Last time we identified the need for wargamers to decide how they interpreted the words "Napoleonic wargame" and what physical means they wished to use to portray such a game. Since no CAME we play will ever match reality (for which we should be thankful!), any simulation technique we use will be flawed in some way or other. Therefore, any part of the game that was designed to reflect the designer's personal taste about what makes a "fun game" or gives a "Napoleonic flavor" isn't open to debate about being 'right' or 'wrong'. However, if the designer advocates that his interpretation of history is better than someone else's, or 'more accurate', or (and them's fightin' words!) 'more realistic', he can be challenged fairly to provide his data and hypothesis, and debate can proceed. The main problem with such debate in the past has come because the participants were unable to clearly identifiy what was personal taste and what was interpretation of an historical event in game form.
Thus, the boardgamer's cardboard counter can't be measured against the miniaturist's 25mm figure for simulation value, since each must accept the self-imposed 'taste' restriction of the other's medium for the game. If one designer, though, were to state that his portrayal of the effect of a formation change was closer to historical results than was someone else's design, we can examine that claim with some success. Such examination cannot be totally exact, since facts, sources and interpretations are often in dispute themselves, but at least there is some common ground there. The same goes for game design. One person's taste may be for fast play and abstracted design, and another for slow play that shows great detail in the events being simulated. Yet both can agree upon examination if 'Game X' is a fast-play game or a detailed-simulation game that plays slowly; their personal like or dislike of 'Game X' wouldn't enter in to it.
What is the player's role in the game?
Once a designer has decided what the 'Napoleonic wargame' means to him, he must decide how he, as a player, will fit into the scheme of things. This is a crucial decision, since the more things a player must do in a game, the longer the game will take to play. This has to be balanced against the level of historical detail the game is to portray; less detail usually meaning a less historically accurate game. We are therefore faced with the old wargaming problem of "realism" vs. "playability".
This means the designer must decide which historical details are worthy of simulation. He must then figure out which historical commanders or troops made the decisions or took the actions that produced those effects, and then to gauge what those effects were. He must next turn to his game and devise mechanics to simulate that action. That means quantifying data and deciding how many 'game- decision-points' he needs to produce the given effect. A game decision is a point where players must stop to calculate effects, roll dice, move units or make a decision about his next course of action. While such points usually occur when players must make a decision for some commander in a game, or find the effects of such a decision, this dichotomy doesn't necessarily have to relate to history, and, in fact, usually doesn't.
For example, to simulate a battalion volley, one need not portray all historical decisions with game decisions. The fact that Corporal Bloggs decided to aim 3 inches further to the right is not important to the designer interested in battalion volley effects, and can be ignored. "Command decisions" or the verbal orders of subalterns to sergeants or of sergeants to privates in the firing line during a firefight need not he simulated with corresponding game-decisions or game-orders. That entire process, as well as the volley effect can be put into the game as data or as modifiers that may affect a game-decision, rather than each requiring a game-decision unto themselves. on the other hand, if the focus of the game design was at the skirmishing level, some of these factors might indeed be worthy of specific game decisions to present them satisfactorily.
It is important for designers to identify what they consider to be a "critical event" requiring a player's attention, since the focus of the game's design hinges on that definition. If one player feels the type of ammunition used is critical to Napoleonic warfare, he will build his rules around that premise and will assume that any other designer's claim to realistically model Napoleonic warfare gives the same priority to ammunition.
At this point, another consideration enters the picture. Even if we have identified times in the game where the player should intervene to make a decision with the data at hand, there is no guarantee that the results of his decision will give us the proper outcome. This is because the PLAYER has more knowledge of the entire battlefield than does the historical individual for whom he is simulating the decision. Thus, even a superb distillation of history into data that leads to the proper decision point fur that battle situation can end up with the same unhistorical effect as a bad set of rules - all because the player did not face the same set of restrictions or lack of knowledge that would have faced historical individuals at that time.
That means that it is not sufficient for "realism" purposed merely to find game decision points and make them player decision points, unless one tries to restrict the player in some appropriate way. Many wargame designers tackle this problem by identifying the different levels in the chain of command of an army, and the different perspectives each level has when dealing with a decision. Many designers have concluded that the best way to handle the situation is to have players make the decisions at one command level only. The game decisions that would normally occur at other command levels are replaced in the game mechanics with data; either in terms of modifiers to dice charts to represent the effects of decisions made at other command levels, or as automatic morale or combat results tables that are beyond the player's control. An alternative is to allow the player to make decisions at other levels, but to restrict him with dice chart modifiers, time lags, etc. etc. Yet another way is to use umpires to moderate the two sides, or to play the other side.
The method of restriction, or even agreement, about what should be restricted, is a topic of on-going wargames discussion. Paddy Griffith devotes much thought to this in his NAPOLEONIC WARGAMING FOR FUN.
The PW REVIEW January issue had an article by John Grossman about that, while the subject of player role and command restriction has appeared in almost every issue of Wargame Development's THE NUGGET. THE COURIER has carried several articles on command and control; Empire Games has presented lectures and seminars on similar topics. Those mentioned here represent only a small portion of the designer attention given to the relation of players to command levels amongst the miniature wargaming world. Though not agreed on how to do it, all do agree on the need to identify the "player", the "command level" at which a decision should be made, and the restrictions required for a player acting as the commander at that level. There is much debate about both the playability and realism of allowing players to function a:t different command levels in the same game.
In WINTER QUARTERS I'll use the terms "player' and "commander" to mean different things. A "commander" will be the historical commander whose role is being temporarily taken by the "player" to make the current decision being simulated. A game might require the player to be one and only one commander; that is, the decisions he makes are only the decisions that the historical commander would have made. A different game might require one player to play many different commanders with each decision he makes appropriately restricted to reflect the command level at which the player was acting when he faced that decision.
In CODE NAPOLEON George Jeffrey allows players to represent any commander who needs to make a decision in the game. Thus, a player might be issuing orders as Napoleon at 5:00 AM and as a regimental colonel at 9:00 PM. The restrictions used at each level derive from his ideas on the different functions of command of control. The orders that pass down the chain of command restrict the options of each succeeding subordinate officer. Within those restrictions, the ability to give an order or rake a decision is further narrowed by transmission and lag times for decisions that are made. Visibility rules reduce the number of times a commander is able to make a decision, even though the player recognizes the desirability of doing so.
Other rules commit player to courses of action ahead of time, which further restricts the player from using the knowledge he has at an inappropriate moment as a given commander, or prevents him from acting when he knows more than the decision-making commander knows. In addition, the option of using historical grand tactical formations removes the need for many low level decisions.
For George, the way to approach the Napoleonic battle is through it's management system, i.e., the chain of command. Once the plan is made and orders go from superior officer to subordinate, then from that officer to his subordinate, the Napoleonic military hierarchy is set up to follow orders, as long as no change comes from above, and the situation remains unchanged from enemy action or unforeseen circumstances. Thus, if the army commander somehow made the PERFECT plan, wherein he foresaw EVERY eventuality, circumstance, morale failure, subordinate disobedience, and enemy reaction (and therefore included the PERFECT countermeasures), he would not need to issue another order nor make another decision for the entire battle. In a game context, that player would never need to halt the game to react to something unexpected or make a new decision. Everything would continue as planned, while he took a nap.
Of course, that is impossible -- but it shows that the game battle only needs to be interrupted when some "critical event" has occurred; something that has not gone according to plan. This failure of the plan need not be only enemy action, since the unforeseen reaction of a friendly battalion to artillery fire can be just as threatening to commanders on that chain of command, and might require action to repair, maintain or adapt the plan to keep it going. This means that an army's command structure must work in common against forces that cause changes in the situations envisioned in the plan.
For that reason, it seemed natural to George to model the battle with an "us against them" structure; the army's chain of command against everybody and everything else that might try to stop them. After all, the officers and non-corns were doing their best to keep the men where they might be killed in order to kill the men who were under the command of the opposing side's chain of command. Since neither the men nor the enemy, (not to mention the weather, the ground etc.) will necessarily cooperate with "the plan", there will be numerous "changes of situation" or reactions to events by the commanders. With that in mind, George tends to make game-decisions-points" match the decision points encountered when a new situation pops up for a commander on the chain of command.
That in turn means that other battle-factors become data or modifiers that affect those decision points. For example, a battalion that was ordered to hold a position and is under artillery fire doesn't cause a commander reaction just because it is losing men; it would only do so at the point the commander realized the unit would be unable to keep up it's part of the plan as ordered - which he often doesn't realize until the men show him by breaking away from their officers and routing! It also means that players can't be tied to only one command level role, since these critical event points might occur at any level during the game, any number of times. For these reasons, the CODE NAPOLEON player finds himself 'role-playing' different commanders at different times during the game, and the rest of the game design is geared to that approach.
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