Perfect information in games
Caleb N. Diffell
After reading the interesting and, at times, provocative post on "getting
into gaming", I thought I'd beat a particular hobby horse of mine: perfect
information.
You know, in most games (I'm talking wargames now) that attempt to simulate
a conflict (either real or imagined), the gamers have FAR more information
at their disposal than a real-world commander or general would have. I think
maybe that's part of Patrick's problem with games like ASL. I mean, everyone
knows what's going on on the board; victory often comes to those who are
willing to crunch the most numbers (and get the most 3:1 attacks lined up).
Some games try to get around this by "hiding" the pieces (Columbia's block
system, for example), but you always pretty much know where everyone is and
with what force. I was just reading Winston Churchill's book on America,
called The Great Republic. In his chapter on the Civil War, Churchill
emphasizes the fact that the main weapon of the Confederacy was the ability
of Lee and Jackson to pop up in places the Federal commanders weren't
expecting them. But this is impossible in wargames today. I mean, you may be
able to hide exactly what units are in what force by stacking them on top of
one another so only the top counter is visible, but unless you're using some
sort of double-blind system with a gamemaster, you won't have Jackson
miraculously appearing at Harper's Ferry out of thin air (to the Northern
mind, anyway).
So maybe that's a realism problem intrinsic to board wargames. I know many
people will shudder at my next statement, but maybe that's where computers
can help. They can take over the gamemaster function to create a realistic
fog of war. Of course, most computer wargames are terrible due to rotten AI
or worse, "cheating" on behalf of the computer. But it seems that human vs.
human games never really took off on the computer (unless you're talking
RTS's, but that's another story).
ANYWAY, the upshot of all of this is that I have grown to prefer games with
perfect information on both sides as part of the design of the game, not a
limitation of it or unrealistic aspect of it. Each player knows where the
other's chess men are at all times, and yet the strategic depth of that game
is immeasurable. Ditto for Go, Chinese Chess, Othello, etc. Perfect info is
BUILT IN to those games, so it's not an unfortunate, realism-deterring side
effect.
But how about this for wargames: a main map where army markers are moved
around. But each player keeps, behind a screen of some sort, duplicate
markers to what is on the board. Next to these, he keeps the actual counters
of the game (the actual strength points, units, etc). He can freely
interchange units from one army marker to another only if their markers
occupy the same area or hex on the game map. If another player moves an army
marker near his, he must reveal what it contains. This, of course, requires
heavy use of the Honor System, as it would be simple to cheat. But this way,
players only know WHERE someone has units, but have no idea what they
contain. There could even be markers on the board with NO troops associated
with them (just rumors of the enemy or whatever). Then, you could even
simulate reconnaissance and spying by playing some pieces or using resources
to "reveal" enemy troop locations by seeing what's behind the screen. I'll
bet this would work particularly well for Napoleonic or Civil War games. It
would be as close as you could get to secret information without setting up
2 boards and using a gamemaster. To my knowledge, no game I've ever heard of
uses something like this (Titan is sort of that way, but you always at least
know how many creatures are in a legion).
Anyway, kudos to anyone who actually read to the end of this. Next time I'll
use "terse" mode instead of "verbose."
Best Regards,
CND
David desJardins
> I think maybe that's part of Patrick's problem with games like ASL. I
> mean, everyone knows what's going on on the board; victory often comes
> to those who are willing to crunch the most numbers (and get the most
> 3:1 attacks lined up).
Have you actually played ASL? Many ASL scenarios aren't much like that,
at all.
> Some games try to get around this by "hiding" the pieces (Columbia's
> block system, for example), but you always pretty much know where
> everyone is and with what force.
It's just not true. Columbia's EastFront (and other block games) are
good examples of games where you really don't know, and you would play
quite differently if you did. It makes a big difference when you try to
cross the river, whether you find 5 steps on the other side, or 8 steps.
Some people like those games more, for that reason. Other people don't.
> ANYWAY, the upshot of all of this is that I have grown to prefer games
> with perfect information on both sides as part of the design of the
> game, not a limitation of it or unrealistic aspect of it. Each player
> knows where the other's chess men are at all times, and yet the
> strategic depth of that game is immeasurable. Ditto for Go, Chinese
> Chess, Othello, etc. Perfect info is BUILT IN to those games, so it's
> not an unfortunate, realism-deterring side effect.
Advanced Third Reich also has (almost) perfect information. It's "part
of the design" of that game, just as much as it's part of the design of
Chess. What makes perfect information a desirable feature of Chess, but
an "unfortunate" feature of A3R? It's just a feature. Some people will
like it, and some people won't.
David desJardins
Steve Okonski
> So maybe that's a realism problem intrinsic to board wargames. I know many
> people will shudder at my next statement, but maybe that's where computers
> can help. They can take over the gamemaster function to create a realistic
> fog of war.
I don't know that you have to resort to a computer to do this job; in
many situations, doing so might be overkill. Many games use dice as a
simple, design-efficient way to represent uncertainty, and imperfect
knowledge.
Jason E. Schaff
>
> Hi all,
>
> So maybe that's a realism problem intrinsic to board wargames. I know
> many
> people will shudder at my next statement, but maybe that's where
> computers
> can help. They can take over the gamemaster function to create a
> realistic
> fog of war. Of course, most computer wargames are terrible due to
> rotten AI
> or worse, "cheating" on behalf of the computer. But it seems that human
> vs.
> human games never really took off on the computer (unless you're
> talking
> RTS's, but that's another story).
>
in "fog of war" with limited spotting, etc. and has a
respectable AI that does not (I think) cheat is _Tacops_.
This is a modern tactical milsim (units are squads and
individual vehicles) designed by a former U.S. Marine major.
Great fun to play, with lots of tough scenarios.
>
> But how about this for wargames: a main map where army markers are
> moved
> around. But each player keeps, behind a screen of some sort, duplicate
> markers to what is on the board. Next to these, he keeps the actual
> counters
> of the game (the actual strength points, units, etc). He can freely
> interchange units from one army marker to another only if their markers
> occupy the same area or hex on the game map. If another player moves an
> army
> marker near his, he must reveal what it contains. This, of course,
> requires
> heavy use of the Honor System, as it would be simple to cheat. But this
> way,
> players only know WHERE someone has units, but have no idea what they
> contain.
The old GDW (I think) actually did a couple of games using a
system somewhat like this. (Unfortunately, I can't remember
the titles right at the moment.) Each player had an
identical map separated by a screen from the opponent's
view. Each player would place their own units on their map,
along with a set of markers noting the location of the enemy
"front line" As you moved your units into enemy (or un-)
occupied territory, you informed your opponent of the
movement, but not what was moving. If the hex you were
trying to enter contained enemy forces, combat was
initiated. I seem to recall that there were also some sort
of rules for "scouting" adjacent hexes without actually
trying to enter them. The system didn't seem to catch on,
and the titles went out of print fairly quickly, IIRC.
As ever, just my $0.02.
Jason
--
---------------------------------------------------------
Jason E. Schaff
If you do not want it known that you have
said something, don't say it.
-- Klingon proverb
---------------------------------------------------------
Dweeb
>Some games try to get around this by "hiding" the pieces (Columbia's block
>system, for example), but you always pretty much know where everyone is and
>with what force.
Only if you have a really good memory. I'd like to mention that in GMT's new
Clash of Giants the uncertainty lays in a variable movement allowance. It
sounds stupid until you try it - it's actually a very clever system.
>Of course, most computer wargames are terrible due to rotten AI
>or worse, "cheating" on behalf of the computer
Actually the worst things about computer wargames are the necessity to
scroll the map and the need to learn "the interface". Also, any attempt to
create "boardgames" on computers leads to failure. The best PC wargame IMO
is Combat Mission, which resembles a boardgame not at all.
>But how about this for wargames: a main map where army markers are moved
>around. But each player keeps, behind a screen of some sort, duplicate
>markers to what is on the board. Next to these, he keeps the actual
counters
>of the game (the actual strength points, units, etc). He can freely
>interchange units from one army marker to another only if their markers
>occupy the same area or hex on the game map. If another player moves an
army
>marker near his, he must reveal what it contains. This, of course, requires
>heavy use of the Honor System, as it would be simple to cheat. But this
way,
>players only know WHERE someone has units, but have no idea what they
>contain
Actually, a number of games USE this system. Avalanche's Great War at Sea
series uses almost exactly the system you mention, with the added twist that
you must plot moves a turn in advance. And in AH's Midway, the fleets are
completely hidden. And IMO the block games aren't too far off from this.
Patrick Carroll
> You know, in most games (I'm talking wargames now) that attempt to
simulate
> a conflict (either real or imagined), the gamers have FAR more information
> at their disposal than a real-world commander or general would have. I
think
> maybe that's part of Patrick's problem with games like ASL. I mean,
everyone
> knows what's going on on the board; victory often comes to those who are
> willing to crunch the most numbers (and get the most 3:1 attacks lined
up).
That's true of many wargames (and almost all of the old 1960s wargames), but
not especially so of ASL. ASL has some measure of both concealment and
hidden placement/movement. (And actually I didn't like those features
much--mainly because I played ASL solitaire quite a lot, and it's hard to
really hide things from yourself when you're trying to.)
My problem, specifically, with ASL and wargames in general is that the game
processes don't jibe credibly enough with the military processes that the
game represents. In one scenario that pops to mind, I had to knock out an
enemy stack in a building so I could advance my forces. I decided to break
a squad down to half squads and send one half squad dashing across the road
to draw fire, while a hero ran through the woods to the side of the building
and planted a demo charge. But first I had to suppress as much enemy fire
as I could, so the other half squad opened up with a machine gun first. If
that had any effect, my "dashing" half squad had a decent chance of drawing
defensive fire, increasing the odds of my hero making it safely to the
building. Now I had to decide how best to use my leader's advantage. I
also had to take the complicated defensive-fire rules into consideration,
because my hero could still be attacked at the last second with final
protective fire. . . . And as I was mulling this over, I stopped and asked
myself, "Who in real life, in the heat of battle, in a two-minute time
period, would have time to calculate all this out? Or the power to execute
it with such exactitude even if he did calculate it all out?" No one. Men
may have dashed across roads; machine guns may have fired; heroes may have
planted demo charges. But no one on the actual battlefield ever did what I
was sitting there doing. And I was doing it many times every turn, for the
whole course of the game.
Even if I hadn't had perfect information, I was engaged in a game process
which had no parallel with actual military processes.
The above example may make it sound like ASL was just too detailed for my
liking. But it's more than that. Even the fact that there are dice and
combat results tables--or that units move through a hex grid--distort battle
into something patently artificial.
A year or so before my father died (in 1971), I got him to play Battle of
the Bulge with me. He had fought in that battle, and he at first hoped the
game would be very realistic. He seemed moderately impressed with the map
and unit-counters. But the moment I pulled out the die, he sat back, looked
appalled, and asked what that's for. I explained how combat results have
been "scientifically" broken down into odds categories and displayed on the
Combat Results Table, and how the die roll simulates the unpredictable
factors. But Dad just shook his head. As far as he was concerned, we might
as well get another die and shoot craps. "I can tell you one thing," he
said: "War has nothing to do with rolling dice."
At the time, I thought he was just an old fogie who didn't understand how
much research had gone into this "scientific model" of the historical
battle. I figured that if I played enough Bulge, I'd soon know vastly more
than my father about that battle, even though he had been there and had
later read books about it.
I was wrong. But it took me a couple decades to realize how wrong I was.
> ANYWAY, the upshot of all of this is that I have grown to prefer games
with
> perfect information on both sides as part of the design of the game, not a
> limitation of it or unrealistic aspect of it. Each player knows where the
> other's chess men are at all times, and yet the strategic depth of that
game
> is immeasurable. Ditto for Go, Chinese Chess, Othello, etc. Perfect info
is
> BUILT IN to those games, so it's not an unfortunate, realism-deterring
side
> effect.
I agree. I prefer those kinds of games too. But in my case, it goes a step
further: I also prefer wargames with perfect information--even though it
supposedly gives me an unrealistic bird's-eye view of the situation.
That overview was always one of the things I most enjoyed about wargaming.
At Gettysburg, Lee didn't have the luxury of seeing the whole topography and
all the unit deployments; but when I play the game Gettysburg, I do get to
see those things. Thus the game becomes a sort of "living map,"
illustrating the historical battle even as we experiment with variations to
the historical moves.
Take away the overview, and I'm left with a narrow commander's-eye point of
view. I don't get to see everything. And if you add command-control rules,
I don't get to *do* everything either; my units may not move where I order
them to. That may be a better simulation of battlefield command; but that's
not what I want from a wargame. I want the overview--the perfect
information--but I also want to be able to experiment with actual military
(tactical/operational) processes and see what might have happened if Lee had
tried this or that. Unfortunately, wargames do not model those processes to
my satisfaction. Maybe because what I was asking or expecting of wargames
is impossible.
> But how about this for wargames: a main map where army markers are moved
> around. But each player keeps, behind a screen of some sort, duplicate
> markers to what is on the board. . . .
As others have mentioned, your ideas are sound--but they have been used in a
number of wargames over the years. A common problem is that players don't
like keeping track of things on separate boards, or keeping side records, or
writing down orders. Most players like a good, clean "user interface" with
the game: ideally everything right there at their fingertips, like in
chess.
All things considered, and as abstract as it is, I've come to consider chess
a darned good wargame.
--Patrick
allan
The three GDW Double Blind Games were: Market-Garden, Normandy Campaign, and
8th Army: Operation Crusader. There are several VG games: Carrier, Flashpoint
Golan, the entire Fleet Series. All these use a modified system wherein you can
see the enemy pieces, you just can't do anything about them until you get
information about them. The old GDW carrier games, Midway, Coral Sea, and Indian
Ocean Adventure all use hidden plotted movement vaguely similar to the old AH
game Midway. Old SPI double blind games are City Fight and NATO Division
Commander use. Perhaps x2 Blind isn't really appropriate for NDC as it can be a
solo game.
Allan
Thorbjörn Engdahl
rather on the spot.)
/thor
Kevin J. Maroney
I think the reason that people find the perfect information available
in most traditional wargames is derived from expectations created by
the theme. A3R has a great many rules which make sense if viewed in
light of "simulation within the theme"--differential production values
for the various nations, for example.
So much of _A3R_ is bent around the "simulation" that it's not
surprising that some people would find it unsatisfying that a major
part of the conduct of war--hidden information--is not simulated at
all.
--
Kevin J. Maroney | k...@panix.com
Games are my entire waking life.
Thomas A. Russ
"Jason E. Schaff" <jschaf...@comcast.net> writes:
> The old GDW (I think) actually did a couple of games using a
> system somewhat like this. (Unfortunately, I can't remember
> the titles right at the moment.) Each player had an
> identical map separated by a screen from the opponent's
> view. Each player would place their own units on their map,
> along with a set of markers noting the location of the enemy
> "front line" As you moved your units into enemy (or un-)
> occupied territory, you informed your opponent of the
> movement, but not what was moving. If the hex you were
> trying to enter contained enemy forces, combat was
> initiated. I seem to recall that there were also some sort
> of rules for "scouting" adjacent hexes without actually
> trying to enter them. The system didn't seem to catch on,
> and the titles went out of print fairly quickly, IIRC.
Yes. This was their "Double-blind series". I have their game on
Operation Market Garden (which I think was even the title). I thought
that it was a clever system and was sad to see that they disappeared
rather quickly from the wargaming scene. You did have to be a bit
careful to keep good tabs on where the front lines were, or else you
could run into some problems with the two maps getting out of sync. I
suppose that if that happens, you could always treat it as some form of
successful infiltration of the lines.
Anyway, particularly for Market Garden, the double blind system makes a
lot of sense, since both sides had very little information (as it turns
out) about the other side. IIRC there was also a North African game in
the series (I think about Operation Crusader) and one more title.
I thought that they had an innovative combat system as well, where
combat was initiated by moving into an occupied hex. You then had the
option of moving additional forces into the battle, but had to do so
before you actually found out what was there.
=
Of course, one drawback with games like this is that apparently a large
number of wargames are actually played solitaire. Double blind games
make that rather hard to do.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute t...@isi.edu
Chris Mattern
"allan" <arot...@optonline.net> wrote in message news:3C8ECE64...@optonline.net...
> All,
> The three GDW Double Blind Games were: Market-Garden, Normandy Campaign, and
> 8th Army: Operation Crusader.
3W also did some double-blind games for the Wargamer magazine. The only one
I can pull up at the moment is Clash of Steel, which was a WWII East Front
game. I think they also did one of the Normandy Campaign.
> There are several VG games: Carrier, Flashpoint
> Golan, the entire Fleet Series. All these use a modified system wherein you can
> see the enemy pieces, you just can't do anything about them until you get
> information about them. The old GDW carrier games, Midway, Coral Sea, and Indian
> Ocean Adventure all use hidden plotted movement vaguely similar to the old AH
> game Midway. Old SPI double blind games are City Fight and NATO Division
> Commander use. Perhaps x2 Blind isn't really appropriate for NDC as it can be a
> solo game.
SPI's old Taskforce, which was US/Soviet naval warfare, was also true
double-blind.
Chris Mattern
Caleb N. Diffell
David had a good point; I've only seen a game or 2 of ASL played for a short
time and never actually played it myself. I used it as an example because it
was in Patrick's post that got me thinking along these lines in the first
place. But it was obviously not the best example I could've chosen.
So, after being hoisted with my own petard on that one, I would like to say
that for me, wargames are fun and they'll always be. But there's just
something about seeing the whole battlefield in front of me and pretty much
knowing everything that's going on that just sort of ruins it. And I've
never played the block games, but I've got both Red Storm Rising and Hunt
for Red October by TSR and they use a similar system. It's just that, even
though I may not always know exactly what units are where, it doesn't take
too much mental exercise to remember where the opponent's 5-combat-strength
units are. And I always know that a given area will contain either 1, 2, or
no units, and I can SEE it. But imagine seeing one lone counter advancing
across the map and having ABSOLUTELY no idea if it's got a measly brigade or
an entire army until it gets close.
There are a lot of games that I think could benefit from such a system. NOT
a "double-blind" one played on 2 (or more, heaven help us) boards, nor yet
something requiring any writing or record-keeping. But what I describe below
can work for games from War & Peace to Kingmaker (I've actually tried it
with Kingmaker with a little success).
Anyway, I'm thankful for everyone that chipped in on this. It's given me
some new appreciation & understanding for some aspects of gaming, and that
is, after all, why I read this message board.
CND
David desJardins
> Rising and Hunt for Red October by TSR and they use a similar
> system. It's just that, even though I may not always know exactly what
> units are where, it doesn't take too much mental exercise to remember
> where the opponent's 5-combat-strength units are.
In EastFront, there's a relatively high unit density (around 2 units/hex
along the front line), and it's usually pretty easy for the player on
the defensive (i.e., the Russian, in the key early turns) to switch
units about when they are activated. More importantly, units start at
reduced strength, and gain strength as the player spends points to build
them up, and the German player doesn't know which units are built up.
So the situation really isn't much like the one you describe.
David desJardins
Scott Stoness
: Hi all,
: After reading the interesting and, at times, provocative post on "getting
: into gaming", I thought I'd beat a particular hobby horse of mine: perfect
: information.
Very interesting post. While A3R has some amount of perfect information,
the Diplomatic point system and the Research system add hidden information
which can have drastic game effects, and some of the research points can
be spent on ways to increase your information about the other players'
research. The Rising Sun expansion / related game has hidden strength fleets;
you know where the opponent's 6 task forces are, you just don't know what is
in them.
A game with some great hidden information is AH 1776. One of the optional
rules is to play with all Continental Army units and all Militia on both
sides upside down; combined with the fact that a single counter can represent
1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, or 20 strength pts, and that each side gets a number
of decoys (8, I think), and you have a very interesting game. Playing this
way requires a pink and a blue marker/pencil/crayon so you know whose pieces
are whose. The only units you can see are the British Regulars, troops which
are fortified and/or entrenched, and you can at least see artillery, although
it may not be clear how many troops are escorting it. Great fun.
AH Midway has been mentioned.
AH Napoleon at Bay has a force chart for each leader, and the chart is
hidden information; all you know is where the leaders are, and there are
optional rules that allow leaders to move around inverted and the creation
of dummy units. Haven't actually played this one, though.
Cheers,
ScS
pulgao
<Patrick...@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>And as I was mulling this over, I stopped and asked
>myself, "Who in real life, in the heat of battle, in a two-minute time
>period, would have time to calculate all this out? Or the power to execute
>it with such exactitude even if he did calculate it all out?" No one.
Correct. In battle, you often just "duck your head and go". But in a
simulation, there needs to be some kind of structure to the disorder
-- which is why the designers provide rules and a sequence of play.
Otherwise you might as well be playing Cowboys and Indians in the
backyard with the kids (and, in terms of the "confusion level" of a
real-life battle, this might actually be closer to what you're looking
for <VBG>).
>Even if I hadn't had perfect information, I was engaged in a game process
>which had no parallel with actual military processes.
True enough, but in a real-life situation a lot of this would have
been intuitive, requiring no calculation on the part of an experienced
commander.
>
>The above example may make it sound like ASL was just too detailed for my
>liking. But it's more than that. Even the fact that there are dice and
>combat results tables--or that units move through a hex grid--distort battle
>into something patently artificial.
I don't believe anyone is making the claim that a simulation wargame
is a perfect simulation of a real-life event. If you're playing a
squad level game in which a counter represents you (the player),
you're not worrying about taking a stray bullet. If it's a higher
level sim, you're also not worrying about many men dying because you
gave a wrong command. And all the damned *noise*... (Have a look at
John Keegan's "The Face of Battle" if you've not yet read it -- I
think you'll find it interesting).
You can make the same case for a statistical sports simulation. You
can play a game that lets you be the "coach" of a college football
team, but you're never worried about getting the axe (with the
consequent loss of income) if your team has a losing record at
season's end. *No* game, by definition, can ever be a "perfect"
simulation.
>
>A year or so before my father died (in 1971), I got him to play Battle of
>the Bulge with me. He had fought in that battle, and he at first hoped the
>game would be very realistic. He seemed moderately impressed with the map
>and unit-counters. But the moment I pulled out the die, he sat back, looked
>appalled, and asked what that's for. I explained how combat results have
>been "scientifically" broken down into odds categories and displayed on the
>Combat Results Table, and how the die roll simulates the unpredictable
>factors. But Dad just shook his head. As far as he was concerned, we might
>as well get another die and shoot craps. "I can tell you one thing," he
>said: "War has nothing to do with rolling dice."
Again correct. But I've played wargames (Yaquinto's "Battle" being an
example that leaps to mind) that eliminate randomness in combat
resolution. They're boring as all get out and even *worse* as
simulations than games containing dice CRTs, because the outcome of a
battle is perfectly predictable. IRL, a battle's outcome is seldom a
foregone conclusion (regardless of what Dupuy would have us believe);
this is why CRTs are typically dice-driven.
>
>At the time, I thought he was just an old fogie who didn't understand how
>much research had gone into this "scientific model" of the historical
>battle. I figured that if I played enough Bulge, I'd soon know vastly more
>than my father about that battle, even though he had been there and had
>later read books about it.
>
>I was wrong. But it took me a couple decades to realize how wrong I was.
With all due respect to you and your dad, two arguments leap to my
mind:
1) AH's Bulge was a *very* early commercial wargame. Simulation
techniques have advanced a great deal since the early/mid 60's when
the game was published. Bulge is *very* primitive by today's standards
(and when I first played it back in the mid-70's, I thought it very
basic in comparison to the typical SPI game of that period).
2) Quite a few (ex and current) military personnel are huge fans of
simulation wargames, finding them to be as accurate an experience as
one can have without actually being in the heat of battle (the "your
mileage may vary" argument).
>That overview was always one of the things I most enjoyed about wargaming.
>At Gettysburg, Lee didn't have the luxury of seeing the whole topography and
>all the unit deployments; but when I play the game Gettysburg, I do get to
>see those things.
That depends on which version (of the innumerable ones available -- AH
alone published four) you're playing. AH's 1977 version allowed
variable unit entry onto the map -- while you could see where the
enemy was located, you didn't know when his units would arrive. Some
newer version by another company (which I saw in a store but didn't
purchase) uses vertical counters (sort of a riff on Columbia's "block"
games) to hide unit strengths and designations from the opponent --
I'll assume that "dummy" units are also a part of the game (if not,
they *should* be).
Thus the game becomes a sort of "living map,"
>illustrating the historical battle even as we experiment with variations to
>the historical moves.
>
>Take away the overview, and I'm left with a narrow commander's-eye point of
>view. I don't get to see everything. And if you add command-control rules,
>I don't get to *do* everything either; my units may not move where I order
>them to. That may be a better simulation of battlefield command; but that's
>not what I want from a wargame. I want the overview--the perfect
>information--but I also want to be able to experiment with actual military
>(tactical/operational) processes and see what might have happened if Lee had
>tried this or that. Unfortunately, wargames do not model those processes to
>my satisfaction. Maybe because what I was asking or expecting of wargames
>is impossible.
Perhaps. You definitely can't have it both ways -- perfect
intelligence coupled with fog of war is, by definition, an
impossibility.
There are many intangibles in warfare that *cannot* be simulated in a
game. If you want to "perfectly" simulate the experience of being Lee
at Gettysburg, you'd have to do the following (among other things):
1) Wear a wool uniform in 90 degree heat;
2) Have a debilitating and undiagnosed heart condition (and. although
you'd know you were sick, you'd have to treat yourself using 19th
century medical methods);
3) Spend several days in the saddle prior to playing the game, and
sleep in a tent (although Lee had an indoor headquarters established
northwest of G-burg, it's well documented that he didn't sleep in the
building);
4) Find a way to simulate the noise of battle (artillery booming,
musketry rattling, horses galloping and neighing, men running about
and shouting, etc.)
5) Know that you'll have the Richmond newspapers on your ass if you
screw up;
6) Wrestle with the knowledge that your best corps commander has just
died a few weeks ago, necessitating a restructuring of your army --
and two of your new corps commanders are untested at that level of
command (and, furthermore, one of them has *just* returned to the army
after a leg amputation);
etc. etc. etc.
>
>> But how about this for wargames: a main map where army markers are moved
>> around. But each player keeps, behind a screen of some sort, duplicate
>> markers to what is on the board. . . .
>
>As others have mentioned, your ideas are sound--but they have been used in a
>number of wargames over the years. A common problem is that players don't
>like keeping track of things on separate boards, or keeping side records, or
> writing down orders.
That depends on the game and the players. SPI had a lot of games using
simultaneous movement driven by written orders back in the 70's, but
these were admittedly a real grind to play. *Many* newer games use
variable impulses to control movement and combat; this works a *lot*
better in most players' view and is certainly a lot easier to handle.
And the games using generic counters to represent stacks of units
which are kept in off-board holding boxes are too numerous to mention.
This is probably the simplest way to introduce the "fog of war"
element, and I seldom hear anyone complain about this particular game
mechanic.
>Most players like a good, clean "user interface" with
>the game: ideally everything right there at their fingertips, like in
>chess.
>
>All things considered, and as abstract as it is, I've come to consider chess
>a darned good wargame.
Echoing James Dunnigan in the first edition of his "Complete Wargames
Handbook", in which he called chess one of the best simulations of
medieval warfare.
Just enjoy wargames for what they are, Patrick -- *nothing* is a
"perfect" simulation of a real-life event.
-- Steve Lopez
-------------------------------------------------
The Chess Kamikaze Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/ludekdudek/
The Chess Kamikaze Club: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chesskamikazes/
pulgao
And with computers, you often have to wrestle with the interface (as
another poster to this thread has pointed out). I like the Sid Meier
Civil War games. But if I was a real CW commander and wanted to issue
an order, I'd just turn to an aide, give him the instructoins, and
send him off to deliver them, without having to remember how to do it.
In a computer game (especially the real-time [not turn-based] ones,
like the Meier games), I have to sit and ponder for a few moments "Now
how do I change from a two-column attack to a single battleline?" --
meanwhile, those precious moments tick away while Garnett's brigade
gets its collective ass shot off over many minutes of compressed
simulated "real time".
Kevin J. Maroney
wrote:
>I think the reason that people find the perfect information available
>in most traditional wargames is derived from expectations created by
^^^ "unsatisfying" or "problematic"
inserted here would make this sentence make sense.
>the theme.
Patrick Carroll
"pulgao" <baays...@md.net> wrote
> I don't believe anyone is making the claim that a simulation wargame
No one, including me, is making that claim. Nor did I ever express the
desire for a wargame to be a "perfect simulation" in the sense that
everybody seems to immediately think of. (More on this below.)
> (Have a look at
> John Keegan's "The Face of Battle" if you've not yet read it -- I
> think you'll find it interesting).
I've read it. I did find it interesting, and I keep meaning to reread it
one of these days.
>*No* game, by definition, can ever be a "perfect"
> simulation.
Agreed. But who's asking for that?
>>I want the overview--the perfect
> >information--but I also want to be able to experiment with actual
military
> >(tactical/operational) processes and see what might have happened if Lee
had
> >tried this or that. Unfortunately, wargames do not model those processes
to
> >my satisfaction. Maybe because what I was asking or expecting of
wargames
> >is impossible.
>
> Perhaps. You definitely can't have it both ways -- perfect
> intelligence coupled with fog of war is, by definition, an
> impossibility.
But I didn't ask for the fog of war. You're assuming that fog of war would
be an essential precondition of a game which accurately models "actual
military (tactical/operational) processes." (By that, I meant *some* of
those processes; not necessarily all of 'em.)
And maybe that assumption is right; I don't know. But maybe not. I would
think that *some* military (tactical/operational) processes could be
accurately modeled *without* fog of war being simulated.
But . . . I don't know. Maybe it's a package deal: if any conditions of
battle are missing or poorly simulated, the whole model fails. If that's
so, then what I was asking was impossible.
> There are many intangibles in warfare that *cannot* be simulated in a
> game. If you want to "perfectly" simulate the experience of being Lee
> at Gettysburg, you'd have to do the following (among other things):
>
> 1) Wear a wool uniform in 90 degree heat; . . .
Sure--but I'm not interested in simulating that experience. I don't want to
know what it's like to be Lee at Gettysburg. I want to be *me* at
Gettysburg. I don't want to hear the noise or experience the confusion of
the battle either; I want to relax over a mapboard in a quiet room and sip
tea. And I certainly don't want to have to put up with not knowing where
the enemy is or how strong he is or how long Longstreet will take to get
into position or what ever became of Stuart. I want to know all those
"unknowns."
But when I order Ewell to attack Cemetery Hill, I want to do it more or less
the way Lee did. I *don't* want to trace each of Ewell's units through a
hex grid and stack them up in front of the Union units until I've
accumulated 3:1 odds or better, then roll a die to see what the specific
result is. That sort of thing is what board-game players do, not what
military commanders do.
Even in computer wargames (I haven't played Sid Meier's "Gettysburg," but
I've read a bit about it) you usually have to get down to the nuts & bolts
of changing formation or fixing bayonets, even though you're supposed to be
the overall field commander. That's a lot of fun--and the game might be
boring otherwise; but it's one of those things that makes it just a game,
not a model of military processes.
> >Most players like a good, clean "user interface" with
> >the game: ideally everything right there at their fingertips, like in
> >chess.
> >
> >All things considered, and as abstract as it is, I've come to consider
chess
> >a darned good wargame.
>
> Echoing James Dunnigan in the first edition of his "Complete Wargames
> Handbook", in which he called chess one of the best simulations of
> medieval warfare.
He said that? Cool. Frankly I doubt his sincerity, and also the accuracy
of the statement. But I'll stand by my "echoing" remark anyhow.
> Just enjoy wargames for what they are, Patrick -- *nothing* is a
> "perfect" simulation of a real-life event.
I understand that. But just to reiterate (since others have been
misconstruing and putting words in my mouth), I've never expected a wargame
to be a perfect simulation. What I expected for many years was that
wargames would faithfully model at least a few isolated processes of real
war. I most certainly did not ever expect wargames to simulate the
prevailing *conditions* of the battlefield--and I was surprised at first
when some wargame designs started attempting that (e.g., the concealment
rules in ASL or the "untried units" rules in Panzergruppe Guderian)--and I
didn't like it much.
But even when it comes to something as supposedly simple as unit movement, I
can't even rely on the belief that if I'm able to move unit X a hundred
meters in the game, unit X could actually have moved a hundred meters in
real life. Movement rates are necessarily averaged out. Or in more
sophisticated designs, movement may be variable but still weighted to an
average. And yet, if you were to field-test movement with reenactors or
something, it's entirely possible that the game's movement rates would turn
out to be way off. Even that sort of test would be unreliable, however,
because you'd have to factor in the heat of battle, Clausewitzian
"friction," and so forth. Who really knows whether Oates's Confederates
could have reached Little Round Top a bit more quickly? Maybe so, maybe
not. All we know for sure is what actually happened that day (and we're
only half clear on that). And the moment we stray from that, we're into
educated guesswork.
So, if every individual process in the game is merely a loose, unreliable
attempt to capture a corresponding military process within the game system,
then the game as a whole is just a designer's *impression* of battle. The
designer may have done a lot of detailed research, and his guesswork may be
well educated--but in the end a lot of it is still guesswork. And when he
gets around to combining the processes and making a game of it, I suspect
there's a lot more art than science in that. The end result is a sort of
dynamic military fiction. Thus, playing a wargame is good entertainment,
good competition--but probably not a good solid study of the game's
historical subject.
But again, I never expected the *whole* to be a perfect simulation. When I
first played Waterloo, I thought the game's designer was saying to me, in
effect, "Now, in the game you're going to have a lot more information than
Napoleon did; you'll get a complete overview of the field and get to see all
the enemy units. And of course you'll have to just imagine all the
battlefield conditions which cannot be portrayed in the game. But what you
*will* get to do is govern the movement and actions an exact, detailed,
scientifically accurate, scaled-down replicas of Napoleon's infantry,
artillery, and cavalry. As you move these units and they clash in combat on
the board, you'll know exactly how these units moved and fought in 1815--how
far and fast they could move, how much punch they packed, and how the
various unit types interacted, as well as the effect of terrain on them.
Your French army will behave physically just like its historical
counterpart, except on a smaller scale." I was perfectly content with that.
I never objected to the "unrealistic perfect-information overview" or the
game's failure to simulate battlefield conditions including limited
intelligence and so forth. As long as just a few basic processes--movement
and combat, for instance--were 100 percent accurate and reliable, I was
happy as a lark.
But it wasn't so. Not a single process in the game jibes irrefutably with a
corresponding historical process. Every rule and feature in the game is
suspect, debatable, unreliable. The game Waterloo is *about* the battle of
Waterloo only inasmuch as I suspend my disbelief and suppose it to be so.
That's what I finally realized that day while playing ASL. Despite all the
detail, it'd be hard to put together a watertight argument that ASL is a
better or more realistic or accurate simulation of war than is chess. It'd
be sort of like arguing that Rembrandt's water lilies are far more
true-to-life than Monet's. It all depends on how you look at it. I finally
decided that ASL is a whole lot more similar to chess than to WWII combat.
And the corollary to that is that it's a toss-up or matter of taste as to
whether chess or ASL is the better wargame.
--Patrick
David desJardins
> That's what I finally realized that day while playing ASL. Despite all the
> detail, it'd be hard to put together a watertight argument that ASL is a
> better or more realistic or accurate simulation of war than is chess.
I don't think it's hard at all. It's based on observations like this:
"Tanks are more resistant to enemy fire than unarmored trucks in real
life, and also in ASL. Knights are more valuable in warfare than
queens, and castles don't move at all, but in chess queens are more
powerful than knights, and castles move rapidly from place to place."
> I finally decided that ASL is a whole lot more similar to chess than
> to WWII combat.
Obviously true. As I wrote earlier, war involves real human beings
dying, and any two activities that don't involve that (e.g., chess and
ASL) will always be much more similar to each other than to war.
> And the corollary to that is that it's a toss-up or matter of taste as
> to whether chess or ASL is the better wargame.
This doesn't follow at all. I'm not going to argue about "better". But
it's obvious that playing ASL is much more like playing chess than like
fighting a war. And it's also obvious that ASL is much more a
simulation of war than chess is. And there's no contradiction at all
between these two statements.
David desJardins
Patrick Carroll
> Patrick Carroll <Patrick...@mn.rr.com> writes:
> > That's what I finally realized that day while playing ASL. Despite all
the
> > detail, it'd be hard to put together a watertight argument that ASL is a
> > better or more realistic or accurate simulation of war than is chess.
>
> I don't think it's hard at all. It's based on observations like this:
> "Tanks are more resistant to enemy fire than unarmored trucks in real
> life, and also in ASL. Knights are more valuable in warfare than
> queens, and castles don't move at all, but in chess queens are more
> powerful than knights, and castles move rapidly from place to place."
To me that's far from watertight. I'd start rebutting by borrowing a notion
from John Hill's "Squad Leader" design notes: the overall holistic
*impression* the game presents is more important than any individual part or
any number of such parts. If you zero in on specific parts, as you do
above, some individual features of ASL do bear a striking resemblance to
corresponding battlefield features, while some individual features of chess
seem quite far removed from what would appear to be their corresponding
battlefield features. Yet it may be that *as a whole* chess captures the
spirit, flavor, and experience of battle better than ASL.
It's the same as comparing a Rembrandt painting to a Monet. Many people
would say Rembrandt's work is more true-to-life because it usually looks
more like a photograph than Monet's impressionistic work. But devotees of
impressionism could argue that Monet's water lilies look more like the
impression real water lilies make on the human consciousness, while
Rembrandt's paintings look too much like artificially staged photographs.
I wouldn't want to take this to the point of a philosophical debate. So, to
keep it simple, I might agree that ASL has more "photographic realism," so
to speak, than chess. But in spite of that, I believe chess might be a
better or more accurate simulation of battle overall. I might be misusing
the word "simulation," though, or using it in a confusing way. By
"simultation," I just mean a representation of a real-life event, expressed
via the medium of a board game.
> > I finally decided that ASL is a whole lot more similar to chess than
> > to WWII combat.
>
> Obviously true. As I wrote earlier, war involves real human beings
> dying, and any two activities that don't involve that (e.g., chess and
> ASL) will always be much more similar to each other than to war.
>
> > And the corollary to that is that it's a toss-up or matter of taste as
> > to whether chess or ASL is the better wargame.
>
> This doesn't follow at all. I'm not going to argue about "better". But
> it's obvious that playing ASL is much more like playing chess than like
> fighting a war. And it's also obvious that ASL is much more a
> simulation of war than chess is. And there's no contradiction at all
> between these two statements.
I'd only agree that ASL has many more specific bits and pieces that one can
pretty directly associate with corresponding real-war bits and pieces. But
in the end, the ASL player is sitting over a mapboard moving cardboard chits
about, referring to charts and rolling dice. And the chess player is
sitting over a board moving little statuettes about. And neither of those
things happens much in real battles.
Furthermore, if one were to hover godlike over a real battlefield and take
in a full, holistic impression of it, then create a wargame which accurately
captures and conveys that impression, I don't know whether the game would be
more like chess or more like ASL. It probably depends on the designer and
his impression.
A patron of William Blake once wrote him a letter, complaining that his
paintings (which at that time were highly stylized) didn't look like their
real physical-world subjects. The patron said that surely when the sun comes
up in the morning, Blake sees the same thing as everybody else: something
like a bright shining guinea coming over the horizon. So, why couldn't he
just paint it that way? Blake's reply was something like, "That may be what
*you* see when the sun rises. What I see are ten thousand angels in
chariots singing 'glory hallelujah!' And if that's what I see, that's what
I'll paint." I'm not at all sure wargame design is essentially any
different. The designer forms an impression based on his research and
imagination or vision or experience, and he proceeds to translate that
impression into a board game.
Wargamers' modern tastes do tend to strongly favor the "realistic" over the
"impressionistic" style, though. Up Front was rejected by many as being too
impressionistic ("terrain that was there a moment ago is not there
anymore"). But I wouldn't be able to prove that UF is any more or less
realistic than ASL. I don't think anyone would be able to, without
resorting to the narrow definition of realism as being "photographically
accurate"--i.e., opposed to impressionism or abstraction. *Real* realism
(in my book, anyway) means that the game strikes the player's consciousness
with an impression very similar to the impression a battlefield commander
would have if he were able to view the real-life battle from the same
relative perspective.
But--I have to admit that my definition of realism is probably someone
else's definition of fantasy. So, to avoid a silly semantic debate here,
I'll just agree with you: In the common sense of "wargaming realism," ASL
is clearly more realistic than chess. Yet, since we also agree that ASL and
chess are a lot more alike than either is like real battle, I'd say the
point about realism is practically moot anyway. Who cares how relatively
realistic two unrealistic wargames are?
--Patrick
David desJardins
> I might be misusing the word "simulation," though, or using it in a
> real-life event, expressed via the medium of a board game.
You can represent the real-life event of a battle without representing
the thought processes of any particular person. ASL simulates a battle
without recreating the thoughts of the leader of the battle; it just
simulates the events of the battle. This is like simulating how a human
being hits a baseball by building a finite-element model of the human
physiology, and then solving differential equations that control its
movement, and synchronizing those movements with input from the eyes.
The simulation and the simulator might never involve the thought, "It's
the bottom of the ninth; my reputation depends on me hitting this ball."
But it's still a simulation of hitting the ball.
> I'll just agree with you: In the common sense of "wargaming realism,"
> ASL is clearly more realistic than chess. Yet, since we also agree
> that ASL and chess are a lot more alike than either is like real
> battle, I'd say the point about realism is practically moot anyway.
> Who cares how relatively realistic two unrealistic wargames are?
I said it's a more accurate simulation. I didn't say it's more
"realistic". It might be, but that's a more subjective question.
The reason it's important that ASL is a fairly accurate simulation of
war (even though it's not "like" war, nor is it "realistic" in what
information is presented to the player or how the player makes
decisions) is that some people do play the game for that reason. They
enjoy simulating the *action* of the battle, even though they aren't
simulating the *thinking* of the leaders of the opposing forces. I'm
not one of those people, but I can understand them.
David desJardins
Patrick Carroll
> You can represent the real-life event of a battle without representing
> the thought processes of any particular person. ASL simulates a battle
> without recreating the thoughts of the leader of the battle; it just
> simulates the events of the battle. This is like simulating how a human
> being hits a baseball by building a finite-element model of the human
> physiology, and then solving differential equations that control its
> movement, and synchronizing those movements with input from the eyes.
> The simulation and the simulator might never involve the thought, "It's
> the bottom of the ninth; my reputation depends on me hitting this ball."
> But it's still a simulation of hitting the ball.
That's true, but it involves some commonly accepted presuppositions. Among
them: (1) there is such a thing as objective physical reality, (2) human
perception and scientific experimentation are reliable interfaces with that
objective physical reality, and (3) the human mind is capable of completely
and accurately modeling (i.e., comprehending or understanding) at least some
perceived events.
Most people, I guess, take all that for granted and never bother to question
any of it. I question all three of those presuppositions. Any of them
could easily be false. And if any of them is false, it plays havoc with
your notion that real-life events can be simulated.
So you see, I wasn't talking about people's thoughts. I was talking about
the true nature of "real life," the scope and accuracy of human perception
(including scientific investigation), and the power of the human mind to
combine perceived data into true understanding.
I can trust that everyone has impressions of real-life events, and the whole
set of impressions one carries with him are what constitute that person's
world-view. I'm also aware that on a social level, we make all kinds of
agreements (e.g., the sky is blue) which lead us to believe we all share the
same or similar impressions of real life. I'm less sure, however, that
there's such a thing as an objective physical reality, or that we're capable
of accurately measuring or understanding or simulating that reality. It
could easily be that what we call reality is what Eastern religions call
"maya" or illusion--a sort of ephemeral nothing, appearances without
substance, or the images (phenomena) on the walls of Plato's proverbial
cave.
> I said it's a more accurate simulation. I didn't say it's more
> "realistic". It might be, but that's a more subjective question.
>
> The reason it's important that ASL is a fairly accurate simulation of
> war (even though it's not "like" war, nor is it "realistic" in what
> information is presented to the player or how the player makes
> decisions) is that some people do play the game for that reason. They
> enjoy simulating the *action* of the battle, even though they aren't
> simulating the *thinking* of the leaders of the opposing forces. I'm
> not one of those people, but I can understand them.
I think I can understand them too. And I think they make the three
presuppositions I listed above. Since to me those three things are
questions, not facts, it's impossible for me to enjoy a simulation game the
way those other folks do. While they think they're experimenting with a
reality, I wonder if they're not just reinforcing an illusion.
Again, if we could see the absolute reality (i.e., God's-eye viewpoint) of
any given battle--beyond *perceived* or relative reality (i.e., what falls
within the parameters of human perception)--a model of that battle might
look more like chess than ASL. Of course, if you find that notion laughably
useless, you could argue that the battle might look more like Candyland or
Bohnanza from that vantage point. And indeed it might. But I believe we
have more than just our human perception and reasoning power to rely on. We
also have intuition, for instance. And via intuition (or other means), it
may be possible to become aware of something close to that "absolute
reality" I just mentioned above.
In which case, Plato was right, and Aristotle led Western thought down a sad
path to materialistic empiricism. But--last time I said I didn't want to
get philosophical, and here I've gone and done it. Sorry.
--Patrick
David desJardins
>>> I wouldn't want to take this to the point of a philosophical debate.
Patrick Carroll <Patrick...@mn.rr.com> writes:
> That's true, but it involves some commonly accepted presuppositions.
> Among them: (1) there is such a thing as objective physical reality,
> (2) human perception and scientific experimentation are reliable
> interfaces with that objective physical reality, and (3) the human
> mind is capable of completely and accurately modeling (i.e.,
> comprehending or understanding) at least some perceived events.
It seems that you changed your mind about wanting to replace the
discussion of board games with a philosophical debate. I'd guess not
too many people think that philosophical arguments about whether the
battlefield really has an "objective physical reality" have anything to
do with the simulation element of board games. As usual, I've wasted my
time reading and replying to you. :-(
David desJardins
The Maverick
> Some games try to get around this by "hiding" the pieces (Columbia's block
> system, for example), but you always pretty much know where everyone is and
> with what force.
You haven't tried the GDW double-blind series games, I take it? Or
SPI's City Fight? Or the AH/Battleline naval game Flat Top?
Take it back a few more years... how about classics like Bismarck and
Midway? Or Jutland?
Good limited intelligence boardgames *are* out there, you just have to
look for them...
the Mav
--
"Never give up -- never surrender!" Commander Peter Quincy Taggart
The Maverick
> What I expected for many years was that
> wargames would faithfully model at least a few isolated processes of real
> war.
They do, and almost always have to some extent since about 1958... yet
that will obviously never keep you from nitpicking about why wargames
are all flawed since they don't meet your unreaslistic expectations.
The Maverick
> Patrick Carroll <Patrick...@mn.rr.com> writes:
>
>>I might be misusing the word "simulation," though, or using it in a
>>confusing way. By "simulation," I just mean a representation of a
>>real-life event, expressed via the medium of a board game.
>
> You can represent the real-life event of a battle without representing
> the thought processes of any particular person. ASL simulates a battle
> without recreating the thoughts of the leader of the battle; it just
> simulates the events of the battle. This is like simulating how a human
> being hits a baseball by building a finite-element model of the human
> physiology, and then solving differential equations that control its
> movement, and synchronizing those movements with input from the eyes.
> The simulation and the simulator might never involve the thought, "It's
> the bottom of the ninth; my reputation depends on me hitting this ball."
> But it's still a simulation of hitting the ball.
Absolutely... A couple years back I presented this rebuttal to
Patronius' claim that ASL simulated nothing well, and now we've ended up
here again! Hence my earlier suggestion that people just check deja
news rather than bothering with Patronius' personal dissatisfaction with
ASL... ;-)
The Maverick
Been there, done that on this topic with that person...
BTW I just found that old thread on deja news - it was started by David
Bohnenberger on 8 Aug 1999. Patrick's lead in re: ASL is at:
Enjoy the "deja view" all over again! ;-)
Patrick Carroll
> It seems that you changed your mind about wanting to replace the
> discussion of board games with a philosophical debate.
. . . as I made clear by ending my last post with:
>>But--last time I said I didn't want to
get philosophical, and here I've gone and done it. Sorry.<<
> I'd guess not
> too many people think that philosophical arguments about whether the
> battlefield really has an "objective physical reality" have anything to
> do with the simulation element of board games.
They may not think philosophical *arguments* about it are pertinent. But if
they don't think the important question behind those arguments is pertinent,
they're damned ignorant fools! Care to explain to me how it would *not* be
a key factor? I agree that most people don't think about it. In fact,
here's another quote from my last post:
>>Most people, I guess, take all that for granted and never bother to
question
any of it.<<
But whether they think about it or not, it has *everything* to do with the
simulation element of board games. If there's no objective physical reality
to simulate, you don't get a simulation. If there is an objective physical
reality but perceptions of it are all hopelessly limited or flawed, you get
a hopelessly limited or flawed simulation. And even if there's an objective
physical reality and perceptions of it are reliable, but the human mind is
incapable of processing the data into comprehensible, understandable
information, you still can't make a true simulation.
Yet, in all these cases, you can go on merrily *believing* that you've
created a true simulation. You can also get lots of other people to agree
that it's a true simulation, and the consensus may further convince you,
sucking you even deeper into the false belief and spreading that belief out
to the masses. Frankly, I believe that's just what happens--not just with
simulation games, but with many things in life.
> As usual, I've wasted my
> time reading and replying to you. :-(
Well--sorry you feel that way. If it helps, I'll repeat that I agree with
the two main points you made: (1) It's obvious that ASL and chess have much
more in common with each other than either has in common with real battle,
and (2) Based on the common view of battles and simulations, ASL can easily
be shown to be a more accurate simulation than chess.
Having repeated that, though, I still reserve the right to personally
disagree with the common view of battles and simulations. But considering
the disgust my views seem to generate around here, I suppose it'd be wiser
to keep them to myself. (Yeah, sure--I've said that before. Hasn't ever
kept my foot out of my mouth for very long.)
--Patrick
David desJardins
> They may not think philosophical *arguments* about it are pertinent.
> But if they don't think the important question behind those arguments
> is pertinent, they're damned ignorant fools!
OK, we're all fools. You've already made that clear. Just by listening
and replying to you, we prove it over and over again.
> Care to explain to me how it would *not* be a key factor?
The abstract philosophical questions you raise are completely
irrelevant. Maybe there is "objective physical reality", maybe there
isn't. Whatever that means. If we can't tell whether there is or not,
then we can just act as if there is, and we're no worse off.
Suppose we're "wrong". We thought we were simulating something, but we
were just fooling ourselves, because France doesn't actually exist. WW2
was a figment of our imagination. So what? It doesn't affect our
appreciation of the game one iota, if we never know that "truth".
David desJardins
Jason E. Schaff
>
>
> But whether they think about it or not, it has *everything* to do with the
> simulation element of board games. If there's no objective physical reality
> to simulate, you don't get a simulation. If there is an objective physical
> reality but perceptions of it are all hopelessly limited or flawed, you get
> a hopelessly limited or flawed simulation. And even if there's an objective
> physical reality and perceptions of it are reliable, but the human mind is
> incapable of processing the data into comprehensible, understandable
> information, you still can't make a true simulation.
>
>
reality, we may as well all go out, buy shotguns, and
splatter our collective brains across nonexistent ceilings!
Life is pretty much a pointless exercise in gratuitous
mental masturbation if there is no objective reality.
Having gotten that rant against abject nihilism out of my
system, let me return to something approximating the
original topic of this thread.
It seems to me that there is a disconnect of definitions
between the two sides in this argument (and a similar one
that has been going on for a few days now over in
alt.games.wargames) over the nature / value / utility of
wargames and other military simulations. Might I suggest
that folks consider the difference between a _simulation_
and a _re-creation_? From the standpoint of military
endeavors, a re-creation is what the Army does out at the
National Training Center in the California dessert where
real troops with real equipment and real vehicles go at it
in combat operations that are about as close to the real
thing as you can get without using live ammo. A simulation
is a tabletop or computer-based exercise which reproduces
_some_ of the elements of real combat operations, but, of
necessity, cannot reproduce all, or even most, of them.
That the simulation does not fully re-create combat
operations does not mean that it is not still a useful and
informative tool for understanding basic principles of
combat operations, strategy, and tactics. (This, of course,
assumes that we are talking about a well designed simulation.)
Consider ASL as an example. Does it fully re-create all
aspects of combat operations? No. Are there elements of
the game design that a grossly unrealistic? Of course: No
unit commander is ever going to have the kind of god-like
control and level of information about their forces that an
ASL player has. Does this mean that the game in no way
reflects realities of combat operations? No! Does this
mean that one cannot learn anything about basic strategy and
tactics of small unit operations from the game. Absolutely
not! The game system still rewards players for making
decisions in line with sound operational principles, and
generally punishes play that violates those principles. The
fact that the simulation is, necessarily, not a complete
re-creation in no way detracts from this.
One can make a good analogy to flight simulators. No flight
simulator will ever completely re-create the full experience
of flying an aircraft. Only flying an actual plane does
that. This does not mean that flight simulators are not
useful tools for understanding _some_ of what it is like to
fly an airplane. That's why airlines and air forces the
world over use them in pilot training.
As ever, just my $0.02.
Jason
--
---------------------------------------------------------
Jason E. Schaff
If you do not want it known that you have
said something, don't say it.
-- Klingon proverb
---------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Carroll
> The abstract philosophical questions you raise are completely
> irrelevant. . . .
The questions I raised are at the very foundation of historiography.
Historiography is at the root of history (determining the reliability and
applicability of histories--i.e., how close history comes to truth). And
history is at the root of historical military simulations (e.g., wargames).
> Suppose we're "wrong". We thought we were simulating something, but we
> were just fooling ourselves. . . . So what? It doesn't affect our
> appreciation of the game one iota, if we never know that "truth".
If you never find out the truth, you're absolutely right. But if you ever
catch a glimmer of the truth, believe me, it'll seriously affect your
appreciation of the game--just as it drastically affected mine.
By setting the words "wrong" and "truth" in quotation marks in the passage
quoted above, you're implying that Truth (without the quotation marks) is
either hopelessly elusive or nonexistent or irrelevant. And I have to
adamantly take issue with that. If there is no truth, or if it's
inaccessible, then I'm the one who has been wasting his time once again by
participating in a discussion like this.
If you choose to be content with social consensus, even if it consists of
nothing but a set of comfortable lies, that's your business. I refuse to
settle for that myself. I'll shut up, since I seem to be touching some raw
nerves here, but I won't agree that there's no point in delving deeper into
a subject--even if that subject is "merely" board wargames, which supposedly
are "merely" for fun.
I guess the best we can do is agree that truth can take many forms and be
perceived in various ways by different individuals. And whatever the truth
may be, we're not likely to get any closer to it via heated debate. So if
we've reached the end of calm, intelligent discussion, we should leave well
enough alone.
--Patrick
Rich Shipley
news:8C1l8.90142$991.20...@typhoon.kc.rr.com...
>
> If you never find out the truth, you're absolutely right. But if you ever
> catch a glimmer of the truth, believe me, it'll seriously affect your
> appreciation of the game--just as it drastically affected mine.
You presuppose that we have all been lying to ourselves in the same way you
did. You are not some prophet leading us away from a false god here.
Wargaming is an enjoyable hobby where you can learn something of history &
military strategy along the way. Very few people have brought the
expectations to the table that you have.
Rich
Patrick Carroll
> OTOH, if there is no reliably perceivable objective physical
> reality, we may as well all go out, buy shotguns, and
> splatter our collective brains across nonexistent ceilings!
> Life is pretty much a pointless exercise in gratuitous
> mental masturbation if there is no objective reality.
Nonsense! Have you ever studied an Eastern religion (e.g., Hinduism or
Buddhism)? Their teaching is that the physical universe is all "maya," or
illusion. It's so ephemeral as to be irrelevant in the greater scheme of
things. The part of us that seems to enjoy a brief sojourn on this planet
(our physical body) is illusory, and only the part of us that's immortal
(Soul) is real.
Socrates and Plato said pretty much the same thing in Western philosophy:
all that seems solid and real (physical "reality") is like the shadow images
that form on the walls of a cave. Actual reality (noumena) exists on a
higher plane, in another dimension.
And what's the point of all that physical-plane illusion or phenomena? To
deceive us into mistaking it for reality, so that via experience we'll
eventually see the illusion for what it really is. At that point, we'll
also see truth for what it is. We'll no longer identify with our false self
(our personality and physical body); we'll realize that we are--and always
have been--immortal Soul, a purely spiritual entity.
I'll stop there, because by now at least half of the people reading are
scratching their heads and saying, "Huh? Is this r.g.b. or
alt.religion.mystical?" I just wanted to point out that the conclusion you
jumped to above is unsound. To my knowledge, materialism is the only
philosophy that depends on there being an objective physical reality.
> Having gotten that rant against abject nihilism out of my
> system. . . .
To reiterate, it's NOT nihilism. Not at all. The only thing being
"annihilated" by my viewpoint are materialism (the belief that objective
physical reality is all there is) and empiricism (the belief that in order
to be valid, knowledge must be based on verifiable physical data).
Annihiliate those two beliefs, and there are still vast universes of
spiritual or psychic reality to consider. All that glitters is not gold,
and all that's physical is not real. Yet, real gold does exist (it's just
not physical).
> Might I suggest
> that folks consider the difference between a _simulation_
> and a _re-creation_? . . .
> Consider ASL as an example. Does it fully re-create all
> aspects of combat operations? No. . . . Does this
> mean that one cannot learn anything about basic strategy and
> tactics of small unit operations from the game. Absolutely
> not! The game system still rewards players for making
> decisions in line with sound operational principles, and
> generally punishes play that violates those principles. The
> fact that the simulation is, necessarily, not a complete
> re-creation in no way detracts from this.
I agree with most of that. But I would argue that ASL teaches at least as
many false or irrelevant lessons as true or relevant ones. For instance, if
I have a stack of three 4-6-7 squads with a 2-factor LMG, and I want that
stack to combine its firepower against the enemy, I'm not going to fire the
LMG at all. Why? Because it doesn't have enough firepower factors to
enable me to use the "16" column on the IFT, so I'm going to have to use the
"12" column anyhow--and why risk a breakdown of the LMG?
That's just one of the thousands of such false lessons that ASL teaches.
And if a person is coming to the game from a standpoint of complete military
ignorance, how is he to sort out the true lessons from the false ones? He
can't. Some players might even believe that in real life, platoons
regularly refrain from using their LMGs because they don't contribute much
and might break down.
Even in the designer's notes to the game, John Hill admits that he
intentionally distorted many facts as he put the game together. For
instance, SMGs in the game can effectively fire twice as far as they could
in real life (IIRC). Why? So that on the mapboards with buildings that have
streets running between them, SMGs can fire across the street. Hill's
contention is that such distortions are forgivable because ASL *as a whole*
presents a true-to-life *impression* of WWII tactical combat. Well, so do
some Hollywood movies.
For those players who are able to sort out the false lessons from the true
ones, I'm sure ASL does provide a few insights into (or at least vicarious,
imaginative experiences of) WWII tactical operations. It's not entirely
useless in that regard. But in my experience, it's really pretty much like
chess or any other game: it rewards sound reasoning. If a player does what
the game requires and out-thinks his opponent (and the scenario is balanced,
and the luck of the dice evens out), he'll win. Inasmuch as that's also
true of military operations, you could say ASL is good training for military
command. But the same thing can be said about chess.
> One can make a good analogy to flight simulators. No flight
> simulator will ever completely re-create the full experience
> of flying an aircraft. Only flying an actual plane does
> that. This does not mean that flight simulators are not
> useful tools for understanding _some_ of what it is like to
> fly an airplane. That's why airlines and air forces the
> world over use them in pilot training.
I don't think flight simulators teach many false lessons--the kind a pilot
will later have to unlearn when he gets into a real cockpit. Magically
transfer an ASL player to a real WWII battlefield, and he'll have to forget
all about IFT odds columns, long-range SMGs, elaborately detailed orders for
individual movements, the luxury of ignoring enemy units that have already
prep fired, and so forth. If a flight simulator teaches a pilot 70 percent
of what he needs to know (I'm guessing and being generous), ASL teaches a
combat commander maybe 2 percent of what he needs to know--and also misleads
him in many ways.
The nice thing, I suppose, is that airline trainees are likely to fly real
planes someday, while ASL players are unlikely to ever lead a WWII combat
battalion.
But that raises another point: flight sims and such are designed to train a
person in a practical application; civilian wargames like ASL--inasmuch as
they're educational at all (and primarily they're just entertainment)--are
designed to give players an insight into how things really were. That is, a
flight sim prepares one for a certain kind of action; a historical wargame
supposedly deepens one's understanding of a subject of study. Two different
aims, which may require two different educational tools or approaches.
All for now (my wife wants the computer).
--Patrick
Chris Camfield
>All,
> The three GDW Double Blind Games were: Market-Garden, Normandy Campaign, and
>8th Army: Operation Crusader. There are several VG games: Carrier, Flashpoint
>Golan, the entire Fleet Series. All these use a modified system wherein you can
>see the enemy pieces, you just can't do anything about them until you get
>information about them.
That's not quite correct about the DB games. I have the Crusader game; each
player has their own map; you get to see the borders of enemy territory and you
are informed by your opponent when they move units into your territory
(converting it to theirs), but the ONLY time you see enemy units is if they
collide with yours (or vice versa) and combat ensues.
Chris
The Midnight Skulker
> wargames and other military simulations. Might I suggest that folks
> consider the difference between a _simulation_ and a _re-creation_?
> From the standpoint of military endeavors, a re-creation is what the
> Army does out at the National Training Center in the California
> dessert where real troops with real equipment and real vehicles go at
> it in combat operations that are about as close to the real thing as
> you can get without using live ammo.
My guess is that board wargames derived from the graphical and miniature
representations that military commanders used to depict actual
situations. These representations were updated as reports were received
from the field.
> A simulation is a tabletop or computer-based exercise which reproduces
> _some_ of the elements of real combat operations, but, of necessity,
> cannot reproduce all, or even most, of them.
Because there is no "field" a simulation must -- um -- simulate the
updates that would be received if there were one. Not being a game
designer I must again take a guess as to how this is done, and I can
think of two mechanisms: 1) the simulation uses an average value for
things like movement, firepower, and the effects of defensive positions;
and 2) the simulation introduces a random element (e.g. dice or cards)
to "report" the outcome of operations with results that are less
predictable. (For example, I suppose that a combat results table could
be thought to incorporate the inherent uncertainty of intelligence an
attacker has about the strength of a defender, or even the intelligence
a commander has about the capabilities of his own units, though one
would hope that latter intelligence would be more accurate than the
former.)
> That the simulation does not fully re-create combat operations does
> not mean that it is not still a useful and informative tool for
> understanding basic principles of combat operations, strategy, and
> tactics. (This, of course, assumes that we are talking about a well
> designed simulation.)
I submit this discussion has been ignoring a class of players such as
myself (and I admit the possibility that I am its only member) who look
at board wargames primarily as ->games<-, contests of strategy with a
war theme. It doesn't matter to me whether or not a D-Day invasion of
The Netherlands was actually possible or feasible on June 6, 1944; if
the rules of the game allow it then I consider it an option. I was also
able to accept the PanzerBush aspect of PanzerBlitz as being part of the
game and therefore an aspect of play that had to be taken into account.
The key question for me is, "Is the game playable?" As more and more
details are added to a simulation I feel it becomes less playable (and
if I understand the meaning of the term, more fiddly). My own attention
span prohibits me from enjoying a game in which each move takes four
hours to make, for example because it incorporates the possibility that
troop carriers will break down, horses will suffer heart attacks, guns
will jam, individual soldiers will have diarrhea, etc. at inopportune
times.
There is another aspect of wargames that greatly affects my enjoyment of
playing them: as more random elements are introduced the less important
strategy becomes. I will stipulate that in a real battle luck may play
a major role, but in a strategy game I would like strategy to dominate
luck. My only complaint with The Russian Campaign is the effect of the
randomly determined weather on turns 3 and 4. Certainly weather was a
major factor in the actual campaign, but when I simulate Operation
Barbarosa I am not looking to recreate the frustration German commanders
felt (or Russian commanders would have felt) when the weather eliminates
my chances for victory regardless of how well I play before or after
those critical turns. Hence, to weigh in on the topic of this thread, I
neither require nor reject perfect information; I will accept however
much the game provides.
1 2
| The Midnight Skulker
9 * 3 aka Van Lewis
aka cvl...@earthlink.net
6
pulgao
<Patrick...@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>
>"pulgao" <baays...@md.net> wrote
>> I don't believe anyone is making the claim that a simulation wargame
>> is a perfect simulation of a real-life event. . . .
>
>No one, including me, is making that claim.
I think that's what I said... ;-)
>>*No* game, by definition, can ever be a "perfect"
>> simulation.
>
>Agreed. But who's asking for that?
That seems strongly implied by your previous posts and the title you
gave this thread. My apologies if I misunderstood.
>
>>>I want the overview--the perfect
>> >information--but I also want to be able to experiment with actual
>military
>> >(tactical/operational) processes and see what might have happened if Lee
>had
>> >tried this or that. Unfortunately, wargames do not model those processes
>to
>> >my satisfaction. Maybe because what I was asking or expecting of
>wargames
>> >is impossible.
>>
>> Perhaps. You definitely can't have it both ways -- perfect
>> intelligence coupled with fog of war is, by definition, an
>> impossibility.
>
>But I didn't ask for the fog of war.
You mentioned this yourself when you said you can look at a wargame
map, see all of the terrain features, and all of the enemy's
dispositions -- and found all of that unsatisfactory. Seems to me that
you *are* asking for fog of war.
>You're assuming that fog of war would
>be an essential precondition of a game which accurately models "actual
>military (tactical/operational) processes." (By that, I meant *some* of
>those processes; not necessarily all of 'em.)
If one wants anything approaching true accuracy, fog of war is a
prerequisite -- no "assumption" at all. However, some are willing to
settle for, oh, say, 75% accuracy and are willing to "put up with"
perfect information.
>
>And maybe that assumption is right; I don't know. But maybe not. I would
>think that *some* military (tactical/operational) processes could be
>accurately modeled *without* fog of war being simulated.
I think that's correct. For example, an operational-level Civil War
game doesn't suffer too much from the players having "perfect
information" on the enemy's whereabouts. In many (not *all* cases),
ACW armies had a pretty good idea of where the enemy was located
(although knowing the enemy's *composition* is quite another matter --
i.e. McClellan relying on Pinkerton's numbers. Heh.).
>
>But . . . I don't know. Maybe it's a package deal: if any conditions of
>battle are missing or poorly simulated, the whole model fails. If that's
>so, then what I was asking was impossible.
I think the models do a pretty dang good job as far as they go, but my
point was that there's no such thing as a "perfect" simulation.
Mapboard wargames have never completely solved the problem of
"perfect" information (although some, like SPI's Cityfight, came
pretty damn close -- and did it in a clever way, too) and I don't
suppose that they ever will.
>
>> There are many intangibles in warfare that *cannot* be simulated in a
>> game. If you want to "perfectly" simulate the experience of being Lee
>> at Gettysburg, you'd have to do the following (among other things):
>>
>> 1) Wear a wool uniform in 90 degree heat; . . .
>
>Sure--but I'm not interested in simulating that experience. I don't want to
>know what it's like to be Lee at Gettysburg. I want to be *me* at
>Gettysburg. I don't want to hear the noise or experience the confusion of
>the battle either; I want to relax over a mapboard in a quiet room and sip
>tea. And I certainly don't want to have to put up with not knowing where
>the enemy is or how strong he is or how long Longstreet will take to get
>into position or what ever became of Stuart. I want to know all those
>"unknowns."
Then what's your beef?
>
>But when I order Ewell to attack Cemetery Hill, I want to do it more or less
>the way Lee did. I *don't* want to trace each of Ewell's units through a
>hex grid and stack them up in front of the Union units until I've
>accumulated 3:1 odds or better, then roll a die to see what the specific
>result is. That sort of thing is what board-game players do, not what
>military commanders do.
Ah. Well, unless you:
1) Play a computer version (like Talonsoft's Battleground: Gettysburg,
in which you can give orders to higher-level units and let your
division/brigade commanders sort out the minute details);
2) Hire someone to move your counters for you;
3) Invent a boardgame with self-moving pieces and self-rolling dice;
...I suppose you're just SOL on this one. ;-)
>
>Even in computer wargames (I haven't played Sid Meier's "Gettysburg," but
>I've read a bit about it) you usually have to get down to the nuts & bolts
>of changing formation or fixing bayonets, even though you're supposed to be
>the overall field commander. That's a lot of fun--and the game might be
>boring otherwise; but it's one of those things that makes it just a game,
>not a model of military processes.
??? I don't understand this at all. There's a "trickle-down" effect in
many board wargames, in which you work from the general to the
specific, taking on *all* the roles on the way down the chain. Let's
use SPI's Terrible Swift Sword (over several turns at the start of the
battle's second day) as an example.
1) You, as Lee, examine your forces and their placement (and this
*does* include bean-counting your strength points and having some idea
of how fast your units can move compared to the hex grid and terrain
-- otherwise you'll be one of those deranged commanders who orders the
impossible/irrational) and determine that an attack on the Union left
has some chance of success.
2) You, as Longstreet, assemble your forces (i.e. decide what
divisions will be used in the attack and how best to get them from
Point A to Point B).
3) Your next step would be as a division commander, getting your
brigades and regiments to the "jump-off" point for the attack (i.e.
physically moving counters to the area of Warfield Ridge).
4) Then, as a brigade commander, you move your individual regiments to
specific hexes to maximize their combat potential.
This is a process that all wargamers follow (at least subconsciously)
as they play. You start with a general plan and then move down the
chain in carrying out the specific details. In this manner you get the
*whole* picture, which is especially useful for those who are
interested in gaining a greater understanding of military history,
beyond just spending an afternoon or three simply playing a game.
If someone is interested in modeling the decision-making process at
the army command level, without delving into the minutiae of
brigade/regiment placement, I see two viable options (off the top of
my head):
1) Play an operational level simulation (such as AH's Roads to
Gettysburg);
2) Play a game like TSS with multiple players, each player taking a
different level of command. I did this once (I was a US corps
commander) and I rather enjoyed it. But do you know why the game
fizzled after Day One? The *army* commanders got bored with it -- once
they gave a general order, they had nothing left to do for many turns
until the results of their orders became apparent.
And, adding more fuel to the bonfire, historically Lee has been
greatly criticized in recent years for doing exactly what you're
suggesting -- giving a general order and leaving his corps and
division commanders to develop and carry out the details, rather than
taking a personal hand in the minutiae. Putting aside the fact that
"Lee bashing" has been very much in vogue for the last 10 to 15 years,
you *can* make a strong case for Lee's being at least partially to
blame for Ewell's failure to take Cemetery Hill on the first day.
>
>> >Most players like a good, clean "user interface" with
>> >the game: ideally everything right there at their fingertips, like in
>> >chess.
>> >
>> >All things considered, and as abstract as it is, I've come to consider
>chess
>> >a darned good wargame.
>>
>> Echoing James Dunnigan in the first edition of his "Complete Wargames
>> Handbook", in which he called chess one of the best simulations of
>> medieval warfare.
>
>He said that? Cool. Frankly I doubt his sincerity,
I don't. I've read several of his books and corresponded with him, and
I consider him to be a "stand up" guy.
>and also the accuracy
>of the statement.
Again, it depends on the degree to which you take it, all things being
relative. As a (former) student of medieval warfare and an avid
chessplayer, I think it's a fairly accurate statement. Chess is a
*very* abstract simulation of medieval warfare but is close enough as
far as it goes.
>But I'll stand by my "echoing" remark anyhow.
>
>> Just enjoy wargames for what they are, Patrick -- *nothing* is a
>> "perfect" simulation of a real-life event.
>
>I understand that. But just to reiterate (since others have been
>misconstruing and putting words in my mouth), I've never expected a wargame
>to be a perfect simulation. What I expected for many years was that
>wargames would faithfully model at least a few isolated processes of real
>war. I most certainly did not ever expect wargames to simulate the
>prevailing *conditions* of the battlefield--and I was surprised at first
>when some wargame designs started attempting that (e.g., the concealment
>rules in ASL or the "untried units" rules in Panzergruppe Guderian)--and I
>didn't like it much.
I don't mind those rules at all, but it makes a lot of games a bear to
play solitaire. I was pretty good at devising ways around them back in
the old SPI "simultaneous plotting" days, but some games (such as the
aforementioned Cityfight) really humbled me in this regard. It's a
pity, too -- Cityfight's a damn fine game and I can never find anyone
around who wants to play it anymore.
>
>But even when it comes to something as supposedly simple as unit movement, I
>can't even rely on the belief that if I'm able to move unit X a hundred
>meters in the game, unit X could actually have moved a hundred meters in
>real life. Movement rates are necessarily averaged out. Or in more
>sophisticated designs, movement may be variable but still weighted to an
>average.
Right -- this is the premise behind AH/Multiman's Great Campaigns of
the ACW series. You roll a die for movement (although some modifiers
will apply) -- Union troops pre-Gettysburg tend to plod along while
Jackson's troops really haul ass. But you do have a variable move
order (it's possible for the Union player to get several moves in a
row) which adds uncertainty to the equation.
>And yet, if you were to field-test movement with reenactors or
>something,
Very unreliable. Young men in fighting trim will move faster than the
typical reenactor FARB.
> it's entirely possible that the game's movement rates would turn
>out to be way off. Even that sort of test would be unreliable, however,
>because you'd have to factor in the heat of battle, Clausewitzian
>"friction," and so forth. Who really knows whether Oates's Confederates
>could have reached Little Round Top a bit more quickly? Maybe so, maybe
>not. All we know for sure is what actually happened that day (and we're
>only half clear on that). And the moment we stray from that, we're into
>educated guesswork.
Which is what wargaming is all about, after all. You can't change the
past and you can't really *know* what it was like without taking into
account *all* of the variables (which is exactly what I was driving at
in my previous post).
>
>So, if every individual process in the game is merely a loose, unreliable
>attempt to capture a corresponding military process within the game system,
>then the game as a whole is just a designer's *impression* of battle.
That's never been in doubt and has been very much on my mind in recent
years.
> The
>designer may have done a lot of detailed research, and his guesswork may be
>well educated--but in the end a lot of it is still guesswork.
Much of historical research *is* guesswork, for good or ill. As an
example that's rather near and dear to my heart (as someone who lives
a stone's throw from Antietam), the debate *still* rages 140 years
later as to McClellan's relative merits (or lack thereof) as a field
commander. Why did he not move faster after the "Lost Order" was
discovered? (One lecturer I recently listened to contends that
McClellan *did* move quite quickly, yet he's unable to explain the 18
hour gap between the time the Lost Order hit Mac's camp table and the
time the first Union units began to move out). Why did he sit on the
east bank of the Antietam for nearly two full days before attacking
Lee? (The answer to this one has recently occurred to me -- I'm
deciding whether to bother writing it up for publication). The debate
rages -- and will likely never be resolved.
Ultimately, the story of warfare is the story of *people* and their
motivations and actions. I've been trying for three years to crawl
inside McClellan's head and figure him out. I think I've done a decent
job, but the frustration of being a historian is that you can never
really *know* whether or not you're 100% correct -- Mac's dead and is
currently unavailable for answering questions. And this applies, too,
to wargame design -- you do the best you can with the available info,
but someone will always dispute your findings.
>And when he
>gets around to combining the processes and making a game of it, I suspect
>there's a lot more art than science in that. The end result is a sort of
>dynamic military fiction. Thus, playing a wargame is good entertainment,
>good competition--but probably not a good solid study of the game's
>historical subject.
That depends on the designer and the game -- one can't make a blanket
statement here. I've played games that did a wondeful job of
simulating the subject matter, while other games contain holes that
even a novice historian can drive a truck through. Most fall
in-between. Yaquinto's Battles and Leaders is a pretty good simulation
of CW combat on the brigade level, yet my major beef with the game is
that artillery is *too* powerful. Two batteries can demolish the
attack of an entire infantry brigade long before it's within rifle
range -- and that's just plain *wrong*. As an example, the artillery
duel on the third day at Gettysburg demonstrates how ineffective
long-range artillery fire was on infantry -- most of the Confederate
fire overshot the mark, while the Union fire wiped out a lot of trees.
I'm still working on ways to diminish the strength of artillery in
B&L.
And other games are just plain screwy. Rebel Yell comes to mind here
-- it tries to be the ASL of CW games. The individual parts of the
rules seem to work OK individually, but when combined you get a style
of warfare that seems closer to medieval than ACW.
IMHO, SPI's old regimental-level games (TSS, etc.) hit closest to the
mark, but even there you get a lot of criticisms from hard-core
historians -- that the morale rules (for example) don't reflect the
realities of the situation. But that presupposes that we *do* know
what the realities were -- debates still rage (see the McClellan
example above).
Bottom line: a good designer will do his best to depict the realities
of the situation *as they are known to him*, but ongiong historical
research changes the picture -- what's preceived as a good ACW game in
the 1970's might be seen as badly deficient in the 2000's as new
information comes to light. But the wheel may turn full-circle and
such a game may again be seen as quite accurate as historians'
opinions change once again over time.
>
>But again, I never expected the *whole* to be a perfect simulation. When I
>first played Waterloo, I thought the game's designer was saying to me, in
>effect, "Now, in the game you're going to have a lot more information than
>Napoleon did; you'll get a complete overview of the field and get to see all
>the enemy units. And of course you'll have to just imagine all the
>battlefield conditions which cannot be portrayed in the game. But what you
>*will* get to do is govern the movement and actions an exact, detailed,
>scientifically accurate, scaled-down replicas of Napoleon's infantry,
>artillery, and cavalry. As you move these units and they clash in combat on
>the board, you'll know exactly how these units moved and fought in 1815--how
>far and fast they could move, how much punch they packed, and how the
>various unit types interacted, as well as the effect of terrain on them.
>Your French army will behave physically just like its historical
>counterpart, except on a smaller scale." I was perfectly content with that.
Which is sad, IMHO -- I also study the Napoleonic Wars (as an adjuct
to my ACW research) and I've always found Waterloo to be a pretty
unsatisfying game.
>I never objected to the "unrealistic perfect-information overview" or the
>game's failure to simulate battlefield conditions including limited
>intelligence and so forth. As long as just a few basic processes--movement
>and combat, for instance--were 100 percent accurate and reliable, I was
>happy as a lark.
>
>But it wasn't so. Not a single process in the game jibes irrefutably with a
>corresponding historical process.
NOTHING does -- that's the point. There is NO single commanding
overriding view of ANY historical process -- historians will bicker
about anything at the drop of a hat. You should hear the discussions
at the local CW Roundtable when a staunch "McClellanite" is the
lecturer (and we seem to get a lot of those, for some reason).
>Every rule and feature in the game is
>suspect, debatable, unreliable.
As it should be. As should be the case with any history *book* you
read. I'm currently reading three books by three separate authors on
battle tactics of the CW, and they disagree on *many* points. The best
one can do is evaluate them, compare what they say to the
*undisputable* historical realities (battle results, casualty lists,
ranges at which the various arms opened fire, the terrain factors,
etc. etc. etc.), and draw your own conclusions -- then read many more
sources, REREAD the three books, and see if/how your judgements
change. "The judgement of history" is more than just a cliché -- it's
what each of us must exercise when reading/replaying/"doing" (such as
visting battlefields) history.
And each of us must do this in regard to evaluating wargames. You
evidently don't find much of value in them beyond the enjoyment of
playing them (and you don't seem to find much of that in them either).
I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I find a well-done, accurate (as
far as the designer can make it in light of present-day knowledge --
see above) wargame to be a valuable learning tool as well as a fun way
to pass a few hours.
>The game Waterloo is *about* the battle of
>Waterloo only inasmuch as I suspend my disbelief and suppose it to be so.
Actually, it's about the *campaign*, but I won't quibble. ;-)
>
>That's what I finally realized that day while playing ASL. Despite all the
>detail, it'd be hard to put together a watertight argument that ASL is a
>better or more realistic or accurate simulation of war than is chess. It'd
>be sort of like arguing that Rembrandt's water lilies are far more
>true-to-life than Monet's. It all depends on how you look at it. I finally
>decided that ASL is a whole lot more similar to chess than to WWII combat.
To which I would strongly disagree, but that's what makes history
*fun*. ;-)
>And the corollary to that is that it's a toss-up or matter of taste as to
>whether chess or ASL is the better wargame.
What I can say is that I'd rather spend 20 hours playing chess than 20
hours reading the rules to ASL, but that's a whole other can of worms.
;-)
pulgao
<Patrick...@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>That's true, but it involves some commonly accepted presuppositions. Among
>them: (1) there is such a thing as objective physical reality, (2) human
>perception and scientific experimentation are reliable interfaces with that
>objective physical reality, and (3) the human mind is capable of completely
>and accurately modeling (i.e., comprehending or understanding) at least some
>perceived events.
So is Paris still there, even though you can't see it? Hell, Patrick,
I don't even know if YOU exist -- you might just be a symptom of my
oncoming dementia. ;-)
That's an old debate from Philosophy 101, can't be conclusively
"proven", and one reason why I didn't become a philosophy major
(despite the fact that I find the subject interesting).
Define "reality" and then we'll talk about ways that people model it.
Otherwise we're arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of
a pin and the whole discussion is just the proverbial "smoke and
mirrors".
pulgao
*Thank you*, Jason, for saying much more clearly and succinctly what I
was unable to state clearly but was desperately *trying * to say.
(And I write for part of my living -- can you believe *that* sh*t??
Geeze...)
pulgao
<Patrick...@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>Having repeated that, though, I still reserve the right to personally
>disagree with the common view of battles and simulations. But considering
>the disgust my views seem to generate around here, I suppose it'd be wiser
>to keep them to myself. (Yeah, sure--I've said that before. Hasn't ever
>kept my foot out of my mouth for very long.)
I wouldn't call it "disgust" at all, unless you *perceive* (heh) a
disagreement with your views as "disgust". So what's the "reality"
here? Can we determine it? ;-)
Your basic argument is, indeed, philosophical. As I said in a previous
post, *much* depends on how the individual evaluates history. You've
taken it a step further by saying that it depends on how the
individual evaluates "objective reality". And since your subthesis
seems to be that there *is* no "objective reality" (in your opinion)
that one can hang a simulation on, there doesn't seem to be much room
here for debate with you. ;-)
-- Steve "Much more amused than disgusted" Lopez
pulgao
<cvl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I submit this discussion has been ignoring a class of players such as
>myself (and I admit the possibility that I am its only member) who look
>at board wargames primarily as ->games<-, contests of strategy with a
>war theme. It doesn't matter to me whether or not a D-Day invasion of
>The Netherlands was actually possible or feasible on June 6, 1944; if
>the rules of the game allow it then I consider it an option.
Exactly. It *was* possible (though not likely to succeed, due to the
difficulties of the terrain, among other factors) -- the beauty of
such a game design is that these things are often *transparent* to the
player. You're given an option that was also available to be
considered IRL -- it's up to you whether or not to exercise it. When
you later think about the game you've played, you realize that you
evaluated the options and came to a conclusion -- so you're exploring
the "why's" of history, not just the "when's" and "what's". That's
*precisely* why I find them to be valuable learning tools -- they
force me to think about *why* things happened as they did.
I was also
>able to accept the PanzerBush aspect of PanzerBlitz as being part of the
>game and therefore an aspect of play that had to be taken into account.
Yeah, but that sucked. ;-) The addition of opportunity fire to Panzer
Leader made it a much better (although far from perfect) system for
modelling the realities of WWII combat.
>
>The key question for me is, "Is the game playable?" As more and more
>details are added to a simulation I feel it becomes less playable (and
>if I understand the meaning of the term, more fiddly). My own attention
>span prohibits me from enjoying a game in which each move takes four
>hours to make, for example because it incorporates the possibility that
>troop carriers will break down, horses will suffer heart attacks, guns
>will jam, individual soldiers will have diarrhea, etc. at inopportune
>times.
This stuff *can* be accounted for in the movement/combat rules, if the
designer wants to get into all the mathematical nitty-gritty required.
Keep in mind, too, that ASL is definitely a product of its time --
back when most wargamers were young and had plenty of time to spend on
gaming. We *loved* "fiddly" rules back in those days. These days
(although I still love the original SL), I'd rather play Battle Cry
with my kids than play SL -- I just don't have the time anymore.
>
>There is another aspect of wargames that greatly affects my enjoyment of
>playing them: as more random elements are introduced the less important
>strategy becomes. I will stipulate that in a real battle luck may play
>a major role, but in a strategy game I would like strategy to dominate
>luck. My only complaint with The Russian Campaign is the effect of the
>randomly determined weather on turns 3 and 4. Certainly weather was a
>major factor in the actual campaign, but when I simulate Operation
>Barbarosa I am not looking to recreate the frustration German commanders
>felt (or Russian commanders would have felt) when the weather eliminates
>my chances for victory regardless of how well I play before or after
>those critical turns.
Ah, but the beauty here is that when you *overcome* these random
unforseen elements and succeed in your plans despite what Mother
Nature throws in your way, it's *very* satisfying. And IRL commanders
had to take such unforseen elements into account when devising their
plans -- so it does factor into your strategic discussion. IMHO, it
makes for a richer gaming experience.
pulgao
wrote:
And this is where Patrick confuses the hell out of me. In one post, he
argues that there is no objective reality, while in another he takes
issue with someone who brings the same view to the table. I'm starting
to think that either:
a) he's mildly schizophrenic;
or b) he likes arguing for the sake of the argument.
All right, I'll admit it -- I'm baffled now...
Patrick Carroll
> You presuppose that we have all been lying to ourselves in the same way
you
> did.
No, I don't. If you look back a couple posts, what I said was:
<<But whether they think about it or not, it has *everything* to do with the
simulation element of board games. If there's no objective physical reality
to simulate, you don't get a simulation. If there is an objective physical
reality but perceptions of it are all hopelessly limited or flawed, you get
a hopelessly limited or flawed simulation. And even if there's an objective
physical reality and perceptions of it are reliable, but the human mind is
incapable of processing the data into comprehensible, understandable
information, you still can't make a true simulation.>>
Pretty fundamental stuff if you ask me. It has nothing to do with you or
anyone else "lying to yourself" in the same way I once did. It has to do
with most everybody, including me, making suppositions that may prove false
(and which I believe do prove false upon close consideration).
> You are not some prophet leading us away from a false god here.
That's true, I should hope! Anyhow, I'm sorry if I've come across that way
to anybody. It wasn't my intent.
> Wargaming is an enjoyable hobby where you can learn something of history &
> military strategy along the way.
Yes, I agree. Why do some folks persist in thinking I'd disagree with that?
Just because I happen to have been disillusioned about ASL once upon a time,
it doesn't mean I'm on some kind of mission to lambast the whole wargaming
community or denigrate wargames in general. Many people love wargames, and
I think that's great! More power to them. Sometimes I sincerely wish I
could fold open a mapboard and get into a good wargame the way I used to.
If I could, I'd do it. It just doesn't work for me anymore. But that
doesn't mean it can't work for you or the next guy.
When I'm discussing the fundamental questions of real battle and how it can
be simulated in board-game form, I'm focused just on those questions. I'm
not prepared to jump from there to conclusions about the wargaming hobby.
To me they're two different (though somewhat related) topics.
> Very few people have brought the
> expectations to the table that you have.
I doubt that. My impression--having played wargames with lots of people and
even run a wargaming club once, long ago--is that the expectations I came to
the table with weren't much different from anyone else's. The only
difference is that most other wargamers I've known have been content to
lighten up and shrug off their little worries, and continue to enjoy the
games as good fun entertainment with a smidgen of military-history education
thrown into the mix. I, OTOH, have sometimes focused intensely on the
worries, following through to a philosophical level (or even to what some
would call a metaphysical level). I also happen to like articulating such
deep-level concerns, so I do.
Quite honestly, if you ask why I stopped playing ASL, and I'm looking you in
the eye and answering as one wargamer to another in plain English, I'd just
say, "Oh, I dunno. I think it just got too complicated for my taste. I got
tired of looking up rules to refresh my memory, so I turned to simpler
games."
On one level, that's an honest and complete answer. It had nothing to do
with the game being unrealistic; it's probably as realistic as any other
wargame, and I'm sure I picked up a lot of valid WWII information and
tactics and such from it too. But it got to where all the work I was
putting into learning and playing that game outweighed the payoff, both in
terms of entertainment and in terms of education. And that was too bad,
because actually it was the most exciting wargame I'd played in some
twenty-odd years, and I really loved that about it.
On *one* level that'd be an honest answer. And that's the level r.g.b.ers
seem to prefer sticking to. But I'm weird that way: if I see a deeper
level (and often I don't, because I can be pretty dense sometimes), I just
have to explore it. Even if it means raising questions like How accurate a
simulation is ASL, anyway? Or To what degree did the simulational aspect of
ASL factor into my enjoyment of the game? Or Given the questionability of
simulating any physical-world event (or even the question of whether
physical-world events are real), is ASL really any more true-to-life than,
say, checkers? Such questions may seem bizarre to some, but they interest
me because I always feel I'm getting closer to the root of a situation. And
I figure that if I ever do hit upon the Truth, maybe I'll finally be able to
answer the eternal question Which game is the best one for me? Then I'll be
able to dedicate myself to that game and play happily ever after.
I guess that's not really how life works. I have to admit that all my
philosophizing has probably not brought me an inch closer to whatever it is
I'm after. Still, it's a habit of mine and also something I enjoy. I would
think that occasionally delving into philosophical questions behind games &
gamers might be interesting to some others in the hobby as well. Clearly,
though, it's not everyone's cup of tea.
--Patrick
Patrick Carroll
"pulgao" <baays...@md.net> wrote :
> That seems strongly implied by your previous posts and the title you
> gave this thread. My apologies if I misunderstood.
No apology needed--but this isn't my thread! Someone else started it & just
happened to mention my name & refer to one of my posts.
> >But I didn't ask for the fog of war.
>
> You mentioned this yourself when you said you can look at a wargame
> map, see all of the terrain features, and all of the enemy's
> dispositions -- and found all of that unsatisfactory. Seems to me that
> you *are* asking for fog of war.
That wasn't me. It was the guy who started this thread. He was speculating
about what it might have been that soured me on wargames.
> >> Echoing James Dunnigan in the first edition of his "Complete Wargames
> >> Handbook", in which he called chess one of the best simulations of
> >> medieval warfare.
> >
> >He said that? Cool. Frankly I doubt his sincerity,
>
> I don't. I've read several of his books and corresponded with him, and
> I consider him to be a "stand up" guy.
Probably so. It's just that the remark smacks of an offhanded way of tying
wargames in with chess, which often has an ulterior motive: to elevate
board wargaming in the public's eye, to something closer to the exalted
position chess has long enjoyed. For years I shared the desire to so
elevate wargaming, so that's the first thing I think of when I hear a
statement like that.
> >and also the accuracy
> >of the statement.
>
> Again, it depends on the degree to which you take it, all things being
> relative. As a (former) student of medieval warfare and an avid
> chessplayer, I think it's a fairly accurate statement. Chess is a
> *very* abstract simulation of medieval warfare but is close enough as
> far as it goes.
But "one of the *best* simulations of medieval warfare"? Maybe that can
pass, considering how few medieval board wargames there were. Come to think
of it, I don't remember ever playing one--though I seem to recall SPI
published a few. And lots of folks were into medieval miniatures (including
Chainmail, the predecessor of D&D).
It's really the adjective "medieval" that bothers me. As far as I can see,
chess is just as good a simulation of ancient, horse & musket, or modern
warfare. As abstract as it is, one just has to switch what the various
pieces represent (though pawns will probably always be "grunt" infantry).
> >So, if every individual process in the game is merely a loose, unreliable
> >attempt to capture a corresponding military process within the game
system,
> >then the game as a whole is just a designer's *impression* of battle.
>
> That's never been in doubt and has been very much on my mind in recent
> years.
So . . . it's never been in doubt that there will always be doubt? Is that
like "the only constant thing in the universe is change"?
I guess you've hit upon my chief worry right there: I've always been
uncomfortable with doubt and so sought to pin things down once & for all.
It's futile, I guess, but it's what I do and why I'm often dissatisfied.
> Much of historical research *is* guesswork, for good or ill. As an
> example that's rather near and dear to my heart (as someone who lives
> a stone's throw from Antietam), the debate *still* rages 140 years
> later as to McClellan's relative merits (or lack thereof) as a field
> commander. . . .
I'd like to swap messages on that subject sometime, if you're interested
(E-mail me). I've read many times about how slow & overly cautious Little
Mac was--but somehow I can't shake the impression that he got an unfair rep
in the history books. Joe Johnston too--though I'm beginning to doubt my
own longstanding support of his oft-denigrated actions.
> Bottom line: a good designer will do his best to depict the realities
> of the situation *as they are known to him*, but ongiong historical
> research changes the picture -- what's preceived as a good ACW game in
> the 1970's might be seen as badly deficient in the 2000's as new
> information comes to light. But the wheel may turn full-circle and
> such a game may again be seen as quite accurate as historians'
> opinions change once again over time.
I'm sure that's true. It just doesn't set well with me, because as I said,
I have a problem being very accepting of doubt. When I repeatedly encounter
it, after a while I turn to something like chess or mathematics as
refreshingly stable (please don't blow my illusions about those things; deep
down, I know they're no more fixed or permanent than anything else).
> Which is sad, IMHO -- I also study the Napoleonic Wars (as an adjuct
> to my ACW research) and I've always found Waterloo to be a pretty
> unsatisfying game.
Well, it is, of course--especially in hindsight. But in the summer of '68
it was the very first wargame I ever played. It was so much more detailed
than Risk or Stratego that I was pretty impressed. Of course I was only
thirteen.
But what I said about Waterloo, I could just as well say about Napoleon's
Last Battles, 1809, or any other Napoleonic game I've played.
> >But it wasn't so. Not a single process in the game jibes irrefutably
with a
> >corresponding historical process.
. . .
> >Every rule and feature in the game is
> >suspect, debatable, unreliable.
>
> As it should be. As should be the case with any history *book* you
> read. . . .
Now, there you hit upon another sore point for me. You're right, of course;
I can't argue with you. But the sad fact is, I always expected wargames to
be *better* than books (as the AH ads used to say). And by that I meant a
wargame should be a definitive model of the battle or campaign it's based
on. A scaled-down replica of that battle or campaign. Just as if, in the
midst of the battle of Chancellorsville, Hooker got hit on the head and
drifted into a dream where he could see the whole battlefield laid out
before him like a chessboard, and could see just what he needed to do in
order to thwart Jackson's flank march and save the day. In such a game, the
players ought to be able to see everything just as it actually was and be
able to experiment with all kinds of what-ifs, certain that those what-ifs
really could have happened.
Yes, that's just a fantasy of mine. But it's the fantasy that got me into
wargaming and gave me a lot of enjoyment for many years. And it was when I
finally realized that it was just a hopeless fantasy that I began to lose
interest in wargames.
> What I can say is that I'd rather spend 20 hours playing chess than 20
> hours reading the rules to ASL, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Actually, I think it's the same can of worms. In plain English, without all
the philosophical inquiries I've been tossing in, that's pretty much why I
stopped playing ASL. But being the complicated kind of guy I am, I couldn't
stop there. I had to justify my departure from ASL--and to do that to my
satisfaction, I had to inquire into its quality as a simulation, and into
the very nature of simulations, and right down to fundamental questions of
ontology. After doing all that, I'm now able to say to myself, "Ah, yes, of
course. Wargames never were what I supposed, and never could be. Therefore
I was unwittingly wasting years in that hobby, and I can now be glad to be
free of it."
On another level, I can stand back and laugh at myself for going through
that process of justification. But still, I find it very difficult to
accept anything "warts and all," as you seem more than able and willing to
do. I have to keep delving deeper or looking far afield, in search of
something clean, reliable, and perfect. I have a nagging suspicion that
perfection is really just another illusion; but until that bubble bursts,
it's something that appeals to me--probably because it promises to be an
antidote for doubt and constant revision.
I was an English major (and before that, History), so I know something about
doubt & constant revision. But in my school years I had a sneaking
admiration for math and science teachers, who always seemed able to reduce
everything to crisp black and white. And philosophy teachers, who seemed on
the verge of discovering something so fundamentally true as to magically
bring order out of all the chaos in the world.
So, in a nutshell, I guess when I started wargaming all those years ago, I
assumed game designers had scientifically reduced real war (or at least
parts of it) to something as clean and comprehensible as chess. I wanted in
on that! Later, as it became clear that each game was just a
crystallization of one designer's *impressions* of how it might have been,
wargames began to be less and less appealing. Now, for the time being, I'm
happy enough with chess itself. I don't know if it simulates anything, but
at least it's a good, clean, challenging, interesting game--and despite all
the variants, its rules and components are unlikely to change in my
lifetime. So, it's something relatively permanent--as much a Rock of
Gibraltar as anything in the gaming world.
'Nuff rambling.
--Patrick
Rich Shipley
> I figure that if I ever do hit upon the Truth, maybe I'll finally be able
to
> answer the eternal question Which game is the best one for me?
You don't believe in objective reality, but still believe in absolute truth?
> I would
> think that occasionally delving into philosophical questions behind games
&
> gamers might be interesting to some others in the hobby as well. Clearly,
> though, it's not everyone's cup of tea.
I don't have a problem with that, but a statement such as this:
>> If you never find out the truth, you're absolutely right. But if you
ever
>> catch a glimmer of the truth, believe me, it'll seriously affect your
>> appreciation of the game--just as it drastically affected mine.
is just annoying. It assumes that others had the same expectations you did.
It also is arrogant in stating that you have glimpsed some great truth that
others are blind to. Isn't it equally possible that others already
understand the truth you suddenly discovered? Maybe that is why they can
accept that simulations are inherently imperfect and enjoy them anyway. I
like Richard Berg's line (hopefully I'm close): "We make this stuff up, you
can too!"
Rich
David desJardins
> The questions I raised are at the very foundation of historiography.
> Historiography is at the root of history (determining the reliability and
> applicability of histories--i.e., how close history comes to truth).
This is all false. Historians don't spend any time worrying about
whether France really exists, or is just a delusion in our minds, any
more than wargamers do. It's not actually important to the subject of
history. (It is, of course, important to the subject of philosophy.)
Furthermore, all of your objections to wargames make no sense under your
new argument, either. What difference does it make whether a wargame
accurately reflects the decisions that Patton and Rommel had to make,
and the information available to them at the time, if neither Patton nor
Rommel ever existed, nor had any thoughts, nor made any decisions?
What is it that *you* would have a wargame "simulate", if it's only
supposed to simulate things that "really exist", and we don't have any
idea what, if anything, really exists?
Maybe ASL is the truth, and our historical knowledge of WW2 is the
illusion. Maybe the outcome of WW2 was really determined by aliens
rolling dice, and we're the counters they moved around. Does this
"possibility" change, in any way, the interest or value of ASL to any of
us? Of course not.
David desJardins
pulgao
<Patrick...@mn.rr.com> wrote:
>Probably so. It's just that the remark smacks of an offhanded way of tying
>wargames in with chess, which often has an ulterior motive: to elevate
>board wargaming in the public's eye, to something closer to the exalted
>position chess has long enjoyed. For years I shared the desire to so
>elevate wargaming, so that's the first thing I think of when I hear a
>statement like that.
Here's the quote, from page 141 of the first edition (1980) of
Dunnigan's "The Complete Wargames Handbook", near the start of the
chapter titled "History of Wargaming":
"Chess is one of the oldest surviving ancient wargames. Games similar
to chess go back thousands of years.
"Chess is also one of the more accurate wargames for the period it
covers (the pre-gunpowder period).
"Chess is a highly stylized game. It is always set up the same way,
the playing pieces and the playing board are always the same. The
board is quite simple. Each of the pieces has clearly defined
capabilities and starting positions, much like the soldiers in ancient
warfare (see Part 4). Given that ancient armies were so unwieldy and
communications so poor, it is easy to see why each player in chess is
allowed to move only one piece per turn. Because the armies were so
hard to control, the battles were generally fought on relatively flat,
featureless ground..."
And I'll leave it to you to interpret the intent and context, though
they seem pretty straightforward.
>
>> >and also the accuracy
>> >of the statement.
>>
>> Again, it depends on the degree to which you take it, all things being
>> relative. As a (former) student of medieval warfare and an avid
>> chessplayer, I think it's a fairly accurate statement. Chess is a
>> *very* abstract simulation of medieval warfare but is close enough as
>> far as it goes.
>
>But "one of the *best* simulations of medieval warfare"?
That was a misquoting of Dunnigan on my part, although one can put
that spin on it.
>Maybe that can
>pass, considering how few medieval board wargames there were. Come to think
>of it, I don't remember ever playing one--though I seem to recall SPI
>published a few.
Four Great Medieval Battles springs to mind -- and it was about as
interesting as watching paint dry.
>And lots of folks were into medieval miniatures (including
>Chainmail, the predecessor of D&D).
Played it, still have it, and it too is like watching paint dry.
Actually, it's just me -- while I still like reading about
ancient/medieval warfare, I don't find games on it all that engaging
anymore (with the possible exception of Phalanx, a sentimental
favorite, as I got it as a present for my 15th birthday).
>
>It's really the adjective "medieval" that bothers me. As far as I can see,
>chess is just as good a simulation of ancient, horse & musket, or modern
>warfare. As abstract as it is, one just has to switch what the various
>pieces represent (though pawns will probably always be "grunt" infantry).
We had a thread on this over in rec.games.chess.misc a while back --
"If you could rename the pieces to represent modern military units,
what would you name them?" Not a terribly fascinating thread, and
somewhat short-lived, but fun nonetheless.
>
>> >So, if every individual process in the game is merely a loose, unreliable
>> >attempt to capture a corresponding military process within the game
>system,
>> >then the game as a whole is just a designer's *impression* of battle.
>>
>> That's never been in doubt and has been very much on my mind in recent
>> years.
>
>So . . . it's never been in doubt that there will always be doubt?
Noooooooooo, what I'm saying is that the fact that a game is at least
partially based on the designer's interpretation has never been in
doubt. Books are the same way -- many historical books are slanted
toward the author's interpretation of events, and sometimes bizarrely
so. "Attack and Die" by McWhiney and Jamieson (I think? The book's
upstairs at the moment) is a very good interpretation of Civil War
tactics -- until you reach the last chapter, when the authors go into
some odd rambling screed about how the Southern forces were prone to
launch suicidal frontal attacks because of their "Celtic heritage".
What the...?
So the trick is to play/read with a very critical eye and never take
anything at face value without putting some level of thought into it.
And even if a game is totally screwed historically, it can still be a
heck of a lot of fun to play, so one sometimes takes a game for what
it is.
> Is that
>like "the only constant thing in the universe is change"?
>
>I guess you've hit upon my chief worry right there: I've always been
>uncomfortable with doubt and so sought to pin things down once & for all.
Good luck. ;-)
>It's futile, I guess, but it's what I do and why I'm often dissatisfied.
Drink more. ;-)
>
>> Much of historical research *is* guesswork, for good or ill. As an
>> example that's rather near and dear to my heart (as someone who lives
>> a stone's throw from Antietam), the debate *still* rages 140 years
>> later as to McClellan's relative merits (or lack thereof) as a field
>> commander. . . .
>
>I'd like to swap messages on that subject sometime, if you're interested
>(E-mail me).
I'll seriously consider that. I'm butt deep in McClellan arguments
now, but when some of them wind down, I just might take you up on
that.
> I've read many times about how slow & overly cautious Little
>Mac was--but somehow I can't shake the impression that he got an unfair rep
>in the history books.
Some may have been unfair, but IMHO most of it was spot on and well
deserved.
> Joe Johnston too--though I'm beginning to doubt my
>own longstanding support of his oft-denigrated actions.
Again, we differ -- the more I read about him, the more I think he got
a bad rap, both during the war and immediately afterwards (mostly
generated by that ol' devil, the Richmond press).
>
>
>> Bottom line: a good designer will do his best to depict the realities
>> of the situation *as they are known to him*, but ongiong historical
>> research changes the picture -- what's preceived as a good ACW game in
>> the 1970's might be seen as badly deficient in the 2000's as new
>> information comes to light. But the wheel may turn full-circle and
>> such a game may again be seen as quite accurate as historians'
>> opinions change once again over time.
>
>I'm sure that's true. It just doesn't set well with me, because as I said,
>I have a problem being very accepting of doubt. When I repeatedly encounter
>it, after a while I turn to something like chess or mathematics as
>refreshingly stable (please don't blow my illusions about those things; deep
>down, I know they're no more fixed or permanent than anything else).
Hee. True enough. I steer well clear of math, but you sometimes come
across some furious debates in the chess world -- luckily it's just
chess and not something important like nuclear physics; otherwise we'd
all be in trouble.
>> As it should be. As should be the case with any history *book* you
>> read. . . .
>
>Now, there you hit upon another sore point for me. You're right, of course;
>I can't argue with you. But the sad fact is, I always expected wargames to
>be *better* than books (as the AH ads used to say).
Not better, just different, more "hands on", which (as I said in a
prior post) can be very educational.
>And by that I meant a
>wargame should be a definitive model of the battle or campaign it's based
>on. A scaled-down replica of that battle or campaign.
IMHO, many are -- as best as the designers can make them with
present-day knowledge and taking their own perceptions/biases into
account.
>Just as if, in the
>midst of the battle of Chancellorsville, Hooker got hit on the head
He did -- hard. ;-)
>and
>drifted into a dream where he could see the whole battlefield laid out
>before him like a chessboard, and could see just what he needed to do in
>order to thwart Jackson's flank march and save the day.
One thing we don't know is what he saw after that pillar whacked him
in the head, but I'm dead certain it wasn't *that*. ;-)
> In such a game, the
>players ought to be able to see everything just as it actually was and be
>able to experiment with all kinds of what-ifs, certain that those what-ifs
>really could have happened.
Again, this is my personal perception, but if a game's mechanics,
maps, unit strengths, and combat tables agree with what my individual
study has shown to be factual, then I'm reasonably certain that the
what-ifs could have happened. But what I find more valuable in playing
wargames is the greater understanding I receive of why what happened
actually did happen, rather than musing about the what-ifs. As always,
YMMV.
>
>Yes, that's just a fantasy of mine. But it's the fantasy that got me into
>wargaming and gave me a lot of enjoyment for many years. And it was when I
>finally realized that it was just a hopeless fantasy that I began to lose
>interest in wargames.
I'm truly sorry you feel that way. As I indicated before, one can't
totally recreate what previously happened (and would be foolish to
try) or set up an identical situation to look at what-ifs (I can't be
a critically ill R.E. Lee, suffering through 90 degree heat, expected
to constantly make life-and-death decisions). But wargaming gives us
the *chance* to create as accurate a mathematical model as possible to
explore options and/or increase our understanding of what really did
happen. I can't see how using them as such a tool is a bad thing,
provided we do it with our eyes open and with some degree of
skepticism while not rejecting the whole exercise out of hand.
>
>
>> What I can say is that I'd rather spend 20 hours playing chess than 20
>> hours reading the rules to ASL, but that's a whole other can of worms.
>
>Actually, I think it's the same can of worms. In plain English, without all
>the philosophical inquiries I've been tossing in, that's pretty much why I
>stopped playing ASL. But being the complicated kind of guy I am, I couldn't
>stop there. I had to justify my departure from ASL--and to do that to my
>satisfaction, I had to inquire into its quality as a simulation, and into
>the very nature of simulations, and right down to fundamental questions of
>ontology. After doing all that, I'm now able to say to myself, "Ah, yes, of
>course. Wargames never were what I supposed, and never could be. Therefore
>I was unwittingly wasting years in that hobby, and I can now be glad to be
>free of it."
Damn, you *are* a complicated guy. My justification came when I got
too busy earning a living -- and all I said was "Man, I just don't
have *time* for this anymore". :-)
>
>On another level, I can stand back and laugh at myself for going through
>that process of justification. But still, I find it very difficult to
>accept anything "warts and all," as you seem more than able and willing to
>do. I have to keep delving deeper or looking far afield, in search of
>something clean, reliable, and perfect. I have a nagging suspicion that
>perfection is really just another illusion; but until that bubble bursts,
>it's something that appeals to me--probably because it promises to be an
>antidote for doubt and constant revision.
It'll be cool for you if you find it, but "warts and all" seems to be
the natural state of all things in life. Life *is* compromise, after
all, and sometimes we just do the best we can with what we have,
imperfect though those things may be.
>
>I was an English major (and before that, History), so I know something about
>doubt & constant revision. But in my school years I had a sneaking
>admiration for math and science teachers, who always seemed able to reduce
>everything to crisp black and white. And philosophy teachers, who seemed on
>the verge of discovering something so fundamentally true as to magically
>bring order out of all the chaos in the world.
That's a hustle. Everytime I had one of those teachers, they always
reminded me of those guys who want you to pick which shell the pea is
under. The teachers I admired were the ones who would say "I don't
know" once in a while.
>
>So, in a nutshell, I guess when I started wargaming all those years ago, I
>assumed game designers had scientifically reduced real war (or at least
>parts of it) to something as clean and comprehensible as chess.
But is chess all that clean and comprehensible, really? When Mikhail
Tal occasionally sacked a Knight just for the hell of it, totally
baffling his opponent, and won the game through little more than smoke
and mirrors, is this really all that clean and comprehensible? How
about Frank Marshall's legendary "swindles"? Sorry, Patrick, but
there's no more objective "truth" in chess than there is in anything
else. While there's a great deal of pleasure to be had in a
well-contructed plan leading to mate, I still find a good hustle to be
more fun (I once played a postal game in which my opponent had me dead
to rights, but I sacked a Knight [unsoundly] and totally befuddled the
guy so badly that I won the game. I *treasure* that one -- I want the
moves carved on my tombstone).
> I wanted in
>on that! Later, as it became clear that each game was just a
>crystallization of one designer's *impressions* of how it might have been,
>wargames began to be less and less appealing. Now, for the time being, I'm
>happy enough with chess itself. I don't know if it simulates anything, but
>at least it's a good, clean, challenging, interesting game--and despite all
>the variants, its rules and components are unlikely to change in my
>lifetime.
Whoops! Pssst -- attention, lurkers! Don't tell Patrick about Shuffle
Chess (a.k.a. Fischerrandom). It's catching on *very* quickly.
The Midnight Skulker
> >Netherlands was actually possible or feasible on June 6, 1944; if
> >the rules of the game allow it then I consider it an option.
>
> Exactly. It *was* possible (though not likely to succeed, due to the
> difficulties of the terrain, among other factors) -- the beauty of
> such a game design is that these things are often *transparent* to the
> player. You're given an option that was also available to be
> considered IRL -- it's up to you whether or not to exercise it. When
> you later think about the game you've played, you realize that you
> evaluated the options and came to a conclusion -- so you're exploring
> the "why's" of history, not just the "when's" and "what's". That's
> *precisely* why I find them to be valuable learning tools -- they
> force me to think about *why* things happened as they did.
A good point, but what if a Dutch invasion does succeed against a
competent defense, and without incredibly favorable die rolls? I would
expect a "realist" to cry, "Foul! That couldn't have happened. This
game is garbage," whereas I would conclude that invading The Netherlands
->in this game<- was the prefered strategy. Of course I might still
think the game is garbage if that prefered strategy all but guaranteed
an Allied victory or effectively reduced the game to a single critical
battle that the Allies are 5:1 favorites to win, but my evaluation
would be based on play balance and strategy vs. luck considerations
rather than an evaluation of how closely the best game strategy matched
the best real life strategy. I'm throwing no stones here, merely noting
that different people use different criteria for judging games.
> >I was also able to accept the PanzerBush aspect of PanzerBlitz as
> >being part of the game and therefore an aspect of play that had to be
> >taken into account.
>
> Yeah, but that sucked. ;-) The addition of opportunity fire to Panzer
> Leader made it a much better (although far from perfect) system for
> modelling the realities of WWII combat.
Again, different strokes. (This is a recording.) The addition of
opportunity fire (and the modification to the spotting rules and the
addition of indirect fire as a standard) certainly made Panzer Leader
play differently than its sister game (and I have to admit that indirect
fire in particular seemed to be a more realistic model than in
PanzerBlitz, so you see I'm not completely blind to that factor), but I
can't say I favor PL over PB because its model is closer to real life.
They are both strategy games to me.
> >The key question for me is, "Is the game playable?" As more and more
> >details are added to a simulation I feel it becomes less playable
> >(and if I understand the meaning of the term, more fiddly). My own
> >attention span prohibits me from enjoying a game in which each move
> >takes four hours to make, for example because it incorporates the
> >possibility that troop carriers will break down, horses will suffer
> >heart attacks, guns will jam, individual soldiers will have diarrhea,
> >etc. at inopportune times.
>
> This stuff *can* be accounted for in the movement/combat rules, if the
> designer wants to get into all the mathematical nitty-gritty required.
And if the players are willing to devote the extra time to deal with it,
which was my point. I personally will trade realism of the above type
for playability.
> Keep in mind, too, that ASL is definitely a product of its time --
> back when most wargamers were young and had plenty of time to spend on
> gaming. We *loved* "fiddly" rules back in those days. These days
> (although I still love the original SL), I'd rather play Battle Cry
> with my kids than play SL -- I just don't have the time anymore.
Ah, but think of what's in store for us in our Golden Years with our
grandkids -- if we can keep the little twerps from getting hooked on
CCGs, RPGs, and computer games.
> >There is another aspect of wargames that greatly affects my enjoyment
> >of playing them: as more random elements are introduced the less
> >important strategy becomes. I will stipulate that in a real battle
> >luck may play a major role, but in a strategy game I would like
> >strategy to dominate luck. My only complaint with The Russian
> >Campaign is the effect of the randomly determined weather on turns 3
> >and 4. Certainly weather was a major factor in the actual campaign,
> >but when I simulate Operation Barbarosa I am not looking to recreate
> >the frustration German commanders felt (or Russian commanders would
> >have felt) when the weather eliminates my chances for victory
> >regardless of how well I play before or after those critical turns.
>
> Ah, but the beauty here is that when you *overcome* these random
> unforseen elements and succeed in your plans despite what Mother
> Nature throws in your way, it's *very* satisfying.
True, but I have yet to see the Germans prevail against an early Russian
winter, or the Russians prevail against a late one.
> And IRL commanders had to take such unforseen elements into account
> when devising their plans -- so it does factor into your strategic
> discussion. IMHO, it makes for a richer gaming experience.
My TRC example was the most extreme one I could think of, and perhaps
was a little unfair to the game since an optional rule allows for the
use of the historical weather. (I always used random weather because I
probably forgot about that optional rule.) I don't mind random elements
per se; as you say having to take them into account can add depth to a
game. What I do mind are random elements that can dominate a game.
I have lost many a wargame on a single roll of the die. Perhaps I took
a calculated risk, and miscalculated. Perhaps I assessed my situation
as more desperate than it was. However, in all such cases I made a
conscious decision to let it all hang out, and Lady Luck didn't
co-operate. With standard TRC weather I have no alternative but to roll
and hope that I still have a chance of winning afterwards.
pulgao
<cvl...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> >The key question for me is, "Is the game playable?" As more and more
>> >details are added to a simulation I feel it becomes less playable
>> >(and if I understand the meaning of the term, more fiddly). My own
>> >attention span prohibits me from enjoying a game in which each move
>> >takes four hours to make, for example because it incorporates the
>> >possibility that troop carriers will break down, horses will suffer
>> >heart attacks, guns will jam, individual soldiers will have diarrhea,
>> >etc. at inopportune times.
>>
>> This stuff *can* be accounted for in the movement/combat rules, if the
>> designer wants to get into all the mathematical nitty-gritty required.
>
>And if the players are willing to devote the extra time to deal with it,
>which was my point. I personally will trade realism of the above type
>for playability.
Clarification: my idea was that these factors can be accounted for in
a way transparent to the user -- by factoring these elements into the
movement rules or CRTs, without any additional rules or procedures
being layered on. Sorry for my prior lack of clarity.
>
>> Keep in mind, too, that ASL is definitely a product of its time --
>> back when most wargamers were young and had plenty of time to spend on
>> gaming. We *loved* "fiddly" rules back in those days. These days
>> (although I still love the original SL), I'd rather play Battle Cry
>> with my kids than play SL -- I just don't have the time anymore.
>
>Ah, but think of what's in store for us in our Golden Years with our
>grandkids -- if we can keep the little twerps from getting hooked on
>CCGs, RPGs, and computer games.
True, which is one of the reasons I'm hanging onto my whole wargame
collection (instead of weeding out a lot of the lesser-played games).
My twins are eight years old now -- I'm pretty sure that one of them
could handle the 1964 AH version of Gettysburg now (with the help of
the table provided for figuring odds ratios); in another two to three
years, they'll both be ready for the other mid-60's AH "classics", and
for much of the rest of the collection by the time they're 12 or 13.
BTW, I also have a lot of RPGs (some of which we've dabbled with
already) and computer games, so I'm not too bothered by the boys
playing them. But I flat refuse to allow CCGs in the house -- those
things are just money pits, IMHO.
>> Ah, but the beauty here is that when you *overcome* these random
>> unforseen elements and succeed in your plans despite what Mother
>> Nature throws in your way, it's *very* satisfying.
>
>True, but I have yet to see the Germans prevail against an early Russian
>winter, or the Russians prevail against a late one.
Yeah, but the *hope* is always there. ;-)
>
>> And IRL commanders had to take such unforseen elements into account
>> when devising their plans -- so it does factor into your strategic
>> discussion. IMHO, it makes for a richer gaming experience.
>
>My TRC example was the most extreme one I could think of, and perhaps
>was a little unfair to the game since an optional rule allows for the
>use of the historical weather. (I always used random weather because I
>probably forgot about that optional rule.) I don't mind random elements
>per se; as you say having to take them into account can add depth to a
>game. What I do mind are random elements that can dominate a game.
I'll go along with that, to an extent. I was once completely hosed by
four straight days of rain in a game on Jackson's Valley Campaign,
making Harper's Ferry a completely unattainable objective. So, yes, it
does happen -- Lady Luck does frown on us once in a while. And I'll
agree that if it's a regular occurance in a particular game, the
*game* design is probably flawed (although the realism factor may be
maintained).
Warren J. Dew
I would argue that ASL teaches at least as many false or
irrelevant lessons as true or relevant ones. For instance,
if I have a stack of three 4-6-7 squads with a 2-factor LMG ...
I'm not going to fire the LMG at all.... I'm going to have to
use the "12" column anyhow--and why risk a breakdown of the LMG?
Even in the designer's notes to the game, John Hill admits
that he intentionally distorted many facts as he put the game
together.... Hill's contention is that such distortions are
forgivable because ASL *as a whole* presents a true-to-life
*impression* of WWII tactical combat. Well, so do some
Hollywood movies.
Sure. Most people are satisfied with Hollywood movie style realism; the more
seemingly accurate details there are, the more realistic it feels. Most people
don't care about the false lessons that will necessarily proliferate along with
the special case rules.
Your problem was that you incorrectly believed that those games were designed
for you; they were not.
There are games that are more about getting at the underlying truth than
representing surface details; you just have to be careful to find the right
ones. Dunnigan's games are generally good examples; he often leaves enough
things out that players complain about insufficient detail, but it usually
turns out that his omissions tend to avoid a lot of false lessons, at little
cost to the real simulation. France 1940 and the original Panzerblitz are
excellent examples.
Naturally, they are not going to be perfect simulations; nothing short of the
real thing is. Dunnigan was good enough that he was frequently hired by the
military to do simulations for them, though.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
The Midnight Skulker
>
> in a way transparent to the user -- by factoring these elements into
> the movement rules or CRTs, without any additional rules or procedures
> being layered on. Sorry for my prior lack of clarity.
OK. That's basically what I was getting at in my first post to this
thread when I said " ... the simulation uses an average value for things
like movement, firepower, and the effects of defensive positions ... ."
Of course the scale of the simulation will determine the level of the
details that can be thrown into an average transparently, and as I think
we are seeing in this discussion, transparency is in the eye of the
beholder.
Brian Bankler
> Caleb N. Diffell wrote:
>
> > Some games try to get around this by "hiding" the pieces (Columbia's block
> > system, for example), but you always pretty much know where everyone is and
> > with what force.
>
>
> You haven't tried the GDW double-blind series games, I take it? Or
> SPI's City Fight? Or the AH/Battleline naval game Flat Top?
>
> Take it back a few more years... how about classics like Bismarck and
> Midway? Or Jutland?
>
> Good limited intelligence boardgames *are* out there, you just have to
> look for them...
>
> the Mav
It may have been mentioned, but the "We the People", "Hannibal",
"Paths of Glory" (etc) system also works. You have perfect information
on the board ["General So and So has X units threatening to attack!"]
but you don't know if the opponent has the cards that enable him to
make an attack. Very elegant.
Brian
Patrick Carroll
> > The questions I raised are at the very foundation of historiography.
> > Historiography is at the root of history (determining the reliability
and
> > applicability of histories--i.e., how close history comes to truth).
>
> This is all false. Historians don't spend any time worrying about
> whether France really exists, or is just a delusion in our minds, any
> more than wargamers do. It's not actually important to the subject of
> history. (It is, of course, important to the subject of philosophy.)
As usual, you and others have latched onto the single most extreme point I
made and taken it to be the one and only thing I said. If you recall, I
said there were *three* suppositions underlying the idea of simulation.
*One* of them (the most extreme) was that there is an objective *physical*
reality to simulate. (At least two or three people who've replied shortened
that to "objective reality," which is inaccurate and unfair.)
Besides that one extreme presupposition, my others had to do with (1) how
accurate our perceptions are, and (2) how well we can piece things together
in our mind and reconstruct an event accurately. Historians most certainly
do contend with those problems, and simulationists should be aware of them
too. It can often be simply expressed by the question How reliable is
so-and-so's report?
> Furthermore, all of your objections to wargames make no sense under your
> new argument, either. What difference does it make whether a wargame
> accurately reflects the decisions that Patton and Rommel had to make,
> and the information available to them at the time, if neither Patton nor
> Rommel ever existed, nor had any thoughts, nor made any decisions?
> What is it that *you* would have a wargame "simulate", if it's only
> supposed to simulate things that "really exist", and we don't have any
> idea what, if anything, really exists?
What I was saying when I mentioned that first, most extreme,
"presupposition" is that one one level there is a question of whether there
is, in fact, anything to be simulated. For all we know, "real battles" are
simulations or simulacrums. The idea has no practical effect except to cast
a shadow of doubt on the notion that Game X is clearly a great simulation of
Battle Y. Unless I'm mistaken, that's a notion that many wargamers do
entertain about certain games. I'm just saying there's nothing clear about
it; it's a matter of opinion, or a facet of one's subjective world-view.
> Maybe ASL is the truth, and our historical knowledge of WW2 is the
> illusion. Maybe the outcome of WW2 was really determined by aliens
> rolling dice, and we're the counters they moved around. Does this
> "possibility" change, in any way, the interest or value of ASL to any of
> us? Of course not.
It doesn't change the interest or value of ASL for any of the many players
who either (1) play the game just for entertainment or competition and don't
care much about how good a simulation it is, or (2) refuse to let the
"possibility" you mention (or any other such possibility) change their
opinion that ASL is in fact a very good simulation of WWII tactical land
combat. Maybe everybody but me falls into one of those two categories; I
don't know. All I'm saying is that those in category 2 may be clinging to
an illusion; and if they value ASL as a simulation because they feel they're
learning important lessons from it, they may be fooling themselves.
Me, I was straddling the two categories, but lapping more heavily into
category 2, I guess. And one day I came to doubt the whole "simulation
value" thing, which caused me to jump back into category 1. And from that
standpoint, ASL just seemed way too complicated to me, so I turned to
simpler games--games in which I could hold all the rules in my memory banks.
But meanwhile, my disillusionment over the simulation value of that game
causes me to have greater suspicions about the simulation value of any
wargame--and my suspicions have grown long tap roots, all the way down into
the realm of philosophy and even metaphysics.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything to anyone but me, I guess. I'm not
going to say that simulation fans ought to wise up and "see the light."
That'd be like interrupting someone who's enjoying a good novel, and saying,
"Stop reading that trash! Can't you see it's only fiction, not fact?!" If
I did that, I'd expect to be told to mind my own business.
So, if I can manage to tie our whole sub-thread together, all I'm saying is:
If it had been obvious to me from the outset that wargames are far more
similar to chess than to real war, then even if it's true that wargames
simulate war in greater detail than chess, I'd have stuck with chess. And
the reason is that I can play chess just for entertainment and competition
or mental exercise; but when I play a wargame, the only way I can justify
all the extra time and complication is to believe that the simulation is
providing me with a highly reliable experience of what war is really like on
some level or from some angle. If the game is merely providing me with a
detailed but distorted and unreliable illusion of what war is like, or what
military command is like, it's not worth all the time and effort to me. For
that, I'll read a book or watch a movie instead (but I'll bemoan the fact
that I can't *participate* in a book or movie the way I can in a wargame).
Now, in the meantime (just to prove I read other people's posts
attentively), others in this thread have convincingly argued that wargames
*are* reliable and useful simulations, up to a point. And if one were able
to sort the wheat from the chaff--the "gamey" distortions from what really
simulates war--one would be able to get valid and valuable military lessons
out of playing the game. OK, I'll concede that point. But on a personal
note, I'll just say that the requisite "sorting out" process still requires
too much effort for my taste. Besides which, when I started out in
wargaming, it looked like I might actually go to war someday, and military
lessons would be applicable. Now my age and the world situation has changed
to where it looks very unlikely that I'll ever "go a-soldiering." So,
although I continue to read military history for fun, I don't expect to ever
directly apply what I learn anyway. I'm glad of that, but it does diminish
my motivation for getting into simulational wargames.
--Patrick
Patrick Carroll
> That's a hustle. Everytime I had one of those teachers, they always
> reminded me of those guys who want you to pick which shell the pea is
> under. The teachers I admired were the ones who would say "I don't
> know" once in a while.
I've always *been* one of those who has to say "I don't know" once in a
while. But I think some of those "everything in black and white" teachers
really did see certain things more clearly than I did, and I admired that.
All too often, I've had to take shots in the dark and hope for the best; and
I admire those who take just an extra moment to think things through, and
are then able to take a clear shot and hit the bullseye. I've always been
way to muddle-headed for that.
> But is chess all that clean and comprehensible, really? When Mikhail
> Tal occasionally sacked a Knight just for the hell of it, totally
> baffling his opponent, and won the game through little more than smoke
> and mirrors, is this really all that clean and comprehensible? How
> about Frank Marshall's legendary "swindles"?
Every time I've read about such things, I've scratched my head and said,
"Huh? How does one *swindle* his way to victory in a game like chess?"
It's easy to catch a glimpse of the answer: a well-timed surprise move that
throws the opponent off balance psychologically. The chess equivalent of a
poker bluff. But even after I realize what it means and how it would work,
I just shake my head and think, "That's not chess. It's something else.
Something less than chess."
> Sorry, Patrick, but
> there's no more objective "truth" in chess than there is in anything
> else. While there's a great deal of pleasure to be had in a
> well-contructed plan leading to mate, I still find a good hustle to be
> more fun (I once played a postal game in which my opponent had me dead
> to rights, but I sacked a Knight [unsoundly] and totally befuddled the
> guy so badly that I won the game. I *treasure* that one -- I want the
> moves carved on my tombstone).
I wouldn't, even if I'd managed to pull it off. You know what I'd feel?
Embarrassed and a little guilty. At best I'd smile once in a while,
briefly, at how smoothly it worked; but a moment later I'd shake my head in
shame again and kick myself for not having been able to win via superior
planning and execution.
I read an interview with Bruce Pandolfini a while back. When asked why he's
been out of the tournament circuit so long, he said he's a teacher. Long
ago, he learned that he doesn't like winning very much--because when you
win, you see the agony on your opponent's face, and you know what that feels
like. He added that some people think you have to play well in order to
teach, but it's not true: the skills needed to play (i.e., the desire to
kill the guy across from you) are just the opposite of those needed to teach
(i.e., the desire to help the guy across from you). And if you're a
teacher, you'll unconsciously want to help your opponent, and it'll take
away your edge. I knew exactly what he meant. I'm like that too.
I love chess as a subject of study: reading a good book and working chess
problems. Or as a form of solitary mental exercise: playing against a
computer. But I hate playing face-to-face or even on-line (or in a postal
game; I did that once, years ago)--especially if I win. Losing is actually
easier against another person, because although I feel a little stupid, at
least he gets to enjoy the thrill of victory, and I'm happy for him; I only
feel bad if it was such a lopsided game that I feel guilty for not giving
him enough of a challenge. But winning is hard, because I feel I've hurt
somebody. Winning against a computer, however, is thrilling! I feel I
achieved something noteworthy and deserve to be proud of myself. (Losing to
a computer, OTOH, really sucks! My blunders stand out like all the
authority figures I've ever known, all pointing at me, scowling, shaking
their heads, and saying, "You moron! You ain't worth nuthin'!") So, I play
chess against the computer, on an easy enough setting that I can be pretty
sure of winning. And every so often, I'll raise the bar--just a little bit.
I suppose it's even possible to "swindle" a computer--and some computer
chess programs probably try to swindle the player. But at my level, I'm
blissfully unaware of the possibility. If I ever get to where I become
aware of it, I'll probably look for a different pastime. The whole reason I
like "perfect information" games like chess is that you can't deceive your
opponent by bluffing about hidden information (as you can in bridge and
poker and other such games). When people argue that you *can* "swindle"
people even in a game like chess, it's disappointing to me.
When I was learning to play go, I read that the tournament etiquette is just
the opposite of what it is in the West: players are always allowed to take
back bad moves. Sometimes a whole series of moves will be retracted,
because a go player wants to win via superior strategy, not just by taking
advantage of an opponent's blunder. I like that philosophy. (Come to think
of it, I may start playing chess that way--allowing myself takebacks. I may
enjoy the game more that way. Hmmm. I don't know how to allow the computer
takebacks, though.)
--Patrick
The Maverick
> But I would argue that ASL teaches at least as
> many false or irrelevant lessons as true or relevant ones. For instance, if
> I have a stack of three 4-6-7 squads with a 2-factor LMG, and I want that
> stack to combine its firepower against the enemy, I'm not going to fire the
> LMG at all. Why? Because it doesn't have enough firepower factors to
> enable me to use the "16" column on the IFT, so I'm going to have to use the
> "12" column anyhow--and why risk a breakdown of the LMG?
>
> That's just one of the thousands of such false lessons that ASL teaches.
> And if a person is coming to the game from a standpoint of complete military
> ignorance, how is he to sort out the true lessons from the false ones?
I would expect that most people would be smart enough to immediately
sort out that example as a gamey application of the mechanics as opposed
to reflecting actual tactics... but so far reasonableness hasn't gotten
in the way of many of your other "criticisms" in this thread.
> Some players might even believe that in real life, platoons
> regularly refrain from using their LMGs because they don't contribute
much
> and might break down.
Sure... why don't you point one of these people out for us???
the Mav
--
"Never give up -- never surrender!" Commander Peter Quincy Taggart
The Maverick
> "Rich Shipley" <ri...@rtgames.com> wrote :
>
>>Very few people have brought the
>>expectations to the table that you have.
>
> I doubt that. My impression--having played wargames with lots of
people and
> even run a wargaming club once, long ago--is that the expectations I
came to
> the table with weren't much different from anyone else's.
[then a snippet from a later post]
> So, in a nutshell, I guess when I started wargaming all those years ago, I
> assumed game designers had scientifically reduced real war (or at least
> parts of it) to something as clean and comprehensible as chess.
Again, I agree with Rich that very few people had the same expectations
as you. Or it could be that those silent multitudes just don't read or
post here... ;-)
Patrick Carroll
If one does *not* believe that a given wargame scientifically reduces at
least some parts of real war to something clean and comprehensible, then
that person does not believe the wargame has any simulational value
whatsoever. Are you saying that most wargamers do not believe wargames are
simulations of war? According to David desJardins, it's important to
recognize that many people play wargames for their simulational value--i.e.,
because of the fact that the game "scientifically reduces at least some
parts of war to something clean and comprehensible." E.g., Sherman tanks
were highly vulnerable to "88" fire in WWII, and that's "scientifically
reduced" in ASL to the 88's damage factor greatly exceeding the Sherman's
armor rating.
I'm quite sure just about every wargamer I've ever met has had the
expectation that wargames do this sort of thing. And for a long time, I
shared that expectation.
One day, however, I came to doubt that there's any reliable link between the
ASL representation and the real thing. I can see how the damage factor vs
armor rating function *seems* to mirror the real Sherman's vulnerability to
"88" fire--but I no longer see it as anything like a "scientific reduction"
of the latter to the former. I think there may even be a complete
disconnect between the two: i.e., the ASL function merely produces an
illusion that prompts the player to imagine the corresponding real-life
event.
What's the difference? To most wargamers, playing ASL just for fun, there's
no important difference. They'll say, "Oh--so the simulation isn't reliable
in this respect? Well, so what? It's still a fun game." But to wargamers
like me (if there are any others), who felt that reliable simulation value
is the only thing that justified the thick rulebook and made all the time &
effort worthwhile, it can be a shock to discover (or even suspect) that
playing ASL as a WWII simulation is essentially no different than playing
chess as a medieval battle simulation. If the "simulation" is all in the
imagination anyway, why not play something simpler?
The answer to that last question is that it's a matter of taste. Some like
complicated games with lots of detail and thick rulebooks, while others like
simple games with easily memorized rules. I'm the kind of person who
ordinarily likes simple games but was willing to make a sacrifice and play
complicated games as long as all the complication served to truly and
reliably simulate war (i.e., scientifically reduce it to game form) so it'd
be comprehensible and I'd get a good, solid education while playing the
game.
If I'd been the kind of person who prefers complicated games in the first
place, disillusionment about the game's simulation value wouldn't have
bothered me. I'd have ended up saying, "Aw, it don't matter; ASL is still a
helluva great game!" In fact, that's exactly how I feel about chess (when
regarded as a stylized medieval battle simulation): I know the pieces and
moves don't compare measure-for-measure with any real-life counterparts, but
so what? It's still a helluva great game.
I guess the moral is: Games are just games. Play the ones you like,
because if you force yourself to play one you don't like, in hopes of
getting some added benefit from it, you'll probably be disappointed.
Come to think of it, I went through a similar process with bridge. For most
of my life, I avoided bridge because it didn't appeal to me at all; in fact
it was repulsive. But sometime after we got our first home computer, I
found some bridge-playing software; and I said to myself, "I really should
learn bridge, because half the books in the Games section of the bookstore
are on bridge, and if it's such a popular game, there must be something
wonderful about it that I'm unaware of." So, I forced myself to learn
bridge: I used the software and also read a couple books on bridge, until I
finally got the hang of it. Then I quit. I still don't like the game any
more than I did in the first place. It's still repulsive to me. I guess I
now have a better idea as to why it's so popular and how it's so
challenging--but it's still not my cup of tea.
Other games I was attracted to before I ever learned how to play them.
Backgammon and go, for example. From the moment I first saw the boards, I
was excited and wanted to play these games. And indeed, they both turned
into favorites. They had everything I expected them to have, and I was
quite satisfied. Bridge, OTOH, had all that I *expected,* but I hoped to
find something more, some added benefit--and was disappointed.
ASL was pretty much the same kind of experience as bridge. When I tackled
bridge (though it went against my grain), I was hoping to find the
mysterious "something" that accounts for the game's tremendous popularity.
When I tackled ASL (also against my grain, since I preferred simpler games),
I was hoping to find the mysterious "something" that accounts for *that*
game's huge popularity--but I assumed that "something" was simulational
reliability (i.e., the game truly teaches WWII tactical warfare). Instead,
the "something" turned out to be a magic mix of simulational detail and
playability. In both cases--bridge and ASL--I finally realized that
whatever it is that makes these games popular with others is something that
doesn't appeal to me; at least not enough to make me want to play such a
complicated game.
So, I went into wargaming with about the same expectations as anyone has:
that a wargame simulates war in a playable and somewhat educational way.
Where I differed from others, apparently, is in cherishing the fond hope
that simulational reliability would increase in proportion to rules
complexity (and also over time, with the developing state of the art). As
it turns out, simulational reliability isn't universally valued in the first
place, and in the second place it's not tied in with rules complexity--nor
with the developing state of the art either, for that matter. A complex,
state-of-the-art wargame is just a complex, state-of-the-art game (which
incidentally simulates war to some degree).
Christian Killoran
Patrick Carroll wrote <snip>
> So, I went into wargaming with about the same expectations as anyone has:
> that a wargame simulates war in a playable and somewhat educational way.
I see a difference between this statement and some of the other things that
you have written. If you are satisfied with "somewhat educational" then I
agree that you and most other wargamers were on the same page. I had gotten
the impression from previous posts that you rejected the educational value
of wargames entirely.
> Where I differed from others, apparently, is in cherishing the fond hope
> that simulational reliability would increase in proportion to rules
> complexity <...>
Many wargamers and wargame designers have felt for years that the
ultra-complex rules of ASL and similar games moved those games away from
historical accuracy for the reasons you describe (and others as well.)
Where you differ is in your need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Patrick Carroll
> Patrick Carroll wrote <snip>
> > So, I went into wargaming with about the same expectations as anyone
has:
> > that a wargame simulates war in a playable and somewhat educational way.
>
> I see a difference between this statement and some of the other things
that
> you have written.
It often depends on the context. I wouldn't be surprised to find that two
posts of mine contradict each other. I'll exaggerate in some cases to make
a point more strongly, or say something that fits a particular context but
wouldn't stand alone or fit a different context.
> If you are satisfied with "somewhat educational" then I
> agree that you and most other wargamers were on the same page. I had
gotten
> the impression from previous posts that you rejected the educational value
> of wargames entirely.
I think I was on the same page with most other wargamers for a long time.
But then . . .
> > Where I differed from others, apparently, is in cherishing the fond hope
> > that simulational reliability would increase in proportion to rules
> > complexity <...>
>
> Many wargamers and wargame designers have felt for years that the
> ultra-complex rules of ASL and similar games moved those games away from
> historical accuracy for the reasons you describe (and others as well.)
> Where you differ is in your need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As I said in the post you're quoting from, the ultra-complex ASL wasn't my
"baby" to begin with. I reluctantly tackled all the SL modules and later
the big ASL rulebook because I figured, "Hey, if PanzerBlitz and Panzer
Leader are about 5 on a 1-to-10 realism scale, this SL/ASL thing with all
its greater complexity must be at least an 8 or 9." Otherwise, why make it
more complex?
The first thing I noticed (after playing my first game of "The Guards
Counterattack") was that SL was far and away the most exciting wargame I'd
ever played. But for years I continued to assume there was also a lot of
historical accuracy or simulational realism to it. And that each new module
increased the accuracy and realism, and that the big ASL revision made the
game the ultimate in WWII realism and accuracy. Until that one day when my
eyes opened, and I said, "Wait--it's not true!"
Then I realized ASL is complex just because some wargamers like complex
games. Often for pretty much the same reason as some gamers like AD&D and
such--games rich in detail and imaginatively absorbing.
Well, I never was such a gamer. I didn't like complexity for its own sake;
I only tackled the burden of complexity because I believed it meant greater
simulational depth and accuracy, or educational value, or whatever you want
to call it.
In hindsight, I can see that the complexity of SL had a lot to do with its
being the most exciting wargame I'd ever played. So I can certainly
understand why someone would become a real SL/ASL devotee. But I didn't
want to put forth all that time & effort just for the sake of dynamic
military fiction; it would only have been worth the time & effort if it was
dynamic and reliably accurate military history.
--Patrick
Jim Swift
> But imagine seeing one lone counter advancing
> across the map and having ABSOLUTELY no idea if it's got a measly brigade or
> an entire army until it gets close.
Caleb, you might want to check out ContraPloy:
http://www.contraploy.com
Most of the details of your average wargame have been abstracted away.
But it certainly meets what you're looking for in your above comment.
Lee and Jackson really can pop up anywhere in this game, without
warning, to devastating effect.
Jim
The Maverick
>
> I wouldn't be surprised to find that two
> posts of mine contradict each other.
Join the club...