"How absurd is Sharp Practice?" Topic

"Whenever I teach someone new to play Sharp Practice, he or she is generally set back by what they perceive to be a lack of control. There is the card activation, which makes it impossible to predict which unit will be activated next. There is also the "Tiffin" card, which ends the turn, often without all units being activated. Then there is uncontrolled fire, which can lead to units blazing away even if you want them to move. And finally there are the random events, causing sometimes funny but often annoying things to happen.

At that point at the latest they start to ask if this isn't a bit too much – surely the designer overdid it, introducing crazy stuff just for the laugh?…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Well written.

It is totally absurd and not enough absurd at the same time. You actually can control the randomness. Fewer maneuver groups the easier. I think they have a good compromise with the ability to order groups/formations with one card after the Tiffin card. Sure they are not 100% effective but 80-90% effectively is better than naught. Having said that, those that don't like it are not wrong as this is a game and personal preference does play a factor.

Chris

The whole thing is splensid, forces you to use officers properly to comland, not jut shout, shoot and charge. The fire at will at nothing, does not last long, and a "turn" is at best a few minutes.
Compared with rhe real thing they probably already are too much in control, doing nothing or what you want, but not whatv"they want" when oit of control.

Great piece of work. I opened it with some trepidation, being a TFL fan, but was surprised to find an exellent analysis of why the rules really do represent the confusion of the battlefield and the command issues it presents – with historical examples from ACW.

Great stuff!

I've never played Sharp Practice, so I have to ask: how frequently do these random event cards pop up in the course of a typical game? The article shows that weird things do, in fact, happen in war. But with an entire war to look at, it's not surprising that you can find examples like that. But how likely is even one such incident in a single game? To say nothing of multiple such events in a single game. A common flaw in wargame rules is to model in extraordinary events from history and then see them happen routinely in almost every game.

ScottWashburn – I do agree that all too often wargaming rules do try to make the extraordinary ordinary. However, Sharp Practice and a few other rules out there try to model the confusion of small unit command. There is a very real reason why one of Murphy's Laws is that No operational order survives first contact. The battlefield has always been a case of who is the luckiest (granted skill, training, and good command capabilities has a tendency to influence how lucky you are). Sharp Practice does use some pretty silly random events, such as your leader slipping on cow dung or the like, but replace this with stumbling over uneven ground or ducking from a near miss, and you have something very plausible. There are some folks on this site that can tell you from first hand experience that when the excrement impacts the atmospheric oscillator confusion reigns supreme. Command & Control is more often ability of command to maintain a semblance of control. Rules such as Sharp Practice place a heavy emphasis on commanders which, in my humble opinion, is one of the most important factors in small unit warfare. In short, random events that impact the ability to command or influence a portion of the fight are not extraordinary but are actually to be expected and a good commander can adapt quickly (hopefully provided he's not wiping cow tunic from his splendidly tailored tunic)

Private Matter, looked at in that fashion I have to agree with you. As a Civil War reenactment battalion commander I've certainly seen a lot of absurd things happen over the years. I'll never forget where at one especially hot event my battalion was put in a reserve position with assurances that it would be at least 45 minutes before we would be sent forward. There was a small creek flowing along just behind us and I let my men break ranks and go over to the creek to cool off. Just a few minutes later a courier rode up with orders that we were needed on the line immediately! I looked back at my battalion and was horrified to see that half of them were literally naked in the creek! I told the courier: "We'll be there, but it may take a while." :) Friction, indeed!

I am more with Frank Chadwick, who has argued in his design notes for VnB, that good commanders would overcome friction. That is my problem with all the rules with random friction. It is random and the better general/player is harmed the same way than the poorer one. – But i dont know SP, so maybe that is solved in the game.

I love friction/fog of war in games as simulations and often find there is not enough of it to be realistic (ostensibly so one could even play the game in a reasonable period of time. A good player must plan for the friction (its called a reserve) to win. (It also gives a weaker player a lucky break now and then, and a something to blame with when their plan is inadequate.)

I think some players who prefer more chess like command and control might well miss the point. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. It's a different skill set. Coup d'oeill is the best skill any commander could have, knowing how to have tools in reserve is as important as knowing how to use the tool..

As Napoleon once said, "I don't care if he is a good general, I want to know if he is lucky."

ScottWashburn – that's funny

Decebalus – I wouldn't agree that good commanders 'overcome' friction in the traditional sense. I would think they know how to work with friction, how to adapt to sudden unexpected events, etc. On a large scale game such as Volley & Bayonet friction on the battlefield is represented differently and more abstracted thereby perhaps permitting the appearance of a good commander overcoming friction. I know this is semantics but I think skirmish games are a completely different animal when it comes representing Friction. In a skirmish level game friction is much more 'personal' and directly impactful on the commander in the thick of things. In my opinion, very few skirmish games represent this well. The TFL skirmish games do a good job in my opinion, as does Force on Force for the most part.

I love the activation system. My issue with it is that units end up blasting away at each other for turn after turn before anything decisive happens. A skirmish game that takes 2 or more hours doesn't work for me. Has anyone else run into this? Has anyone tried halving the number of shock required to drive units back and such?

While you have to look at the probability that something would happen, you must also account for sampling, what I call the "Marlin Perkins Effect".

Mutual of Omaha sponsored a nature show in the 70's hosted by Marlin Perkins. You got to see some good video of animal behaviour in the wild. But only a subset of it. You saw a lion stalk, pounce, and eat a gazelle. You didn't see the same lion taking a nap all day in the sun for three or four days in a row until it got hungry again.

Why didn't MoOWK show that part? Because nobody cares. It's not interesting to watch that part.

Likewise, we don't wargame the parts of warfare where people sat around and prepped for something or stood watch all night and no engagements happened. We also don't game all the action. There are tons of battles in the wars we game that are covered in history with the sentence "XXX marched into YYY and took the city against minimal resistance."

We only game battles that have exciting and interesting dynamics. The outliers. The ones where we expect extraordinary things to happen.

That said, (not having played SP), every officer shouldn't take a pratfall twice per battle. But I also don't have a problem with outlier events happening in outlier circumstances.

Devout wargamer "…friction is fun and models real world action."

Dutiful game designer "Well turn it up to 11."

Glad you enjoyed it my friends!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

It is random and the better general/player is harmed the same way than the poorer one

Ah, but they're not. If they are handed the same random effect, it is not as detrimental to the better player/general. There are many ways to overcome friction, or at least mitigate it.

Keep reserves to counter the unforeseen. Don't commit your off table troops too early. Make sure your capable officers are in a good position to influence the troops if it is a critical area of the battle. Always evaluate your actions – if your opponent suddenly seizes the initiative, how bad would it be after that action?

I get what you're saying Decebalus. I don't like games that are entirely random, and without any input from me. Playing Snakes and Ladders is pointless. Poker is also random – but good players will outperform bad ones.

From reading the articles,the issue with Sharp Practice, pro or con, isn't about whether there 'should' be friction if modeling combat or not. It is about how much friction should occur in a game and the amount of control a player does or doesn't have. Is it 'realistic' or absurd [extreme and unrealistic.]

Friction is fun--for many wargamers, and others not so much. It is what the designer wants to provide the players in the way of a game experience. Certainly some amount of realism can be one of those things.

The question is 'how much' is realistic… or too much?

Richard C. in his article provides Clausewitz quotes regarding friction that are among my favorites:

"In war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities."

'variable quantities' i.e. how much?

"Friction is the ONLY concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper."

Sounds kinda of important if representing 'real war' is a design goal.

Careful now, there is already a 5 page discussion on friction over on the WWII board.

Sigh, well this was a good thread but now I see it going down hill form here.

I like friction in my games. What I dislike is giving stupid names to otherwise perfectly reasonable game mechanics. Sharp Practice is one of my favorite rulesets. However, it irks me when I read AARs and the officers and places are given idiotic, when not slightly xenophobic, names. I don't get British humor.

pro or con, isn't about whether there 'should' be friction if modeling combat or not. It is about how much friction should occur in a game and the amount of control a player does or doesn't have. Is it 'realistic' or absurd [extreme and unrealistic.

It's also how the friction is delivered.

For example, in "Longstreet" the delivery via not having the right game cards at the right time is one source acting against a players control but the addition of the opponent being able to introduce friction by their own hand of cards, ultimately undermines the game.

Being able to retain cards and use their advantages against your opponent becomes a skill in itself and the historical nature of the friction they are based on is undermined by the ability of the player to deploy them at a time of their choosing.

As Napoleon once said, "I don't care if he is a good general, I want to know if he is lucky."

I regret to advise that I don't think he ever said that: see TMP Link for a brief discussion on that quote.

I regret to advise that I don't think he ever said that: see TMP Link for a brief discussion on that quote.

The quote was probably started by a mediocre French general who had been very lucky.

Being able to retain cards and use their advantages against your opponent becomes a skill in itself and the historical nature of the friction they are based on is undermined by the ability of the player to deploy them at a time of their choosing.

I have no idea how many hundreds (thousands?) of hours I have spent learning about, teaching, planning, and executing military operations designed to make an enemy defeat themselves. Being able to do that in real life is a skill in itself.

Planning and executing Military Operations I understand.

A representation of two or more Civil War Battalions facing off over an open field generally has less possibilities for the enemy to screw up.

A card played to increase the chance of damage by shooting, countered by one giving the target protection of thick smoke. Followed up by a counter card of one played to increase the chance of damage by shooting on the recipient of the smoke, is the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Oh and yes, I do except this not the custom on every player's turn, in case other "Longtreet" players are reading this.

US commander in the China-Burma-India Theatre during the Second World War General Joseph Stilwell summed up the impact of friction upon a commander's job, commenting
(Glick, S. P. & Charters, L. I. (1983). "War, Games, and Military History." Journal of Contemporary History. 18 (4) p.567-582. (1983)

"(The) Principal load (of a commanding general) is standing disappointment and upsetting of plans. Everything conspires against him; dumb execution, weather, breakdowns,misunderstandings, deliberate obstructions, jealousies, etc. (He) must be prepared to accept fifty per cent results in twice the time calculated .

Note that the general says 'be prepared to accept', not that it will happen that way all the time. They are random events, unpredictable in both kind and number. Of course, he is speaking from a position of commanding tens of thousands of men, hence tens of thousands of possible friction events. That isn't necessarily so at the scale of Sharp Practice.

Some game designers seem to take that 50% prediction at face value. The designer of Grand Piquet wrote:

What we gamers often times forget, is that every order has as much chance of being misinterpreted, not followed, or not delivered, as it had being executed properly.

Can you imagine an army where only half of all orders were actually carried out 'properly'? Wouldn't military men be aware of such poor odds and do something about it?

An individual's experience of friction/random events will always be particular to them and the unusual will always stand out. We don't remember the 50 die rolls that gave us the expected results, we remember the one die roll that was against the odds or granted success at a critical juncture in the game.

The question for the game designer is how to provide that experience with an aggregate of all military units' general experience of Friction, the kind and frequency of such events… even though to the players they will remain unpredictable.

And also note that Stilwell is talking about HIS army, his organization's behavior, not the enemy's influence. Friction as Clausewitz envisioned it was all the things that go wonky in one's own army.

I agree with Trajanus. However fun such uses of cards are in games like Longstreet, they are at best an uneven portrayal of friction for the players. While I know that Sharp Practice uses cards differently in representing Friction, I can't really comment because, though I have the rules, I haven't played them yet.

Note that the general says 'be prepared to accept', not that it will happen that way all the time.

More likely be prepared because it WILL happen.

More likely be prepared because it WILL happen.

More likely or just occasionally? For a game design, you can't use such vague references. It will come down to Friction being represented by specific odds, chance and probability, whether that is Chain of Command or Sharp Practice.

Anyone can do the math on the exact probabilities those games provide in the way of friction randomly occurring.. The question was and is, how close to reality are those probabilities? 1 in 6, 3 in 6, 5 in 6? Each roll will be be random and unpredictable for the players beyond a one through six result… Even the classic Avalon Hill CRT had negative results for 2-1 and 3-1 odds.

Howdy,

A: Are you familiar with Murphy's Law?

B: Yes, Whatever can do wrong, will go wrong.

A: Are you familar with Cole's Law?

B: Scratches head, No.

A: Cole Slaw – Shredded Cabbage with mayonnaise, a bit of vinegar, and seasoned to taste.

Ponder on,

JAS

A: Are you familiar with Murphy's Law?
B: Yes, Whatever can do wrong, will go wrong.

C: Are you familiar with Boyd's corollary?
D: If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost.

Fortunately, laws are made to be broken [Enough with the clever sayings already.]

If whatever can [do?]go wrong, will go wrong, D-Day should have been an unmitigated disaster, the Allies scampering back to England in thousands of sinking ships.

At Omaha pretty much every thing that could have gone wrong did but fortunately they were able to over come the friction and prevailed.

At Omaha pretty much every thing that could have gone wrong did but fortunately they were able to over come the friction and prevailed

'Pretty much everything? So everything, or not everything? How much is that? That is 'pretty much' one beach out of five, so a one out of five chance for 'pretty much'?

"Pretty much", "likely", and "occasionally" isn't very useful in designing a wargame like Sharp Practice which attempts to model friction nor make much sense of any criticisms that the result is 'absurd.'

Worked well enough for Rich designing both Sharpe Practice and Chain of Command.

Worked well enough for Rich designing both Sharpe Practice and Chain of Command.

Does that mean you agree with the mathematical formula in the system that creates friction and it's frequency. That isn't a criticism of those rules sets or the article which highlighted examples of friction. It is a question of:

What constitutes 'well enough?' considering the question was whether or not at least Sharpe Practice's portrayal was 'absurd'. Compared to what?

The issue that CaptShandy wrote about in his excellent article is indicated in his opening paragraph.

"Whenever I teach someone new to play Sharp Practice, he or she is generally set back by what they perceive to be a lack of control. There is the card activation, which makes it impossible to predict which unit will be activated next. There is also the "Tiffin" card, which ends the turn, often without all units being activated. Then there is uncontrolled fire, which can lead to units blazing away even if you want them to move. And finally there are the random events, causing sometimes funny but often annoying things to happen.
At that point at the latest they start to ask if this isn't a bit too much – surely the designer overdid it,…"

Italics and bold are mine. The bold just identifies how friction is added to Sharpe Practice

The italics identifies the question the article addresses: is the friction in the game 'too much', of having 'over done' it? In other words, the author gives the amount of friction as the issue to be addressed.

The article goes on to provide a convincing set of examples of how and where such friction occurs, matching the kinds of friction to Sharpe Practice mechanics. Richard C. also provides similar examples in his blog referenced by CptShandy.

From what is described above, quite a few of those kinds of events can happen in one game of Sharpe Practice.

All fine and good. What none of the articles address is the question raised: How much is 'too much'? How do you establish that the rules representing friction 'over did it?'

And of course, this is has implications regarding Richard's goals for representing Friction in his game rules:

"By incorporating friction in our games we hope to provide the gamer with a more realistic challenge and ultimately, one hopes, a more enjoyable experience."

So, is the amount of friction provided, realistic or 'too much'? Obviously, whether it is more enjoyable is a matter of personal taste. Realism isn't a matter of taste…it is a comparison to established reality--the same reality the article worked to establish with the examples from history.

Note that all the examples in the articles are single events from different engagements, not how many occurred in a single battle, so the question of 'too much' isn't really addressed by the articles other than to prove that such Friction does happen.

Adding Friction does not of itself to me add enjoyment. I can be easily be and in my opinion i,s all to often overdone. Certainly in the first hand accounts I read do not have as much go wrong as in some games. Furthermore. if you are trying to learn strategy and tactics its faster and easirer and much more interesting to do it with perhaps a little less than "real" friction, it leads to a faster more interactive learning experience and hence is much more fun and a better appreciation of the limits of command in a particular period.

Too much is given over to "friction" which is not friction. Too many of the Sherman tanks crews in DD tanks died because of lack of training. Nobody taught ther Guys at Omahar the basics "doint turn Broadside to the swell". That is not friction thats lack of training.

Yes and lack of training leads to screw ups – which are friction.

A screw up because of a lack of training at the platoon level can throw off the timing of actions and rates of advance for the company, battalion, and regiment. Environmental conditions and terrain can also create conditions at a lower that creates friction up the chain of command.

Because the DD tanks did not arrive, the beach landing did not go as planned thus creating unexpected friction up the chain of command.

For me, SNAFU's at the lower levels caused from lack of training, stupid decisions, poor maintenance, etc which creates friction up the chain of command in a skirmish game is generally irrelevant unless victory points are assigned to it.

As a game designer, you could recreate the details that lead to friction up the chain of command or draw a card for a random friction result. I think it would depend on the level of play, the definition of friction the designer wants to use and what he wants to recreate. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do it as you are not going to get consensus agreement.

Wolfhag

Wolfhag,

Excellent post.

DB

As a game designer, you could recreate the details that lead to friction up the chain of command or draw a card for a random friction result. I think it would depend on the level of play, the definition of friction the designer wants to use and what he wants to recreate. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do it as you are not going to get consensus agreement.

Yes, as a game designer, he gets to choose what to put in and what to leave out. There are no 'right' choices. Only those that work to achieve his goals. It is the same with anyone writing about history: They can't include everything, even with the most limited time frame. It is about making choices.

So, the questions are what the goals are for the design and how it achieves those goals. IF representing 'reality' is one of those goals, then what part of reality has to be established and shown to be modeled by the design.

Whether Sharpe Practice "over did it" visa vie history is the thread/article question.

For me, SNAFU's at the lower levels caused from lack of training, stupid decisions, poor maintenance, etc which creates friction up the chain of command in a skirmish game is generally irrelevant.

You have just made a statement not only about what you might choose to portray, but what is the 'reality of friction' at skirmish scale: "generally irrelevant."

If you feel that we all can come to some consensus agreement on the veracity of CplShandy's conclusion: events in Sharpe Practice did happen in reality, then with enough evidence, we could come to some consensus about your conclusion regarding friction's impact at skirmish scales.

That effort to establish evidence--and that consensus--is Richard C. goal in his blog "Friction or Fiction" linked in CplShandy's article.

The idea that there is less friction at lower levels of command is something that Dupuy felt analysis supported, though I don't think he felt it was irrelevant.

Mystics & Statistics: A blog on quantitative historical analysis hosted by The Dupuy Institute
link

Consensus is based on either common 'likes' or enough evidence.

This discussion does seem to be utterly missing the point that Sharp Practice is a completely cinematic game, where the two or three random events that occur in each game are small but potentially significant events that add colour and narrative to the game. A couple of men slip away to loot, a volley creates a temporary build up of smoke, which obscures visibility, a leader trips over and is momentarily disorientated or twenty other tiny every day situations which happen in all real life battles.

The variable activation sequence isn't about friction or Clausewitz, it's about adding suspense and creating cliff-hangar moments of excitement. All of which seems to be utterly missed here.

The variable activation sequence isn't about friction or Clausewitz, it's about adding suspense and creating cliff-hangar moments of excitement. All of which seems to be utterly missed here.

NM:
Well, I remember that Richard did write something about adding excitement with that activation sequence. Such variables do add suspense and create excitement. I just don't remember where at the moment.

So, you feel that Richard used variable activation without any thought to representing Friction? I don't know what Richard would say to that.

However, the thread was about CplShandy defending the several mechanisms in Sharp Practice [I keep adding the 'e' on Sharp….] as portraying aspects of Friction including the variable activation sequence. So it is understandable that your observation might have be missed.

It comes down to what Richard was intending including the variable activation. It could well be that excitement AND representing friction were both game design goals. Do you know?

Northern Monkey:

You seem to be almost alone in grasping Sharp Practice (and its ilk). You do not play such games so much as watch them. The players function is to roll dice (often masses of d6) and turn over random cards. The designer has decided not to bother with player decisions as input.

Friction can be elegantly simulated by dice rolls provided you have a large enough range of chance (d10s work well). Frank Chadwick was one of the first designers to recognize their value and also add a real world chain of command in classics such as Command Decision I&II. But he wisely keep player decisions (in the form of order chits) central to the design (but kept them hidden so you didn't know what the enemy was up to – simply brilliant – and yes I know John Hill originally created the concept).

An interesting game puts player decisions in the fore front with friction being handled as elegantly as possible in the back ground. Giving players something to other than count d6 and letting them over come friction. It also keeps players involved as most of my Sharp Practice experience has been sitting around doing nothing waiting for some random card to turn up.

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame & Glory Games

"An interesting game puts player decisions in the fore front with friction being handled as elegantly as possible in the back ground."
This, I think, is the "sweet spot" that rules writers need to be shooting for. If the rules attempt to create friction, completely overpowers my attempt to create a battle plan, then I am just watching the game unfold, not playing it.

This, I think, is the "sweet spot" that rules writers need to be shooting for. If the rules attempt to create friction, completely overpowers my attempt to create a battle plan, then I am just watching the game unfold, not playing it.

Yes, that "sweet spot." Well, while actual commanders may have experienced that watching, unable to make decisions from time to time [again a question of frequency], that certainly wasn't the 'norm' or no general's plans would have come to fruition. There would have been no Austerlitz or 2nd Bull Run, just a series of random events.

Sid Meiers of 'Civilization' fame said that games are "A series of interesting decisions."

Friction in games can present 'interesting decisions,' and certainly they were an element of war. So some where between between absolute certainty and 'absurd' randomness in games is that 'sweet spot'. I imagine that there is also a 'sweet spot' for portraying the reality of friction in battle with a game system. I see no reason why those two spots can't overlap.

Tango starts off with some new players stating:

surely the designer overdid it, introducing crazy stuff just for the laugh?…."

Is a person that is just learning the game able to make informed decisions as to what the designer did or did not "overdo" in the game?

I think a set of rules can only be objectively critiqued from the viewpoint of do the rules accomplish what the designer intended. This is where the designer's notes should come into play to explain what he intended with different rules.

Richard Clark is an accomplished game designer on at least two continents. He seems to have a particular idea, based on experience and research, of how he feels what will best deliver for the player the best overall experience. Evidently, thousands of people (but not everyone) agree with him. It should have been pretty easy to explain it to them.

All I'm saying is that before we start dissecting someone else's rules using our own ideas, experience, research, prejudices, and biases (we all have them, including me) we need to understand the designers intent. If the game accomplished the designers intent I'd say the game is a success. If you don't like the result or the experience it delivers that's another issue. There are many games that are well designed and popular that I don't "like" but there is no need for me to criticize them. We can both have different ideas on the experience the game delivers. Some people like romantic comedy movies and some like action movies.

Someone that is playing a game for the first time and not familiar with the rules can't really formulate a "constructive opinion" about whether a designer "overdid" something, especially if he does not know the designers intent. He's still entitled to it but also should learn the system to make an informed opinion. That's my opinion anyhow.

I've handled these issues by developing an extensive FAQ and notes document that addresses the questions and concerns people have brought up.

Wolfhag