"Any good books on wargame design?" Topic

Well? Any suggestions?

I'm looking to develop some quick and easy skirmish rules for very few miniatures. I think I have a pretty good idea for a system, but I can always use some help.

Help!

Most books about wargame design probably won't be of great use to you as they tend deal more with design theory than practical examples. I seem to remember that Wally Simon did write several books that might be of assistance, but I don't have them to hand at present.

What era are you talking about? Chances are that there are already some pretty good choices available.

Not for what you want – most are highly technical.

Just write out a few ideas and get playing. It;s not that hard!

I'm looking to develop some quick and easy skirmish rules for very few miniatures. I think I have a pretty good idea for a system, but I can always use some help.

It all depends on how deep you want to go. It doesn't sound like any technical study is the goal, but rather trouble-shooting a simple set of rules.

My suggest is the same as Extra C: Get it down on paper, play it and THEN if you are having problems, then come back and we would have 1. a better idea of who you might reference and even find those on this list would have ideas.

Just throwing out books and articles shotgun isn't going to get you anywhere.

And of course, the best way to learn something about game design, like writing, to just do it…

Start with the scale you want, figure out movement rates, then just start writing the rules YOU want to use. From there it's just adding more rules/tweaking them to work (tips: Simplify! Explain with examples of play!) Your two pages of rules will soon swell to 100… ;-)

Click on "message boards" on the left side of the TMP home page. Do a search for "skirmish rules". You will find lots of info and suggestions. Maybe some links to some free skirmish rules by gamers that have been down this road ahead of you.

It really depends upon what you want to do with your written rules. Do you want to publish them for free, or for profit? Are they just for you, and your circle of family and friends?

I self-published a set of skirmish rules for playing with plastic Army Men, back in 1998. I sold my game for profit, mail order. I printed copies at OfficeMax, assembled the rulebooks at home, then mailed them to my customers. I also taught Community Education classes on wargaming, using my rules as a demo game for the students to play, to experience the hobby. My classes sold out, each year, and I was asked to run 2-3 additional classes, to meet the demand (mostly kids, but I ran a few classes for adults, as well).

I had zero Dollars for advertising. Print-on-demand services did not exist back then. The Internet was my friend, but marketing was difficult, with no money, to say the least. Still, I managed to sell around 150 copies, total. I live in the USA, but I managed to sell copies internationally (Canada) and overseas (Great Britain and Australia), without any advertising costs. I ran my business for eight years, before I shut it down.

Let me know if you have additional questions: plasticwars [at] G-m-a-i-l [dot] C-O-M. Cheers!

"Serious Games" by Clark C. Abt and "Simulation Games in Action" by Colin J. Marsh are two that I've read, but I doubt that these are really what you're looking for. I'd second McLaddie.

I have to agree, there are lots of rules out tehre. The only books I am aware of tend to just generate a set similar to stuff rthat is out there. If that is the case get your current favorite and then re-write and play test. The most work even on our set, which is quite unique in some ways, was sorting it out so there were no inconsistancies and it got the answer you wanted. You need to think up the wierdest situations and then make sure the rules cope.

We carry all eight volumes of Secrets of Wargame Design series, which offers a wide variety of mechanics across a variety of periods.

Vol. 1: SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN: A Tabletop Toolkit of Ideas, Analysis, and Rule Mechanics

Vol. 2: MORE SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

Vol. 3: SOLO SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

Vol. 4: CAMPAIGN SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

Vol. 5: MASTER SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

Vol. 6: SKIRMISH SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

Vol. 7: WWII SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

Vol. 8: NAVAL SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN

For a list of articles within each volume ($19 each plus shipping):

* Go to onmilitarymatters.com
* Type in SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN within the search window at the top left of the home page (under logo)
* Click on the Search button
* Scroll down

Hope this may help. Volume 6 seems appropriate to your description, but other volumes include skirmish mechanics and rules.

Any questions? E-mail militarymatters@att.net

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and help. I probably will just try out what I've got already. I was mainly looking for a reference on things I should consider that maybe I haven't thought of. But perhaps the best way is to simply playtest until I'm happy.

Rather than worry about what I haven't thought of beforehand, I should probably just find out what I haven't thought of through trial and error and lots of playtesting.

Thanks again, guys!

The intro to this book is a good read, starting page 6:
link

SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN video review:
YouTube link

Wolfhag

I will warn you that creating (good) vehicle rules will be challenging… ;-)

I would suggest you are taking the right approach. In engineering and wqwrgame desighn its important that you know what you are desighning for "A good Game" is not a specification its a dream. You can't plan for a dream it becomnes a nightmare.

By "play testing" you will better understand what it is you want the answeres to be, and where you can cut doen and do less and still get the answeres. Then you can look in detail about writing the rules.

Vehicle rules yes its diffrent but a few folk have done it. Vehickles reall only work correctly at about 15mm and smaller.

At larger scales the vehicles generally are too close to function effectively or the ground scale is so out of wack or even massively distorted, that they become game pices with little or no connection to reality. But hey fantasy is a big seller.

Lucky for me, vehicles aren't really a necessary component of the game I want to create.

Thanks again to all.

I suggest you approach design top down.
What are the important things you want to model?
Which might seem kind of obvious, but it can be easy to forget things and it's easy to over or under emphasise something.

Once you know what you want to model you can start thinking about how you do that.

The simplest safest route is to look at other rule sets and see how they do the things you want. Borrow rules and get opinions. Once you have a pile of mechanisms then you can sort through them and see how you feel about them. You can think about em for a while but you will probably quickly need practical basic experiments. Not full games but put objects on a table and think about what happens. Compare alternatives and take notes. Iterate – re factor your code (oops) I mean design. Then repeat.
You want as simple a set of mechanisms as does the job.
Heath Robinson is a lot more obvious to an outside observer.
Get opinions and listen to them.
It's a natural tendency to defend the child of your labours. At least some part of your time should be spent "trying to break it". This is far easier to do with someone else's work so peer testing is very important. Then external testing ( ask people here ).

The Angry Piper,

My advice is for you to make a statement that describes the 'end state' you are after and then go about backward engineering the game design/system/mechanics from there.

You already made a good start in your initial post which states you want to develop a: "quick and easy skirmish rules for very few miniatures."

All you have to do is frame the rest of the military factors in respect to:
- the Organization size (i.e. Squad, Platoon or Company).
- Time and Space
- The Scope, does it include other combat support elements, such as tanks, artillery, aircraft, minefields and engineers?

Finally, and most important, state what you are trying to portray. Examples. A Squad taking a single building (i.e. at the individual soldier level), a platoon (i.e. Squads) assaulting a bunker or a Company (i.e. Platoons) taking a hill.

I must admit having an interest in game, design, specifically to increasing playability while retaining sufficient accuracy to remain interesting. The simplest game system is throwing a die, or flipping a coin, which lacks much interest, so you need to dial that up to the point where the game is interesting. I created a number of videos, specifically for figure gaming but actually originally designed for boardgames, with the first game-system video being: youtu.be/-3svFFNsbWQ
Unfortunately unless you are interested in game system design they are rather boring.

pfmodel,
Nice video. I subscribed.

For a traditional game check out Design for Cause and Design for Effect.
link

Then there is a Time Competitive Design:
US Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Tactical Decision Making: "Whoever can make and implement his decisions consistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive advantage. Decision-making thus becomes a time competitive process and timeliness of decisions (OODA Decision Loop) becomes essential to generating tempo."

A Time Competitive game would be somewhat like converting a video simulation into a miniature or board game so there is no traditional sequence of play. Since timing parses the sequence of actions and determines the initiative you don't need initiative, unit activation's, spotting or orders phase. It would be less "gamey" with less reliance on dice and more on player Risk-Reward Tactical Decisions. Better units and crews are quicker than poor ones. Suppression increases the amount of time to perform actions so if you are too slow you are dead before you execute. Suppression can also impact order changes and communication creating delay which gives the enemy more freedom of action and initiative.

I know it sounds complicated but it can be much easier than traditional IGYG games and pack in more action and fewer abstracted and artificial rules. It just depends on what timing factors you want to take into account because there can be many.

Since units are always "active" and observing, just as they are in real combat, players don't need to wait for their "turn" to react and do something and there is less reliance on the roll of the dice and the flip of a card. Units can attempt to do anything they did in real combat. However, orders are not executed immediately and enemy action, poor Situational Awareness, surprise and suppression may force you to cancel an order or objective before it is executed.

You could think of Time Competitive being: I Go before You Go because I'm quicker. You can go after me if you are still alive.

It can also generate a more realistic Fog of War because opponents don't know exactly how long an enemy unit will take to execute an order and who will do it next. Timing also eliminates some of the unrealistic actions that can take place using random activation and players don't get to select the sequence they units will execute their orders, neither do real commanders. It's all about timing and not like an IGYG Chess type game and tactics. You "seize" the initiative and generate the tempo by being quicker than your opponent using maneuver, tactics and suppression.

Wolfhag

Wolfhag
I did see your ideas in an earlier posting. The basic principal does make for a good game, although you can achieve something very similar with a traditional game system and a time clock. Those which play the quickest gains a significant advantage over their opponent, normally though the mechanism of victory points. As long as each game is unique it can work well, if not unique then it can becomes rote. Rote works well in military training, especially small arms actions, but becomes less than interesting in a civilian gaming environment.

As for the whitepaper, it is an interesting read. A game, let's assume board game, which always provides a historical outcome, has been engineered to provide a historical outcome rather than provides a choice of the realistic decision a commander possessed. Nothing wrong with this, but it does not make for a game which can be played once a player have learned the tricks.

A board game with a wider range of possible outcomes can be played for a greater period of time, because there is no single possible outcome. As long as that game can reproduce history when the historical decisions are made, you have solid bedrock to work with. The issue is how wide a range of outcomes you wish. A bell curve is probably what you need to aim for, although even here you need to determine how wide the bell curve is.

My analysis of game system does not delve into this aspect, its is simply an analysis of existing game systems. My analysis was original designed for Board games, the video series is a figure gaming version of the same methodology using figure gaming rules.

I for one have not considered the range of outcomes which you have covered. Randomness within a micro-even, such as a combat, is a given, but the range of randomness over the length of a game is a more interesting topic which I have no real opinion on. This is mainly because its very complex and I need to first establish a bedrock game system, which is not simple.

Weirdly enough my currently thinking is to use SPI based game systems for figure gaming, modern battles for micro-armour, napoleon at war for Napoleonic's and PRESTAGES for ancients. This was based on my analysis of Phillip Sagins ancient board game/figure game rules.

The WW2/Cold War and Napoleonic rules seem to work very well, which allow me to focus on victory conditions and scenario creation. I am still play testing the ancients and while I see some unique issue I expect it will also be successful. If using SPI board gaming mechanics gives me a quick, enjoyable figure-gaming game-system, then I can start focusing more on the range of outcomes, which seems to be your focus in your whitepaper.

You should consider subscribing to the SimulatingWar@groups.io, it sounds like your main interest would align with this forum.

Thanks pfmodel, I'll check it out.

Wolfhag