaming is a >big hobby and can accommodate many players with varied interests.

I think the useful definition of a "campaign" is linked games that build on the results of previous games and when the decision to fight or not is based on on strategic or operational requirements such as choice of terrain, economic or political value if the terrain is lost, and the logistical and attritional factors of a battle on future battles can be felt. If you want to call a battle generator a campaign but none of these are present, you are just muddying the definition such that it serves little purpose. If I was asked to join a campaign only to find that it made no effort to recreate the decisions of a theatre commander, I would be the guy who dropped out. If you want me to join your league…I would be happy to do so too, but keep the goals clear.

Campaigns can often be finished with a single battle…it is the jockeying about to garner advantages for that battle that make campaigns interesting.

Mick,
Thanks for the reply. While your definition is useful for you, I myself find that boring; too much like work. Mine would be about the story. Thus it depends on one's definition. Fortunately it is a big hobby that can accommodate multiple definitions. The biggest error in my opinion, is to think that "your way" or "my way" is the correct or only way.

Cheers

Joe

When it comes to language, the point of it is unity of definition otherwise you don't have communication. If I said come join my campaign and you wanted a league match you would be bored and ill served

But Mick, isn't it the level you enter the campaign in? In my campaigns a player enters the game as the general of an army or a wing of an army. You don't worry about logistics. You have functionaries, flunkies and munchkins to handle that for you and present you with clear choices one or the other. You as general CERTAINLY don't handle requisitions for supplies and make the general decisions which the functionaries, flunkies, and munchkins carry out.

Besides no gamers want to handle supplies and the dirty work.

Further. In the Musket period battles did not happen day after day. A battle today, and both sides are hors du combat for a month to six. Reinforcements, shifting of troops, and the like can significantly alter the forces for the NEXT battle, and the big loser of even a big battle (and the bigger the battle the bigger both sides will bleed) might not be hale and hearty again in even six months.

Besides. What is wrong with the victory going to the person who wins the most battles.

What is the draw for someone to be under the gun for the next six battles. The odds he will play even one more are slim and none and Slim was last seen leaving town in a hurry with the Nun.

Otto,

Generals of armies always consider logistics…it is the very essence of what a general of armies does, even if details are left to staffs to implement.. Players might not care about it because the tabletop is tactical and logistics is an operational decision, so those players are really into simulating the division or at best a corps commander, a battlefield commander. Some players do like operational decisions,that you haven't found many is probably because you yourself don't like it yourself and haven't done much to seek them out but they are there. Ask most board gamers and you find more than a few who prefer it to tactical games.

As for multiple battles in a campaign, day after day most are finished by the sole battle, or sometimes by a cluster of battles. I would be distressed if a campaign produced more than a few battles over the course of a campaign (skirmishes and combats a plenty but not full fledged battles.). Napoleonic battles sometimes were recuperated from in just a day (Ligny/Quatre Bras and Waterloo/Wavre) but exhaustion from the first battle still affects the subsequent. but there is still a lot of maneuver and generalship to simulate and I find quite fun to play, even if I lost the initial battle(s). If you think you aren't getting enough tabletop games to fight, play lots of campaigns.

As for what is wrong with victory going to who wins the most battles? It is patently wrong as a simulation of a campaign or even a war. Wars and campaigns are not tennis or whist games. Washington lost more battles than he ever won tactically but he won the war by winning the important ones. Being under the gun for six games is something I wouldn't mind. It's a simulation and most campaigns were rarely equal. Imaginative campaign victory conditions might offer some approaches.

I hate to appear pedantic but keeping track of league performance as per a baseball team to determine a champion is probably fine for you but it is not a campaign. Enjoy it for what it does but don't use the wrong label. If you bought a book called the Campaigns of Napoleon, you would be very upset if it really was only just about the days of his various battles, and did not cover the maneuvers and political/logistical/economic aspects of the days in between battles. If I bought a game that was billed as /strategic game but was a grand tactical game on a single battle I would be looking for my money back.

As for slim, let him concede defeat, and start a new campaign if he feels he has no chance at all…or let him wander off and find one who actually likes campaigns, if that is what you want to play. If you just want balanced games with a bit of variety use some sort of random scenario generator, but don't think your league approach is any sort of campaign simulation in even the most abstract way. It is really just a rubber in whist

Mick,
Agree whole heartily. But who is to say your definition is any more correct than mine? Than Otto"s?
Platoon Forward is certainly not a league match. The goal is to survive with a secondary goal to thrive.
Thus we must rely on more than one word to define what we mean. Fortunately we are allowed to use more to define our terms.

Cheers

Joe

Joe, you might want to consult a dictionary. I don't think a league game approach matches what I see there. Or maybe if you really want a specific authority…Chandler and his book "the Campaigns of Napoleon" where battles are often just a page or two. Kevin Zucker of OSG has two game systems…one called the Campaigns of Napoleon where the turns represent days and the other is called The Library of Napoleonic battles where the turns are an hour. I think that is definitive enough.

You might to call the colour of the sky in your painting, green, but the consensus is, that no matter how much you paint it thus, it isn't. It's blue.

Linked scenarios such as a fantasy RPG might use are sometimes considered a campaign in a much abused way, in that the scenarios might not have any long term effects to be felt on the opponents, but still the players live and grow in strength (or not). So at least you have the bare bones of a campaign at the most basic of levels. Survival and thriving means not wasting resources in an early scenario because it cannot be replaced. That's a campaign. But if it just generates Vp (or not) and the forces return intact for the next go, that is a whist rubber. I'll play whist, and even keep a long term score, like I do when I play chess or Go but I wouldn't describe it as a simulation of a campaign. I think your platoons forward might be that. The crucial aspect is a building or erosion of future capabilities of the forces as a result of victory or defeat in the active action on the table top. Logistics, political significance, terrain value aspects might be gamed off board abstractly.

Otto obviously has had a lot of drop out players and seeks to minimize it. His solution of never allowing a battle to be pulled too out of balance is a fine thing, but I wonder why anyone would worry about up points at all, or call it a campaign, anymore than my wife does when it comes to playing gin or backgammon, since we don't play for money. I think Otto has been exposed to some pretty immature attitudes about competition from some of his players that has soured him. I feel for him, but I think really he has just given up on campaign play in all but name rather than entice New blood into his campaign.

Dear Mick the Metalsmith.

You're getting pretty condescending here. As for immature attitudes from some of the players over the 54 years I've been in the hobby the attitudes in campaigns (which is what they were always called) the attitudes have been pretty well universal, of if it's "immature" then it's a quality of war gamers.

If you put on a campaign with twelve people. My experience will be that all of them will be wildly enthusiastic about joinging it, whereupon….

5 of the 12 will not be heard from again once you have sent out the game matereils, their "excitement to participate" being limited exclusively to their getting freebies.
3 of the remaining twelve will send in initial dispostions and that will be that. These will be fragmentary, incomplete and mostly wrong and when you ask them for clariciation they will joint the group of five and you will never hear from them again. They will say their cat has had a conniption, or their family suffers an astounding run of mortality.
4 of the remaining will send in a first move.
Two of them will suffer a minor defeat and immediately quit the game, their cat having fallen to the connuiption epidemic, or sending you a nasty-gram as the game is rigged against them.

1 of them will go on for a turn or two, and even though they have WON the initial battles just don't want to do the work.

1 of them MIGHT go on for four or five turns and might have the determination to fight on through thick and thin.

Second, I hate to tell you this but "League" game is a term I have heard of till you dropped it. For all of the 54 years I have been in the hobby campaign has been the turn. I frankly consider it a magical word of power used to denigrate, criticize and insult other gamers and magnify your own efforts.

What the heck are you talking about when you are talking about "League" performance? Each country is for its own and plays for itself and has its own score. Are you telling me you can't conceive of a game with more than two sides.

Most revealing is your statement.

"As for what is wrong with victory going to who wins the most battles? It is patently wrong as a simulation of a campaign or even a war. :

"REALLY!? Amazing? I don't know how I could have missed that in my quest for the PhD. I always thought that the guy who won the most battles and wound up raising his flag over the enemy capitol won?!!!

"Wars and campaigns are not tennis or whist games." Perhaps not but in war GAMES the dynamics of the game offer us little else.

Washington lost more battles than he ever won tactically but he won the war by winning the important ones.

I rather think the French Fleet and Siege train had something more to do with it.

"Being under the gun for six games is something I wouldn't mind."

Sorry but methinks you are using modus Eusophagus here. Modus Eusophagus is "If you swallow this you'll swallow anything."

So tell me mick the metalsmith, what has been YOUR interaction with campaign games. I've played in twenty or so and umpired in 12. Written four sets of rules for them, and produced 23 maps for them.

So sorry to have . I bow to your superior education and history of contribution to the hobby and shall not trouble you further. I wish you well in your future endeavors. Good day to you, sir.

Otto,
Don't bother, Mick obviously has his mind made up and there is no room for other opinions. Like the US political situation I am afraid. Suspect he is a very frustrated individual.
I do agree with your original post that for most people, the campaign system really needs to be a vehicle to tie your table top games together. If you want to focus on all the stuff Mick is talking about ( which in real life is critical!) you will lose players and it is tedious. I think computers handle that stuff better.
Good day to both of you!

Joe

No I haven't made up my mind that there is no room for other opinions. I am not the pedant you make me into. I do get irritated by someone who moans often about the dearth of players who remain interested in his campaigns and thus feels is best recourse he has is to dumb down his games to the point that he deludes himself in still thinking he is simulating a campaign at all as far as the hobby understands the term to mean. I certainly am not going to tell him how to play his game…but I will be pretty quick to point out that his label of campaign" no longer applies and that might well be why he has the sort of players he gets. If they haven't meaningful tools to build on future games from the performance of the game on hand, those who want to play campaigns are going to get bored and drop out. My efforts were not meant condescend even if you seem to make them so.

As for condescension, the angry reply with credential flaunting is the epitome of condescending behavior and a personal affront in that he called me a liar,. I won't even give that one the dignity of a comparison, because frankly I don't believe him. He projects.

No metalsmith. Originally the rules were quite a bit more complex and intriguing. But that's not what players wanted. They wren't bored, they were just plain lazy.

As for credentials. I have them you don't People who have no credent always resent those who do. It's fact not condescension. I also neglected to mention I ran four highly profitable play-by-mail games in the 1980's Cluster, Bron, Clustron,(computerized) and two versions of "Baroque", both the latter were computerized, one in a real Europe and one in an Imaginary Europe. All made very nice money. As for your definitions, they're wrong. It doesn't matter if they are "new" and yours.

Yes it was condescension on your part. You remind me of a friend I once had. When he met my father who had been a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Army of World War One, he began telling my father all about the Austro-Hungarian Army and its battles. My father several times contradicted him several times. It got so bad that finally my father slammed him down with, in his heavily accented German "Vass you dere Charlie?" And that is my final comment to you.

dear Joe Logan

He is not so much annoying as tiresome.

TMP OUGHT to be (but is not) a vehicle for discussion of war games. it OUGHT to be a place where games can come on and say. "This is what I have done. This worked, that didn't. This is what I have learned. It should be a place of suggestion and inquiry to on how to have fun in the hobby and how to make it more enjoyable. This petty carping that Metalsmith has done is typical of those who come on for no other reason than to run down the work of others.

The numbers of his kind are growing and eventually will drive out all enjoyment from the hobby, or rather people from this list.

Otto,

I hope not. I changed my approach about 4 years ago. I only correct if it is in the spirit of friendly information. ( After all, I too can and have been informed) If that doesn't work after several tries then I feel I am justified in ignoring them. That way discussion can still occur on these boards.

Joe