There are two extremes of wargamers. The first is the "lawyer". The "lawyer" cannot play a game without the "official" rulebook to nit-pick. The other extreme is the "innovator" or "revisionist". He is a man who cannot abide an unrealistic, illogical or unplayable rule even if it is a Papal dictate. To the tormented ranks of this latter group of wargamers, I belong. (Before continuing, I would like to say that if most of my criticisms seem aimed at Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI), it is only because they have by far produced the most games and, therefore - a statistical inevitability - the most errors. Needless to say, gaming graphics would be less than it is without the past and present efforts of Red Simonsen. If any of my suggestions are to be adopted, they will have to be adopted on the initiative of and with the resources possessed by a large gaming company.) Myth There is a myth now being promulgated in the wargaming world by certain game designers. The gist of the myth is that a game can be realistic OR playable but cannot be both to any satisfactory degree. As a result of this mis-assumption, some gamers; and designers are mistakenly presuming to equate realism with complexity - as evidenced by '1914' or the MOSCOW CAMPAIGN - and some publishers attempt to foist such needless complexity off on game consumers as inherent proof of "realism." However, ever BETTER rules SIMULTANEOUSLY increasing the amount of BOTH realism and playability - are an eternal possibility. It is to this never-ending quest for ever BETTER rules that the revisionist sacrifices the time, tranquility and sanity that he does. Anyone with a probing interest in military art and science and a creatively analytic mind can criticize, revise or design wargames. Almost anyone else can play them. Assuming, then, that no game is perfect - that, in fact, many are downright inadequate - and that the desire of gamers to improve their purchases is legitimate and even laudable, I would like to point out to game designers and publishers a few improvements (chiefly in the physical components and format of their games) which they could make in their games to facilitate revisions and accommodate the needs of revisionists without detracting from wargames' overall marketability. I will organize my recommendations around the major game components. Once printed, the mapboard is usually impossible to try to revise without damaging and thereby cheapening it in the attempt. A grossly inaccurate mapboard (such as the one in MOSCOW CAMPAIGN) immediately forfeits the historical realism which is the inherent and distinguishing attraction and value of wargames. Mapmaking The one best contribution to revisionists that game designers and publishers can offer is simply to produce perfect mapboards - or mapboards as nearly so as humanly possible. Much improvement is possible in mapboard-making philosophy and techniques. First, the map should be thoroughly researched with as many maps of the given period used and compared as possible. (In the case of Western European Russia, for instance, accurate maps showing terrain and vegetation are extremely hard to obtain or are contradictory since such information is often still "classified".) Next, an omission on a map is infinitely better than a mistake - as long as the map is not of the "finished," glossy kind - since it is far easier to make an addition than a correction. Game markings such as initial locations of units, fortifications and starting lines should be as abbreviated as possible to enable alternative scenarios to be enacted over the same terrain. (Initial unit locations need include only the unit identification symbols: the combat and movement factors such as on the ARDENNES OFFENSIVE mapsheet are repetitious and therefore unnecessary disfigurments.) Fortifications, for example, should be down the pertinent EDGE of a hex as in MOSCOW CAMPAIGN (or, ideally, represented on fortification counters as in DRAG NACH OSTEN), not cutting hex-wide swaths down the center of the board as in DESTRUCTION OF ARMY GROUP CENTER, KURSK and others. These swaths are not only inaccurate - advantage due is not given to attacks on the fortification line from the rear - they also detract from a possible scenario of the German 1941 onslaught through the very same area. (The complete omission of East Prussian terrain features is disgusting but more remediable than the printed swaths.) In such games, why couldn't the starting lines (relatively obscure as they are) simply be also designated fortification lines? Much of the problem with the current mapboard situation stems from hasty production scheduling and/or a lack of the meticulous patience necessary to conform the works of nature and man to the hex grid. Hopefully, game designers and publishers will reemphasize quality over quantity in their coming efforts. Rivers, also, should be on the EDGE of a hex - for the sake of clarity and simplicity - at a "division" unit level scale or higher. The worst example of river delineation that I know of is Guidon's DUNKIRK wherein the rivers squirt across the mapboard in complete oblivion to the hex grid. Charts Even if the map itself is adequately accurate, the inclusion of defective and/or just space-consuming charts, tables, reinforcement schedules and other such baggage on the mapboard sheet is inexcusable. As much of the playing surface as possible should be devoted only to mapping the battle and campaign area. This allows a greater scope for operations and potential variations or scenarios. The exclusion of the Caucasus and Voronezh areas - and of, therefore, a scenario covering the German advance on Stalingrad (and on the Caucasus to the south? - makes TURNING POINT a game that really covers only the latter half of its subject campaign: that half which confronted neither side with major strategic problems. Thus, while cramming in reinforcement schedule and Combat Results Table on the mapsheet saved SPI the expense of additional enclosures, it stunted the geographic, chronological and therefore operational scope of TURNING POINT, thereby cheapening it. TURNING POINT, settles for a battle when it could have gamed a campaign. To conclude: the playing surface should contain only the map which should (in its conformity to the hex grid) be as historically and geographically accurate as possible and should be sovereign of any other game component. An example of good map format is the "building block" format of the DRANG NACH OSTEN maps. While I find many mistakes and many more omissions in the maps, they are still the maps most adaptable to revision to be yet published. Game producers can help revisionists and designers in solving the map problem in another way: by providing blank hex sheets as cheaply as possible so that maps can be remade or created. A novel innovation by Game Designers Workshop is the reduced hex sheets which better lend themselves to transferring smaller scaled maps to the hex grid. However, this is leading our discussion to the brink of game design and away from revision. Counters The next game component to which a revisionist is most sensitive is the unit counter sheet. Not in T14IRTEEN YEARS of wargaming have I EVER found a set of units (or rather their combat and movement factors) completely to my satisfaction. After the rules themselves, unit factors are the most frequently challenged game component. After the mapboard, unit counters and the factors on them are the most IMPORTANT game materials because of their physical inalterability. The game publisher can help the revisionist by omitting factors and by printing only the unit's branch, size and identification symbols, numbers and nomenclature on the counters. The factors can then be listed on separate enclosures as was done to an extent in GUADALCANAL. Publishers will probably complain that this leads to an intolerable memory demand, especially on the beginning player. This is a petty and myopic response, however, because demands on player memories can be built up with game levels of increasing difficulty - basic, intermediate and advanced, for example - which most thoroughly designed games offer. If game publishers remain convinced of the impracticality of this suggestion, there are a few good alternatives worth considering. The first is an amplification of the blank unit counter sheets now offered by SPI (in sickly pastels and, initially, with the diagonal in the cavalry symbol reversed, incidentally). This would be to make counter sheets of units of any given size of any given nation of any given historical period - MINUS, of course, the combat and movement factors! For example, a counter sheet might be produced on Waffen-SS units of WWII from regimental to army levels. (I recommend asphalt black background with silver markings as the color scheme.) Or a series of sheets might be produced covering all Axis and Soviet units on the Eastern front in division/corps or corps/army scales. Producing one all-time set of unit counters - minus factors - would require the most professional of graphic efforts and necessitate a precedent setting standardization of counter formats and national color codings. Unit names could be included in the space vacated by the factors - e.g., "Hohenstauffen-SS" - and printed in nationalistic stylizations as were the units in the early BATTLE OF MOSCOW game. In the immediate absence of factorless unit counters, a practical suggestion might be the production of small rubber stamps having unit branch and size markings. I have had a basic set of branch symbols made for myself, and they perform adequately for me on posterboard. (I'd rather forget, though, the paralysis afflicting my hand after scissoring the little bastards out!) However, the resulting homemade counters would be no match for a professionally manu~actured set of counters as I have discussed in the previous paragraph. Another stopgap would be the inclusion of more spare counters with the published games -- marked WITH various branch and possible size symbols since these are impossible to freehand well. (Spare counters with a glossy finish are WORSE than useless due to the tendency of ink to bead up on the gloss.) I have noticed an increasing and suspicious reduction in the number of unit counters, let alone spares, in many newly issued games - especially S&T magazine games. I have also noticed a wastage of counters to unnecessarily EMBODY relatively trivial rules - e.g., railway disruption markers, etc. In any event, an overabundance of units is far preferable to an undersupply, and I urge game producers to be generous (even if it costs us) with counter equippage. Reinforcement Schedule The reinforcement schedule is another game component dear to the heart of revisionists. It should be as historically accurate and detailed as the turn time span and the unit level will permit (as, for example, in DRANG NACH OSTEN). The deserved and reserved strategic option of the gamer in producing and introducing reinforcements at his own discretion is secondary to the responsibility of the game designers of demonstrating the historical actuality and POTENTIAL of the liven adversaries in the game. Additional reinforcement schedules should be built upon this historical precedent. Terrain effects tables, combat results tables and rules in general are, obviously, the most frequently challenged game components. I often have a game revised well before I receive it. Thus, we revisionists deeply appreciate game publishers who keep rules, tables, etc. physically separated from less violable game components such as the mapsheets. Short, prefactory comments on the historical factors which a specific rule is attempting to simulate should be included in the instruction brochure as IS the case in most of the newer releases by SPI and other game publishers -- and otherwise made as generally open to evaluation and criticism as possible. A revisability factor might well be included in the various game evaluation surveys used by SPI. There is little more to be said about, published rules from the perspective of the revisionist since we have so little reverence for them anyway. These, then, are the various recommendations to be made in regards to reforming game formats to the needs of revisionists. To sum up, I have stressed the need for keeping basic game components such as the mapboard and unit counters of matchless (or at least remediable) accuracy and for keeping the game components physically separated (and therefore more flexible) - even to the point of factorless unit counters. In addition to presumably higher sales, game producers and the gaming CLIENTELE itself can expect to be compensated for adopting this more flexible game format by a welter of new innovations and perspectives which can better satisfy the dual quests of the art of simulation: realism and simplicity. Back to Table of Contents -- Panzerfaust #64 To Panzerfaust/Campaign List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1974 by Donald S. Lowry This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com