"Rules do not have a natural lifespan!" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

I've played and still play 60+ year old rules if they're suitable to troops and period, and I don't have any problem with them. But I've seen wargamers reject 10-15-year-old rules as hopelessly old-fashioned. Do rules have a "natural" or "normal" lifespan? Is there a period after which they become "vintage" instead of just "tested?" And does this vary with type of combat (land, sea, air) or type of play (tournament, club small circle of friends)?

78% said "no, rules do not have a natural lifespan"
16% said "yes, rules have a natural lifespan"

SOME rules, naming no names (🙄) deserve a very short lifespan.

Other rules (Cent Anni! (Consult your Italian friends. 🇮🇹 👍)) should go on forever. Besides the obvious ones with powerhouse publishers, like Risk and Stratego, some are just that darn good. Like The Sword and the Flame.

It sometimes seems that "natural lifespan" means that the authors can't afford to keep them in print. Or, the evil bloodsucking capitalist imperialist publisher (again, naming no names 🙄) thinks it's about time to bring out a brand new "revision" to rake in more ill gotten loot, and shame those who are happy with the previous editions.

Not that I have any strong opinions about this.

Perhaps some rules mechanisms age poorly?

We don't use spring-loaded cannons any more to fire projectiles at our lined-up soldiers.

I hate rules that reward you for guessing distances correctly.

Some rules die an untimely death.

Some rules die a deserved death.

Some rules just keep soldiering on!

There has been a general development of game systems since the 1960's. While you could say this could represents fashion rather than any real evolution, but there are a lot of older ideas which are no longer used. The classic example is reaction tests for almost all possible events; this has generally been replaced by command points. This is interesting because reaction testing was often used to replace written orders. Other changes are the move from simultaneous turn systems to sequential turn sequences and the move to higher scales. A good way to see that is to compare the old WRG ancient's rules all the way from WRG v1 up to the latest version of DBMM. Some may say that ADLG is a continuation of that evolution, or perhaps a evolutionary branch. Its harder to see this in Napoleonic's and WW2 rules, because both are a lot more fragmented, but if we look at the US only, then looking at Empire 3rd edition, napoleon at war and BBB is a good example of an evolution of game systems.

"We don't use spring-loaded cannons any more to fire projectiles at our lined-up soldiers."

Cough. We still do. In fact we played a large naval game yesterday where gunnery was resolved using Britain's 25pdrs firing matchsticks at ship silhouettes….

I shoot a bow… It still works but has been "superseded" though in large part that starts because fashion dictates the
Bright shiny things is prefered.

Rules are nk different. Personally I don't see any rule sets ancient or modern that id play as is. Older sets have good and still.workable ideas. I love Featherstones paper disks dropped over the table to represent where paratroopers land.

Hear hear Martin. ☝🏻

"I hate rules that reward you for guessing distances correctly."

Hmm why? Real life is all about guessing distances… unless you are equipped with a good range finder. Skill makes your guesses more accurate and so you should be rewarded… YMMV

Martin. My wargaming started with my airfix 1/32 napoleonics dad had painted. Some spring loaded 12lb cannon, which id like to get more of. And plasticine weigted matchsticks. And we fought battles on the living room floor.

Gamesman6, people who are good at guessing ranges win the games largely based on that personal ability and nothing to do with the game tactics.

People who are not as good at that skill are handicapped before the game begins. It is not a fun game to play.

People who are not good at anything in the game will tend to lose… 🤷 a players who isnt good at tactics will lose even we can argue the unit in RL would be better. 🤔

Not being good at tactics, knowing the rules etc etc… handicap the player. Surely tactics and their use is a personal ability. And like any personal ability or the other factors mentioned will improve with practice.

If a game isn't about, personal ability, it might well be snakes and ladders.

Personally I'd rather have a player that was good at estimating distance than none who games the rules of measurement with a ruler before they make their move. YMMV

Guessing ranges is good fun for skirmish and individual shooters.

If a whole unit overshoots or undershoots that would be odd. Such a happening would intimate whole unit incompetence at their chosen role.

In a unit game, does guessing reflect the general telling the unit how far away the target is due to their inability to carry out their profession?

If the guess represents many shooters then the method is also very odd.

There are skills a game should reward. Battle plans and making the right gambles might be two of those skills. Guessing distances; probably not.

I don't use range guessing but know many who do.

martin

Hmm still depends IMO… many units would be opening attack at a range at the command.

Im not advocating range estimation as tbe best solution ar all times? No…. but in a situation where the detail of range is that important the general opposite is measurement, which leads to whole other set of issues.
Again like other aspects of mechanics ir time and place.

In another current thread, where theres consideration of perception rather than actuality. And where the optimal choice based on better information and understanding the mechanics of the system. How do we reflect bad choices or at least subconsciously optimal choices, especially compared rules vs reality.

As I said I'd rather success failure be based on player skill or lack of, over how well the player games the rules.

I also think that in many cases where thinga like range is involved, there are better ways to solve them rather than guess or measuring.

Rules are limited with revised editions making them seem like they are lasting forever

Our rules are mere whipper snappers at 16 years old! Still supported and yes there is an issue two, but If you have Issue 1 we don't recommend Issue 2, just use the original and the bulletins. Issue 2 is better written but no fundamental changes so not worth buying if you have the original.

We expected to be superseded a decade ago but the current, to me un-desirable, over simplification of rules so they can be played effectively on the first game, means our rules endure for folk like me who want more than over simplified stuff.

There are some long lasting sets, DBA remains for good reason, still popular and make our 16 years look but yesterday!

On range estimation, I've been known to write rules permitting pre-measuring and even to use gridded boards, but I have to admit that within my beloved horse & musket period, good range estimation was a critical skill for officers, making sure the cavalry weren't blown when they reached combat, and the infantry volley was timed for maximum impact.

I can and do say the wargamer need not demonstrate these skills. We don't make him ride a horse, after all. But I can't deny the "range estimation" crowd has an argument.

OFM, sadly like cars with great acceleration and poor survivability--very common down to the mid-sixties--the "the evil bloodsucking capitalist imperialist publisher" is doing what he's paid to do. If miniatures players looked at the Nth Edition and consistently said "no, thanks" they'd adapt.

I'm told the model railroading people stood firm and are not visited by our "sorta, almost, not quite" scale problems.

OFM, sadly like cars with great acceleration and poor survivability--very common down to the mid-sixties--the "the evil bloodsucking capitalist imperialist publisher" is doing what he's paid to do.

I have to admit one area the "the evil bloodsucking capitalist imperialist publisher" does annoy me is how rules today cannot be used as a reference document in a game. FFT3 is the classic example of that trend. I suppose in order to charge big bucks the rules designers and publishers have to give you a lot of bang for your buck, so the rules are long, the book is thick, its filled with unnecessary (but nice to look at) pictures and quotes and it forces you to study the rules so you never need to reference them in a game. Even with Blucher I have had to create my own cheat sheet and I am thinking of scanning he rules, stripping out all the non-rules stuff, and putting in a black and white 2 or 3 column booklet which is no longer than 24 pages in length.

The farce of rane estimation was brought home to me by a good friend who was a landscape gardener, his ability to estimate ranges in the 6ft or less was legindary, corect to less than 1/10th of an inch. Made accuracy achedemic and to be honest made the game unplayable. It's great if one of the team is not deadly accurate and the rest poor.

So when a player is good at something that gives them an edge in the game it's a farce? Right! 🤔🤷

People can use or ignore whatever they want.

What's a bit odd is the justifications made against things that basically people dont like. Especially when those could be applied to any numbe4 of other factors in rule sets.

That elements that people dont like should be eradicated like some deadly sin.

Something I dont like… I do something wild and I dont include it in the rules i play. I then launch a Säuberung to insure they are not found anywhere. 🤔😉😀😀

Wargames that have you guess ranges reward good estimation of distances that range from a few inches to a few feet. Horse and musket officers were rewarded for being good at estimating distances in the range of dozens of feet to perhaps a few thousand yards. How much overlap is there between those skills?

(Genuine question, I assume there has to be some positive correlation but if it's big or not I haven't got a clue.)

How much overlap is there between those skills?

Based on military marksmanship assessments I have had done in support of test and evaluation of weapons systems, the physiology and cognitive science people have done studies for me showing they are fundamentally the same skill.

Based on the same work, the trainers tell me that short range distance estimation skills are more prevalent at higher degrees than long range estimation skills for three basic reasons related to practical ease of training:

1) Feedback Frequency – the shorter the distance is faster to provide feedback on

2) Multimodal Reenforcement – with a short distance, you get more parallax and have more things in your field of view to cue off of

3) Everyday Experience – most people spend more time doing stuff in short range (like inside a room, in our case) than at long ranges, so you get a scaffolding advangtage; long range estimation is almost all dedicated training

So – EOD guys being trained to read and "measure" a room on sight learn it faster than snipers or artillermen learning to spot ranges. Snipers and artillerymen have roughly the same learning curve per training exposure, even though snipers go through more training for better refinement.

Same skill. One is "easier" to learn.

In a combat domain that requires visual sighting, actual combat is mostly driven by having surveys and scouting of the area:

Both sides with the same surveys/scouting, no advantage.
One surveys, the other scouting, advantage survey.
One survey, not even scouting, huge advantage survey.
One scouting, the other no scouting, advantage scouting.

In those domains, range estimation is a driver, but reading terrain is equally as important.

Putting artillery on a forward slope vice a reverse slope has a huge effect on minimum and lethal range. If there's a flat spot or even a local rise on one of the slopes, that can really gum up your plan.

Someone would have to do some digging for a wider answer. Im not bad at judging distance outside and on table. Its a question of practice and skill. I grew up roving with a bow across fields and woods. So had to gauge distance relative to the range of the bow and how to cover that distance.

Short of rolling dice or drawing cards everything were doing is a question of personal skill developed by attributes we bring with us and develop through practice. What tactics to use. When to use them… those are skills the player has to develop and they may or may not be reflected in what the little men on the table would be able to do.

Saying on thing is off, because of "player skill" seems odd.
Just say its something thats not in the system… but..

Personally I've done it where the player has to judge the distance but its adjusted by the unit the player is making the judgement for.

@etotheipi, Gamesman6

Thanks :)

etotheipi
Interstinv confirmation kf things.

> Rules do not have a natural lifespan!

But I have an attention span, and it's short…

When I used to play billiards with a number of friends we were all evenly matched, however one of my friends eye sight began to fail and he was not able to play anymore. Sometimes it's the deterioration of your body which makes it impossible to complete. Even when getting older is not an issue, a tall person has an advantage in some sports while a short person in other.

☝🏻yep.

Saying on thing is off, because of "player skill" seems odd.
Just say its something thats not in the system… but..

Much like the point of "what is a resource" in the other thread – TMP link -, the need for skills are pretty ubiquitous in wargames.

Do certain wargames advantage certain players because they can easily recall or on the spot calculate the cumulative probability of the sum of 2d6 or 3d6?

Well … yeah.

They can spend less cognitive work on one part of their decision process and more on another. But that's true of pretty much all aspects of a wargamer's decision process (dare not call it an OODA loop!) – whether it's convoluting dice probabilities through a combat resolution process or having a tacit understanding of the relative combat effectiveness of Tirailleurs and Bervers.

This is why when I teach wargaming design, I have a very well-defined taxonomy for the parts of a wargame. Rules cover the interactions among the conceptual entities on the board.

Measuring during a decision process would not be a rule (I call it a meta-activity). It's no more a part of the rules than what to do in Yahtzee when a die rolls off the table or whether or not we can stop (again) to explain the precedence of hands while playing poker with a n00b (usually, me).

When I write rules, I leave meta-actions to the discretion of the players.

while a short person in other.

I have not seen this manifest in my personal experience. I am a short person, and I suck equally in all sports. :)

There is an interesting discussion as to what constitutes the same rules.

To me it's clear DBA is very much the same since day 1. DBM is more questionable as although the command and control system is identical throughout the versions, mostly anyway, the troop types have varied to a more marked extent. DBMM has essentially the same rules for command and control but the troops types and their interactions are more complex.

Our in our own rules the basic principals have remained unchanged but the weapon factors have changed slightly, especially for WW2 troop types since the original issue, some as Bulletins and a few minor changes in Issue 2. I would argue they are the same rules but it begs questions, do minor corrections or small deviations make it a separate set or not? Some rules have Version 2 or more with substantial changes to basic mechanisms, a thing more related to more commercially oriented rules where they need to be sufficient changes to invalidate the older set. in the interest of greater sales.

I have not seen this manifest in my personal experience. I am a short person, and I suck equally in all sports. :)

A jockey is best short.

I would argue they are the same rules but it begs questions,

That's not what "begging the question" means.

link

do minor corrections or small deviations make it a separate set or not?

This depends on establishing what you mean by "rules" and what is actually changing.

If you mean everything typically in a wargame book that is called "rules", then, in general no. If you mean rules as the guidelines that govern interactions of entities in the wargame, then yes.

Example: The difference between "rules" and "unit stats".

I wrote a wargame for the ACW. It has the Springfield and Enfield rifles. Turns out, I had the effective range, maximum range, and muzzle velocity swapped in the table. I issued a new wargame document with the correction.

Same rules.

While this change does affect play, it doesn't affect player decision process. Whatever decision ia player would make with a Springfield, they now make with an Enfield, and vice versa.

Changing rules changes the player decision structures. Changing other things may change decision outcomes, but the process is the same.

do minor corrections or small deviations make it a separate set or not?

A rule set has a form of morphology id say. Tweaks changes etc may alter it byt as long as its recognisable as the same rules then it has changed.

A rule set has a form of morphology id say. Tweaks changes etc may alter it byt as long as its recognisable as the same rules then it has changed.

A good question, i am not certain, but if an updated set of rules lists the changes compared with the older version its more likely the same rules. If it does not, it depends on the changes, but often they are so major it may as well be a new set of rules. When WRG went from 6th edition ancients to 7th, it may as well be a new set of rules. On the other hand the change from 5th to 6th edition was not as major, so i suppose it depends on the player.

Its further muddled when a group produces a set of rules.

WRG produces a set of rules across multiple editions, I don't see the need for continuity to sustain the rules.

In other situations when the rules are a brand to themselves then they need, imo, to sustain core features.

When playing games using human range estimation, to make it balanced make everyone wear beer goggles.

Wolfhag

Ah! But some people are bettwr at seeing through beer goggles and they get an unfair advantage.

As someone who is excellent at estimating table distances, I highly recommend Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition! :) :o

Some rules deserve to die – they were the product of bad ideas, poorly executed by people with too much time on their hands. I won't list them, that would be unkind. But many were made in the 1980s, when to be taken "seriously" you had to have lots and lots of rules in your rules.

Game design has "progressed" in the sense that design goals have become more targeted and refined. That's a good thing as people who want certain types of rules can get them. People who don't want that can play something else.

The bad news is it is hard to get a game in regularly as there are so many sets of rules to play the hobby is VERY fragmented. Sometimes excellent rule sets get unplayed or overlooked because they don't have the right publisher or they have 1-2 novel ideas.

Another bad side is that most gamers have no idea how to design rules, and now idea why they like what they like. And many have poor understanding of history. Whoops, that's three things…

Seriously, you have to do a complete game with all the bangs and whistles, then work hard to find a regular audience. Offering pizza helps.

The latest success for me in throwing games it to bring back Classic [original boxed] Squad Leader. Two successful meetings so far…