Please note the number next to your name on the mailing label. This indicates the last issue you will receive in your current subscription. We will notify you when it is time to renew.
We have completely sold out issues one, two, and three of Conflict. These three issues will not be reprinted until 1974, will be updated slightly, and the games will be revised according to player responses and further playtesting. (Issue number two will contain an entirely different game.) Copies of issue four are available for $2.50 each.
Due to the printer's delay in finishing issue four, issue five was put behind schedule. In order to get Conflict back on schedule, we will not be publishing the boxed game SINAI (or others) this year. SINAI, and several other games and products, will be available in 1974. Until that time we will playtest and develop these products more thoroughly.
To compensate for this delay, Conflict will be steadily improved and enlarged during 1973. Note that we are now at 56 pages, and the quality of the articles and games is improving with each issue.
The Post Office's problems also delay issues of Conflict; please allow three to four weeks for delivery -- issue five should be in your hands in July. We cannot send Conflict by air or first class mail: our business is military history and game design, not bookkeeping.
These delays may not be so bad, considering the plethora of new games and companies now entering the field. Since Conflict established a new format, other publications have been motivated to improve theirs. By continuing the improvement in quality and quantity of materials in each issue of Conflict, we hope to make 1973 a very good year for the student of military history and wargamer.
Games Are Fixed
Every game is "fixed." That is, it is deliberately set up by the designer in such a way that his conclusions and assumptions will be "proven" by playing the game. For example, if you believe that armored forces are very powerful, they will dominate the game board by being given stronger factors or better chances in combat. More subtly, if the designer believes that the commander of a historical battle was inferior to his counterparts, he will inject "idiot" factors into the rules which compel a player to act very closely if not identically to the participants in the original battle.
Thus, the player makes the same mistakes because (if designed -- "fixed" -- properly) the rules prevent him from doing otherwise. Hence, the game "proves" the designer's assumptions and theories. If the designer is wrong, the game cannot correct his errors.
We then see the phenomenon of game players blindly accepting a judgment made by a designer, especially if a game reproduces (simulates) history. Obviously, most game designers do a great deal of research, but inaccurate value judgments still bias too many wargames. In computer technology, this is better known as "garbage in, garbage out." If you don't have the correct assumptions or evaluations, your game cannot truly reflect (simulate) history.
To simulate history is not to duplicate it. The purpose of a historical game is to provide players the chance to refight a battle or campaign. If the commanders of history were incompetent or "idiots," that should not handicap the players, for now they are the commanders, and any "idiot" factor brought into the game is in themselves. A game is a simulation if one of the possible outcomes of a game session ends exactly like the historical battle or campaign -- provided both players move their forces exactly as the original contestants did. Because of hindsight, such exact reproductions of history should be rare occurrences. Instead, too many simulations cannot deviate from reproduction no matter how hard the players try.
Too many game designers (as well as historians) tend to believe that one side won a battle or campaign mainly because of the incompetence or "idiocy" of their opponents. Their games therefore handicap one side of a game because of the inferiority of its commanders. While generals like McClellan and Haig proved to be poor field commanders, you should not fault the units they commanded and design a biased game. Another man in their place could have used those same units to better advantage, and that is what a game tries to explore.
It should be noted that McClellan and Haig were not "idiots." These men forged the weapons that eventually helped to win their respective wars. The Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War, and the BEF in World War I were molded into powerful military forces by McClellan and Haig, respectively. That these same men did not understand how to best utilize the armies they created is not because they were "idiots," but because that aspect of generalship was out of their depth. They were organizational masters, not battle leaders like Lee or Hindenburg.
Too many game designers (and historians) seem to know how best to win a war that's already been fought. They know what mistakes were made and who were the "idiots." Could these same designers (and historians) find solutions to current military problems? Giving them time for their normal research, by 1983 they should have found the answers to 1973. Hindsight can destroy your perspective and appreciation of the problems that faced the commanders in history. Striving game designers should not carelessly make value judgments of military leaders, lest they become victims of their own "idiot" factor.
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© Copyright 1998 by Dana Lombardy
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