Let's Talk: Wargame or Not

[LongBlade]

I don't think complexity should be a driving factor either, but there are those who view it as a break down in creating accuracy.

I recall a conversation somewhere where I was told that during the 70's wargame designers were happy if they could produce real-world results accurately 60% of the time. Toss Panzer Blitz into that conversation and you have a pretty good idea where "classic" wargames and accuracy meet.

Today we might hope for more information to produce better accuracy; certainly the tools available to us are more robust, at least with regard to electronic wargames and the ability to research and number crunch on the tabletop side.

[Bison]

I'd say that in general playability of a game is for more people a consideration than realism.

[Cyrano]

It was the complexity = accuracy ergo = wargame issue that caused so much fuss in my car....

Friedrich (a game everyone should own) brilliantly if abstractly captures the challenges faced by the great king.  It has one of the best combat resolution systems I've ever encountered, but has little to do with the tactical warfare of the period.

Battle Cry is as abstract as they come, but strikes me as doing a good job of depicting those red and blue blocks pushing at each other in the West Point Atlases.

I dislike A&A a great deal -- considering it an unnecessarily complicated version of Risk -- but I certainly understand the appeal to some of moving hordes of men across the face of the world.

I have always -- since I bought Starship Troopers from Gimbel's Department Store in the 8th Grade -- equated complexity with "wargame".  It strikes me as strange that it's taken this long to begin unlearning this evidently inaccurate proposition.


Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

[MengJiao]

By the way, shouldn't this thread be in the boardgaming forum instead?  I mean, board wargames are the real wargames!  Not to put yet another slant on what constitutes a wargame and what doesn't.  ;)

as much as I agree with you, I am willing to admit that you and I are swimming against the tide on that one

Let's suppose there's some essential element that makes a game a real war game.  If we take that essential element to be some representation of the options some level of command had during some real war then most supposed war games don't come anywhere near possessing that essential element.  Moreover a boardgame is just as likely as a computer game to have that element.

On the other hand computer games  -- if they get close to that element -- seem to be inherently more convincing as experiences.

Yet, if I work with a boardgame (or set of boardgames -- I'm reaching the point where it takes 3 to game a situation -- eg. PQ-17 to do the naval and air operations, Invasion Norway to do the ground fighting and Command at Sea to check on any fishy aero-naval results) I can usually analyze a situation more convincingly because the elements of the particular narrative are easier to manipulate.

What's worse, the problem with computer games isn't that they aren't gamey, it's that they are too much like boardgames.  For example, a computer game could have many map-like representations of a situation and hide the real situation well away from the player.  So for example, I (as the player) could have a situation map in my simulated HQ that might be almost useless since either I can't get there or the HQ staff has fled or been called elsewhere.  I might have to make my orders on the fly:  I stop the jeep and hail a fleeing peasant and ask him what the next railway station east is.  Then I get on the radio and tell my remaining mobile formations to meet me there ASAP.  Of course the enemy (simulated obviously) might very well pick up that transmission, but then my own forces might not...etc.

[MengJiao]

I have always -- since I bought Starship Troopers from Gimbel's Department Store in the 8th Grade -- equated complexity with "wargame".  It strikes me as strange that it's taken this long to begin unlearning this evidently inaccurate proposition.


Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

Obviously I disagree.  It seems to me that the complexity of the ideal war game should be so horrifying that the complexity alone should be enough to overwhelm the player before the enemy even so much as sends up a distant puff of smoke.

[Bison]

I can remember spending several days to setup Guns of August and just sitting there thinking ok now WTF? 

[MengJiao]

I can remember spending several days to setup Guns of August and just sitting there thinking ok now WTF?

Which is why a computer game is potentially so much better.  Imagine you are a simulated von Kluck in early
September trying to make sense of orders from von Bulow and radio messages from the Imperial HQ
when you get orders to fall back and find out that everybody is blaming you for losing the war.

In game terms the complexity would be hidden, but to win you have to come up with some way of
representing it to yourself and convincing others -- yes! even von Bulow! to act on your reading of
complex events.

[LongBlade]

I can remember spending several days to setup Guns of August and just sitting there thinking ok now WTF?

For me, Up Scope was that mystifyingly complex game. 20 pages of five point font rules. I think it took me a year to read it cover to cover because I was so overwhelmed. Of course being 12 years old didn't help.

[Bison]

The mmp regimental series uses written orders to activate actions that subordinate leaders and units can take.   If it isn't specifically written in the order, the unit cannot take an action.

[GJK]

And for lack of degrading this conversation to a boardgame vs computer wargame expose, I'll add that to me I agree that computers do a better job at simulating a combat situation (generally) because of the obvious; they can process so much more information and handle so much more than a player sitting at a boardgame could or would want to do.  That said, that is where I have a disconnect with most PC wargames - the computer IS doing so much for me behind the scenes that I honestly can't say what the hell just happened during the turn with any degree of certainty.  Certainly not as precise as if I had done the whole turn manually on a board.  Take for example the fine game "The Operational Art of War".  If you load up a scenario and begin play, you have a great sense of control of what you're doing; moving pieces along, assigning this unit to do that, etc.  But when the computer does it's thing and it runs through it - suddenly the turn is over and it's the start of your next turn and all you see is that now suddenly you're farther away from the objective here, but closer there and so the question is "what did my opponent (AI) just do to me?".  Now that is probably much more realistic - as the big commander, I don't have all the specifics on what casualties every unit of mine took and exactly how far back they had to retreat but in a gaming sense, I feel disconnected from the game because all of that is taken out of my hands.  So maybe for me at least, a PC wargame does the better job of simulating a historical battle or war, but a board wargame gives me a better sense of actually battling that battle or fighting that war.  That doesn't make the board wargame any better, but it gives me a more enjoyable gaming experience overall.  Does that make sense?

[Grimnirsson]

Does that make sense?

Absolutely! I have exactly the same feeling...

[W8taminute]

Yeah but...where are the Panzer Divisions?   :P

[Nefaro]

^If you'd ever had Blue Bell Cookies and Cream....you would understand    8)

The homemade flavor vanilla is good enough for me.  :D

[Bison]

Makes sense GJK. 

[jomni]

How about Twilight Struggle? For me it's like Diplomacy in that combat is not the main winning ingredient so not a wargame.

Ah the Cold War.  A historical/actual war without direct armed confrontation between superpowers. :)
So gaming the Cold War like Twilight Struggle or Balance of Power is not a wargame?  Maybe not in my books.  It's a geopolitical simulation.
But the multitudes of games playing out hypothetical a WW3 scenario are wargames.