Assessing ancient/medieval tabletop rulesets
As promised I explain below the criteria I use to assess generic rulesets that aim to model large land battles over the entire combined ancient and medieval periods. I have made further comparisons with Chess in a number of places as the majority of people have played it and it purports to be a representation of a medieval battle, even if only in passing. You will find that many of the points I make cross over from one criteria to another - they are inextricably linked.
1. Good modelling of historical army formations
From the beginning of recorded history when entering battle men have formed themselves into deep long lines to protect themselves from both being outflanked and against enemy penetrations. When armies grew large and varied enough they then began to form into discrete units, both to take full advantage of different weapon systems (e.g. skirmishing troops armed with a variety of ranged weapons deployed in front of the spearmen) and to aid the command and manoeuvre of those men onto and over the chosen field of battle.
Any ruleset attempting to model ancient and medieval battles over the broad reach of pre-gunpowder history must, therefore, cover how formations were organised, how they developed over time, how they behaved and how they deployed for battle.
- Formation organisation and development - A good ruleset must model how men were organised in those times, how they were commanded, trained and equipped to fight. You only have to think of the Sparabara of the Achaemenid Persian empire, the Roman Legion or the Mongol Tumen with their different organisations, equipment and vastly different fighting styles as examples to see that the correct representation of all military units on the tabletop, and how their abilities are modelled, is key to the creation of a good ruleset.
- Behaviour - The rules must give clear instructions on what these military formations are allowed to do both on the battlefield generally and, in particular, when in close proximity to enemy units when the threat of injury and death would have been uppermost in men’s minds and when the reality of imminent combat tested the human character (and also the behaviour of the animals taken into battle) to its limits. This permitted behaviour must obviously reflect what they were trained to do and how the men that comprised them reacted and fought in real life.
- Tactical deployment - It took time for an army to deploy onto the field of battle, time that was crucial in ensuring that all of its components were in their planned positions and prepared for action before enemy formations were in a position to catch units before they were ready for battle. It was important therefore for the army commanders to be well-practised in organising that deployment to take advantage of the terrain and ensuring the enemy weren't able to interfere in the process by for example sending out light troops to protect the heavier troops as they prepared.
2. The correct feel
A good ruleset must create the feel of how battles unfolded or at least how someone living many hundreds of year later imagines they unfolded. There are three areas that I have found to be of the most importance in this regard: deployment and terrain, the relative scales and the rule mechanics:
Strategic deployment and terrain: The ability to dictate the site of the battlefield and the opportunity to deploy the army to maximise its battle-winning potential were critical for a commander to successfully influence the outcome of a battle. The decisions made by the opposing army commanders when manoeuvring their armies prior to the day of battle and jockeying for the best strategic position translate into those rules mechanisms that determine the terrain that is placed on the tabletop and where and how the armies are deployed. Ruleset designers must have put sufficient thought into these aspects, even though they they relate to matters prior to starting a game as these rules can easily make or break a ruleset.
Relative scales: The battlefield scale has to have been carefully thought through (see the separate section below on this) to ensure that unit and "terrain piece" sizes, movement distances and weapon ranges all work together. The mechanics relating to scale need to both conjure up the feel of a battle in the ancient/medieval world and lead the players into making the same decisions (and mistakes!) as the real commanders would have.
Rule mechanics: The biggest issues that rules designers have to grapple with are time; how commanders control the army; and how combat is undertaken. Battles typically lasted many hours, sometimes all day, in that time one unit could be locked in one melee combat after another, another could be firing volley after volley of arrows, whilst yet another could theoretically march from one side of the battlefield to the other several times over.
- Firstly, the designer has to come up with the core mechanics that underpin the structure and flow of the game, normally by dividing the battle into a number of turns. In most modern rulesets a game typically lasts an average of eight to ten turns so each one could represent anything from 30 minutes to an hour. The main question then becomes how much fighting can be done in any one turn, a unit could possibly charge or counter-charge into combat half a dozen times. In some rulesets this could be represented in a game action by simply moving one unit next to another and each player rolling one die or could involve a series of die rolls or card draws.
- Secondly all the other game mechanics then need to be built to match that core mechanism e.g. the effects of shooting with distance weapons and the ability of units to move about and rally, so that they are realistic in relation to a turn of melee combat. The correct modelling of the effects of ranged combat on enemy units in particular is as much a crucial area as melee combat to get right as many armies relied on ranged weapons in whole or in part to beat enemy forces, e.g. Hunnic horse archers and English longbowmen.
- Thirdly, the rules designer has to address how much a commander would be able to perceive around him and how quickly react to events, the ability of commanders to issue orders to units and how much they would be able to respond to them.
- Formation organisation and development - A good ruleset must model how men were organised in those times, how they were commanded, trained and equipped to fight. You only have to think of the Sparabara of the Achaemenid Persian empire, the Roman Legion or the Mongol Tumen with their different organisations, equipment and vastly different fighting styles as examples to see that the correct representation of all military units on the tabletop, and how their abilities are modelled, is key to the creation of a good ruleset.
- Behaviour - The rules must give clear instructions on what these military formations are allowed to do both on the battlefield generally and, in particular, when in close proximity to enemy units when the threat of injury and death would have been uppermost in men’s minds and when the reality of imminent combat tested the human character (and also the behaviour of the animals taken into battle) to its limits. This permitted behaviour must obviously reflect what they were trained to do and how the men that comprised them reacted and fought in real life.
- Tactical deployment - It took time for an army to deploy onto the field of battle, time that was crucial in ensuring that all of its components were in their planned positions and prepared for action before enemy formations were in a position to catch units before they were ready for battle. It was important therefore for the army commanders to be well-practised in organising that deployment to take advantage of the terrain and ensuring the enemy weren't able to interfere in the process by for example sending out light troops to protect the heavier troops as they prepared.
2. The correct feel
A good ruleset must create the feel of how battles unfolded or at least how someone living many hundreds of year later imagines they unfolded. There are three areas that I have found to be of the most importance in this regard: deployment and terrain, the relative scales and the rule mechanics:
Strategic deployment and terrain: The ability to dictate the site of the battlefield and the opportunity to deploy the army to maximise its battle-winning potential were critical for a commander to successfully influence the outcome of a battle. The decisions made by the opposing army commanders when manoeuvring their armies prior to the day of battle and jockeying for the best strategic position translate into those rules mechanisms that determine the terrain that is placed on the tabletop and where and how the armies are deployed. Ruleset designers must have put sufficient thought into these aspects, even though they they relate to matters prior to starting a game as these rules can easily make or break a ruleset.
Relative scales: The battlefield scale has to have been carefully thought through (see the separate section below on this) to ensure that unit and "terrain piece" sizes, movement distances and weapon ranges all work together. The mechanics relating to scale need to both conjure up the feel of a battle in the ancient/medieval world and lead the players into making the same decisions (and mistakes!) as the real commanders would have.
Rule mechanics: The biggest issues that rules designers have to grapple with are time; how commanders control the army; and how combat is undertaken. Battles typically lasted many hours, sometimes all day, in that time one unit could be locked in one melee combat after another, another could be firing volley after volley of arrows, whilst yet another could theoretically march from one side of the battlefield to the other several times over.
- Firstly, the designer has to come up with the core mechanics that underpin the structure and flow of the game, normally by dividing the battle into a number of turns. In most modern rulesets a game typically lasts an average of eight to ten turns so each one could represent anything from 30 minutes to an hour. The main question then becomes how much fighting can be done in any one turn, a unit could possibly charge or counter-charge into combat half a dozen times. In some rulesets this could be represented in a game action by simply moving one unit next to another and each player rolling one die or could involve a series of die rolls or card draws.
- Secondly all the other game mechanics then need to be built to match that core mechanism e.g. the effects of shooting with distance weapons and the ability of units to move about and rally, so that they are realistic in relation to a turn of melee combat. The correct modelling of the effects of ranged combat on enemy units in particular is as much a crucial area as melee combat to get right as many armies relied on ranged weapons in whole or in part to beat enemy forces, e.g. Hunnic horse archers and English longbowmen.
- Thirdly, the rules designer has to address how much a commander would be able to perceive around him and how quickly react to events, the ability of commanders to issue orders to units and how much they would be able to respond to them.
It may surprise non-figure gamers that the latest rulesets are left vague in certain areas, they generally do not make any attempt to define fixed ratios of miniatures or bases to the numbers of soldiers in a unit or army, neither do they lay out any ratio of table top distances to real life distances nor do they seek to state how much real time each game turn represents or how combat is actually undertaken.
Whilst these issues need to be carefully considered by the rules authors they are now left deliberately undefined as, in the past when attempts had been made to do so, it always led to problems for those rulesets in the form of disputes over: how long a time period should a turn represent, how far a unit could move in a certain time period, how many men should a base represent or how many casualties could be caused in x amount of time, to name but a few.
Rule writers have learnt that the easiest way to avoid arguments is simply not to state any fixed criteria, it has been found that attempts to provide precision in the past have detracted from the goal of producing a set where the game just "feels" right and plays well.
3. The games have to be fun.
Not for me are the contests of physical prowess that the vast majority of people enjoy, when football matches or the Olympics are on off goes the TV. There is no better fun to be had than playing a contest matching your wits against someone else's, the highest form of which is recreating a battle where men's very lives were put on the line.
To some non-gamers the idea of 'enjoying' a game that seeks to simulate killing may appear odd, I can only say that the killing aspect is not the focus or point of the game. It is more to do with the behaviour of men when placed in such situations and the thrill of the contest between the players just as any competitive game provides.
Over the course of my playing tabletop battles, which dates from the late 1970's, rule sets have evolved considerably. Back then most of the popular sets were far more detailed in their approach, minor differences in soldiers' equipment, training and morale made big differences in performance on the tabletop with copious charts and tables that had to be consulted to determine whether a unit would advance or retreat if ordered, how many casualties were incurred in shooting and melee and the reactions resulting from these losses; all requiring numerous die rolls. You had to work hard to play a game, this came at the expense of enjoyment.
There are trends in many human activities and wargames are no exception. Nowadays, in the current popular rulesets, most of the complexity of older rulesets has been pared away and replaced by simpler mechanisms. As a consequence play intentionally proceeds much more quickly and is far more enjoyable but possibly this has come at the price of some of the realism the writers of the older sets were striving for. The designer of the Mortem et Gloriam (MeG) ruleset, for example, has stated that in his opinion generals are able to order units in that ruleset to undertake more complex actions than would be possible in a real battle and has purposely allowed players to do so in order to make the games more entertaining. He has even produced a more constrained 'prompted actions table' for players who want to play more realistically.
It may surprise non-figure gamers that the latest rulesets are left vague in certain areas, they generally do not make any attempt to define fixed ratios of miniatures or bases to the numbers of soldiers in a unit or army, neither do they lay out any ratio of table top distances to real life distances nor do they seek to state how much real time each game turn represents or how combat is actually undertaken.
Whilst these issues need to be carefully considered by the rules authors they are now left deliberately undefined as, in the past when attempts had been made to do so, it always led to problems for those rulesets in the form of disputes over: how long a time period should a turn represent, how far a unit could move in a certain time period, how many men should a base represent or how many casualties could be caused in x amount of time, to name but a few.
Rule writers have learnt that the easiest way to avoid arguments is simply not to state any fixed criteria, it has been found that attempts to provide precision in the past have detracted from the goal of producing a set where the game just "feels" right and plays well.
3. The games have to be fun.
Not for me are the contests of physical prowess that the vast majority of people enjoy, when football matches or the Olympics are on off goes the TV. There is no better fun to be had than playing a contest matching your wits against someone else's, the highest form of which is recreating a battle where men's very lives were put on the line.
To some non-gamers the idea of 'enjoying' a game that seeks to simulate killing may appear odd, I can only say that the killing aspect is not the focus or point of the game. It is more to do with the behaviour of men when placed in such situations and the thrill of the contest between the players just as any competitive game provides.
Over the course of my playing tabletop battles, which dates from the late 1970's, rule sets have evolved considerably. Back then most of the popular sets were far more detailed in their approach, minor differences in soldiers' equipment, training and morale made big differences in performance on the tabletop with copious charts and tables that had to be consulted to determine whether a unit would advance or retreat if ordered, how many casualties were incurred in shooting and melee and the reactions resulting from these losses; all requiring numerous die rolls. You had to work hard to play a game, this came at the expense of enjoyment.
There are trends in many human activities and wargames are no exception. Nowadays, in the current popular rulesets, most of the complexity of older rulesets has been pared away and replaced by simpler mechanisms. As a consequence play intentionally proceeds much more quickly and is far more enjoyable but possibly this has come at the price of some of the realism the writers of the older sets were striving for. The designer of the Mortem et Gloriam (MeG) ruleset, for example, has stated that in his opinion generals are able to order units in that ruleset to undertake more complex actions than would be possible in a real battle and has purposely allowed players to do so in order to make the games more entertaining. He has even produced a more constrained 'prompted actions table' for players who want to play more realistically.
4. Realistic command-level decision making.
As stated above all wargames need to model the behaviour, ability, training etc. of all the soldiers involved but, particularly in a big battle ruleset, the correct modelling of the army leaders' abilities, decisions and transmission of those decisions to the troops are paramount.
A good big battle ruleset must focus on modelling the ability of the senior army commanders to manoeuvre their armies both prior to the battle in order to obtain a battle-winning deployment advantage, and during the battle to inspire and rally their units, get them to charge the enemy, or in some cases not charge, or to get them where they are needed most; just as it would have been in real life.
Furthermore, another major factor to consider is of course that you, the player, don't actually exist in the world of your miniature figures. There was no entity with god-like powers of omniscience to guide the generals on the best commands to issue to their troops. This is one of the big differences between a good big battle tabletop miniatures ruleset and more abstract battle games like Chess. In the latter a player's pieces will always move whenever or wherever desired by the player, after careful deliberation of the entire Chessboard (i.e. battlefield) and review of the capabilities of all troops on the field of battle, without argument or confusion; needless to say this was not the case in a single real life battle. The fog of war i.e. dust, noise and confusion plus terrain and weather conditions usually meant that each commander could only see a very limited part of the battlefield.
But it goes further, in Chess the players are free to move their pieces in accordance with their own whims, a good big-battle ruleset should not only limit the units to historical behaviour but restrict the army leaders to the historical behaviour, knowledge and capabilities of commanders of the time. Most rulesets do this by some system of random die-roll or card draw each round modified by the ability of the general concerned to determine how many commands they can give out. At times this can be incredibly frustrating to the player who can see opportunities or threats on the battlefield but not be able to get their army to react to them but this is the price of realism.
5. Training and Morale
Training has always been a key determinant of the battlefield performance of all soldiers so it is important for it to be considered and modelled. The intense training regime of the Imperial Roman soldier is well known as are those of various other military units in history, unfortunately being so long ago the amount of training received by the many other troops and armies can only be guessed at. Still, it can't be ignored.
In the ancient/medieval period, just as it is today, the morale of the soldiers was also paramount in determining battle performance. Some units were battle-hardened and being victors of many battles were convinced of their martial superiority, at the other extreme were untrained peasants drafted into an army with very little stake in a battle. The high morale of the former made them almost invincible soldiers, the low morale of the latter obviously the opposite.
There would be times during any battle when men would be exposed to threats they weren't prepared for, such as enemy units turning their unit's flank or the appearance of unexpected enemy reserves late in the day when the men are feeling exhausted plus there was nearly always a point when the men of one side began to feel that the battle was irretrievably lost. At these times only their officers, training and esprit de corps stood between them continuing to fight or cutting and running in an attempt to save themselves. Training and morale are therefore key elements and a good set of rules has to model them well.
In fact, most of the killing only occurred after the point of total army morale collapse; all serious rulesets stop the game at that point as the fun aspect of the game ceases when the jeopardy goes and who would want to play out the mass slaughter that ensued in any case.
6. Military science
The introduction of, and final abandonment of, groups of men going into battle solely armed with either a sharp metal-topped pole (spear, pike polearm etc.) or the bow and arrow (short bow, longbow, crossbow etc.) pretty much define the beginning and end of the ancient/medieval periods respectively. Spearmen and archers are a constant throughout the approx. 4,500 years of pre-gunpowder warfare.
Whilst, apart from the advent of early gunpowder weapons, most of the weaponry in use in 1500 CE wouldn't be unrecognisable to a warrior of 3000 BCE the methods and organisations used to fight battles changed considerably over time. Strategies and tactics evolved and, in particular, the increasing availability of ever larger horses affected warfare greatly. These developments along with incremental but steady and important improvements in the quality of weapons and armour plus many other inventions (e.g. the stirrup) and changes in society make the conduct of warfare in the sixteenth century CE quite different to that of the third millennium BCE. The rulesets need to reflect those evolutions.
The split between the ancient and medieval worlds is taken to be the fall of the western Roman empire in 476 CE, a purely arbitrary date in many ways and to the wargamer largely irrelevant as nothing immediately changed in terms of the way wars were fought or the technology available. To the medieval period wargamer the period ends when the development of gunpowder-based weaponry into cheap and seriously powerful weapons began to change how men were organised and battles were fought; depending on one's view this is generally taken to be the early to middle 1500s CE.
Given the long sweep of history involved in modelling warfare that covers the entire period it is almost impossible for rules writers to ensure that all troops from all eras perform as they should when matched up to non-historical opponents. Most ensure that the main historical interactions are modelled well and don't worry about the non-historical ones so much, leaving them to work out as they may.
4. Realistic command-level decision making.
As stated above all wargames need to model the behaviour, ability, training etc. of all the soldiers involved but, particularly in a big battle ruleset, the correct modelling of the army leaders' abilities, decisions and transmission of those decisions to the troops are paramount.
A good big battle ruleset must focus on modelling the ability of the senior army commanders to manoeuvre their armies both prior to the battle in order to obtain a battle-winning deployment advantage, and during the battle to inspire and rally their units, get them to charge the enemy, or in some cases not charge, or to get them where they are needed most; just as it would have been in real life.
Furthermore, another major factor to consider is of course that you, the player, don't actually exist in the world of your miniature figures. There was no entity with god-like powers of omniscience to guide the generals on the best commands to issue to their troops. This is one of the big differences between a good big battle tabletop miniatures ruleset and more abstract battle games like Chess. In the latter a player's pieces will always move whenever or wherever desired by the player, after careful deliberation of the entire Chessboard (i.e. battlefield) and review of the capabilities of all troops on the field of battle, without argument or confusion; needless to say this was not the case in a single real life battle. The fog of war i.e. dust, noise and confusion plus terrain and weather conditions usually meant that each commander could only see a very limited part of the battlefield.
But it goes further, in Chess the players are free to move their pieces in accordance with their own whims, a good big-battle ruleset should not only limit the units to historical behaviour but restrict the army leaders to the historical behaviour, knowledge and capabilities of commanders of the time. Most rulesets do this by some system of random die-roll or card draw each round modified by the ability of the general concerned to determine how many commands they can give out. At times this can be incredibly frustrating to the player who can see opportunities or threats on the battlefield but not be able to get their army to react to them but this is the price of realism.
5. Training and Morale
Training has always been a key determinant of the battlefield performance of all soldiers so it is important for it to be considered and modelled. The intense training regime of the Imperial Roman soldier is well known as are those of various other military units in history, unfortunately being so long ago the amount of training received by the many other troops and armies can only be guessed at. Still, it can't be ignored.
In the ancient/medieval period, just as it is today, the morale of the soldiers was also paramount in determining battle performance. Some units were battle-hardened and being victors of many battles were convinced of their martial superiority, at the other extreme were untrained peasants drafted into an army with very little stake in a battle. The high morale of the former made them almost invincible soldiers, the low morale of the latter obviously the opposite.
There would be times during any battle when men would be exposed to threats they weren't prepared for, such as enemy units turning their unit's flank or the appearance of unexpected enemy reserves late in the day when the men are feeling exhausted plus there was nearly always a point when the men of one side began to feel that the battle was irretrievably lost. At these times only their officers, training and esprit de corps stood between them continuing to fight or cutting and running in an attempt to save themselves. Training and morale are therefore key elements and a good set of rules has to model them well.
In fact, most of the killing only occurred after the point of total army morale collapse; all serious rulesets stop the game at that point as the fun aspect of the game ceases when the jeopardy goes and who would want to play out the mass slaughter that ensued in any case.
6. Military science
The introduction of, and final abandonment of, groups of men going into battle solely armed with either a sharp metal-topped pole (spear, pike polearm etc.) or the bow and arrow (short bow, longbow, crossbow etc.) pretty much define the beginning and end of the ancient/medieval periods respectively. Spearmen and archers are a constant throughout the approx. 4,500 years of pre-gunpowder warfare.
Whilst, apart from the advent of early gunpowder weapons, most of the weaponry in use in 1500 CE wouldn't be unrecognisable to a warrior of 3000 BCE the methods and organisations used to fight battles changed considerably over time. Strategies and tactics evolved and, in particular, the increasing availability of ever larger horses affected warfare greatly. These developments along with incremental but steady and important improvements in the quality of weapons and armour plus many other inventions (e.g. the stirrup) and changes in society make the conduct of warfare in the sixteenth century CE quite different to that of the third millennium BCE. The rulesets need to reflect those evolutions.
The split between the ancient and medieval worlds is taken to be the fall of the western Roman empire in 476 CE, a purely arbitrary date in many ways and to the wargamer largely irrelevant as nothing immediately changed in terms of the way wars were fought or the technology available. To the medieval period wargamer the period ends when the development of gunpowder-based weaponry into cheap and seriously powerful weapons began to change how men were organised and battles were fought; depending on one's view this is generally taken to be the early to middle 1500s CE.
Given the long sweep of history involved in modelling warfare that covers the entire period it is almost impossible for rules writers to ensure that all troops from all eras perform as they should when matched up to non-historical opponents. Most ensure that the main historical interactions are modelled well and don't worry about the non-historical ones so much, leaving them to work out as they may.
7. Chance
The insertion of a random element into the game is an important distinction between a tabletop battle game that seeks to be realistic and games like Chess where realism has taken a back seat to competition. To illustrate what I mean, in Chess when a player attacks, i.e. when a player wishes to move a piece to "take" an opponents' piece, it occurs automatically and furthermore is an automatic success, there is no possibility that the order to attack is misinterpreted or refused or that the attack will fail and the moving piece will be taken out of play instead.
In reality there were numerous factors that meant no general could be 100% certain that an order given would be carried out as intended or at all, nor could the outcome of a combat be taken for granted. For example:
- confusion in the transmission of or understanding of an order and/or the personalities of the commanders giving and receiving them;
- the state of the men's morale or fitness;
- the experience, determination and ability of the dozens of individual unit commanders (Centurions etc);
- the weather and state of the ground the men were fighting over
The insertion of a random element into the game is an important distinction between a tabletop battle game that seeks to be realistic and games like Chess where realism has taken a back seat to competition. To illustrate what I mean, in Chess when a player attacks, i.e. when a player wishes to move a piece to "take" an opponents' piece, it occurs automatically and furthermore is an automatic success, there is no possibility that the order to attack is misinterpreted or refused or that the attack will fail and the moving piece will be taken out of play instead.
In reality there were numerous factors that meant no general could be 100% certain that an order given would be carried out as intended or at all, nor could the outcome of a combat be taken for granted. For example:
- confusion in the transmission of or understanding of an order and/or the personalities of the commanders giving and receiving them;
- the state of the men's morale or fitness;
- the experience, determination and ability of the dozens of individual unit commanders (Centurions etc);
- the weather and state of the ground the men were fighting over
There are many examples of men who, when faced by certain death, outperformed expectations hugely, and the reverse was also true, many units didn't live up to reputations. The inclusion of a random element usually in the form of rolling dice or drawing cards, but from whatever method, reflects all those unknown variables that meant that the army commanders could never be sure of the outcome of any clash of arms. To put it simply, ancient/medieval generals had no such luxury of the certainty of outcome that Chess provides, so neither should the players.
Luck versus skill
One final point I'd mention is on the extent that luck should play a part. This is a very subjective point and everyone has their own views both as to how much luck there is in the mechanics of a rules system and whether it is too much or too little. Whilst accepting that chance has an important role to play, for the reasons set out above, some ruleset designers build more randomness into some of their mechanics than others and, of course, the greater the scope for randomness the greater the chance for luck to influence a game as opposed to player skill.
The amount that should be built in appears to be very much a matter of personal preference and can have a great influence on which rulesets players like or dislike, and will therefore play, consequently this criteria shouldn't be understated. Chess, of course, represents one end of the spectrum i.e.100% skill, a game like Snakes & Ladders the other i.e. 100% luck. In my view a good ruleset pitches the balance slightly on the skill side of the middle - sufficient luck to give unexpected twists and turns to the flow of the battle but sufficient skill so that the player who produces and executes the better battle plan has the better chance of winning.
In my experience, when fighting a battle with any ruleset, if you begin to feel that luck is given too big a role and skill too little, the best thing to do is enter a wargames competition that requires use of that ruleset, I rapidly find that the best players seem to win despite what obstacles lady luck throws in their way. In many ways its all about managing the randomness.
One final point I'd mention is on the extent that luck should play a part. This is a very subjective point and everyone has their own views both as to how much luck there is in the mechanics of a rules system and whether it is too much or too little. Whilst accepting that chance has an important role to play, for the reasons set out above, some ruleset designers build more randomness into some of their mechanics than others and, of course, the greater the scope for randomness the greater the chance for luck to influence a game as opposed to player skill.
The amount that should be built in appears to be very much a matter of personal preference and can have a great influence on which rulesets players like or dislike, and will therefore play, consequently this criteria shouldn't be understated. Chess, of course, represents one end of the spectrum i.e.100% skill, a game like Snakes & Ladders the other i.e. 100% luck. In my view a good ruleset pitches the balance slightly on the skill side of the middle - sufficient luck to give unexpected twists and turns to the flow of the battle but sufficient skill so that the player who produces and executes the better battle plan has the better chance of winning.
In my experience, when fighting a battle with any ruleset, if you begin to feel that luck is given too big a role and skill too little, the best thing to do is enter a wargames competition that requires use of that ruleset, I rapidly find that the best players seem to win despite what obstacles lady luck throws in their way. In many ways its all about managing the randomness.
8. Competition and drama
Lastly, there needs to be a competitive edge to the game and a ever-increasing sense of tension. When men went to battle they were fighting for their very lives, in many cases for their country's existence; losing was not an option. In one sense therefore, if it is to be a true model, a wargame tabletop ruleset should be the most competitive and dramatic of any and all games, the stakes could not be higher.
That's not to say that one has to play the game in an overly-competitive or even aggressive manner as the player, in fact playing against an overly competitive player in any contest can be quite unpleasant. I play with the view that if I was really in charge of thousands of men relying on me for their lives I would be trying my level best to win the battle as the army commanders but, even though it's always pleasant to win, a successful ruleset should create a game that can be enjoyed by both players whether they are on the winning or losing side.
As I have mentioned above, one of the distinctions between Chess and a real ancient/medieval battle is the that in Chess armies are identical and deployed in mirror image and fight on a flat empty battlefield, this was not so in a real battle. General's spent many days or months even trying to get every imaginable advantage to aid them on the day of decision. This process needs to be modelled in a ruleset so that the player that thinks up and puts into action the more successful plan, one that maximises the strengths of his/her army and minimises those of their opponent's, has the best chance of victory. The competition, therefore, unlike Chess where players begin a game only after laying out the pieces, starts long before players meet up to play. This pre-game process adds immeasurably but surely to the richness of a game.
8. Competition and drama
Lastly, there needs to be a competitive edge to the game and a ever-increasing sense of tension. When men went to battle they were fighting for their very lives, in many cases for their country's existence; losing was not an option. In one sense therefore, if it is to be a true model, a wargame tabletop ruleset should be the most competitive and dramatic of any and all games, the stakes could not be higher.
That's not to say that one has to play the game in an overly-competitive or even aggressive manner as the player, in fact playing against an overly competitive player in any contest can be quite unpleasant. I play with the view that if I was really in charge of thousands of men relying on me for their lives I would be trying my level best to win the battle as the army commanders but, even though it's always pleasant to win, a successful ruleset should create a game that can be enjoyed by both players whether they are on the winning or losing side.
As I have mentioned above, one of the distinctions between Chess and a real ancient/medieval battle is the that in Chess armies are identical and deployed in mirror image and fight on a flat empty battlefield, this was not so in a real battle. General's spent many days or months even trying to get every imaginable advantage to aid them on the day of decision. This process needs to be modelled in a ruleset so that the player that thinks up and puts into action the more successful plan, one that maximises the strengths of his/her army and minimises those of their opponent's, has the best chance of victory. The competition, therefore, unlike Chess where players begin a game only after laying out the pieces, starts long before players meet up to play. This pre-game process adds immeasurably but surely to the richness of a game.
No comments:
Post a Comment