"Do rules matter as much as we think they do?" Topic

Long title and a bit of a rant, I admit, but I couldn't help thinking about this as I read the two-page (and growing) post about IGOUGO vs alternating activation rulesets (not for the faint of heart: TMP link). Now, when I was but a boy I invented my very first wargame while wasting a perfectly good summer day in Vermont. I had a fistful of plastic army men (green Americans and grey Germans), one plastic army man tank (a Sherman of some sort) and a empty bank checks box as a German tank. They fought for many memorable afternoons over a Puzz3D Italian village and tissue-box factory with the most complex set of rules a ten-year old could conjure: you could fire with one model or move a few models, then the other side got a go. All shots were instantly fatal and movement was simply eyeballed.

In hindsight, that wargame was objectivey bad, but nevertheless I only have good memories of it. In fact, I can think of many games I had later on, when I "grew up" (*ahem*) that were either terrific fun or mind-numbingly tedious, and were so completely regardless of the game itself. I've played Crossfire, Battlefront WW2, Battleground WW2, Nuts!, Flames of War, IABSM, Bolt Action, Chain of Command, TW&T, Disposable Heroes and countless other systems that I can barely remember, and I have had good and bad experiences with each.

The only thing that has been consistent in my own personal experience is that a good gamemaster and a good scenario means (barring unusual circumstances) a good game experience, and a bad gamemaster and scenario almost always means a bad game experience. If the scenario is interesting, dynamic, assymetrical, unusual and allows lots of different approaches, I am almost sure to have fun, whereas a typical "line up equivalent forces and have a shoot out for 4 hours" scenario will bore me to tears. No brilliant ruleset will in any way save the latter, no uninspired ruleset will in any way harm the former.

Forums tend to be a natural receptacle to a lot of armchair theorizing and in that sense, personal experiences are often relegated as "merely anecdotal" and thus inferior to the more "substantive" arguments about the various virtues and sins of different game mechanics. After all, my experiences at the club last week are not demonstrative proofs subject to rigorous, logical analysis. They are inherently subjective. And besides, we like to make axiomatic judgments about game systems ("This game is the best, that game is the worst, period. End of story.") Making conditional, qualified statements about the value of a game just seems weak and ineffectual in comparison. But while they don't make for good forum fodder, my experiences fly in the face of my own typical arguments about which ruleset is "best" and why… I've had both fun and tedium with many of the games I have either promoted or disparaged!

Lately, I don't think the game system matters as much, in practice, as we often believe it does, as a good umpire can make a scenario that will surprise and challenge players in any ruleset. I am curious if others have had similar experiences… if so, I wonder why so much time is spent deconstructing and arguing about game systems and so little time is spent constructively suggesting ways to add a twist or surprising factor to spice up your scenarios? Why is less time spent bringing interesting or unusual campaigns to the attention of the forum community, or suggesting good tips for running a scenario or campaign? Why isn't our conversation surrounding rules focused on how we can use those rules flexibly to serve our scenario needs, rather than taking a game system as an immalleable monolith to which we are all beholden?

I think it comes down to ROI – Return on Investment. A gamer / group of gamers invest time and experience playing a set of rules, so naturally, if they enjoy the experience they become advocates for that set.

I take your point and agree that the arguing can easily get out of hand and that is a byproduct of the digital age we live in – it's so 'easy' to do.

Someone posts a thread stating Rule Set X is rubbish. The reader who enjoys Rule Set X takes it 'personally' as if the OP's opinion is attacking 'his' (the readers) investment.

"Why is less time spent bringing interesting or unusual campaigns to the attention of the forum community, or suggesting good tips for running a scenario or campaign?"

Because arguing is easier.

The quality of the players can also make a dreary ruleset enjoyable or vice-versa. They can even overturn the influence of the Gamemaster and scenario. Of course, they'll also frustrate said GM something awful…

I think you are lucky if you have an umpire for a game. Most of the games I've played have either been against a single opponent or two against one. I have umpired twice.

As far as rules go? They all fall short of the mark in some ways. The best game I had was against a guy whereby we discussed what was likely to happen in a given situation and decided the outcome between us. Not an argument all evening, but a most enjoyable game.

I find that anally obsessed button counter gamers make any game dull.

The problem is not rules, it's gamers obsessively trying to get "realism" and model their pet theory.

Me, I play black powder with mods for most periods and we all love it.

@Achtung Minen "The only thing that has been consistent in my own personal experience is that a good gamemaster and a good scenario means (barring unusual circumstances) a good game experience, and a bad gamemaster and scenario almost always means a bad game experience. If the scenario is interesting, dynamic, assymetrical, unusual and allows lots of different approaches, I am almost sure to have fun, whereas a typical "line up equivalent forces and have a shoot out for 4 hours" scenario will bore me to tears. No brilliant ruleset will in any way save the latter, no uninspired ruleset will in any way harm the former."

From where I stand, that pretty much sums up wargames.

Players, terrain and GMs matter much, much more than the rules.

I agree with you that choice of rules is not the most important choice; a good scenario with a mediocre ruleset will probably give a better game than a poor scenario with a good ruleset.

Here's my take on which ingredients you need for the High Quality Gaming Experience:
link

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
link

So, instead of Osprey or Warlord putting out a new set of rules, their time and money would be better spent putting out a book explaining how to be a good umpire/DM or how to create scenarios?

Grelber

I've found rules sets that I despise and no GM no matter how talented can make it worth my time to play. A bad GM can or scenario can ruin any game however.

@Grelber, I didn't mean to imply that wargame companies shouldn't develop new games. I am quite pleased to own a full bookshelf of rulesets and will keep buying them in the future as well. Nothing wrong with an abundance of choice! That said, I think I meant to ask about forum habits more than anything.

Nevertheless…

their time and money would be better spent putting out a book explaining how to be a good umpire/DM or how to create scenarios?

I'd buy that book too, for sure! Now I am imagining a nice big coffee table book, each chapter with a gorgeous diorama of one of the best convention games of the year, with an essay by the person who ran it telling how he went about from concept to execution… naturally it would have a full after-action report and lots of pretty photos of minis!

I have played some quite bad games that I think were poorly run and/or
"Bad" because I didn't enjoy that era, that scenario, or the other players. Still, I have played games were the rules were poorly written, thought out, or interpreted. There are bad rules systems, but they may be unenjoyable for me, and enjoyable for you. Enjoyment is subjective, thus rules system preferences are subjective too. However, I do think some rules suck.

Rules matter because it depends on what you are looking for from your games.

One player's detail intense simulation, is a mind numbingly dull experience for another. One player's light and simple game, is a bit of mindless fluff to another.

Some find great enjoyment in the detail, others are totally turned off. Some want to pick up a game quickly and have it all over in an hour or two.

Two like-minded players will derive a lot of pleasure from either type of rules.

rules not mattering a heck of a lot.

While 'wargaming' is a social activity, we do so much of it (researching history/armies/battles/uniforms/etc, selecting figures, painting and basing figures) mostly as solo activities, that when we come together to game, I want to enjoy myself, but I also want others to have a good time, and thus hopefully want to have further games with me in the future.

There are certainly different game mechanisms that I prefer, and help me to select the game systems that I actually purchase. But I've never refused to play a game on the basis that "IGOUGO" is unhistorical, or measuring movement in basewidths is excessively gamey.

If everyone involved in the game has a good time, and we can see some sort of logic to the outcome, I'll happily come back for a another go at that rule set, but the key is the social one of having a good time first…

I think the rules themselves matter far less than if the GM and/or the players "get" what the rulewriter is trying to achieve. If they do understand what the intentions of the rule writer are then they will probably have a good game. Problems occur when a players expectations are vastly different from the rule- writers perspective.

As much as I like the figures, terrain , experience, history and challenge of playing wargames, It's the Rules ultimately which make the game.

but you can use them badly, inappropriately and they may have treatments that are a bit off.

On saying that, there are actually very few downright bad rules.

Played many a "poor to average" game with good people and played good games with "difficult" people…(hardly surprising since I am one of them!) and you take what you get from it. If you don't have a lot invested, it is easier.

Two things can make a game good, a good scenario and a good set of rules. Equally, a bad scenario or a bad set of rules can ruin a game.

I watched one game played by a group on YouTube using a wwii set of rules I really enjoy where they had Germans holding a village and US forces charging across open fields to their death. A good set of rules utterly ruined by a ridiculous scenario.

The problem then comes where someone has such an experience of a set of rules and comes here saying that the game system is rubbish. In truth, very, very few rule sets are that bad and clearly such inflammatory remarks cause arguments when the truth is that their experience was ruined by the scenario, not by the rules.

That said, there is no doubt that the result of the game was historically plausible. The German defenders got the right historical result. With a different set of rules, say one that limited ranges to just 24", the US player may have got much closer to the defenders and even broken in to the defences to get to close combat. Now, that may have given a more balanced game, but the Gernan defender would be left saying that the result was historically unbelievable. That is also.a game ruined if you want a plausible game that looks like WWII combat.

Ultimately, a bad scenario will break any set of rules.

Achtung Minen – excellent point! -

"Why isn't our conversation surrounding rules focused on how we can use those rules flexibly to serve our scenario needs, rather than taking a game system as an immalleable monolith to which we are all beholden?"

I've come to think of scenarios as a means of presenting a problem to solve – the terrain board lays out the grounds for the problem, and the combatant forces are the operating tools (all adjudicated by some rules system, but the GAME is crafted by a "Game Master" who is the essential ingredient behind the whole project).

Playing prepared, moderated scenarios in this format to me reached a "high art" form, and before the tourney, Pts. build, and often equal pts. balanced gaming format became vogue in the past ten years or so. However, open-format scenario designing does take skill, and some preparation time [and ultimately "ownership"], and that many current rule systems have meant to make this process easier and more automated – but the results can often be more confining too.

Some who have come to know the excellence of crafting, presenting, and playing in well-built scenarios, have realized that some backwards engineering automatically occurs in order to use today's crop of popular rule systems, and maybe to amplify AM's point, it's become natural [for some] that our reliance on any one rules set has become more tenuous too.

While I agree that scenario is far more important than rules mechanics, I will point out that rules are important because certain mechanics reward or incentivize certain kinds of play.

For example, if your rules impose artificially short ranges (e.g. you can't shoot more than 24"), then you'll end up with situations where troops are mucking about in clear view of the enemy, safe in the knowledge that they are out of harm's way. If your rules do not allow for ambush or hidden deployment or hidden movement, the player's "perfect knowledge" of the battlefield will reward a purely mathematical analysis of damage output vs unit resilience when making decisions about what to attack and where.

FWIW, this same facile argument of "A good GM can make any rule-set fun!" permeates the RPG world as well, and has the same shortcoming – it too tends to ignore the idea that certain game mechanics reward certain play-styles. In D&D, your character gets experience for killing monsters and taking their stuff, hence you have a natural incentive to kill monsters and take their stuff. Contrast this with Apocalypse World, where the experience mechanic is based purely on the choice of other players around the table choosing to reward you by incentivizing a certain subset of actions, a subset which is likely to change every session. These two games produce vastly different play experiences. And yes, you could run the same kind of game in both systems, but much boils down to how much extra work and effort the GM has to put into the process, and whether he or she is ultimately just "re-inventing the wheel" to the extent that they have basically just turned one system into the other.

Is one any better than the other? No, not really. It all depends on what you're looking for in a game, which is why TacticalPainter01's comment about the difference between player expectations and what play experience rules mechanics deliver is so important.

To bring this back to wargaming, I find that my personal preference is for rule sets and game mechanics that capture the feel of the period and which reward/incentivize the use of historically-appropriate tactics. I don't so much care about hyper-accuracy of armor penetration or whatever, but (using WW2 games as an example) I like games that reward the use of fire-and-maneuver, suppression, ambush, etc. In the black powder era, I like rules that highlight the difficulties in command-and-control, effectively managing the morale of the units under one's command, and period-appropriate application of cavalry and artillery.

Can other games that don't have these aspects still deliver a "fun" experience? Absolutely. But in my experience that usually has more to do with the other players than anything else. Sometimes getting together with friends is the important bit, and pushing around tiny soldiers on the table is purely secondary, at which point the specifics of the rules matter far less.

First of all no rule set can compensate for a bad scenario or bad players.

Umpires, even the army now days uses some form of gunnery simulator, to adjudicate firing. To expect any GM to do better is not going to happen. Munin Ilor has it, rules encourage sensible play, if they are in of themselves sensible, folks definition of sensible is infinitely variable.
It's clear that the players need to be matched, some like the gambling, rist taking and the gains of not needing to think too much as it is all on the die rolls. Others hate that and want careful planing to dominate. The two types in the same game and it's a big time fail. Like having experts on one side and amatures on the other, nobody gets a good game.

Having written literally hundreds of scenarios, time spent results in better game. Sometimes thrown together scenarios can be stunning, they can also be dire. Time spent may not improve the chances of stunning, but they do ensure a pleasant interesting game at worst.

Achtung,
Well stated. I think you are spot on for 80% of gamers. I would like to speak for the minority; those who play solitaire. The scenario is important only in that it must be challenging and immersive. Like UshCha, I "roll up" plenty of scenarios that are great. For me the rules are important as they must allow me to escape into the situation. For me an umpire and other players would get in the way.
Cheers

Joe

I enjoy almost any game with cool toy soldiers – but some I enjoy more than others. The most important factor being the rules. A good set of rules can work in a pick up game between two players. A bad set of rules can ruin the most elaborate scenario despite a game masters efforts.

Still what often happens is the game master just takes over and starts ignoring rules and modifying as they go – hence saving otherwise poor rules. The problem of course is the layers than have to depend on GM decisions to move forward and you can no longer rely on set rules.

TomT