Sometimes, players in PBM games become unhappy about the lack of information that they receive in their game reports, and their inability to achieve what they want to. I have been thinking about this in the light of physics.
Consider the following: a basic unit of measurement in real life could be a movement of one mile in one hour by one person - it's an easily understood measure. The basic unit of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (to take an example with which I am well acquainted) is 2,160,000 person-miles per hour (basic units are 1,000 persons traveling at 3 mph for one month) . So the scale of the game is 1:2,160,000. What does this mean in other areas? Well, the spatial scale should be about 1 inch: 35 miles, but it is actually 50 miles to the inch, so there is some distortion there, which needs to be corrected. To achieve the scaled effect, time has to be adjusted to compensate. Each person depicted in the game would need 10/7 times as long to produce the same effect.
And what about time? The basic scale allots about 1 second to represent 1 month for the work-time available for one person. Adjusting for the distortion of the spatial scale, each player character (i.e. each player) ought strictly to spend about two seconds over his/her month. And information? Well, one character on the page is the equivalent of a 36 page daily journal. If a player-character spent an entire month reading reports at the rate of 800 five hundred word pages per day, he/she would have absorbed the game equivalent of six words. Given the relative rates of reading and writing, he/she might send out orders of two letters.
So the material that is submitted as orders or which is sent as a report is grossly out of scale (reports by a factor of 25 or so, orders by a factor of 500+!). It is not actually possible for the information exchange to proceed in a realistic manner, but any player argument which runs along the lines of "Of course I would know that as a matter of routine, so it should be supplied to me as a matter of routine." is missing the point. Yes, of course Napoleon had his detailed cahiers on every unit in the Grand Army, available for consultation whenever he needed them - but he didn't read through them every month as a matter of routine. He couldn't. Not while his marshals and Talleyrand (not to mention Josephine) required his attention too. He had to decide what was important this month, and deal with it.
Mass is another important aspect of physics, and a major aspect of mass is inertia. Armies do not turn on pinheads, or spring into instant action. Napoleon didn't suddenly say to Berthier, one day, "Time to hammer the Austrians again" and the next day, the Grand Army was thundering down the road towards Ulm (and the French were certainly a great deal more nimble than, say, the Austrians). For the Jena campaign, Napoleon gave a fortnight's notice of movement to his troops, and the actual advance started a week after that. It took a further week to advance 70 miles to battle. Given that the troops were already preparing themselves for action against the Prussians, it would seem quite reasonable to say that from the first orders being given until the march, an army needs a month of preparation, a corps needs a fortnight, a division needs a week and a brigade needs three days. At least! So it is not realistic for a player to expect his forces to leap off in any direction that he may chose. There has to be a preparation time, with the attendant risk that someone will realize what is afoot.
PBM. John Laszlo Acs writes at some length about his experiences and reflections concerning the Baltic States campaign that he ran until it ended recently. He says "I do not blame anyone for the game ending. It simply got too much - if anything the computer made storing information easier but also made it possible to overproduce detail, thereby again increasing the workload. I confess that I enjoyed using the machine, devising the economic system and other trappings of the game. I was never brilliant at maths as a school boy and found the computer made light work of the formulae I devised for it, encouraging me to make these ever more complicated. I rose to the challenge as best I could. I actually caught myself bringing my old maths book down from the loft to check equations and sums. The final aim gave impetus to my learning and I did work I would not otherwise have attempted in 'real life'.
A long-standing friend of mine introduced me to wargaming (doing the things he did, I thought he was potty at the time, now I am convinced I am myself - but I digress) and on the strength of this we set up a mini campaign - just the two of us - then we encourages others to join in and so the Baltic States Campaign was begun in 1977. It was played on a day to day basis set exactly 200 years ago to the day and was linked to events of the day, then and now. My friend left the game some time later leaving me to develop and run it. It seemed like a fun idea at the time.
It soon transpired that the literary talents of some of our players did not stand up to too rigorous a test of wit or endurance and so publication of the campaign newspaper 'DIE ZEIT', published in Hamburg both in real life and in the campaign, became very much a solitary exercise to which contributions were seldom forthcoming. I derived great enjoyment from researching articles and reading books on the period, an activity which has now lost its magic since the game has ended. In the articles, research and wargaming events were mixed, one supporting the other to give credibility and individual interest alike.
Furthermore, players are less than entirely honest. They will say one thing and do the other. They surely know that others rely on their responses to incoming mail, yet will not deliver appropriately. Even when they do, they do not cast their nets through diplomatic channels to spread or gain information. Very few will truly enter into the creative spirit of diplomatic or cultural life as it must have been for those who lived at the time. Yet to taste the past is what wargaming is about, especially play by mail.
I played in my own campaign (as Holland and the Hansestadt Hamburg) and as umpire sorted and reported on all the events within the domains of individual players - as umpires do. If I think of the amount of work I executed in comparison to that volume I received, the difference in time spent wargaming and any one player must have been colossal. Some players will act out their roles well, but they are badly let down by players who will not pull their weight. Perhaps personal contact as in a wargame would make for greater interplayer loyalty - it is hard to tell. It boils down to plain honesty and a fulfillment of responsibility.
If one reason for players not contributing properly is their lack of eloquence or imagination - indeed expressive ability within the English language - then the other is their inability to cope with defeat. I have lost more players to their armies or governments being defeated than to any other single cause. Yet defeat is merely an expression of the state or condition of a government. To the average merchant or peasant it has no meaning. The shipment from Champagne will still arrive, the crops will still ripen (hopefully) - only the tax collector may have to account to a new master. The defeat of a nation - if there is such a thing - can prove to be its strength, or at least be turned around to seem that way. A martyr gains an air and power which the living can never achieve. A government or a country cannot die, just as an idea cannot be strangled.
A player has a godlike rule over his destiny and the characters he plays can sprout two heads for each that is cut off. In defeat, he becomes infamous and most importantly, acquires an historical background. He also has a choice in what is a turning point, a new beginning. All that defeat is - is a new beginning. I can understand players leaving a campaign game because their positions seem untenable as they have envisaged them, but I feel sorry that they cannot see the opportunities therein. Victory points often do not account for the sheer character of a player though in some cases there is no doubt in my mind that they should. I have not met many players who would score on this point, however.
For now, I have the task of removing the campaign game from the computer and consigning my 3,500 figures to their hiding place in the loft. I hope, however, that my observations have been of some interest."
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