GameFix 3: The Armchair General More Standards: Counters and Maps; and Several Asides

The Armchair General

More Standards:
Counters and Maps;
and Several Asides

By Dave Wood

Many of the factors which degrade the performance of the graphic system in a game are not obvious to the average gamer. Some of these considerations are technical in na- ture: e.g., the size and style of type used on the counters; the intensity, surface quality, and range of colors used on the maps as they affect vision; the weights of the lines used to separate sections of charts or forms, etc

Although they may not be consciously per- ceived, these factors all add up and impact upon the user as he plays the game. Wrong design choices can conspire in such a subtle manner that the gamer may not be able to pinpoint why the game is troublesome but he'll be aware that something is wrong and is preventing from getting the most out of the game. [Redmond A. Simonsen. "Image and System: Graphics and Physical Systems Design." in SPI Staff, Wargame Design. [Strategy and Tactics Staff Study Number 2], New York: Simulations Publications, Inc., 1977. pp. 57 - 88. p. 58.]

In the two previous columns, we've looked at the investment the game publisher requires of the gamer, in terms of evaluation time and the time required to work through the rules. Along the way, we began to establish a set of standards that rely on reasonableness. This month, we'll continue the effort by deriving standards for the other components in the game.

[Aside: In one sense, the first columns, this month's column, and probably all future columns amount to a plea for common sense-- common sense as applied to all the components of a game, from the box to the design to the rules to the maps to the counters and so on. For example, does it make common sense for the rules to be organized in the sequence that the player needs to use them to learn to play the game? I think so; and I derived a standard based on that reasoning. If you dis- agree, well and good. However, you should know that future reviews in this column will be based on this kind of standard.]

[Further aside: In another sense, these columns amount to a plea to designers to produce what they themselves would expect in a wargame. For example, how many designers expect to buy a wargame whose box doesn't tell them what they want to know about the game? Few, I believe. Is it common sense, then, for a designer to produce a game whose box doesn't contain the kind of information that he would look for? Perhaps some designers don't buy games, they just design them.]

While doing some heavy thinking about the basis for this month's column, I spent some time with a top-notch computer programmer. His experience goes back to the days when programming a computer involved patching jumpers on a board, and he has kept current enough to earn six figures by fixing other programmers' programs.

We got deeply into an analysis of a detailed Napoleonic game, and my friend was amazed at the sheer quantity of information that the game system required the gamer to understand, evaluate, remember, and act on. He began taking some cryptic notes that he later translated for me, they were the outline for the programming code that would be required just to set up the data base for the game, and it would have been a lot of code. Later, I ran across Redmond Simonsen's comment:

[Wargames] are enormous information processing and learning problems. Even the simplest game requires the player to manipulate dozens of discrete pieces (units) in hundreds of possible cell locations (typically hexagonal); sort out thousands of relevant and irrelevant relationships; and arrive at a coherent plan of action (a move) several times in the course of the play of that game. It is a testament to the power of the human mind that anyone can begin to play such complex systems let alone do it well. [p. 57.]

So the designer's task becomes one of how to ensure an unobtrusive, unambiguous information flow between the game and the player. And it's a difficult one. Simonsen again:

... Virtually every gamer has had the experience of struggling through what might be an otherwise good game, hampered by the fact that the organization and design of the components prevents him from easily understanding what he is about-and thereby losing concentration and interest in the game. [p. 58.]

The standards in this article reflect this concern with the easy flow of information in the game. Those things that impede this flow will be condemned; those that aid it will be praised.

Counters will be designed and executed so that the player can immediately know whom the counters belong to.

The first standard involves color. The gamer needs to know - immediately, without pausing to figure it out - which playing pieces are his and which are his opponents. Traditionally, counter designers have used color to separate the units of the players. The player's first perception involves the overall color of the piece; and if they are all the same color, confusion arises. In Clash of Arms' La Bataille de Preussisch-Eylau, for example, some opposing units are printed in precisely the same color.

[Third aside: It's interesting to note that this same problem arose, more than once, in history. For example, at Wagram, Napoleon's allies from Saxony wore mostly white uniforms, as did the enemy Austrians. During the evening of the first day, the Saxons attacked the Austrians in the village of Wagram. French allies on their right suffered a setback and mistook the white-coated Saxons for Austrians and began to fire on them. Receiving fire from the Austrians on their front and the French on their flank, the Saxons routed, causing a general rout of several French units around them. And, a few years later in Belglum, Napoleon thought that the dark-blue uniforms approaching on his right flank were Grouchy's; they turned out to be Blucher's.]

In many games, several nationalities fight as allies, controlled by the same player. Some designers have allowed their sense of decoration to overcome their common sense and have used a counter background color for each nationality. For a Napoleonic encounter, this kind of design yields a colorful array, but it also initially and perhaps continually confuses the players. In other words, the design has gotten in the way of the information flow. For example, GMT's The Battles of Waterloo's counters show so much color that it becomes confusing.

And when the design limits the "background color" to a tiny border around the rest of the decoration, the problem worsens.

[Fourth aside.- Designers would also do well to remember that over forty percent of the male population of the US suffers some degree of color blindness. This fact should prevent color combinations like yellow on white, dark colors on dark colors, and so on.]

There have been some games for which the counter designer and the map designer apparently weren't on speaking terms. The colors in the resulting map act as perfect camouflage for the counter; the counter simply disappears into the map in certain terrain types. The Gamers' Matanikau gives us a perfect example of a map swallowing up the counters. The two sets of colors blend like jungle camouflage. Camouflage may help battle commanders defend on the real battlefield, but not on the wargame map.

Counters will be designed and executed so that the player can immediately know what values the counters present.

The second consideration - the unit's values - brings up the typeface bugaboo again. Designers would do well to pay attention to the typefaces used on the counters that they like to play with and on the counters that they don't. They'll soon see that both the size and the style of the type become important.

The size should render the type readable from a distance of about one meter: anything smaller than nine points (in most typefaces) will not meet this requirement. The style should be unambiguous - some sans-serif type confuses certain letters and numbers.

This point about the confusion of letters becomes especially annoying when the size of the typeface is smaller than about nine points, such as when the designer uses the difference In size to show different values (or perhaps to distinguish play information from historical information). The style should be unambiguous - some sans- serif type confuses certain letters and numbers. For example, III 111lum

This type is set in five-point Helvctica (the same size as the unit designations in MIH's Ring of Fire). Can you Immediately see the difference between the capital "I" and the lower- case "I"? between the lower-case "I" and the lower-case "I"? Isn't this clearer?:

This type is also set in five-point; but this time it's a serif font (Adobe's Caslon, the same type used throughout this magazine). See how the serifs help you distinguish the letters?

And the designer should never sacrifice easy reading for decoration, as when the counters in Clash of Arms' L'Armee du Nord use an Old English typeface. (It's been said that the "Old English" and German "black-face" typefaces delayed the spread of reading for at least a century.)

The Old English information is not necessary for the play of the game, but the calligraphic information on the backs of the counters in their La Bataille de Preussisch-Eylau is, and it's nearly unreadable. Simonsen again:

Decoration is information - unnecessary information - which if present in overabundance detracts the player from the truly important, game-play 'Information he must have.... [Another] mistake occurs in counter designs which use large flag symbols (for example) to display nationality (when a simple color change is all that's necessary) and the important numerical data is squeezed into the small remaining space. In this case, as in many others, its really a matter of proper emphasis being ignored or subordinated to eccentric concept of "historical flavor." There's nothing wrong with such flavoring - it's simply a matter of knowing how much salt to put in the soup. [p. 59]

Or, put another way, any design element color, type, line weight, table layout, map symbol, and so on - that calls attention to itself, rather than to the information it seeks to convey, is just plain wrong. Forexample, the simple holding-box type play-aid cards for morale in The Gamers'Matanikau: their garish colors and color gradations (is the computer operator showing off that he knows how to blend between two colors?) and dropshadow, non-outlined white type all call attention to themselves to the point of distraction.

The Battles of Waterloo counters are perhaps an extreme example of this decoration versus information problem. Viewed solely as decoration, these counters represent some remarkable artwork: each 3/8" area presents a numature piece of art that, remarkable in itself as art. But for a counter that conveys information for game purposes, the art overwhelms the information. If you want to sit with a magnifying glass and appreciate the illustrations, these counters are for you; if you want to use them as game information, prepare yourself for difficulties. Very salty soup, indeed.

And is there any reason for L'Armee du Nord (and other games "In this series) to use two different styles of type for the game-information numbers? Nothing in the rules explains this difference, so there must not be any game reasons for it.

Counters will be designed and executed so that the player can immediately discriminate necessary information from unnecessary information.

This question of what's information necessary to play the game and what's information included merely for historical "flavor" goes beyond decoration and into the realm of typefaces and unit symbology. Many designers seem to want to include unit designations (both names and numbers) on their counters, even when the game makes no use of that information.

To discriminate this information, the designer is left with little except a different size or style of type. But if the maximum type size (because of the amount of information on the counter) comes in at about nine points, the designer is left with little choice except a smaller size, which will be practically unreadable. At this point, the counter merely has some muddy, unreadable information (that it's there at all almost requires the gamer to try to find out whether it's necessary); and the whole process gets in the way of the really necessary information. The old SPI games show many examples of this problem.

The unit type also often displays unnecessary information. If, for example, the game system doesn't discriminate between airborne artillery and towed artillery, different unit symbols can perhaps cause confusion. If a Napoleonic game, for example, shows ten or twelve different kinds of horse-mounted unit, but treats them all the same in the game system, the gamer has to weed out unnecessary information to find what he needs to play the game. The player would be better off, in this case, with one unit symbol for all kinds of horse unit. Again, the question of how much salt arises.

At this point, I'd like to praise the recent design efforts of those counter designers who seem to be able to simplify the information on the counters and yet include itall and manage to give us the flavor of the game at the same time. Many of these use an outline for the unit type, as opposed to the old Field Manual symbols.

For example, MIH's Ring of Fire uses tank outlines to discriminate the armored units in what amounts to a tank battle with some other units as supporting players (they get standard FM symbols); the gamer can see his armored pieces at a glance, quickly and easily. (This same approach would have worked in The Battles Wataterloo, except that there's so much background behind the outlines that they're hard to see. Still, they're pretty.)

This kind of outline counter perhaps reaches its best expression in games whose counters don't require much in the way of numerical information. For example, 3W's Frederick the Great has some of the cleanest counters I've seen: the unit outlines and even the tiny flags for the different nations come through cleanly, convey game information easily, and give an overall period feel to the game.

The map will use colors sparingly and consistently.

Map design often suffers from the same faults that counter design suffers from, and standards for counters should apply equally to maps. But maps present some specific design problems, among them the number of different colors that can reasonably appear on them. If the designer uses color to discriminate the different types of terrain on the map, and then uses color also to discriminate the different elevations on the map, he may soon run out of colors.

Fifth aside.- I will admit to a personal prejudice against white areas on a map pure white as opposed to some other blank color. I know others who share this prejudice. Few designers make use of white areas within the hexes; but those who do, shouldn't.]

Simonsen is instructive:

Perhaps the best approach would be to use colors to discriminate either terrain or elevation, but not both, especially in games with many elevations. (Remember the old SPI Wellington's Victory?) There are several symbols generally accepted for terrain, and some few for elevation.

The Gamers' Matanikau uses several colors to indicate both terrain and elevation, and the terrain symbology (woods) overlaid on these colors give the impression of that many more colors. The overall feeling is one of confusion.

The map will avoid harsh colors.

... Additionally, the more colorful a map is the harder it is to read in an overall sense: the patchwork quilt of a multi- colored map can be confusing to the eye and tiresome to look at for long periods of time. For these same reasons, use of raw primary colors should be avoided in map work except as accents. When using color to convey information, the designer must strike a balance between the ability of the gamer to separate with his eye the difference in color and the harmony of the color scheme .... The most Common mistake in the use of color on wargame maps is to make the colors too harsh and bright and to surround them with large expanses of white paper. Not only is the effect produced ugly and hard to look at but it also is suggestive of a childlike level of presentation that undermines the legitimacy and seriousness of the game map. [Simonsen, P. 64.]

Of the maps I've examined recently, their designers seem to fall into either the harsh school or the muted school, with (thank goodness) the last group having the largest membership. (However, now and then the two will mix, as in MIH's Ring of Fire, which uses an awful, garish, dark green chipped marble pattern for woods on an otherwise plain, muted, effective map.)

Perhaps the worst offender I've seen recently is the Gamers' Matanikau, whose map writhes with dark, garish colors (much of which is unnecessary: the elevation contours are all marked with numbers and outlines - why have another color as well?) and suffers from poor color choice and poor printing quality.

The same kind of praise for good counter design given above is due sonic of the recent inap designs. In particular, I'm impressed with sense of period and color restraint in Clash of Arms' L'Armee du Nord. The swash calligraphy gives a feeling of the history, and the overall color tends to disappear except when needed. So too with the maps for GMT's The Battles of Waterloo, which may be some of the prettiest maps I've ever seen.

The map will accurately represent the battlefield.

Although any map designer will naturally practice a certain amount of abstraction to get the physical features of the battlefield to conform to the hex grid, he should restrain this abstraction with reasonableness - Paris must be southwest of Berlin, not due west. (Don't laugh, I once saw a proposed map like that.)

That may be a crude example, but more subtle ones can affect the game play. For example, in GMT's The Battles of Waterloo, both the Mont St. Jean and the Wavre maps are full of errors, most of which shift the advantage to the French. These errors range from omitting several key Brabantlan farms from the Mont St. Jean map to putting the Moulin Bierges (a massive brick watermill) on the southeast, instead of the northwest, side of the river Dyle.

The map will contain as much playing information as it has room for.

This strange-sounding standard calls designers' attention to the amount of map that the game is actually played on and asks them to consider adding other information in the "dead" areas. For example, many maps use some portion of the map to list the terrain symbology, the elevation colors, etc.; they could just as easily add information on the effects of terrain on movement and combat next to the terrain explanation.

Maps also sometimes contain turn record tracks, holding boxes, and so on. In short, the designer should watch carefully during playtesting to determine where the dead areas are in the map, adjust these areas to the borders of the map, and replace them with useful information that he might otherwise have to include in play aid cards and that could be of so much more immediate use to the player.

Play-aid cards will conform to the standards for rules, counters, and maps.

This standard simply requires the designer to apply the good presentation practices given last month and this month to play-aid cards. There's not much sense in carefully producing rules and counters and maps to a set of standards and then producing play-aid cards to no standards at all.

But some designers seem to do just that. I've seen good work done in other areas of the game accompanied by play-aid cards that look like they were done by the beginning class at the local grade school. After all, the players will probably use a play-aid card more frequently than they look at the rules: there's just no sense in giving second-best efforts to them.

For example, MIH's Ring of Fire has good work in the rules and map and excellent work in the counters; but the play-aid card suffers from poor type choice (the whole thing is in a sans- serif type) and type size: it looks as if it were meant to be posted on a wall a few yards away, not used on the game table. Some of the type is as big as 36-point; the most part of it is about 20-point. Too much of it is in boldface, and much too much of it is in italic and bold italic.

The effect of all that emphasis is that there is no emphasis at all, a point that escapes those who haven't yet understood that, when everything is a scream, a yell doesn't get heard at all. The content of the card (there are two, printed back-to-back) is concise, to-the-point, easy-to-use; my complaints are solely with the look of the thing which is professional, just misguided.

On the other hand, some play-aids seem to have been produced at the last minute, with a complete lack of professionalism. For example, Clash of Arms' La Bataille de Preussisch Eylau contains two 11" x 17" sheets of the orders of battle of the two sides. It appears to be a xerographic copy of the counters in the game, arranged by wing, reserve, etc. The resulting high- contrast image of these very complex counters is virtually unreadable, and the overall impression of these play-aids is that they were done as an afterthought.

Play-aid cards will contain references to the pertinent rules.

This standard needs the qualifier "where appropriate," because simple game systems simply don't require references to the rules. But for more complicated games, this standard raises a common-sense point: if the gamer needs to consult the rules after having consulted the play- aid card, the pertinent reference is not only welcome but required; if he doesn't need the reference, it won't bother him that it's there.

In GMT's The Battles of Waterloo, the playaid cards (and there are several of them) do a relatively good job of referencing the rules (but not, to my mind, good enough). This is a complex game, both in its rules and in the way the play- aid cards (both the Terrain Chart and the combat tables) regulate play. (The Terrain Chart has fifteen footnotes, in addition to the explanation of the items in the chart itself) I found myself going to the rules several times, and when the play-aid card gave me a reference, I thanked it profusely.

Play-aid cards will conform to professional standards for tables, charts, etc.

Rather than set out in detail the traditional methods by which typesetters and illustrators set up tables and charts - differences in line weights, screen weights, type face and style and size choices, etc. - I will reference the current style guides that govern most of the industry. Few typesetters and illustrators actually use these things, because they have served an apprenticeship that taught them what to do in different circumstances. But, for those who haven't served that apprenticeship, reference to The US. Government Printing Office Style Manual, James Felici's The Desktop Style Guide, Kate Turabians A Manual for Writers..., or The MLA Style Guide would be helpful.

But designers should remember that gainers depend on play-aid cards to a great extent and that carelessness and inattention in their design and execution does the gamer a great disservice.

Summary

In summary, the standards in this and previous columns ask designers to pay attention to the kinds of things they criticize in other designers' work; asks them to apply common sense to all aspects of the game; asks them to prevent decoration (whether of illustration, type, design, layout, etc.) from calling attention to itself instead of to the information it seeks to convey. The standards apply equally to all aspects of the game: many of the standards in this column apply to the rules discussions in last month's column, just as the standards in that column apply to this month's discussion.

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