The subject of the passage of time in the wargame has received scant coverage from writers and rulemarkers who tear one another to pieces in the wargame press over the smallest details of weapon capabilities and movement rates - all in the 'cause of greater realism'. Of course, rulemakers have always appreciated that the reproduction in realistic fashion of the passage of time in the game presents them with something of a problem. (Thus, in one commonly employed set of rules, the bound was stated to be a 1/2 minute long, 15 minutes long, and 60 minutes long - all at the same time). Before we may hope to begin to deal with the problem of reproducing the passage of time in our games in a realistic fashion we must first of all know what it is we are talking about. All wargames scales are the relationship between what is in our game and what it represents in reality. Thus, our ground scales are the relationship between distance on our miniature battlefields and distance on the 'real' battlefield which they represent. Our time scale, therefore, is the relationship between time as it is represented as passing in the game by the length of each bound and by their sum total at the end of the game, and the passage of 'real' time on the battlefield being represented. From this it follows that the only time scale which will serve our purposes of reproducing reality as closely as possible, is one of 1:1, so that each minute on the real battlefield represented, and the total number of bounds played represents, the time that it would have taken 'for real' to reach the point to which the game has progressed. There are, in effect, three types of time with which we have to deal when wargaming, and it will help to summarise them here: Game Time: The time that is depicted as having passed in the game by the length of the bounds played. Real Time: The actual time that it would have taken to effect an amount of activity on a battlefield of the period being wargamed. Player Time: The time that the player spends in actually playing part, or all of the game. We can see from these definitions that the'time scale' in the wargame is the relationship between CAME time and REAL time, and that, for accuracy's sake, these should be equpl so that, if a certain activity took 5 minutes, 10 minutes or hour to effect on areal battlefield, itshould take 10, 20 and 120 half-minute bounds or 2, 4 and 24 two-and-a-half-minute bounds to effect in the wargame. We can also see that, under normal circumstances, there will be NO relationship between game and real time and our own player time, since we will, because of the mechanics of the game, generally find ourselves spending far more than a half a minute dealing with the progress of a half-minute bound and so on. It will also be seen from the above that, when rulemakers speak of their time 'scale' as being 'one bound equals' so many minutes, they are NOT stating their 'time scale at all, but are, in fact, merely stating the length of the sub-division into which they have 'cut up' the continuous flow of time for game purposes. The length of the bound, in fact, has NO EFFECT on the time scale, which is determined purely and soley by the relationship between the game time and real time. Thus, if the wargamer can effect a movement in 'one bound' which would have taken four times as long on a real batflefield, the time SCALE is 1:4 regardless of how long the bound is. We can also see the vital importance of our time scale in the game, and its effect on every other aspect of our games and their claim to realism. If, for example, we were to operate with a time scale of 1:4 everything would be done four times as fast in our games as it was/could have been on a real battlefield. Equally, fire effect would be four times as effective as it was in real life, since our troops would be able to achieve in 1 minute what real troops took four minutes to achieve. Our whole game, in fact, becomes UNREAL unless we operate with a time scale of 1:1 so that anything achieved in the game takes the same amount of game time to effect as it would have taken on the battlefield. All rulemakers have, in fact, employed a 1:1 time scale, even if they haven't known it. This they have done by the simple process of basing what their troops could do on what real troops could have done during the period of time represented by their bound. Thus, if infantry could move at 100 yards per minute during the period in question, rulemakers employing a half-minute bound would permit them to move 50 scale yards, rulemakers employing a 30 minute bound would permit them to move 3000 scale yards, etc.. This, of course, presents a problem to rulemakers. If, after all, a half-minute bound represents the passing of half a minute on the real battlefield, it cannot also represent the passing of 15 minutes or an hour, and twenty such bounds will ALWAYS represent the passing of ten minutes, no more, no less. It also means that, to fight an average battle, for example, of the Napoleonic period, lasting some six to ten hours, we would need to play through no less than 720-1200half-minute bounds or 144 - 240 two-and-a-half-minute bounds under present systems. Since it would represent months, and indeed years of wargaming just to fight one battle to a conclusion. Do we have to give up our quest for reality, and acknowledge the truth of the criticism so often levelled at wargamers, that they are just 'playing soldiers', or can we surmount the problems posed by the question of authentically representing the passage of time in the game? THE PLAYING PROCEDURE The purpose of the playing procedure is to deal with the passage of time in realistic fashion so that our miniature battles take the same length of time to bring to a conclusion in 'game terms' as they would have if they had been fought in reality. As, however, our miniature troops and weapons cannot themselves make the movements, cause the casualties and determine the outcome of morale-affecting situations which their real-life counterparts would, and we have to do so for them using our rules, the playing procedure is also required to allow us to interrupt the progress of the game whenever necessary so that we can perform these functions. These twin requirements of the playing procedure have always been seen as diametrically opposed by rulemakers since the 'answer' to the first is the use of bounds of considerable length, so that the several hours required to fight a battle of even limited scale could be reproduced, whilst the 'answer' to the second has always been seen as being the use of bounds of very short duration, so that we do not run the risk of 'missing' a vital moment during the course of the battle, at which its future progress might have been changed. Wargames rulemakers have always put the cart before the horse in terms of their playing procedure. It is obvious that, if one sets oneself the problem of locating a moment during a piece of activitiy without knowing what that piece or activity is, then one will have to 'follow it through minute by minute' in order not to miss the point. Thus, if we are going to determine the length of the bound before we know what will take place on our battlefields, we must employ a bound of very short duration in order not to miss the vitally important point. It is equally obvious that, if we knew in advance where an important point would occur, we could locate it without reference to time - and simply 'look at the clock' when the activity reached that point so as to know how long it had taken to do so. Time is not an arbiter of activity. It does not dictate to us how much activity we can get through. Time, indeed, is nothing more than a man made device for recording the progress of activity (be it the progress of an athlete or the movement of the sun) in relation to the progress of other pieces of activity (the movement of other athletes or the completion of one's work), in just the same way as a ruler is a man-made device for recording the relationship between different lengths of line. It is by keeping this in mind, that we can begin to understand the solution to the problem of time in the wargame. From this basis, insofar as our wargames are concerned, what is important is not how long we have to do it in', (ie the bound length), but 'how long it took to do, (i.e. the amount of activity we get through before we must interrupt the game). Thus, in general terms, our games should not be a series of 'time bounds', with the activity catching up with the clock, but a series of 'activity bounds', with the 'clock' being used to record the duration of each. (Thus, a one hour cannonade, followed by a 900 yard advance by infantry at 100 yards per minute, followed by a minute fire-fight then a 2 minute melee, should be reproduced in the wargame by a one hour bound, followed by a 9 minute bound followed by a 10 minute bound and then a 2 minute bound, NOT by 162 half-minute bounds or 33 two-and-a-half minute bounds). The major problem which would appear to face us is that we would not know 'where to stop'. However, we all know perfectly well where to stop, these points being the occasions during our games where we MUST employ our rules in order to determine something, (as opposed to points at which we do employ our rules simply because the game has been stopped - such as 'at the end of the bound' under the present system). We know, for example, that we MUST stop the game if there is a morale test to be taken. We also know that we must stop the game when an order becomes effective which would set in train a different series of actions from that already taking place, because that would set up situations whose outcomes were not forseeable and would, therefore, require our use of the rules to determine. (We would not have to stop the game if a commander ordered troops in column into line to meet a hostile advance if the movement would be effective prior to the arrival of the enemy forces as this would make no difference to the arrival of the attack). When he considers the situation, the reader will quickly see that, in fact, there are very few situations on our battlefields which really require us to halt the game. Indeed, apart from morale tests and the introduction of fresh movements which could alter the course of the battle, the reader will be hard put to it to think of any situation which REQUIRES the game to be halted. Thus, in essence, our games should be able to flow from start to finish, only being interrupted whenever one of the two situations just mentioned occurs. So how do we go about achieving such a system in practice? Obviously, since a system based on the proper relationship between activity and time will be radically different from one based on a reversal of their importance, it follows that its mechanics will be different. It also follows that its effect on our games will be quite different, and before we move on to consider how we may bring such a system to practicality, we will consider the differences it would make in our games, with particular regard to the increase in reality content. ORDERS Since we will have to determine'on the ground' the point at which we must call a halt to our troops' activities in order to determine the outcome of a critical event, and since this may not occur for some time in game terms, it will no longer be possible for players to issue orders every couple of minutes to their troops, and they will have to compose REALISTIC battle orders designed to take their troops to the END of their ordered activity. Thus, if we propose to advance a body of infantry over a distance of 1000 yards then attack an enemy position in a farmhouse, we must issue orders to that effect before the advance starts, since it may well reach the farmhouse before anything occurs which calls for us to interrupt the game. This is far more realistic than current situations, where commanders are able to set their troops in motion without any idea of what they are going to do, taking the opportunity afforded by the frequent interruptions of the game every few 'game' minutes to react to the current situation. Because orders will have to be far more realistic, and will carry troops through lengthy periods of game time, there will be far less need to write orders than there is under the current system, with, consequently, a speeding up in play, since interruptions to the progress of events will not, of themselves, provide reason for issuing of fresh orders, troops who have not been affected by the interruption will merely proceed in the next bound on the same course of action on which they were set in the one before. (Thus, a movement by a flanking force that is brought to a temporary halt owing to another force having caused the game to be halted whilst it takes a morale test, will, on the morale test being concluded and the game re-started, simply carry on as before). Yet another advantage of the use of the new system would be the proper significance of the difference between command and control being portrayed. The majority of wargames rulemakers have 'combined' the two military functions in their rules, because of the use of standard-length bounds, so that players may effectively change their superior's orders any time they wish. The officer who commands a body of troops is not the same officer as 'controls' it. Thus, whilst a battalion commander commands his battalion, it is the brigade commander who CONTROLS it since he is the officer who determines what it will do. (The battalion commander, of course, determines how he will undertake the task assigned to his unit by the controlling officer). Thus, since every force on the table will be controlled by the officer next senior on the command chain to the officer leading the troops, any changes to the forces' orders will come from its controller, not its commander. For example, a brigade of infantry ordered to storm the heights behind an enemy-occupied village will not be able to 'veer off' part of the way through its advance on the heights to deal with the enemy in the village. (Its commander, if it did, being in the position of 'disobeying orders', and unlikely to escape censure, especially if his divisional commander, or corps commander, has already assigned another force to the task of attacking the village without informing the first brigade commander - as he probably wouldn't. DIALOGUE Having a severe effect on their ability to 'amend' orders during the progress of events would be the fact that, inorder to determine the point during the ordered activity at which the game would first, (or next), have to be interrupted, opposing players would have to inform one another of the activities their troops had been ordered to undertake before any movement was made. Thus, following the previous example, the attacking player would state to his opponent that he could see 'this brigade of infantry marching round that way and aiming for your troops on the hill behind the village' in order to compare this with his opponent's response, (which in this case would be 'Well my troops are standing here to meet yours, so you can come right up to morale testing distance'). It might, from this introduction of a 'pre-movement dialogue', appear that we would be 'giving away' our plans. This, in effect, is true, however we would only be giving away such information as would be available to the enemy since he could see the events unfolding on the battlefield, (and events which he would not see would not be disclosed until they could be seen - thus a movement round a wood, for example, would be stated as such, and the opposing player would not be able to react to it until the point in time at which the troops became visible to him in the game). Equally, since we are able to accurately reproduce the passage of time throughout our game, opposing players would not be able to make use of any information we gave them before they could have done so in reality. Thus, after informing our opponent that he could 'now' see troops coming round the edge of the wood, any orders he issued consequent to that information being received would take a realistic game time to come into effect - and therefore might be purely academic in the event. The use of the pre-movement dialogue between opposing players would add to the realism of the game by suppressing the ability current amongst wargamers to react to events unrealistically quickly, therefore throwing them back on their true qualities of generalship by compelling them to try and 'allow for everything' in advance and to 'outguess' their opponent. It would also serve to speed up the game itself since we would be capable of dealing with movements and actions that would take literally hours of player time under the present system in mere minutes of player time under the new system. PLAYER TIME RELATIONSHIP It would, of course, be 'total reality' if we could achieve permanent 1:1 relationship between player time and game/real time, and some advanced wargamers actually aim for this. If we could achieve such a thing then fighting Waterloo should take us 10 hours or so, and we would be realistically tired at the end of the battle in just the same way as the commanders who actually did fight it were. However, in the main, what we require is the ability to get through several hours of game time in far less of our own time, and this, since it would only take us minutes to play through a bound of an hour or so under the new system, is exactly what we can do, with the result that a battle such as Waterloo can be fought in 10 hours of GAME time but only four hours of wargaming, as this writer and his club colleagues have done. There is, however, one aspect of the player time/game time relationship which we should try to incorporate in our game mechanism, and that is the time spent by players doing things which they WOULD have done on the battlefield represented by our game. In effect, this means that we SHOULD represent any time spent by players in making their minds up what to tell their troops to do, and writing the orders to bring it into effect. This has always been possible, even under the old system, but it has not been practical were twenty minutes spent deliberating and writing orders would have meant the game being progressed by 40 half-mir~ute bounds or 8 two-and-a-half minute bounds before the player's orders came into effect, (generally meaning that the game would have been over by the time that the orders became relevant). With a system based on activity rather than pre-set tirne periods, since the 1:1 time scale is no barrier to our being able to get through long periods of the game in very little of our own time, it is perfectly possible for us to take account of periods spent writing orders and to incorporate them in our games. Thus, should a player spend twenty minutes getting orders out to his troops, (including the time taken under the rules to get the troops to act on them), all that we need do is time him when he is doing so and then advance the game by the total time taken to bring the orders into effect in one bound. By this procedure (and when the reader considers that the standard of his orders will have to be far higher than was required under the old system he will appreciate that they may well take some time to compose until he becomes experienced in the art), we remove the gross unreality of the current system, whereby players can spend almost as long as they like 'between bounds' deciding what to do in situations where the enemy are a split-second from contact . The adoption of the new system permits us to take account of the PLAYER'S effect on the game in the person of the general he represents, so that players with superior ability will have that reflected in the game in the proper manner. Thus, the better a tactician he is, and the more capable of assessing a situation and deploying the means to succeed, the less frequently will a player have to issue orders and, consequently, the more fluidly will his operations flow. Equally, the less capable tactician will find himself having to constantly react to his opponent's maneuvres by issuing new orders to his troops - which he will never be able to guarantee will 'arrive in time'. RELEVANCE OF AMMUNITION I well remember asking one wargamer why his rules did not cater for ammunition supply and being told that 'There are very few cases of Napoleonic troops running out of ammunition so I just assume that mine won't'. The fact that, like troops in all ages, Napoleonic troops and their officers probably didn't run out of ammunition very often was because they took care not to, whilst his rules caused then to fire as rapidly as possible at all times without regard to the amount of ammunition used in the process, (generally going through all the ammunition for the French army at Waterloo every time they fought a divisional engagement), didn't seem to bother him. Of course, the current, short-bound system has meant, in effect, that battles lasted only a few minutes, and that ammunition expenditure has been based on the shortest bound length, it is hardly surprising that rulemakers have found an 'unlimited source of supply'. However, when we use a bound system based on what is done and not some pre-determined period of time, so that we can authentically represent the passing of several hours on the battlefield, we naturally bring the question of ammunition supplies into stark relief. (For example, during a one hour pre-attack bombardment, at a rate of only one round a minute, a medium field battery will fire 360 rounds - which is more than it would carry with it for the whole battle without drawing on reserves from the artillery park). It is not only the artillery arm that the question of ammunition availability becomes realistic and affects our games. In the case of infantry, with Napoleonic troops having some 50 rounds with them, it only requires them to engage in two 25-minute fire-fights, (dealt with in a couple of minutes when we employ the new system), for their ammunition to be finished - and that is at a slow rate of fire of one round per minute. At a common wargames rate, of four rounds per minute, infantry's ammunition would run out after a mere 12 1/2 minutes, (a tiny fraction of a game where we can easily represent some hours of warfare). (And it is not enough to argue that the infantry would be re-supplied automatically by their officers - they may well be 1000 yards in front of the main line of battle attacking the enemy at the time). The new system, therefore, by permitting us to authentically get through long periods of warfare, would cause the major problem of ammunition supply to become realistically important. Because of this, although we may never run out of ammunition, that will only be achieved by a careful use of the weapons at our disposal, and a realistic selection of targets, (eg it would be realistically stupid to fire our guns at 'anything that moved', as is commonly done, because it would be a 'waste of ammunition'). WEAPON EFFECTIVENESS It is not surprising to find that the effectiveness of weaponry is generally exaggerated in wargames. It is only natural for the player to want to see some effect from the firing of his guns however, in what, in reality, amounts to no more than a few minutes of action, he could not do so if his weapons' effectiveness were realistically reproduced. Thus it is the general rule in wargames of the Napoleonic period, to find that cannister firing produces masses of dead - when, in reality, it didn't do so, and was less effective than roundshot in that respect. (The 'kill rate' of cannister was of the order of 5 men for each round fired, which is about one quarter of what one gets under most sets of rules). The reason for such inaccuracy and unreality in fore effect rules is, of course, that the current playing procedure only permits players to engage in very short engagements - which would, if realistically reproduced, produce-very few casualties. it is not so much the short, sharp action which is productive of great losses, but the slow, grinding exchange of fire over the great periods of battle. Thus, troops regularly stood for an hour or more under fairly intense artillery bombardments during the 'horse and musket period', without breaking, but would hardly last ten minutes under most current rules. With the use of a playing procedure which reproduces in playable form those long periods of battle, it is, of course, possible for us to realistically obtain the casualties that their historical predecessors did - in the same manner - over the longer periods of time which we are able to reproduce. FACTS AND RULES One of the main areas of unreality with the present playing procedure is that, having established their bound length, rulemakers have a great tendency to 'make the facts fit the rules' by, for example, ruling that formation changes will take 'one bound', whatever the length of the bound, rather than 'making the rules reproduce the facts', by causing the time taken in reality to effect some action to be equalled by the number of 'game bounds' that it takes in the game. Thus, this writer has seen rules based on half minute bounds and rules based on 2 1/2 minute bounds where the deployment of a column into line ahead under the Prussian tactical system, which took some 10-20 minutes depending on the quality of the troops, which happily state that deploying into line from column will take one bound'. (What wouldn't Napoleon have, given for a set of those rules at 7pm on the day of Waterloo?). It is not, however, just in the realm of formation changes that this procedure is adopted. One finds that, for instance, attacks on built-up areas, (which could easily take a great deal of time) are decided in 'one bond', and that the crossing of obstacles which would have taken up considerable time periods on a real battlefield are allowed 'in one bound'. It is, of course, very convenient to deal in this manner with the time-consuming, but hardly tongue-in-cheek, problems which faced troops on the battlefield - but it is far from realistic, especially when one is operating with a bound of only a few seconds or minutes! When the playing procedure is based on what the troops do, and how long it took to accomplish, there is no need for us to falsify matters. If it takes twenty minutes to throw back an assault on a village, and a further fortyfive minutes to mount another successful assault, then we can permit it to do so in the game because we can play through a bound of those lengths in two or three minutes of our own time. Equally, if a body of troops is moving from one point to another and has to cross an obstacle all that we need know is how long it would take to cross the obstacle and add that time to the time taken to cover the remainder of the march in order to determine how long the troops took to get to their destination. The use of the new system would permit us to add to the realism of our games by introducing realistic 'time penalties' for obstacles, etc. It would also make the feeding of new information into the rules much easier, since, for instance, if we discovered that infantry moved slower than we had allowed for, or crossed particular obstacles faster than we had originally allowed for, all that we would have to do would be amend the relevent 'time expenditure rate' - ie one figure - in the rules in order to have the effect of the amendment felt throughtout our game. Now that we have considered some of the major increases in realism which would accrue to our games by the use of a playing procedure based on our troops activity rather than a pre-ordained length of bound, we can see that the introduction of such a system would prove beneficial in the extreme. This, of course, is true so long as it would be workable, (or 'playable' in wargames jargon). Next issue I propose to show the reader, that such a system is not only playable, but easier to use than the current one as well as productive of far greater realism. More New Concepts New Concepts in Wargaming 1: The Time Scale New Concepts in Wargaming 2: Game Mechanics New Concepts in Wargaming 3: The Moral Battle Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. III #3 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 by The Courier Publishing Company. 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