Should games be fair?
Chris von Seggern
particularly in wargame scenarios. He insists that wargames don't need to
be balanced because real-world combat engagements are rarely fair fights,
and that it's impossible to build a balanced scenario around an engagement
that historically was one-sided. He also insists that playing a game to win
by whatever legal means seems expedient violates the "spirit" of most games,
and proceeded to berate me for playing a Great War at Sea scenario
"ahistorically."
My only question is, WTF? I view a game with victory conditions and/or
scoring as a competitive activity. Why keep score or track victory points
if you aren't going to play to win? And if you're playing to win, isn't
balance an important consideration? The game's more fun for both people if
they come to the table with a roughly equal opportunity to win. Any
thoughts from the group on this?
Chris
Nathan Sanders
> I had a long argument with a friend today about balance in games and
> particularly in wargame scenarios. He insists that wargames don't need to
In my opinion, the term "wargame" is misleading, for precisely the reasons
your friend put forth. Wargame Type A isn't as much of a game as it is a
reinactment. The more historically accurate the simulation, the less
game-like it becomes, since as you reach perfect accurracy, there can only
be one outcome --- the one that actually happened.
Wargame Type B, like Risk, is truly a game, and should be "fair". Eve
Axis and Allies, which seems to be Type A at first, is really type B, in
that various aspects of history have to be ignored or reconceived in
order to make the game fair.
> My only question is, WTF? I view a game with victory conditions and/or
> scoring as a competitive activity. Why keep score or track victory points
> if you aren't going to play to win?
For many players of Type A wargames, it's more of a historical and
analytical excercise, rather than a game. Like reading a history book,
but more fun. =)
But I agree with you that a game is more fun if it is fair (i.e. all
players of equal skill have approximately equal chances of winning before
the first move is made).
Nathan
======================================================================
san...@ling.ucsc.edu ***** Department of Linguistics
san...@alum.mit.edu *** University of California
http://ling.ucsc.edu/~sanders * Santa Cruz, California 95064
======================================================================
Chris von Seggern
"Nathan Sanders" <san...@ling.ucsc.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.SUN.3.91.102021...@ling.ucsc.edu...
> On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, Chris von Seggern wrote:
>
> > I had a long argument with a friend today about balance in games and
> > particularly in wargame scenarios. He insists that wargames don't need
to
>
> In my opinion, the term "wargame" is misleading, for precisely the reasons
> your friend put forth. Wargame Type A isn't as much of a game as it is a
> reinactment. The more historically accurate the simulation, the less
> game-like it becomes, since as you reach perfect accurracy, there can only
> be one outcome --- the one that actually happened.
I have to disagree with you here. Although I see your point, and it is not
without merit, I don't think that an accurate simulation locks the player
down to an inevitable historical outcome. Many, many engagements have been
won or lost based on the decisions made by key players, or by dumb luck, or
myriad other factors that weren't under anyone's direct control. A
well-designed game will allow all those factors to play a part, but still
leave enough up to the player's control to allow for alternatives.
Chris
Darin McGrew
I don't really care that much about game balance. Some of my favorite games
are unbalanced. Even "balanced" games usually give one player the first
move, which unbalances the game slightly. If the lack of balance is
significant, then play two games, trading sides so that each player gets to
play each side once.
I don't really care about playing war games "historically" either.
Real-life generals and rulers made mistakes. Why shouldn't table-top
generals and rulers try strategies that the real-life ones "should" have
tried?
--
Darin McGrew, mcg...@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da...@htmlhelp.com, http://htmlhelp.com/
"Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance."
orwell
>> and proceeded to berate me for playing a Great War at Sea scenario
>> "ahistorically."
Were you winning? Maybe that's why he was upset.
angiolillo
> > particularly in wargame scenarios.
I had the same kind of discussion several times in the past... I think
that they should be fair to be fun. This is often done also in
simulations of conflicts that were not fair in reality. Easy example:
in "Normandy", by SPI, the German player has obviously no chance to
stop the Allied invasion, but he can delay it longer. The "simulation
game" is a very good one: Germans will lose anyway (the simulation
works), but the German player can win if he does his best starting
from that hopeless situation (the game works too). Why not?
> The more historically accurate the simulation, the less
> game-like it becomes, since as you reach perfect accurracy, there can only
> be one outcome --- the one that actually happened.
I don't totally agree with that. Several wars and battles depended on
decisions by the people involved or by sheer chance.
What if Hannibal decided not to stop in Capua after his first
successes in his Italian campaign? He did not need to rest so much
time in Capua without attacking Rome. A game on that Punic Wars can be
accurate without forcing the Punic player to do the same... What if
the 82th US Airborne wiould have been paratrooped on rome the 8th of
September 1943, as it was planned? Or if the troops landing at Anzio
in january 1944 would just go straight to Rome instead of waiting on
the shore while Germans came to block them?
At the same time, weather or other situations could have changed the
course of history. Blucher falling from the horse after Ligny and
being saved from capture by chance... I don't have so many examples
now, but there are. This makes a good or a bad die throw for "the real
player" that could have gone totally different, altering the course of
history...
No more time, but interesting thread.
Bye!
Andrea
Peter Clinch
>
> I had a long argument with a friend today about balance in games and
> particularly in wargame scenarios. He insists that wargames don't need to
> be balanced because real-world combat engagements are rarely fair fights,
> and that it's impossible to build a balanced scenario around an engagement
> that historically was one-sided.
Depends how you mean by "balanced". In Storm Over Arnhem you can pretty
much guarantee that in absolute terms the British forces are going to
get a royal kicking. But the Victory Conditions mean that if they can
hang on to a few key spots for a little longer, they'll actually win the
game. By fiddling with the victory conditions you can make almost
anything balanced.
> He also insists that playing a game to win
> by whatever legal means seems expedient violates the "spirit" of most games,
> and proceeded to berate me for playing a Great War at Sea scenario
> "ahistorically."
That sounds like he should be reading a book rather than playing a game!
But rather depends on one's definition of spirit too. If playing a game
of Bismark you don't go where the Bismark went, according to your friend
that would violate the spirt of the game. But since the essence of the
situation was a difficult search for the Royal Navy, you could argue you
were violating the spirit by not going somewhere else...
Plus if you don't use historical games for "what if the Germans decided
Stalingrad could go hang" type consideration you're selling your
purchase short IMHO.
Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.c...@dundee.ac.uk http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
David Allsopp
<cvons@?.com> writes
It all depends what you mean by "balanced". Many historical simulation
games have different victory conditions for the two sides which reflect
the different force balances. For instance, where side A is much
stronger than side B, it might be that A wins if there are any A units
left on the board at the end of the game.
A slight variation on this is used in the old AH "Gunslinger" game. The
object is to get most victory points, but in some of the scenarios the
characters on one side start with a victory point bonus. Usually that's
because they're likely to be dead at the finish.
But yes, play to win. Recreating the exact historical outcome of a
battle is a solo activity.
--
David Allsopp Houston, this is Tranquillity Base.
Remove SPAM to email me The Eagle has landed.
Michael
chorus...
1) Having a wargame exactly follow history is just plain WRONG. First of
all, as others have also pointed out, there have been a LOT of chance
elements that just aren't likely to be duplicated... unless your friend
would also like to agree beforehand on the die rolls the two of you will be
rolling during the game. I think it's a lot more interesting to try out
"What If?" strategies anyway.
2) Must the games be fair? No. Again, someone already said this, but you
only have to play the game twice, switching sides if you want to have a fair
means of comparison. Personally, I prefer to play fair games, I guess
because I don't feel like playing the same game twice in a row. =)
"Chris von Seggern attbi.com>" <cvons@<spamtrap> wrote in message
news:MXEc8.95414$Pz4.384518@rwcrnsc53...
Richard Bell
Nathan Sanders <san...@ling.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, Chris von Seggern wrote:
>
>> I had a long argument with a friend today about balance in games and
>> particularly in wargame scenarios. He insists that wargames don't need to
>
>In my opinion, the term "wargame" is misleading, for precisely the reasons
>your friend put forth. Wargame Type A isn't as much of a game as it is a
>reinactment. The more historically accurate the simulation, the less
>game-like it becomes, since as you reach perfect accurracy, there can only
>be one outcome --- the one that actually happened.
Type A games can be converted into Type B games by judicious application
of victory conditions. The best example of this is AH: France 1940. There
is no historically accurate way to make the invasion of France balanced.
However, the german player's victory is determined by how much of a blowout
is achieved, and he will lose if he does not crush the french, merely beats
them. TFG's Battlewagons has a scenario for the second battle of the
Falklands, from WWI. This was a british blowout, as it was an action where
Fisher's BC's actually performed as designed-- fighting a slower opponent
with shorter ranged guns. The germans win if they can get a few of their
light cruisers to escape, which will force the british player to quickly
sink the CA's, or take the risk of going past them to the light cruisers
(the british BC's do not have the armor to resist german 8" shells at
any range that a hit can be scored).
angiolillo
> of Bismark you don't go where the Bismark went, according to your friend
> that would violate the spirt of the game. But since the essence of the
> situation was a difficult search for the Royal Navy, you could argue you
> were violating the spirit by not going somewhere else...
Sometimes, anyway, I think that rules can somehow limit the players'
choices for realism's sake. Makling a game about the battle of Cannae,
for example, I would (...I did...) put some limits to the use of the
Roman legions. In the historical battle, Hannibal won with half the
number of soldiers compared to the Romans. But the Romans used to
attack with the light Velites first, then with the Hastati
legionaires, then with the Principes, then with the Triarii. If you
make a game giving the Roman player the possibility to use freely all
his 80.000/100.000 men, you both destroy realism and game equilibrium.
The real defy for the designer is to make a game in which the Roman
player has a limit to use the four orders of their legions (he should
use them one by one in the right order), making that limit reasonable.
The real defy for the Roman player of a such game is to win anyway,
even with that limit. That in the simulation is a limit given not only
by generals' mentality, but also by legionaires' training.
IMHO, of course...
Bye!
Andrea
pulgao
Many wargames build in "pyrrhic victory conditions" to compensate for
this. For example, a WWII game simulating Normandy to V-E Day might
have a victory condition for Germany that if they can hold out until
May 1946, the player "wins" (even though IRL the loss would be a loss,
no matter what). American Civil War strategic sims frequently use this
-- if the South holds out past April 1865, they win.
Your friend, btw, is absolutely correct. There are *very* few
battles/wars that are "balanced". In fact, you'd have to question a
real-life commander who would attack if he has merely equal chances to
his opponent. In most battles, one commander will try to develop an
advantage (material, position, maneuverability) *before* he attacks.
So wargame designers usually compensate for this by juggling victory
conditions -- allowing points to be scored for terrain objectives or
time considerations. The idea is to give the *players* an equal
opportunity to win *the game*, although a similar real-life result
wouldn't necessarily be considered a "victory" in military terms.
-- Steve Lopez
-------------------------------------------------
The Chess Kamikaze Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/ludekdudek/
The Chess Kamikaze Club: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chesskamikazes/
Darin McGrew
> Sometimes, anyway, I think that rules can somehow limit the players'
> choices for realism's sake. Makling a game about the battle of Cannae,
> for example, I would (...I did...) put some limits to the use of the
> Roman legions. In the historical battle, Hannibal won with half the
> number of soldiers compared to the Romans. But the Romans used to
> attack with the light Velites first, then with the Hastati
> legionaires, then with the Principes, then with the Triarii. If you
> make a game giving the Roman player the possibility to use freely all
> his 80.000/100.000 men, you both destroy realism and game equilibrium.
> The real defy for the designer is to make a game in which the Roman
> player has a limit to use the four orders of their legions (he should
> use them one by one in the right order), making that limit reasonable.
What happens when troops are ordered to use tactics/formations for which
they haven't trained? You could give the Roman troops a bonus when they're
used in the "correct" order, because those are the tactics they're familiar
with.
--
Darin McGrew, mcg...@stanfordalumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, da...@htmlhelp.com, http://htmlhelp.com/
"I'd love to make time, if only I could find the recipe."
Nathan Sanders
> > The more historically accurate the simulation, the less
> > game-like it becomes, since as you reach perfect accurracy, there can only
> > be one outcome --- the one that actually happened.
>
> I don't totally agree with that. Several wars and battles depended on
> decisions by the people involved or by sheer chance.
True, but I was talking about "perfect accuracy". =) Once you achieve
that, there are no outcomes other than what actually happened (otherwise,
you're not being "perfectly accurate").
Up until you reach that point, however, I do agree that there is room for
variability, and a historical scenario can be more game-like.
Warren J. Dew
Type A games can be converted into Type B games by judicious
application of victory conditions. The best example of this
is AH: France 1940. There is no historically accurate way
to make the invasion of France balanced. However, the
german player's victory is determined by how much of a
blowout is achieved, and he will lose if he does not crush
the french, merely beats them.
One problem with that method of balancing military simulation games is that it
somewhat changes the objectives. For example, a game about the invasion of
France can be 'balanced' by requiring the Germans to win with the same or more
rapidity than historically occurred, but then the game player no longer shares
the Germans' historical objectives, since he will make different tradeoffs
regarding speed and certainty.
That said, France 1940 doesn't actually suffer from those problems; they just
permit the game to be unbalanced with the historical orders of battle. Their
approach is to present some ahistorical orders of battle with stronger French
forces, or with weaker German forces, to allow better balancing or different
handicapping of the game.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
Richard Hutnik
When you are talking about a reenactment of a historical battle as a
game, does bring into the "accuracy" aspect to it. The point of
playing such a game is to see if you and your opponent can outdo the
historical general. On this note, while a certain scenario can be
unwinnable by one side, it can be set up, through a balanced method of
scoring to more accurately measure who is the better general. In this
way, you can have a game that isn't balanced in resources used, but
gives both sides a roughly equal opportunity to win.
A second approach to this is to have a short enough battle that the
players can switch sides and play the other side. Then compare the
results.
- Richard Hutnik
Patrick Carroll
> >scoring as a competitive activity.
There's one point where your wargaming opponent may differ from you. As
I've said too often for some people's liking, there are (IMHO) three basic
kinds of gamers: Competitors, Socializers, and Dreamers. You sound very
much like a Competitor. Your friend sounds very much like a Dreamer--a
gamer whose main enjoyment is immersing himself emotionally/imaginatively in
a rich, detailed theme. (The third type, the Socializer, mainly enjoys
interacting with friends around the gaming table.)
> >Why keep score or track victory points
> >if you aren't going to play to win?
It lends structure and tension to the experience. It gets players to
compete, which affords them a small taste of the tension and emotions that
their real-life military counterparts must have experienced. To the
Dreamer, vicariously experiencing military command is often important; and
the emotional tension is part of that vicarious experience.
> >And if you're playing to win, isn't
> >balance an important consideration?
Only if that's the *main* thing you're trying to do. For the Competitor, it
is the main thing. For the Dreamer (and the Socializer), it's secondary.
The Dreamer may be playing to win just so he can vicariously experience some
of the tension that battlefield commanders go through. Meanwhile, he's also
immersing himself in the details of the map, the units, and the mental
images of what it all must've looked like and been like in real life. And
if you, as a Competitor, are ignoring all that and just treating the game
like an elaborate form of chess with dice, your Dreamer opponent is likely
to be peeved, because you're unwittingly pulling him away from what he
considers most valuable about the game.
> >The game's more fun for both people if
> >they come to the table with a roughly equal opportunity to win.
I'd say the game makes a lot more sense to the Competitor under those
conditions. The Socializer might also prefer it, but mainly for the sake of
fair play & the harmony it engenders in a group. The Dreamer, however,
might find it really annoying if some smart-alec game designer tinkers with
historicity just to turn a one-sided battle into some kind of "military
chess" game.
As others have mentioned, though, a good design can be both balanced and
true to history. In Bulge '81, for instance, the Germans will probably
fail to achieve their historical objectives--but the German player can still
win if he does better than his historical counterpart did.
--Patrick
Chris von Seggern
> > >The game's more fun for both people if
> > >they come to the table with a roughly equal opportunity to win.
>
> I'd say the game makes a lot more sense to the Competitor under those
> conditions. The Socializer might also prefer it, but mainly for the sake
of
> fair play & the harmony it engenders in a group. The Dreamer, however,
> might find it really annoying if some smart-alec game designer tinkers
with
> historicity just to turn a one-sided battle into some kind of "military
> chess" game.
>
> As others have mentioned, though, a good design can be both balanced and
> true to history. In Bulge '81, for instance, the Germans will probably
> fail to achieve their historical objectives--but the German player can
still
> win if he does better than his historical counterpart did.
>
the *battle*. Just make the game victory conditions at least roughly
equitable.
Chris
Patrick Carroll
> > true to history. In Bulge '81, for instance, the Germans will probably
> > fail to achieve their historical objectives--but the German player can
> still
> > win if he does better than his historical counterpart did.
> >
> And that's all I really ask for. There's no need to go screwing around
with
> the *battle*. Just make the game victory conditions at least roughly
> equitable.
But even if the game's design/development team manages to do that, there are
still going to be three (IMHO) basic types of players playing the game. And
when a Competitor is matched up with a Dreamer, there's likely to be
friction.
I still remember a game from long ago where this happened to me. It was
about 1971 or so, and a friend and I were playing our nth game of Bulge '65.
By this time we were both avid wargamers, but we enjoyed them the way
Dreamers enjoy games.
However, I had just read a sure-fire strategy article in the "General," and
I wanted to try it out. So I slipped out of character and started playing
this game like a Competitor. Suddenly the "battle" (the historical
situation and all the game "chrome" supporting it) faded into the
background, and I was focused just on the victory conditions and game
mechanics--and on what I needed to do to optimize my chances of winning.
Suddenly my friend Lenny saw what I was up to, sat back and glared across
the board at me, and said, "You're trying to win! If you don't stop, I'm
not playing anymore."
To many people, that probably sounds childish. But I knew exactly what
Lenny meant. For the past few years we had had an unwritten, unspoken
agreement to enjoy wargames just by immersing ourselves in them
imaginatively, vicariously experiencing military command. I had broken that
agreement. I felt bad about it, blushed, and tried to go back to playing
the way we always had before.
To reiterate, the Dreamer considers the underlying game system & victory
conditions as just an artificial tension builder. It's a relatively small
part of what the game is all about. Mainly it's about imaginative/emotional
immersion in a battle or fantasy adventure or whatever the game is about.
So, if someone flips that around and makes competing in the *game* the main
thing, the Dreamer is apt to be upset. As far as he's concerned, it's
putting the cart before the horse.
In wargaming, though, Dreamers can be hard to spot. In my day I found they
(and I) usually masqueraded as military historians. Though secretly
enjoying the role-playing immersion, they'd speak only of history, weapon
systems, tactics, leaders, and so forth, as if they were historians giving
the running commentary for a TV documentary.
In the mid-70s, wargames developed into RPGs. Then it was as if the
Dreamers could come out of the closet, so to speak, and unabashedly do what
they always really wanted to do. Ironically, Lenny and I never played an
RPG; in fact we scoffed at them. His interest turned from board games to
sports, and I continued to masquerade as a military historian and began
reading more than wargaming.
Nowadays I consider mental exercise to be the best reason for playing games.
So I tend to stick to abstract games like chess or dominoes, which challenge
me without drawing me into an elaborate fictional world. But, judging from
the success of computer games, with all their eye and ear candy, it looks
like there are still many Dreamers around.
--P. C.
The Maverick
> But even if the game's design/development team manages to do that, there are
> still going to be three (IMHO) basic types of players playing the game.
Might as well put this in your signature line if you are going to
include it in every message...
the Mav
--
"Never give up -- never surrender!" Commander Peter Quincy Taggart
Patrick Carroll
> >scoring as a competitive activity.
There's one point where your wargaming opponent may differ from you. As
I've said too often for some people's liking, there are (IMHO) three basic
kinds of gamers: Competitors, Socializers, and Dreamers. You sound very
much like a Competitor. Your friend sounds very much like a Dreamer--a
gamer whose main enjoyment is immersing himself emotionally/imaginatively in
a rich, detailed theme. (The third type, the Socializer, mainly enjoys
interacting with friends around the gaming table.)
> >Why keep score or track victory points
> >if you aren't going to play to win?
It lends structure and tension to the experience. It gets players to
compete, which affords them a small taste of the tension and emotions that
their real-life military counterparts must have experienced. To the
Dreamer, vicariously experiencing military command is often important; and
the emotional tension is part of that vicarious experience.
> >And if you're playing to win, isn't
> >balance an important consideration?
Only if that's the *main* thing you're trying to do. For the Competitor, it
is the main thing. For the Dreamer (and the Socializer), it's secondary.
The Dreamer may be playing to win just so he can vicariously experience some
of the tension that battlefield commanders go through. Meanwhile, he's also
immersing himself in the details of the map, the units, and the mental
images of what it all must've looked like and been like in real life. And
if you, as a Competitor, are ignoring all that and just treating the game
like an elaborate form of chess with dice, your Dreamer opponent is likely
to be peeved, because you're unwittingly pulling him away from what he
considers most valuable about the game.
> >The game's more fun for both people if
> >they come to the table with a roughly equal opportunity to win.
I'd say the game makes a lot more sense to the Competitor under those
conditions. The Socializer might also prefer it, but mainly for the sake of
fair play & the harmony it engenders in a group. The Dreamer, however,
might find it really annoying if some smart-alec game designer tinkers with
historicity just to turn a one-sided battle into some kind of "military
chess" game.
As others have mentioned, though, a good design can be both balanced and
true to history. In Bulge '81, for instance, the Germans will probably
fail to achieve their historical objectives--but the German player can still
win if he does better than his historical counterpart did.
--Patrick
Anthony Simons
> > >My only question is, WTF? I view a game with victory conditions and/or
> > >scoring as a competitive activity.
>
> There's one point where your wargaming opponent may differ from you. As
> I've said too often for some people's liking, there are (IMHO) three basic
> kinds of gamers: Competitors, Socializers, and Dreamers. You sound very
> much like a Competitor. Your friend sounds very much like a Dreamer--a
> gamer whose main enjoyment is immersing himself emotionally/imaginatively in
> a rich, detailed theme. (The third type, the Socializer, mainly enjoys
> interacting with friends around the gaming table.)
Despite your pidgeon-holing of gamer types, I see where your
classification makes some sense. However, I would say what we have in
the case of his opponent is not even a gamer. Where a game is
designed to be competitive, and wargames simulations generally are,
any player should expect competition. To argue that an ahistoric play
is against the spirit of the game is nonsensical; it then ceases to be
a game and becomes a history lecture on the part of this "Dreamer"
using the game as an educational tool.
>
> > >Why keep score or track victory points
> > >if you aren't going to play to win?
>
> It lends structure and tension to the experience. It gets players to
> compete, which affords them a small taste of the tension and emotions that
> their real-life military counterparts must have experienced. To the
> Dreamer, vicariously experiencing military command is often important; and
> the emotional tension is part of that vicarious experience.
But haven't you just stated he is a "Dreamer" not a "Competitor"; or
is he a bit of both? That would then give him the best of both
worlds, as he would be able to complain whilst losing about his
opponent's ahistoric discrepancies. The wargame's simulation of a
real life battle is only a simulation of how the units and their
weapons behaved in that battle; it is not a simulation of the actual
battlefield decisions made (though many external and/or superordinate
decisions and other strategic, tactical and logistic restrictions may
be simulated through the rules). Scripting the battlefiled decisions
for the players turns it into a reenactment or a stage play, not a
wargame.
>
> > >And if you're playing to win, isn't
> > >balance an important consideration?
>
> Only if that's the *main* thing you're trying to do. For the Competitor, it
> is the main thing. For the Dreamer (and the Socializer), it's secondary.
> The Dreamer may be playing to win just so he can vicariously experience some
> of the tension that battlefield commanders go through. Meanwhile, he's also
> immersing himself in the details of the map, the units, and the mental
> images of what it all must've looked like and been like in real life.
Or the "Dreamer" may be playing to win because he is in fact also a
"Competitor", and one who cannot accept that, under this simulation,
he lacks the command ability of his original counterpart. Thus his
competitive dreaming is upset and he throws a tantrum about ahistoric
play.
>And if you, as a Competitor, are ignoring all that and just treating
the game
> like an elaborate form of chess with dice, your Dreamer opponent is likely
> to be peeved, because you're unwittingly pulling him away from what he
> considers most valuable about the game.
>
Codswallop! This is a wargame; and while I appreciate there are a
fair few folk out there who "wargame" solely to simulate and analyse a
historic battle, most wargamers appreciate that, allbeit a simulation
to some extent, they are not obliged to treat it as a reenactment.
The real "Dreamer" would consider the game's simulative accuracy to be
its most endearing property; in all wargames I have played nowhere has
this simulation involved playing out every original action from the
original battle.
If it is a good simulation, there will be little or no room for
"gamey" plays, as the units will behave roughly as they did in real
life (hence they are often termed "simulations"); and to point the
finger and call Chris such a "Competitor" is unfair and extremely
presumptious.
> > >The game's more fun for both people if
> > >they come to the table with a roughly equal opportunity to win.
>
> I'd say the game makes a lot more sense to the Competitor under those
> conditions. The Socializer might also prefer it, but mainly for the sake of
> fair play & the harmony it engenders in a group. The Dreamer, however,
> might find it really annoying if some smart-alec game designer tinkers with
> historicity just to turn a one-sided battle into some kind of "military
> chess" game.
However, in a good simulation, the designer has not tinkered with
history; he has left a one-sided battle and attached what we call in
the gaming world "victory conditions". Granted most of these are
hypothetical (the actual historic outcome being the one true exception
to this), but the losing side might achieve a game victory by causing
sufficient damage and/or delay to the victor.
>
> As others have mentioned, though, a good design can be both balanced and
> true to history. In Bulge '81, for instance, the Germans will probably
> fail to achieve their historical objectives--but the German player can still
> win if he does better than his historical counterpart did.
>
> --Patrick
Most designs in this genre are both balanced and true to history.
Does your "Dreamer" accept these designs for what they are,
simulations, or is he after the reenactment he appears to crave
according to your earlier statements? Quite frankly, I don't see any
point in wasting time setting up the game for such an opponent if all
he is going to do is cite history; I have more interesting books and
multimedia presentations for that sort of thing.
Erich Schneider
> Where a game is
> designed to be competitive, and wargames simulations generally are,
> any player should expect competition. To argue that an ahistoric play
> is against the spirit of the game is nonsensical; it then ceases to be
> a game and becomes a history lecture
This depends on what you mean by "an ahistoric play".
If you mean any deviation from actual history, then I agree with you.
I disagree if "an ahistoric play" is used to mean "a series which
wouldn't have been performed by the relevant historical figures
because of constraints not represented by the game system".
Example: The Gamers' "Civil War Brigade" series includes a
command/control system that attempts to simulate American Civil War
command/control by having the players write out orders for their
formations, track their transit to the relevant lower-level
commanders, roll dice to determine how long it takes those commanders
to understand and execute their orders, and then actually execute them
according to the written instructions. If the games are played by
players who are committed to recreating a "Civil War experience", it's
great fun, but if it's played by people trying to "game" the command
system to win at all costs, it breaks down pretty badly, because of
the possibility of creative interpretation of poorly-written orders.
Here, "playing historically" in accordance with the "spirit of the
game" is vital to having a good game experience.
Example 2: Many of Ted Raicer's First World War-era games have supply
rules that severly punish players who allow penetrations of their
front line. This is intended to motivate players to be paranoid about
continuous lines and flanks as the historical commanders were.
Unfortunately, if one side makes certain small mistakes and the other
wants to win at all costs, the result can be a World War 2-style
blitzkrieg with vast numbers of divisions dying due to being out of
supply. In a former game group of mine, we played "The Great War in
Europe" to death, each time tweaking the rules slightly to allow for
competitive play while still not allowing this sort of thing
("ahistoric plays") to happen.
--
Erich Schneider er...@caltech.edu Caltech Information Technology Services
Anthony Simons
> fellon...@hotmail.com (Anthony Simons) writes:
>
> > Where a game is
> > designed to be competitive, and wargames simulations generally are,
> > any player should expect competition. To argue that an ahistoric play
> > is against the spirit of the game is nonsensical; it then ceases to be
> > a game and becomes a history lecture
>
> This depends on what you mean by "an ahistoric play".
>
> If you mean any deviation from actual history, then I agree with you.
>
> I disagree if "an ahistoric play" is used to mean "a series which
> wouldn't have been performed by the relevant historical figures
> because of constraints not represented by the game system".
I took "ahistoric" from its context in the original posting, which is
unclear in distinguishing which, but I would argue that the latter
translation you have given of the phrase is no so much "an ahistoric
play" but "an ahistoric design flaw" (which may be difficult to
overcome).
>
> Example: The Gamers' "Civil War Brigade" series includes a
> command/control system that attempts to simulate American Civil War
> command/control by having the players write out orders for their
> formations, track their transit to the relevant lower-level
> commanders, roll dice to determine how long it takes those commanders
> to understand and execute their orders, and then actually execute them
> according to the written instructions. If the games are played by
> players who are committed to recreating a "Civil War experience", it's
> great fun, but if it's played by people trying to "game" the command
> system to win at all costs, it breaks down pretty badly, because of
> the possibility of creative interpretation of poorly-written orders.
> Here, "playing historically" in accordance with the "spirit of the
> game" is vital to having a good game experience.
This is a good example to support your argument; I have to concede
such aspects of warfare are difficult to represent. The easy answer
for the designer would be to state in the rules that the orders should
be interpreted literally and not creatively but this is difficult to
enforce. Such a system begs the introduction of a neutral umpire to
oversee the interpretation of written orders; otherwise there will
always be occasion for it to fall flat on its face.
I agree that if played by people trying to "game" the system, then it
would break down; but as I said in my last posting, if it is a good
simulation, there will be little or no room for "gamey" plays as units
will act approximately as they did in reality.
>
> Example 2: Many of Ted Raicer's First World War-era games have supply
> rules that severly punish players who allow penetrations of their
> front line. This is intended to motivate players to be paranoid about
> continuous lines and flanks as the historical commanders were.
> Unfortunately, if one side makes certain small mistakes and the other
> wants to win at all costs, the result can be a World War 2-style
> blitzkrieg with vast numbers of divisions dying due to being out of
> supply. In a former game group of mine, we played "The Great War in
> Europe" to death, each time tweaking the rules slightly to allow for
> competitive play while still not allowing this sort of thing
> ("ahistoric plays") to happen.
Again, a good example for supporting your argument; and again a
failure in the game system and not in the players. It is a good idea,
having such rules which effectively simulate historical attitudes
towards warfare, but such rules need supporting with further rules to
maintain an acceptable simulation. If the victory conditions allow
one player to win despite his neglect of entire divisions' supply,
then they are not very well thought out, and the whole simulation
fails.
Naturally, not every possible event which may have occurred on any
battlefield can be effectively simulated; but for those which are, as
many possible outcomes as are conceivable should be considered.
Historic restrictions should be covered by the rules systems, not by
the subjective "spirit of the game".
Patrick Carroll
> classification makes some sense.
Thanks for being charitable, but I'm not actually pigeon-holing gamers. I'
ve just boiled my observations of gamers down to three categories. Imagine
a triangle, where the angles are labeled Competitor, Socializer, and
Dreamer. What I'm saying is that if gamers were represented by dots, each
gamer would fall somewhere inside that triangle. Some would be placed way
out toward the Competitor angle, others toward the Dreamer angle--and many
would be nearer the middle of the triangle, where they'd have
characteristics of all three types. The angles of this imaginary triangle
represent the three basic "pulls" that games can have on gamers: mental
challenge (Competitor), human dynamics (Socializer), and imagination/emotion
(Dreamer). Some individuals, due to their background, interests, and
preferences, are more drawn by one of these "pulls" than another--or more by
two than by the third.
> However, I would say what we have in
> the case of his opponent is not even a gamer. Where a game is
> designed to be competitive, and wargames simulations generally are,
> any player should expect competition. To argue that an ahistoric play
> is against the spirit of the game is nonsensical; it then ceases to be
> a game and becomes a history lecture on the part of this "Dreamer"
> using the game as an educational tool.
That, to me, is a Competitor's self-centered assertion. The Competitor
focuses on mental competition; and if he's intolerant of other types of
gamers, he'll insist that games basically are just vehicles of mental
competition--and anyone who doesn't treat them that way is not a gamer at
all. I see it as a bigoted point of view, even though I happen to agree
(now, after years of experience) that games *are* basically just vehicles of
mental competition.
> But haven't you just stated he is a "Dreamer" not a "Competitor"; or
> is he a bit of both? . . .
Could be a bit of both. As I said above, it's not a pigeonholing system.
It's possible for an individual gamer to fall at the midpoint of the
"triangle," where he's 1/3 Competitor, 1/3 Socializer, and 1/3 Dreamer. But
to me, the fellow who started this thread sounds like mainly a Competitor,
and his opponent sounds like mainly a Dreamer.
> The wargame's simulation of a
> real life battle is only a simulation of how the units and their
> weapons behaved in that battle; it is not a simulation of the actual
> battlefield decisions made (though many external and/or superordinate
> decisions and other strategic, tactical and logistic restrictions may
> be simulated through the rules). Scripting the battlefiled decisions
> for the players turns it into a reenactment or a stage play, not a
> wargame.
I've heard that line of argument a thousand times, and I still don't get it.
I don't think anyone has ever seriously advocated a wargame in which players
are required to follow in the exact footsteps of their historical
counterparts. You're right--it wouldn't be a game then. But what's your
point? Who's advocating that in the first place? To me, it's a straw-man
argument.
The Dreamer doesn't want to follow in anybody's footsteps. He wants to
travel back in time and *become* a historical commander, and get to make all
the same kinds of decisions the historical commander made. But many
Dreamers don't *just* want that; they also want a simultaneous overview of
the battle. Just as in a nightly dream, where you may be both the observer
and a participant, the Dreamer may want to simultaneously be a military
commander and a god hovering over the battlefield observing.
There's not necessarily anything "realistic" about that--except for the fact
that the historical battle really happened and really was observed and
participated in by others. The Dreamer now wants to capture as much of that
sense of observing and participating as he can, from this distance in time
and space and situation. That can only be accomplished via the imagination.
A Dreamer, therefore, is a gamer who primarily enjoys games by engaging them
with his imagination. A Competitor, in contrast, is a gamer who primarily
enjoys games by engaging them with his reasoning power. (And a Socializer,
for the sake of completeness, is a gamer who primarily enjoys games by
engaging them with his interpersonal or social or "human dynamics" skills.)
In a wargame, you'll often hear a Dreamer say, "Wait, you can't do that;
that could never have happened in real life!" And you'll often hear a
Competitor dryly reply, "Show me something in the rules that says I can't do
it." That's the classic clash between Dreamer and Competitor. The
Competitor may suspect the Dreamer is just trying to snow him; meanwhile the
Dreamer resents the Competitor's rude violation of the imaginative spirit of
the game.
But who is the game really designed for--the Competitor, or the Dreamer?
Who knows? It's designed to sell and be played. Since I was such a Dreamer
myself, for years I was certain that wargames were designed for
Dreamers--that the spirit of the game was basically imaginative (or loosely
"simulational"). But I've never gotten far in trying to debate that point
with Competitors. They're equally certain that wargames are basically just
like chess or any other game--basically mental competition.
> > The Dreamer may be playing to win just so he can vicariously experience
some
> > of the tension that battlefield commanders go through. Meanwhile, he's
also
> > immersing himself in the details of the map, the units, and the mental
> > images of what it all must've looked like and been like in real life.
>
> Or the "Dreamer" may be playing to win because he is in fact also a
> "Competitor", and one who cannot accept that, under this simulation,
> he lacks the command ability of his original counterpart. Thus his
> competitive dreaming is upset and he throws a tantrum about ahistoric
> play.
Could be. Most Competitors will see it that way and guess that their
Dreamer opponents are just trying to pull a snow job. But having been a
bonafide Dreamer myself, I can assure you it's not *always* the case. (Btw,
I also seriously doubt that success in a wargame has much of anything to do
with real-life military command ability.)
> >And if you, as a Competitor, are ignoring all that and just treating
> the game
> > like an elaborate form of chess with dice, your Dreamer opponent is
likely
> > to be peeved, because you're unwittingly pulling him away from what he
> > considers most valuable about the game.
> >
> Codswallop! This is a wargame; and while I appreciate there are a
> fair few folk out there who "wargame" solely to simulate and analyse a
> historic battle, most wargamers appreciate that, allbeit a simulation
> to some extent, they are not obliged to treat it as a reenactment.
Huh? Who said anything about a reenactment? Your straw man is rearing its
ugly head again.
> The real "Dreamer" would consider the game's simulative accuracy to be
> its most endearing property;
Not according to my definition of Dreamer. See my remarks above. Realism
or historical accuracy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
Step-by-step reenactment certainly has almost nothing to do with it. The
Dreamer values the simulational aspects of the game because it feeds data
into his imagination and gives him that feeling of "being there" and seeing
how it was--or might have been.
> in all wargames I have played nowhere has
> this simulation involved playing out every original action from the
> original battle.
Same here. And if it did, it wouldn't be a game, would it? <ahem . . .
"straw man">
> If it is a good simulation, there will be little or no room for
> "gamey" plays, as the units will behave roughly as they did in real
> life (hence they are often termed "simulations"); and to point the
> finger and call Chris such a "Competitor" is unfair and extremely
> presumptious.
Here you seem to be speaking of the mythical perfect wargame. I've played
hundreds of wargames, and I've yet to see one that actually does what you
say a wargame should do. In my experience, they all have that "gamey play"
design flaw. My conclusion is that it's not a design flaw at all; it's an
inherent aspect of what real wargames are. They're competitive game-systems
underlying a heavy carpet of simulational "chrome." And that leaves players
with a choice: to focus on the simulation, or to focus on the underlying
game-system. Most players, I believe, try to do both. But in doing so,
they must necessarily focus on one area or the other.
If they focus entirely on the simulational aspect (like the Dreamer), they'
ll blunder in the game aspect. And if they focus entirely on the game
aspect (like the Competitor), they'll spoil the simulational aspect.
In the many actual wargames I've seen and played, that's the reality of it.
I've been in groups of Dreamers (who thought of themselves as military
historians) where an intruding Competitor (denigrated as a "rules lawyer" or
"number cruncher" or someone who "just doesn't get it") was ostracized. And
I've been in groups where the Dreamer (often me) was mildly ridiculed for
being "tender meat" for the Competitors to feed off of. Both kinds of
wargaming happen; and when the differences get extreme and human kindness
falls short, the two types of gamers can be intolerant of one another.
In your "perfect wargame," the game-system would support the simulation in a
historically accurate way--such that just by playing to win, the players
would also be engaged in exactly the same kind of decision making as their
historical counterparts. Well, this is the pipe-dream of wargamers and
wargame designers, I suppose--but I've never seen it in real life, and I don
't think I ever will.
The reason I don't expect to ever see it is that real-life battles and
campaigns are not games. They have features in common with games, but they'
re not games. They're extensions of real life; there's nothing artificial
about them. They live and breathe; they're organic. And furthermore, they'
re composed of countless small living parts, all swarming unpredictably
along in what Clausewitz calls "friction."
Wargame design is often an attempt to boil the salient features of real war
down into a tabletop model. But identifying the salient features involves
the same process as claiming that there are just three types of gamers. In
truth, each individual gamer is unique. And so is each individual battle,
campaign, or war. By extracting "salient features" and casting them into a
tabletop model--and then tweaking the model until it becomes a fun game to
play--you turn an organic, real-life event into something patently
artificial. Something distorted and unreal. A sort of Frankenstein's
monster.
Yet, you do end up with a game that can be fun to play, and even
educational. But if the player's goal is mainly to win the game, tackling
it as he would chess or any other game, he's going to be focusing on the
most artificial part of the game--the underlying mechanics and dubious
victory conditions. And if, OTOH, the player's goal is to vicariously
experience the historical battle, he's going to have to apply his
imagination to fill in all the gaps that this artificial model leaves--so he
's going to focus on the "chrome" and the real-life battle that the game is
supposed to be simulating.
In my experience, you can't do both at once if you're going to do either
very well. Each focus undermines the other.
Because of that, I stopped playing wargames several years ago. I had been
attracted to them because I was a Dreamer and wanted to vicariously
experience real battles. But once I got into the games, I kept getting
distracted by the underlying game-system and the need to compete in order to
win. Finally, I decided the latter is basically what games are all
about--so I turned to traditional games like chess and backgammon, where I
don't have to hack my way through a jungle of "chrome" just to play a game.
(Sometimes I'll still play a chrome-heavy computer game, though, since the
machine handles all the picky little details and feeds me eye and ear
candy.)
> Most designs in this genre are both balanced and true to history.
> Does your "Dreamer" accept these designs for what they are,
> simulations, or is he after the reenactment he appears to crave
> according to your earlier statements? Quite frankly, I don't see any
> point in wasting time setting up the game for such an opponent if all
> he is going to do is cite history; I have more interesting books and
> multimedia presentations for that sort of thing.
The Dreamer prefers games to books and movies and such because in games you
get to participate. You get to make choices and experience the effects of
your decisions. And what does that do to your imagination? It gives you
the sense of "being there."
But that only works as long as you maintain the "suspension of disbelief"
(to borrow Coleridge's oft-cited phrase)--as long as you believe that your
decisions and your opponent's decisions are decisions that your historical
counterparts could and might really have made.
If there were such a thing as a perfect wargame (or what you call a "good
simulation"), the game design would automatically handle that. Any move or
decision a player could legally make in the game would also be a move or
decision that could have happened historically. But in actual wargames,
there are always loopholes in the rules; the victory conditions are often
arbitrary; and following the rules to the letter can easily violate the
historical spirit of the game's theme. Therefore, a Dreamer can't trust the
game design to automatically maintain his "suspension of disbelief"; he has
to ensure it by applying his imagination and insisting that his opponent do
likewise.
My main point in this thread is just that different gamers focus on
different aspects of a game. People are not all exactly alike. And if you
sit two very different people down to a wargame, they're probably going to
play in two very different ways. Friction may arise (as it reportedly did
for the fellow who started this thread); and I don't think it's fair to
resolve that friction by insisting that all games are basically vehicles for
mental competition. Even if that's true (and I happen to agree that it is),
the fact remains that some players will choose to focus primarily on other
aspects of the game: the imaginative aspect or social aspect, for example.
Who's to say they're wrong for doing that?
My whole "three types of gamer" concept has just one purpose: to illustrate
three basic ways that gamers can differ from each other. All too often,
players sit down to a game together and suppose that they're doing the same
thing in pretty much the same way; and when that proves not to be the case,
confusion and hard feelings can result. So, I find it convenient to think
of there being three types of gamers. That way, when I'm involved in a game
and another player does something surprising that momentarily puts me off, I
can quickly recover and say to myself, "Ah--he must be a Dreamer (or
whatever)." Then I begin allowing for the differences between us, and I'm
able to tolerate the situation and adjust to it.
But, having said all that, I'll add that at this point in my life, I
personally tend to agree with you. Having played and studied and thought
about games quite a lot for many years, I've pretty much come to the
conclusion that the only really valid reason for playing games is
competition, which mainly serves to afford mental exercise. In other words,
I've become much more of a Competitor as the years have passed.
In my experience, games are not great for social interaction--except as
ice-breakers. Once you've broken the ice and people are warmed up to
conversing with one another, a game can actually be counterproductive in
social situations. People have to focus on the game, so they're not paying
as much attention to each other. They're having to follow the game's rules
and pursue the objective, so they're not being as free-spiritedly creative
as they might otherwise be. I've never been a Socializer anyway, but at
this point I don't even see much value in the social aspect of
games--except, as I said, when they're used as ice-breakers or a device for
getting strangers to become acquaintances.
As to the imaginative/emotional aspect, that used to be my main attraction
to games. And the reason I preferred games to books or movies was that in
games you get to participate. To me, games were the next best thing to Star
Trek TNG's "holodeck." Books and movies fell short, in that their script
was already set, and all you could do was follow along. In games, you got
to write your own script and have your own vicarious experiences. But,
after having a whole lot of that vicarious experience in my life, I now find
that it's ultimately unsatisfying. The game-system keeps pulling you back
down to earth, so to speak, and you never get to enjoy all the freedom you'd
like. If you play a game long enough, the "chrome" seems to wear off the
way chewing gum loses its flavor.
So, in hindsight, I personally agree that games are fundamentally
competitive activities. Of the three types of gamers, I'd say the
Competitor has the right idea. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure there
are many Socializers and Dreamers who'd disagree.
Anthony Simons
> > Despite your pidgeon-holing of gamer types, I see where your
> > classification makes some sense.
>
> Thanks for being charitable, but I'm not actually pigeon-holing gamers. I'
> ve just boiled my observations of gamers down to three categories. Imagine
> a triangle, where the angles are labeled Competitor, Socializer, and
> Dreamer. What I'm saying is that if gamers were represented by dots, each
> gamer would fall somewhere inside that triangle. Some would be placed way
> out toward the Competitor angle, others toward the Dreamer angle--and many
> would be nearer the middle of the triangle, where they'd have
> characteristics of all three types. The angles of this imaginary triangle
> represent the three basic "pulls" that games can have on gamers: mental
> challenge (Competitor), human dynamics (Socializer), and imagination/emotion
> (Dreamer). Some individuals, due to their background, interests, and
> preferences, are more drawn by one of these "pulls" than another--or more by
> two than by the third.
Thank you for clarifying this; this is not what you said in your other
post and is certainly not pigeon-holing.
>
> > However, I would say what we have in
> > the case of his opponent is not even a gamer. Where a game is
> > designed to be competitive, and wargames simulations generally are,
> > any player should expect competition. To argue that an ahistoric play
> > is against the spirit of the game is nonsensical; it then ceases to be
> > a game and becomes a history lecture on the part of this "Dreamer"
> > using the game as an educational tool.
>
> That, to me, is a Competitor's self-centered assertion. The Competitor
> focuses on mental competition; and if he's intolerant of other types of
> gamers, he'll insist that games basically are just vehicles of mental
> competition--and anyone who doesn't treat them that way is not a gamer at
> all. I see it as a bigoted point of view, even though I happen to agree
> (now, after years of experience) that games *are* basically just vehicles of
> mental competition.
You have now assumed that I play games according to your definition of
"competitor". Does this mean I sit at the "competitor" point of your
triangle? If you're not pigeon-holing types of gamer, you have
certainly done it to me (and possibly Chris too) based on little
evidence.
I am not more "competitor" than "dreamer"; indeed I could easily argue
the opposite. Nor is it a bigoted viewpoint; I do not focus on mental
competition; especially for a game attempting to simulate actual
events (or possible events arising from actual events). Rather, I
expect the game system to allow some realism, however abstracted,
while not allowing the exact opposite (complete fantasy, or detachment
from what might actually happen in the physical world if that is where
the game is set) to occur. This is not competitive, it is scientific.
>
> > But haven't you just stated he is a "Dreamer" not a "Competitor"; or
> > is he a bit of both? . . .
>
> Could be a bit of both. As I said above, it's not a pigeonholing system.
> It's possible for an individual gamer to fall at the midpoint of the
> "triangle," where he's 1/3 Competitor, 1/3 Socializer, and 1/3 Dreamer. But
> to me, the fellow who started this thread sounds like mainly a Competitor,
> and his opponent sounds like mainly a Dreamer.
Happy to agree on this one.
>
> > The wargame's simulation of a
> > real life battle is only a simulation of how the units and their
> > weapons behaved in that battle; it is not a simulation of the actual
> > battlefield decisions made (though many external and/or superordinate
> > decisions and other strategic, tactical and logistic restrictions may
> > be simulated through the rules). Scripting the battlefiled decisions
> > for the players turns it into a reenactment or a stage play, not a
> > wargame.
>
> I've heard that line of argument a thousand times, and I still don't get it.
> I don't think anyone has ever seriously advocated a wargame in which players
> are required to follow in the exact footsteps of their historical
> counterparts. You're right--it wouldn't be a game then. But what's your
> point? Who's advocating that in the first place? To me, it's a straw-man
> argument.
I will concede that perhaps you do not advocate this; but if we take
Chris not to be the "competitor" you believe he is, then this is not a
"straw-man" argument. If Chris is not so much the "competitor" then
surely his "dreamer" opponent is taking things to the extreme?
>
> The Dreamer doesn't want to follow in anybody's footsteps. He wants to
> travel back in time and *become* a historical commander, and get to make all
> the same kinds of decisions the historical commander made. But many
> Dreamers don't *just* want that; they also want a simultaneous overview of
> the battle. Just as in a nightly dream, where you may be both the observer
> and a participant, the Dreamer may want to simultaneously be a military
> commander and a god hovering over the battlefield observing.
>
> There's not necessarily anything "realistic" about that--except for the fact
> that the historical battle really happened and really was observed and
> participated in by others. The Dreamer now wants to capture as much of that
> sense of observing and participating as he can, from this distance in time
> and space and situation. That can only be accomplished via the imagination.
>
> A Dreamer, therefore, is a gamer who primarily enjoys games by engaging them
> with his imagination. A Competitor, in contrast, is a gamer who primarily
> enjoys games by engaging them with his reasoning power. (And a Socializer,
> for the sake of completeness, is a gamer who primarily enjoys games by
> engaging them with his interpersonal or social or "human dynamics" skills.)
A good synopsis and explanation of your gamer types; makes it clear
you haven't pigeon-holed gamers in general. You have still made
assumptions about Chris, and about me.
>
> In a wargame, you'll often hear a Dreamer say, "Wait, you can't do that;
> that could never have happened in real life!" And you'll often hear a
> Competitor dryly reply, "Show me something in the rules that says I can't do
> it." That's the classic clash between Dreamer and Competitor. The
> Competitor may suspect the Dreamer is just trying to snow him; meanwhile the
> Dreamer resents the Competitor's rude violation of the imaginative spirit of
> the game.
Hmm, grey area here. Your "dreamer" might well say that (I know I
have); but such statements have to be supported by the rules or the
game will fail. The "dreamer" cannot introduce new rules in the
middle of a game, no matter how many "competitors" are involved. On
the other hand, in certain games (I am thinking RPG here) the rules
are there only as a guideline. Such games as a matter of course
employ an umpire (or GM, DM, Keeper, etc.), who ultimately has the
task of making a fair decision using the rules as a guideline. With
an umpireless wargame, the rules need to be hard and fast; they must
govern necessary aspects of gameplay, and when introducing simulated
elements into the game mechanics must avoid allowing spurious elements
in which would detract from the simulation.
For example, not so long ago I introduced a set of WW2 skirmish rules
to another player. It was a very abstract system, and this other
player did not take to certain elements:
1) The probability of a soldier being affected by enemy fire was not
increased for every rifle firing, and was limited at a certain point;
but all units could fire on more than one target. The logic behind
this was that in reality the chance of casualties is based not on the
number of firing units, but on the number of targets. Commonsense,
really; no target=no casualty; 1 target=max 1 casualty; 2 targets=max
2 casualties etc etc. My opponent's argument was that six more
rifleman shooting at the same target would all have an equal
probability to hit, and a die should be thrown separately for each.
This is not true; particularly since after the first shot the target
has probably made himself smaller (hit the ground and started crawling
off, or found cover), and no two rifles have the same line of fire.
2) The scenario was played at night; and die modifiers made it highly
unlikely to hit a target at short range in the open, and impossible if
the target was in light wooded cover. My opponent believed this to be
nonsense, as in some cases even close range (just outside of melee
range) gave little chance. I could not convince him that you cannot
shoot a target you cannot see. Reality, I'm afraid, and the game
system reflected it well (albeit in an abstract fashion).
So who is being "competitive?" I was quoting rules, but only so I
could support them with examples in reality. His criticism was also
angling for reality, but fitting this into an existing system (which
incidentally played fast and well) would open a whole new can of
worms; the rules for the effects of cover and darkness, as well as
suppressive and damaging capability, would have had to have been
rewritten just to allow for his version of nightshooting, and basing
the hit probability on individual attacks. In effect, we were both
looking for realism, but had different opinions.
>
> But who is the game really designed for--the Competitor, or the Dreamer?
> Who knows? It's designed to sell and be played. Since I was such a Dreamer
> myself, for years I was certain that wargames were designed for
> Dreamers--that the spirit of the game was basically imaginative (or loosely
> "simulational"). But I've never gotten far in trying to debate that point
> with Competitors. They're equally certain that wargames are basically just
> like chess or any other game--basically mental competition.
>
Yes, then that definately puts me in the "dreamer" fold, and still
unfairly categorizes Chris. I still stand by what I said; it is not
the players here who are at fault if the game fails to simulate
without allowing "gamey" plays.
>
> > > The Dreamer may be playing to win just so he can vicariously experience
> some
> > > of the tension that battlefield commanders go through. Meanwhile, he's
> also
> > > immersing himself in the details of the map, the units, and the mental
> > > images of what it all must've looked like and been like in real life.
> >
> > Or the "Dreamer" may be playing to win because he is in fact also a
> > "Competitor", and one who cannot accept that, under this simulation,
> > he lacks the command ability of his original counterpart. Thus his
> > competitive dreaming is upset and he throws a tantrum about ahistoric
> > play.
>
> Could be. Most Competitors will see it that way and guess that their
> Dreamer opponents are just trying to pull a snow job. But having been a
> bonafide Dreamer myself, I can assure you it's not *always* the case. (Btw,
> I also seriously doubt that success in a wargame has much of anything to do
> with real-life military command ability.)
>
Again, you are making assumptions about my style of play in the same
way you made them about Chris.
> > >And if you, as a Competitor, are ignoring all that and just treating
> the game
> > > like an elaborate form of chess with dice, your Dreamer opponent is
> likely
> > > to be peeved, because you're unwittingly pulling him away from what he
> > > considers most valuable about the game.
> > >
> > Codswallop! This is a wargame; and while I appreciate there are a
> > fair few folk out there who "wargame" solely to simulate and analyse a
> > historic battle, most wargamers appreciate that, allbeit a simulation
> > to some extent, they are not obliged to treat it as a reenactment.
>
> Huh? Who said anything about a reenactment? Your straw man is rearing its
> ugly head again.
No, I don't think so. You mentioned "chess with dice", and I disagree
that any gamer, be he at any point in your gaming style triad, views
the game this way. I replied with a similarly extreme example to make
a point; now you have made it clear you were not putting gamers at the
points of your triangle. Whose "straw-man"?
>
> > The real "Dreamer" would consider the game's simulative accuracy to be
> > its most endearing property;
>
> Not according to my definition of Dreamer. See my remarks above. Realism
> or historical accuracy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
> Step-by-step reenactment certainly has almost nothing to do with it. The
> Dreamer values the simulational aspects of the game because it feeds data
> into his imagination and gives him that feeling of "being there" and seeing
> how it was--or might have been.
So the dreamer does not value the game's simulative accuracy? Oh no,
you just said he does! Pardon me, but could you clarify where this
statement disagrees with mine? It doesn't seem to.
>
> > in all wargames I have played nowhere has
> > this simulation involved playing out every original action from the
> > original battle.
>
> Same here. And if it did, it wouldn't be a game, would it? <ahem . . .
> "straw man">
Glad we agree on something again.
>
> > If it is a good simulation, there will be little or no room for
> > "gamey" plays, as the units will behave roughly as they did in real
> > life (hence they are often termed "simulations"); and to point the
> > finger and call Chris such a "Competitor" is unfair and extremely
> > presumptious.
>
> Here you seem to be speaking of the mythical perfect wargame.
Another presumption.
>I've played
> hundreds of wargames, and I've yet to see one that actually does what you
> say a wargame should do.
Then you should know that there is little room for the "gamey" play in
most, in so far as the players are generally restricted in what units
are deployed where, and what goals/victory condtions each side has.
Movement is limited, zones of control are usually employed, attack and
defence combat values are given to each unit, stacking is often
limited if allowed, etc etc. But you know all this; the rules are
there for a reason, and it is not just to provide the playuers with a
"chess with dice" system.
>In my experience, they all have that "gamey play"
> design flaw.
But not generally to a damaging extent; though there are exceptions.
>My conclusion is that it's not a design flaw at all; it's an
> inherent aspect of what real wargames are. They're competitive game-systems
> underlying a heavy carpet of simulational "chrome." And that leaves players
> with a choice: to focus on the simulation, or to focus on the underlying
> game-system. Most players, I believe, try to do both. But in doing so,
> they must necessarily focus on one area or the other.
They need not focus on one or the other; most players, I believe, can
succeed in integrating the two and enjoying the game. The competitive
game-system is there to reflect the competitive war-system; in the
vast majority of cases by focusing on one you will achieve focus on
the other.
>
> If they focus entirely on the simulational aspect (like the Dreamer), they'
> ll blunder in the game aspect. And if they focus entirely on the game
> aspect (like the Competitor), they'll spoil the simulational aspect.
I focus on the simulational aspect; but the game aspect is not
entirley detached from it. The odds on a unit victory in combat for
example are reflected in the game system; and unless you happen to
have commanded that unit in the field for real, you are hardly likely
to be able to argue anything, other than the obviously ridiculous, is
not close enough to reality to be acceptable.
>
> In the many actual wargames I've seen and played, that's the reality of it.
> I've been in groups of Dreamers (who thought of themselves as military
> historians) where an intruding Competitor (denigrated as a "rules lawyer" or
> "number cruncher" or someone who "just doesn't get it") was ostracized. And
> I've been in groups where the Dreamer (often me) was mildly ridiculed for
> being "tender meat" for the Competitors to feed off of. Both kinds of
> wargaming happen; and when the differences get extreme and human kindness
> falls short, the two types of gamers can be intolerant of one another.
>
> In your "perfect wargame,"
Another "straw-man"? ;) I never argued the wargame was anything more
than an abstraction of reality. This is another of your assumptions.
>the game-system would support the simulation in a
> historically accurate way--such that just by playing to win, the players
> would also be engaged in exactly the same kind of decision making as their
> historical counterparts. Well, this is the pipe-dream of wargamers and
> wargame designers, I suppose--but I've never seen it in real life, and I don
> 't think I ever will.
If there was a perfect wargame, this would be far from it. Most
wargames manage to achieve this to some extent because of the rules
employed. I am not talking about anything but the abstraction that
they are; but as far as this abstraction goes players do make some of
the decisions of their historical counterparts.
The perfect wargame would probably involve lots of real-time
decisions, a battle that would go on for days with the commander
(player) not seeing most of what happens except for what is on his
map; lots of sleepless nights before, during and after the execution
of major operations... now I think about it, a lot of wargames are not
so far off. :)
>
> The reason I don't expect to ever see it is that real-life battles and
> campaigns are not games. They have features in common with games, but they'
> re not games. They're extensions of real life; there's nothing artificial
> about them. They live and breathe; they're organic. And furthermore, they'
> re composed of countless small living parts, all swarming unpredictably
> along in what Clausewitz calls "friction."
I am well aware of this; I was for a whole decade of my life one of
those small living parts. :)
>
> Wargame design is often an attempt to boil the salient features of real war
> down into a tabletop model. But identifying the salient features involves
> the same process as claiming that there are just three types of gamers. In
> truth, each individual gamer is unique. And so is each individual battle,
> campaign, or war. By extracting "salient features" and casting them into a
> tabletop model--and then tweaking the model until it becomes a fun game to
> play--you turn an organic, real-life event into something patently
> artificial. Something distorted and unreal. A sort of Frankenstein's
> monster.
>
But not necessarily a poor, albeit abstract, simulation.
> Yet, you do end up with a game that can be fun to play, and even
> educational. But if the player's goal is mainly to win the game, tackling
> it as he would chess or any other game, he's going to be focusing on the
> most artificial part of the game--the underlying mechanics and dubious
> victory conditions. And if, OTOH, the player's goal is to vicariously
> experience the historical battle, he's going to have to apply his
> imagination to fill in all the gaps that this artificial model leaves--so he
> 's going to focus on the "chrome" and the real-life battle that the game is
> supposed to be simulating.
>
> In my experience, you can't do both at once if you're going to do either
> very well. Each focus undermines the other.
No, they do not undermine each other; and can often complement each
other.
>
> Because of that, I stopped playing wargames several years ago. I had been
> attracted to them because I was a Dreamer and wanted to vicariously
> experience real battles. But once I got into the games, I kept getting
> distracted by the underlying game-system and the need to compete in order to
> win. Finally, I decided the latter is basically what games are all
> about--so I turned to traditional games like chess and backgammon, where I
> don't have to hack my way through a jungle of "chrome" just to play a game.
> (Sometimes I'll still play a chrome-heavy computer game, though, since the
> machine handles all the picky little details and feeds me eye and ear
> candy.)
>
I stopped playing wargames because I didn't have the time for them.
If I ever get the time again, I may return to them. But this would be
primarily for social reasons; computers I believe simulate warfare so
much smoother than miniatures or boardgames. Something we do have in
common; I particularly enjoy the Close Combat series, and play CMBO
occasionally over email. Of course, Close Combat allows near-perfect
communication with your units which is, for a real-time wargame, a
disappointing break in realism. Perhaps you agree?
I would wager the loopholes often do not affect the major system,
though I must agree that poor definition of victory conditions, and
heavy rules lawyering would certainly affect the gameplay and spoil
it. But where the rules represent actual physical limitations of
units and their firepower and/or protection then they are there for
the sake of the simulation; they should be followed to the letter.
>
>
> My main point in this thread is just that different gamers focus on
> different aspects of a game. People are not all exactly alike. And if you
> sit two very different people down to a wargame, they're probably going to
> play in two very different ways. Friction may arise (as it reportedly did
> for the fellow who started this thread); and I don't think it's fair to
> resolve that friction by insisting that all games are basically vehicles for
> mental competition. Even if that's true (and I happen to agree that it is),
> the fact remains that some players will choose to focus primarily on other
> aspects of the game: the imaginative aspect or social aspect, for example.
> Who's to say they're wrong for doing that?
I disagree that all games are vehicles for mental competition; chance
elements have seen to that. I don't say anybody's wrong for focusing
on one aspect or the other; it is wrong however to place a gamer (such
as myself or Chris) squarely in one aspect or the other.
>
> My whole "three types of gamer" concept has just one purpose: to illustrate
> three basic ways that gamers can differ from each other. All too often,
> players sit down to a game together and suppose that they're doing the same
> thing in pretty much the same way; and when that proves not to be the case,
> confusion and hard feelings can result. So, I find it convenient to think
> of there being three types of gamers. That way, when I'm involved in a game
> and another player does something surprising that momentarily puts me off, I
> can quickly recover and say to myself, "Ah--he must be a Dreamer (or
> whatever)." Then I begin allowing for the differences between us, and I'm
> able to tolerate the situation and adjust to it.
>
>
> But, having said all that, I'll add that at this point in my life, I
> personally tend to agree with you. Having played and studied and thought
> about games quite a lot for many years, I've pretty much come to the
> conclusion that the only really valid reason for playing games is
> competition, which mainly serves to afford mental exercise. In other words,
> I've become much more of a Competitor as the years have passed.
Saying this you are not agreeing with me at all, as this is not what I
have said. I merely stated that by definition a wargame is inherently
competitive, in so far as there are two or more armies facing each
other on a field of battle over which one must come out the victor.
And, surely you must be aware there are many cooperative games out
there?
>
> In my experience, games are not great for social interaction--except as
> ice-breakers. Once you've broken the ice and people are warmed up to
> conversing with one another, a game can actually be counterproductive in
> social situations. People have to focus on the game, so they're not paying
> as much attention to each other. They're having to follow the game's rules
> and pursue the objective, so they're not being as free-spiritedly creative
> as they might otherwise be. I've never been a Socializer anyway, but at
> this point I don't even see much value in the social aspect of
> games--except, as I said, when they're used as ice-breakers or a device for
> getting strangers to become acquaintances.
If you are talking about a wargame (whether traditional or simulative)
then I am inclined to agree; such people do not get into the spirit of
any such game, and often take losing personally. But there are games
out there designed to be social; don't despair!
>
> As to the imaginative/emotional aspect, that used to be my main attraction
> to games. And the reason I preferred games to books or movies was that in
> games you get to participate. To me, games were the next best thing to Star
> Trek TNG's "holodeck." Books and movies fell short, in that their script
> was already set, and all you could do was follow along. In games, you got
> to write your own script and have your own vicarious experiences. But,
> after having a whole lot of that vicarious experience in my life, I now find
> that it's ultimately unsatisfying. The game-system keeps pulling you back
> down to earth, so to speak, and you never get to enjoy all the freedom you'd
> like. If you play a game long enough, the "chrome" seems to wear off the
> way chewing gum loses its flavor.
I've heard this one before; it wasn't you who lost all faith in games
with themes was it? I think the key is to rotate between games/game
types. I am off wargames now, but will return...
>
> So, in hindsight, I personally agree that games are fundamentally
> competitive activities. Of the three types of gamers, I'd say the
> Competitor has the right idea. But that's just my opinion. I'm sure there
> are many Socializers and Dreamers who'd disagree.
This dreamer disagrees. That said, I would like to thank you for an
interesting discussion on your thoughts on the many aspects of gaming.
Patrick Carroll
"Anthony Simons" <fellon...@hotmail.com> wrote
> If you're not pigeon-holing types of gamer, you have
> certainly done it to me (and possibly Chris too) based on little
> evidence.
Well, Mr. Simons, you've given me a lot of food for thought. I've got to
leave for work in a couple minutes and don't have time for a point-by-point
response, so I'll just say this for now (in reply to your whole post, not
just the snippet above):
I apologize if it sounded like I was forcing you or Chris into a pigeonhole.
And it does sound, now, like I certainly mis-guessed your type in any event.
My intent was just to illustrate what I saw as the root of Chris's conflict
with his wargaming friend--i.e., two disparate ways of approaching wargames,
each way equally valid.
Forget the Competitor and Dreamer labels if they get in the way. I had
hoped they'd clarify, but they seem to have distracted instead. (I have a
bad habit of wanting to generalize every idea I come up with, so that it not
only applies to the matter at hand but to all such matters anywhere,
forevermore.)
As to wargames themselves and how well they simulate anything, we may just
have to agree to disagree on that. You still have faith that a wargame can
be a good simulation; I don't. My "suspension of disbelief" was shattered
one day in the midst of an ASL game, when I suddenly realized--to my utter
amazement--that on a scale of 1 - 10, "chess with dice" being 1 and "real
battle" being 10, ASL was about a 2 (I had previously supposed it to be
about an 8). That happened in the late 80s or early 90s, and I haven't been
able to see any wargame as a "good simulation" since that day.
I can see your point about the game-system having to be fair and players
being responsible for approaching any game in a fair-play way. But I can
still easily see myself thinking, "Who cares about the rules or victory
conditions or who's winning? C'mon--it's a wargame; let's just get into it
and have fun with it." Meaning let's exercise our imagination to
vicariously experience the battle, and forget about misusing our imagination
to make believe we're military commanders with some serious responsibility
to achieve our battlefield objectives. That may sound to you like a
contradiction--but to me it's not. The minute I start taking the game
seriously (even while role-playing or second-guessing my historical
counterpart), the underylying game system comes to the forefront and I lose
my "suspension of disbelief." It's like seeing the Wizard of Oz step out
from behind his mask. How disappointing!
All I have time for this morning.
--Patrick