"Rules: Fashion or Progress?" Topic

Following up on a point Fitzovich made elsewhere: are miniatures rules a matter of progress, so that the "outdated" set has no more purpose than a WWII tank on a modern battlefield? Or are they more like hemlines and hats, where everything old is new again? (And what does one make of rules which are like US .50 cals and Maxim guns and seem to defy aging?)

I'm going to go out on a limb and waffle, saying that some rule mechanisms may never really have been good ideas, and that we will not see the return of spring-loaded naval artillery to determine casualties, nor a major revival of the bounce stick. But hang on long enough, and you may well see written orders/simultaneous movement, national characteristics, saving throws and card draw activation rise again, because certain things have to be done or reflected in a miniature wargame, and all the mechanisms have drawbacks.

How say you? Will old rules and mechanisms slowly fade away, never to be seen again? Will they return like a certain Corsican from Elba? Or are there some in each category?

The floor is open for nominations.

People still play Empire…

I was rather fond of the bounce stick and cannister cone.

Column Line & Square

I'm going to go out on a limb and waffle

Me, too,

because certain things have to be done or reflected in a miniature wargame, and all the mechanisms have drawbacks

Thus things that are reasonably useful and playable will come and go over time. More things may be invented, and they'll enter the rotation.

So we'll have both fashions (or fads) and progress.

To quote King Solomon, from his book, Ecclesiastes: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

I've already seen, in my 33 years of wargaming (plus my days as a youth, playing Squad Leader, and other Avalon Hill board games), game mechanic systems are always being recycled.

To be honest, I thought the bounce stick, for Napoleonics cannon fire, was interesting, as well as a plausible means of simulating the hurtling iron balls down range. Games are games, a few attempt to be simulations, but they all end up as being just games -- some more complex than others.

Card activation is a decent system, in my experience. I adopted it for my own Army Men game, abandoning the simple IGOUGO system. While cards become predictable as they are flipped, I do not find that a bad thing. To be honest, I find it makes players cringe as they realize how the next several cards will play out. I like "cringing players." LOL! It creates a little pucker-factor in game play, and combat is all about pucker-factor. YMMV. Cheers!

As a rules writer and home-brew enthusiast, and too often a solo gamer, I am increasingly drawn to mechanisms that instill randomness, such as card-based activation. I really prefer written orders and simultaneous phased movement, but that doesn't work solo. I like Regimental Fire and Fury because the range of dice outcomes is so wide, a scenario rarely plays the same twice. The reality is so complex it cannot really be simulated, but enough random surprises does provide some of the feel, as well as being fun.

Some new ideas are so good that they cause big changes in gaming.
e.g DBA which has created quite a few knock offs and "inspired by" rule sets.
Before Phil created it, the DBA system did not exist.

My opinion is that written orders will not return en masse to gaming.
WRG 4th and Skirmish western used them a lot in the 1970s.

Exterior pressures such as time, space and money will create rule changes too I expect.

Older gamers will have noticed the changes more.

martin

I think they are fashion and that it is a common and yet dumb assertion that game rules only evolve forward. Can early systems and mechanics be raw and undeveloped? Sure, but there are great ideas that you can still plumb from those early games.

I think the best designs cherry pick the best ideas and put them together in interesting ways.

First, I need your data for what is in fashion.

But to discuss, rules are neither progress nor fashionable. They are to a certain degree appropriate for the scenario you want to present to your players. Of course, your players may have a different opinion on what is important to be presented…

RP for the win. I hope my time left will allow me to see a return to old school mechanisms. One of the things that keeps me playing BLB despite all the frustrations it engenders is simultaneous moves with orders or chits.

It's both. New ideas come along, some are exciting for a while and then fade away. Others are adopted by other games and inspire adaptations. The classics will remain, that's the definition. Some things will be surpassed, but choices will keep broadening.

Whatever happened to those click-base games?

I won't mind when the custom dice in various colors things passes.

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

That sounds like an announcement the CEO of Games Workshop made to his investors and stock holders.

Wolfhag

I don't think that look up tables will come back

They are so out of fashion that many people haven't seen them. You look up your to hit roll based on a table of attacker/defender stats. Really funky tables would give a number of guaranteed casualties plus a number of dice to roll

Special tokens, dice and measuring devices do seem to be popular. I really hope it's just a fad and that games workshop doesn't go all in

John

Sgt Slag, I still think The Preacher was as tired as he was wise in this. But I'm coming to think "tired" is the defining trait of old age.

I see an argument for bounce sticks, but I'd want two hedges. First, the rules should be marked "NOT FOR USE BY WARGAMERS UNDER AGE 25" to lower the testosterone level a bit, and second, "hits" should be calculated by bases/stands or something else with an area dictated by the rules. Otherwise, the pressure builds to use the smallest legal castings, standing with arms close by their sides.

martin, yielding to few in my respect for The Barker, I think he'd admit himself he was standing on the shoulders of giants, and two giants in particular--Charlie Wesencraft who got very close with his "Corps Level Game" and Joe Morschauser who was using 12-element armies with constant frontages from at least the 1960's. Phil put it all together and gave it a boost no one else could have.

Wargame rules are invariably seasoned to taste. Some are just over seasoned.

Define "progress" for me, and then tell me why it's a Good Thing.

Perfectly true, eto. I think probably the best we have is the Great Wargaming Survey and the major conventions, but we really don't know how big the elephant is, or which part we're feeling. So, as in much of life, we do what we can with imperfect data.

Note, however, that even if there were agreement on what was important to the scenario, there are always multiple mechanisms for representing them, which seem to come and go from favor.

In fashion, out of fashion, new or old doesn't really matter to me. Some rules I like and play again when possible. Some I don't, but (usually) will play if asked. I doubt any become the equivalent of wrecked old hulks that are only good for being targets on the anti-armour range. Even (shudder) WRG Ancients 7th may have those who like them.

So I think rules will continue to transform (more than evolve), and most will find someone who likes them. Sometimes something newish comes along (eg the battle boards for Saga) or an old standby, like the cannister cone, continues to sweep away nearly 50% of a target (because of appallingly lucky dice rolls).

" we will not see the return of spring-loaded naval artillery to determine casualties,"

Ummm.. We regularly play games using matchstick firing cannon, Although our preference is the Britain's 25pdr rather than the l naval gun. I'm playing one on Friday.

Wargames rules are rather like cinema, generally everything is recycled or a sequel, but occasionally some genius comes along with a new idea.

So part of marketing to make your game stand out is to have "innovative mechanics". Sometimes it's just an improvement over existing ideas. Take Bolt Action order dice: just like the black/red playing card usage BUT the order indicator is built in.

Someone will eventually design an app driven version of Starfleet Battles and we will all play like it's 1979

OFM, for me, "progress" is placing your finger on the hot stove, saying "I won't do that again!" and then actually not doing it again--the process of learning from mistakes, as opposed to the fairly common repetition of them, under such headings as "that was then: this is now" or "let's see what happens this time." If it's a matter of taste--four people like a mechanism and three don't--then it's fashion. In the strictest sense of this, paisley shirts for men could return, and tragic as it would be, it would still be fashion and not a failure of progress.

Dal and Martin of course, are putting together a rebuttal based on all mechanisms being fashion. It is good to be so challenged, but I'll have to think about it a bit.

I think the thread misses a point, How do you define progress? DBM to me was progress, it showed you could at least get a crude form of command nan control that deteriorated like in many accounts, when the fighting starts. It also was the first mechanism to reflect the real world logic of-organization of good troops in battle to gain a tactical advantage, true progress in rules terms.

Now much was made of cards but I never saw them as other than a fad. However I will concede if you have players that only play a game 2 or 3 times a year then some sort of "in hand prompting" may be ab advance. That is a completely different definition from my definition of what an advance in wargaming is.

Many of the statements here make me thing FAD, they say nothing about how such mechanisms improve the fidelity of the model. They may make "gamers have more fun but may even detract from fidelity as a consequence, but that may be progress if fidelity is not a key requirement.

I an aware of the cannon ball bounce rules, however details on how they reflected the real world were very sparse at the time. It may be now (decades later since I saw bounce rules), that they could genuinely better reflect the real world. That got no mention in the thread so I put it down to fad, no grounding for or against it reflecting reality.

Dal and Martin of course, are putting together a rebuttal based on all mechanisms being fashion.

Not a rebuttal, Robert. My approach to the hobby is less serious than some. All I require from the rules I use is that they feel as if they're reasonable model of the period, they're fairly easy to learn and that they give an enjoyable game- and then I stick to them until a game introduces me to something "better". So I haven't tried most "new" rules sets over the decades. Nor do I read ad's and seldom read reviews- unless I'm already interested in the rules.

Some, not unreasonably, could call it mental laziness.

If it's a matter of taste--four people like a mechanism and three don't--then it's fashion.

It's all a matter of taste, or at least opinion.

Before you get to the mechanism, there is the matter of what is important to represent.

If I feel it is important to have a distincion between detection, targeting, and damage, and you don't, no mechanism that doesn't represent the three as independent processes will be acceptable to me. Within that, wome might be better. For you, a mechaism that represents them independently will be an annoying compromise at best. You will always feel like you are doing extra steps with no purpose, because your definition of important says they have no importance.

The point being, you can't evaluate a mechaism in a rule in the absence of a statement of the purpose of the rules (what is important, for whatever reason … fashion, preference, the desire to exericse specific decision spaces, etc.)

So, as in much of life, we do what we can with imperfect data.

Imperfect data is not one thing. The denominator problem is a fundamentally different thing than missing data, ambiguous standards or insufficent granularity.

I asked the people on our game day mailing list whether they preferred playing a long or a short wargame. I got fifteen responses – 3 long, 12 short.

Ambiguous – What does long or short mean?
Granulairty – What about e "medium" or two "shorts"?
Missing Data – 26 people on the list
Denominator – I don't know who is coming this weekend, some people represent themselves, spouses, childrem, cousins, etc., some people bring friends.

Each of these causes a different challenge in application of the result.

Louis, "innovative mechanics" would be a very poor way to advertise a set of rules, if some optimist hoped to sell them to me in shrinkwrap. I learned long ago that there are dozens of ways to screw something up I haven't thought of yet. Someone not selling me those rules would have to convince me they worked.

eto, on detection, targeting and damage, I'd go sideways. If they're all important at period/level, then they all have to be taken into account. But unless there's a wargamer-level decision involved, I'd say the difference between "roll for detection, then roll for targeting then roll for damage" and "look through the modifiers booklet for all three, then roll for the specified percentile die result" would be a matter of taste.

I'd concede you do sometimes get differences even at the same period/level about what it's important to represent, but I'd have said far more often we've got a dozen different mechanisms to resolve the same situation. Your experience may be different, of course.

Whatever happened to those click-base games?

They're still making new sets, so somebody must be buying them.

I liked the games originally, but per the topic, the owners "improved" it.

1) They started retiring sets. Of course, you can play whatever you want. But it means prize supported games by the game owner at stores are limited to the last few sets. That may limit other games bein advertised at stores since a store might not want people showing up sxpecting an official game and not getting one.

2) The added figure specific rules. That means you have to have, or at least research all the figures in all the sets to know the complete extent of the rules. Not interested in that.

The first "improvement" did lower prices on the secondary market, which is good for a cheap guy like me.

I think it is mainly fad. If there is progress, I think it is mainly in legibility and playability of rules. Lots of older sets seem to me to be badly underwritten, have loads of embedded faff, require some semi-demanding calculations to be made, or some hideous combination of all of this.

Things I don't think we will see more of (in that they don't seem to be inspiring many new rules' writers, although old sets will still have them):

Casualty tables and recording
Physical artillery/naval fire
Individually based very big battles
6mm or smaller figures on very small bases
Massively detailed rules (I don't see anyone new doing the 'one more sub-routine, one more modifier' thing)

I think 'melee points' and 'fire with 1 die/x number of troops' seem to have been moribund as mechanisms for a long-time.
VLB doesn't look like making a comeback any time soon: I think any replacement will actually be different enough to qualify as progress, rather than a fad.
I haven't seen anyone new coming in with old style written orders for a while (a good thing IMHO, a very ahistorical mechanism)

I do wonder if the "Eaglebearer"-type computer-moderated rules game has reached the end of the line? I know that C&G is a thing, but I don't think I have seen anyone else come in in a while? I think new computer-moderated games will feel somewhat different.

It depends on where you look.
Lots of fashion out…
Some progres, though that depends on what one thinks we should be progressing towards.

Though given how many rules still follw basic building blocks, numeric dice etc, it's arguable about progress.

Though the things that spark my interest tend to be outliers when it comes to rules and the ideas they use.

I don't think that look up tables will come back

I was looking at the old Avalon Hill MBT game. When you shoot, in addition to a unit data card, you need two QRCs to look up information on seven tables. That's crazy.

The way to get around multiple tables is to design a data card for the vehicle or unit type with customized data to eliminate look-ups and various modifiers.

First, I need your data for what is in fashion.

I'd say it is whatever the big publishing companies' marketing departments are telling us is fashionable and we need to buy.

According to the definition of innovation, it can be new or original. Using dice with an odd number of faces would be new and innovative but not progress.

When you say progress, what ideal state are we attempting to progress to? I think just about every permutation of dice, rules, cards, etc has been tried. What exactly do you want to accomplish? What are we striving for?

Before you get to the mechanism, there is the matter of what is important to represent.

What a Tanker is a game that represents tank warfare. In the game, you need to spot and detect the target, engage it, shoot, and reload by rolling command dice. Whether you like the overall dice system or not (I don't), it is a great representation.

The board game Tank Duel is very similar but movement is more abstracted but crew, gunnery and damage details are better.

In tank combat, when a target is hit there is a variety of things that can happen. There is no simple way to portray it historically. A round can ricochet or shatter, a partial penetration can cause internal spalling damage that can be insignificant or fatal, a weak or vulnerable spot may be hit resulting in penetration, etc. There can be a simple or complicated way to portray it.

The point being, you can't evaluate a mechaism in a rule in the absence of a statement of the purpose of the rules (what is important, for whatever reason … fashion, preference, the desire to exericse specific decision spaces, etc.)

In my small arms fire rules I use Cover Saves which some people say is hokey. Why? Most detailed games have a variety of small arms fire modifiers to determine if the round hits or not. I hate looking them up and doing the + and – modifiers to get the final number.

The firepower of a weapon is the chance to hit a static target standing in the open with no cover, and no other modifiers. If the round hits the target, the targeted player rolls a D6 Cover Save.

His cover level is defined by how much he is exposed from 1-5 which works well for a target 6 feet tall. Just the head exposed like shooting from a trench or window he saves on a 1-5, head and shoulders exposed 1-4, waist up 1-3, etc. If he failed the Cover Save he is a causality. If he passes, the close hit was close enough to suppress him so he cannot fire back until rallied. I find it more playable than other systems, there is justification for it and the targeted player has a hand in his fate.

What I like best is that it is not totally attrition-based as in many games. More units were suppressed than KIA/WIA. This forces the player to pull back or fail a morale check.

In armored warfare, rounds did ricochet a small percentage of the time. When the shooter rolls to see if he hit, the targeted player rolls a D20 at the same time. The hit location has a ricochet value. If the D20 result is <= the ricochet value the round bounces for no damage. Both die rolls are done at the same time and no other charts to look up.

Also, there is a small chance of a critical hit or malfunction built in so no extra effort, so no tank is completely safe or functions perfectly at all times.

In the above two examples, both players roll the dice at the same time so there is no extra time spent.

I believe innovation will come from technology. Hopefully, someday technology will give us a better FOW on the table with hidden units rather than a gods-eye view.

Someone may be able to train an AI system that will allow the players to put in some parameters of combat and the AI system evaluates it, the opposing tactics and chances and generates a battle report in a narrative or "color commentary" result. It could also give a progress report or update and ask the player what his new order or tactic will be such as call in artillery, send in reinforcements, flank, frontal assault, etc. It might also generate the chances of success for each tactic too. It could be done in a narrative way like an battle report to the commander.

As some others have said, no matter what new innovation comes out there will be no consensus.

QR codes are nothing new. On my data cards and sequence of play I have a QR code that you can bring up with your cell phone that shows a short 15-30 second video example of play. This eliminates the need to look up and interpret the rules. The overall game mechanics are pretty much traditional so an experienced player could start playing the game without reading the rules first.

Wolfhag

If this becomes a poll, it needs options along the lines of:

All fashion
Mostly fashion but a bit of progress
About half fashion, half progress
Mostly progress but a bit of fashion
All progress

(Naturally, instead we'll get "fashion", "progress", "chickadee plum pie" and five versions of "dunno".)

With no definition of either.

Again it's a ms.tter of what you consider good. What a tanker to me is extremely poor as a system. Tanks have turning turrets Its what separates tanks from assault guns generally. What a tanker fails utterly on this point so how could it be called good when it ignores suck a few key aspect. To be excellent at it's low level rate of turn of the turret would be included. Clearly there is nothing to even an agreement as what is a simulation

e

Tanks have turning turrets Its what separates tanks from assault guns generally. What a tanker fails utterly on this point so how could it be called good when it ignores suck a few key aspect

Only true to the extent that turret traverse is, in practice, an important enough factor in WW2 combat to be worth including. And if it was a very small factor in reality, but gets treated as moderately important in a set of rules that will make it worse as a simulation than if you had just chinned it off .

Chickadee Bakers does not make a plum pie …
link
… but I bet they would if you asked!

@Whirlwind – You are correct; context is king!

We just played our assault on the drive in game this past weekend. The car movement rules are highly unrealistic. But they are simple and represent the limited response dynamics of cars moving less than 5mph trying to exit the drive in all at the same time while preventing their occupants from being attacked by birds (guess what movie was playing at the drive in…).

Like your example, cars have a lot of capabilities that are not being used in that apscific situation, so adding them in to the game doesn't inprove the simulation, adds complexity (boredom), and increases the chance for random and systematic error.

UshCha,

In WAT when you roll a "1" you can rotate the turret up to 60 degrees if stationery, while moving turn up to 90 degrees and traverse the turret for free up to 60 degrees. You can't shoot at a target unless the gun is pointed at it. I know it will not meet with your approval. If you don't roll a "1" you normally can't unless you saved a "6" which is like a wild card.

It's a playable abstract dice game, not a simulation. However, you do perform the same actions as a real crew to engage and shoot at a target whether you like the game or not.

I've played it several times and lost. My only beef is that it seems to take too long when players are attempting to figure out the different permutations of choices for their turn because, unlike most games, you can perform from 0 (very poor die roll but has happened to me) to 4-5 actions in a single turn if you play your dice right and know the rules. There are quicker, easier, and more historically accurate ways to do the same thing.

In a 1:1 game, it's important. At higher levels, it becomes less important. I've played many games where when you "activate" your tank you can immediately and magically fire at any tank in your LOS no matter where your gun is pointing.

Wolfhag

Like your example, cars have a lot of capabilities that are not being used in that a pscific situation, so adding them in to the game doesn't and improve the simulation, adds complexity (boredom), and increases the chance for random and systematic error.

Seems to me like a pretty poor scenario, massively constrained scenario leaving the player little to do but minor adjustments if you are3 running below 5mph all the time, then its a strange use of a car. Perhaps we don't agree on what a good scenario is! Not that that is a problem but without some common ground there is no way to have a credible discussion.

Go look at some of the tank raids in Ukraine and tell me the turret traverse was not a key factor.

I thought about this some more and it looked more and more absurd.

If you are teaching a new car driver, you do not put him in a car only able to do max 5mph. He may not need to do more than 5mph in a given task but you do not limit the car to that! Actuality is just that, how can a car be boring for being able to do 0 to 60+ mph, Ignoring such things just make the thing not boring but well past absurd to the point it is not a credible solution and hence is unplayable as its connection to reality, at best tenuous, goes to the level of pointless exercise.

Sounds good, conformist. Me for "mostly fashion but a bit of progress" and I think Whirlwind has nailed a lot of the progress. Incidentally, the "individually based figures in big battles" and "6mm castings on tiny stands" are things I've tried to go into in polls before. As I recall, it was difficult even to get people to admit that smaller stands were harder to handle, and a large percentage of TMP members are convinced they can handle an infinite number of maneuver units.

For myself, I still think 3/4"/20mm is as small as you would normally want to deal with for a stand, and that 12 units capable of changing formations and taking attritional damage is about as much as most of us can deal with and not start forgetting the obvious. If "units" are more like "pieces"--having at most a facing and either fully capable or removed from play--you can get up to maybe 50. And this ought to be taken into account in game design.

Sometimes it is.

Seems to me like a pretty poor scenario, massively constrained scenario leaving the player little to do but minor adjustments if you are3 running below 5mph all the time, then its a strange use of a car.

So, read the post before you reply. Do you think it is realistic to go 60mph in a drive-in?

Go look at some of the tank raids in Ukraine and tell me the turret traverse was not a key factor.

I have and I am. Relative rates of turret traverse are not obviously a factor of any especial importance in tank-versus-tank combat in Ukraine. Can you, without looking it up, just from observation of video clips, rank turret traverse rates in order?

In any event, even if you could tell that, which you can't, that would not be very informative about a war 80 years previously with completely different standards of optics and in which nations optimizing AFVs for anti-tank combat routinely put bigger guns in non-traversable turrets and even made many of them open-topped so the crew could see better, because really obviously they were prioritizing gun, armour, low profile and visibility over turret traverse rates. Which, I infer, is exactly why the TooFatLardies prioritized those factors, especially observation since in actual real-life OR, acquiring the enemy and getting the first shot off with a weapon which could hurt the target where key. Turret traverse of course is more important for tanks against infantry targets, since they will be acquired generally at much shorter ranges – but this is not the focus of What A Tanker, as I understand. Even then it is probably pretty pointless (by which I mean actually counter-productive to the simulation) to have battalion commanders choosing where the hull AND where the turret is pointing on each of their vehicles.

etotheipi The pont is iF you are teaching sombody to do something, like learning to fly a light aeroplane, it does not have retractable landing gear. However you do not ommit that from the training, on completoing landing checks you do the checks and include landing gear. Typicaly "Gear down and welded". To only teach half a simulation stores up issues for later on when you do need it. To half teach rules leaves gaps that may be an issue later, that does make for boreing play.

The only excuse might me one off games, but they can never be taken as serious, you don't get tennis players of any merit playing just one game a year,

@robert piepenbrink

Agreed that 20mm is about the smallest practical base size. Not coincidentally, 20x20mm the smallest I used for both 28mm and 6mm figures.

Was thinking about more potential areas that we might think of as progress:

More specific mechanisms for playing solitaire and co-operatively e.g. a game like 'Bodycount' now would definitely have explicit solitaire and co-operative options, and be better for it.
More grid-based games. Possibly a bit related to relatively cheaper/better hex terrain availability?
And relatedly, more hybrid games. Others will know the history better than me but I think this may be a continuation of the development path of ASL being played with miniatures on the one hand and the 'back to the dungeon, but simpler' games like Space Hulk, Heroquest, Talisman.
And relatedly, more operational-level rules as opposed to bath-tubbing/campaign/megagame solutions for the bigger battles.
More explicit basing agnosticism (although no doubt this was often done in practice!)
This next I am somewhat uncertain of, but more genuinely simple naval and air games? Would be really interested in some of the grognards' views on this. Might be somewhat related to cheaper play aids.

iF you are teaching sombody to do something

From the description of the scenario, what do you think it is teaching?

continuation of the development path of ASL being played with miniatures on the one hand and the 'back to the dungeon, but simpler' games like Space Hulk, Heroquest, Talisman.
And relatedly, more operational-level rules as opposed to bath-tubbing/campaign/megagame solutions for the bigger battles.
More explicit basing agnosticism

All these facors (and more) are based in what you intend represent.

Space Hulk can be a good representation of making decision under time pressure (something many wargames lack), dealing with progressively revealing uncertaintly, and some aspects of managing combined arms effects, and small unit progress in a completely hostile environment (no civilians to protect).

If you desire to represent combined arms includes specific modern weapon mixes, it may not be as good as a fit, depending on what degree of what types of effects you want to focus on.

So if progress means making things better over time, you have to hold a very specific intent fixed to evaluate it.

Some old naval wargames represent some details better than some modern ones. You can't even hang your hat on represneting capabilities that didn't exist at the time the wargame was written, since a wargame may have a deliberate hypothetical capability or an abstraction level where the modern and an older capability are the same.

I don't think I would disagree with any of that. I think I was trying to get at the idea that certain types of conflicts and conflict levels have been approached in new ways over the years and those ways seem to have stuck – that feels like some kind of genuine progress? They don't seem like fads?

Certain rule sets go through phases of popularity. I've seen a few come and go in the 40 or so years of gaming.

Whatever qualities a rule set has its as much imo, about whether people like the rules. And the the people you play with want to play, as much as any quality in the actual rules.

Also with is things have longevity, I see that in certain areas we hit a plateau of something being as good as they can be with current thinking/design.

I think that also feeds off the popularity idea, rules feed of each other and a "new" idea needs not only to be "better" but catch the attention beyond the established base line.

I've seen lots of improvements in systems that didn't fit in what people think of as rules and fall by the wayside.

From the description of the scenario, what do you think it is teaching?

Our rules are about showing how the basics shown in manuals work and why at the very basic level. The use of formations, when and when not to for example button up, or go head out for better situational awareness.

To give an insight into the gains and potential penalties), of combined operations, basic integration of artillery planning into the mix. By definition as a tabletop system it will have many limitations, but most simulations are far from perfect. Hence there is a need for the simulation to be broad enough not to run into boundaries where the solution is inadmissible, if at all possible possible.

Also with is things have longevity, I see that in certain areas we hit a plateau of something being as good as they can be with current thinking/design.

To keep generating interest commercial publishing companies put out new versions of the same thing or they will die.

I've seen lots of improvements in systems that didn't fit in what people think of as rules and fall by the wayside.

If you think it's an improvement, it's really just a variation of the old.

Wolfhag

Our rules are about

Irrelevant. You were criticizing my mechanism in my scenario.

Saying that a rule is inappropriate for something it wasn't intended to be for is a waste of communication.