"One day Allah created hell. Then he thought to himself I can do one better than that. So he created Iraq and added flies." --Arab proverb Once upon a time a game company made a game that was based on chess. It involved modern military units moving around on a playing field with dice resolved combat. It was great fun and lead to many games like it. Some of these later games added in rules for supply, replacing troops, economics, and diplomacy. Some of them worked, but with each addition to the rules the game slowed down and became harder to play. This article looks at why that happens. Games are all about moving information around in an orderly manner. Each component of a game stores or manipulates some kind of data. So why does one game work while another doesn't? The answer has to do with overload. And overload has to do with how many types or LEVELS of information a players has to keep track of. Just what is a LEVEL of information? Well, take Tactics II (the game mentioned above) as an example. Playing it involves tracking 1. movement, 2. combat factors and odds, and 3. where all the pieces are on the board. Since movement and unit location are so tightly linked they are in fact one game action rather than two. That means that Tactics II deals with two levels of information, moving and shooting. The levels of information come together since the unit must MOVE next to the enemy before he can SHOOT. The interplay of these two levels of information is fun and is a basic component in a majority of wargames. So why not add another level on information to a game? If two levels make a fun "realistic" game, then won't three levels make It even more "realistic" and fun? Third Reich is an excellent example of such a game. On top of moving and shooting it adds the idea of economics and "buying" replacement troops. Again, it is a fun game. So why not add a diplomatic level to it? Then maybe a clearer set of naval rules, or something else. Pretty soon the game is unplayable, and it looks like Iraq with flies. A basic limit of game design has been exceeded. The Machine Model of games says that playing games is ann exercise in processing information. Too much information leads to friction which slows the game down. This leads to boredom amoungst some players, and overload and shut down of the players less able to handle the work load. Information overload can come from too much information on one level (ie tracking the movement of 10,000 cardboard counters) or by mixing together too many levels of information. Sounds so simple, doesn't it? All a game designer has to do is to put down the "right" amount of information and everything will be alright. How much is too much Information? The Machine Model also sets out the idea that different people have different styles/limits of information processing. This boils down to -- Certain people can process info quickly, (they get bored with "simple" games). Other people process slowly, (and so get overloaded by "complicated" games). Consequently there is no one "right" amount of information. So what is a "realistic" amount of Information? Games are never realistic in recreating reality (and thank God for that or I wouldn't play them). Some games do use analogs of war, but for the most part games use a mix of numbers and gestalts. Numbers mimic the idea of statistical analysis. That means they give lots of details. Without some clear definitions about what the numbers mean (gestalts) and procedures on how the various levels of information are integrated (another gestalt) then the numbers soon overload the players. The folks at WRG recently found that the drive for more Information vs "realism" is very tricky. The widely accepted WRG ancients rules are a prime example of a game with a lot of levels of information. It has been widely held up example of what a "realistic" game should be. Unfortunately most people took from this the Idea that "more information" equals "more realism." Now WRG puts out a set of simple/quicky ancients rules which they say can also produce "realistic" games. The "realism" does not seem to be created so much by the volume of Information but more from how the levels fit together. Tactics II is challenging because of the interaction between two levels of information (moving and shooting). This is true of other games as well. Poker for example, is fun because of the interplay between the cards and the betting. Diplomacy is fun because of the interplay between the movement and the diplomacy. They are all simple games which often say more about the real experience of human conflict than overload games (which seem to say a lot more about what it is like to be an accountant that to be a warrior). The problem of too simple a game is that the variety of options is predictable. This is where adding multiple levels of information to games shakes things up. Multi level games add greater depth to play by giving the player more "directions" to travel in. For example, a player can play a movement battle, or maybe a supply/attrition war, or a diplomatic angle. Such levels can be added to a game without slowing It down, but it does take a delicacy of design. Games which start out with a basic Idea to which gets added "neat ideas" can come out being as ugly and unplayable a monster as Frankenstein. The limits on how multi-level games can work are unclear. To test them out imagine playing the following game. The game is an abstract game of modern warfare. It consists of five simple chess like games which manage the information of the levels of the game. The levels are: 1. Politics, 2. Supply/economics, 3. Morale, 4. Strategic movement, 5. Tactical movement. Each level of the game uses a subgame that is identical to all the other levels. The variety of the game comes from the interaction between the different levels. Here that means that the status of one game determines the movement rules for the game below it which in turn determines the movement rules for the game below it. Sound complicated? But the "rules" are simple. Another example of levels interacting is a two level game that uses a two way feedback loop ( ie the play of one game determines the rules of the other game, whose play determines the rules of the first game). Tactics II does this by having movement lead to combat (i.e. units are destroyed) which ends a units ability to move more. What happens when the interplay between levels is not as simple as in the above examples? Well, it is safe to say situations get pretty complicated. Consider for a moment the number of ways games have levels interplay... Move units next to enemy to fight. Roll on a table to find a result. Spend "points" on troops you want to buy. Bid amongst the players for some advantage. Keep records of "damage" taken. Negociation among players followed by written orders. Pick a card to settle an Issue or give a random event. Make a matrix argument which interacts with the world. Trade among the players. Bluff and intimidate through gambling like mechanisms. Tables of situational dice modifiers. Formulas that combine two levels Into one. Special case rules and variations. and more ... A couple of real examples can best show the difference between a game that does not integrate its levels of information well and one that does. MILITARY DIPLOMACY Military Diplomacy is a game I was working on ten years ago. It is meant to be a military game like Blitz Krieg. Have military and civil economics like Third Reich. Have Air and Sea battles done one hex at a time. Have random events like King Maker, and have diplomacy, like Diplomacy. To my surprise, it never worked. Why didn't it work? The answer is supplied by the length of the order of play. One page long, it includes some thirty separate actions. The actions require the player to go from being president, to big business, to chief of staff, to battle field commander, to diplomat, etc. Even a very experienced gamer would have a hard time with all these shifts. Military Diplomacy used a lot of differing rules as well. one phase might involve flying bombing missions (with a table all its own.) The next phase might look at ground combat (with another table that used a different type of die). The economic phase might have players make an investment in increasing military production that mandated using a mathematical formula. And so on. Taken alone all the rules mechanisms work, but none of them work well. Together they clash. They demand that the player make complete shifts in how he thinks about the game with not regard for the difficulty of doing that. The end result is that playing Military Diplomacy is like filling out your tax return, without the benefit of getting a refund. The concept for the game is a hodge podge of "neat" ideas that lacks one unifying element. Consequently the game has not been played since 1981. MAHA RAJA Maha Raja is a game that replays the British conquest of India in the 18th century. It is built on the idea that the rules of the game should not dictate to the players the optimal strategy. Instead it should create a frame work in which players can make up their own strategy. The game uses a map of India, divided into political areas. The players receive income from their lands and then spend it. They bid on advantage cards (like "The Most Blessed of Kings") which tell them how much troops and diplomacy cost. This is followed by a movement/combat phase. Movement is fluid, and allows armies to march as far as they wish inside their own lands. Combat is settled by players "risking" their troops in three phases of battle. Each phase, the combatants hold out the troops they want to fight, in their hand. The two forces are compared and the smaller force is destroyed. After each round of battle either side may decide to retreat. So there is a lot of' bluff and bluster that goes on in combat. Maha Raja does touch on military matters, economics, morale, diplomacy, and random events but it does so In a highly simple manner. The player decides what type of war he wants to fight and spends his money accordingly. The unifying concept of the game Is the excitement of bidding and bluffing. The only drawback of the game Is that it demands that the players make their own strategy without much help from the system. So, if you like making up all -- that you want your country to do, not just figure the odds. It is a fun game. Back to Experimental Games Group # 10 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by Chris Engle 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