Some time in the late 70's I went over to a grand old gamer of my home town (Tom Keller) to play a seven years war game. Well... sort of a SYW game, really it was another war between Belgravia and Arteguaya. The Aztec Grenadiers vs the regulars, a straight up infantry action. I didn't know the rules and Tom had tweaked them anyway, so very strange things happened. My grenadiers failed in their attack, but my militia smashed their way through - gloriously. Everyone had a good time. Pat of which was the very unpro&tability of charging. One did so at one's peril. That game was probably twenty years ago but I still remember it. It influenced me. After that game I have always looked for games that make outcomes uncertain. It is and aesthetic - something I consider beautiful and true. It is a hard standard to live up to - which is why I've been forced to write my own rules for so long. Uncertainty is not universally admired. Many gamers, perhaps most, want certainty in their rules. They want clear, concrete procedures that require one man to lose when attacked by one hundred. Even the thought that something unpredictable might change this inevitability grates their aesthetic. Which is why rigid rules with a procedure for every outcome are so popular. Likewise, this is why rule books are full of statistics on how weapons perform in relationship to one another. It feels certain, and certainty is considered beautiful and true. Of course the notion that life really conforms to rule books is bogus. How many times have I seen movies in which the commander wins by "throwing away the book." But that doesn't really matter. Art does not have to match reality, so if one person wants certainty, that is as good an aesthetic as uncertainty. Certainty breeds something I don't like. The person who uses their nit picky knowledge of the rules to make something happen that absolutely doesn't feel beautiful or true. This isn't always rules lawyering. It is rather using a bunch of independently written rules and organizing them in play in such a way as to circumvent believability. This can happen because no rules writer can foresee all the ways his rules can be used. More rules, more levels of complexity, more chance of unrealism. The other thing I find distasteful about certainty is that it is certain. I begin playing a game and see in ten minutes that my side is going to lose. I am certain of this because the rules do not allow me to do anything to prevent it except roll hot dice. Since I was born under a cursed star - I am lost. Only by maneuver do I stand a chance. Uncertainty on the other hand has never been an easy thing to accomplish in miniatures rules. Tom's game did it as a fluke - we never did another game like that again. Role playing allows for it, as shown by Howard Whitehouse's Science vs Pluck games. And my experiments with free kriegspiels did it to. But neither do it quickly or easily. Still if it could be done just think what games would be like. My brave boys are marching down a road. They come to a river. Can it be forded? Of course! Can it be forded safely? Who knows. Though we outnumber the defenders on the other side, will we be able to overwhelm them after coming up out of a river? I don't know. If we do overwhelm them, how long will it be before the next enemy force comes up to counter attack? Hummm... I don't know. Etc. Uncertainty make players stop and think about what they are doing. They don't know for certain how well their men will fight or what the next step will be. Certain rules take a long time to play out, so gamers know that this fight is the only fight of the day so who cares if all your men die! Rigid rules remove all traces of uncertainty. By their nature the only uncertainty comes from misinterpreting the rules. An impasse? Of course not! Why else write an article if that were the case! ADDING UNCERTAINTY TO GAMES There is a way to add uncertainty to any wargame without changing anything about the games you play. You will not have to remount any figures, make any special do dads, or rewrite any rules. All you have to be willing to change is to be tolerant of unexpected (but logical) things happening. This is a bigger change than it first appears. It means accepting that no matter how big the rule book is that it is incomplete and that its rules do not apply in all situations. Can you accept that? If you like uncertainty, probably yes. If you don't then probably not. If you can here is how you do it. EACH TURN ALLOW EACH PLAYER TO MAKE ONE ARGUMENT TO CAUSE SOMETHING UNEXPECTED TO HAPPEN. Players make a statement about some event. It can be anything. The player can interrupt another players move - so a unit fording a creek may find themselves swept away! "But the creek is tiny!" "Yes, deceptively so." Or players may argue to get a second round of shooting, or that they get a positive dice modifier in melee, or that a side takes a morale check, or that a man steps on a land mine and dies, etc. In a single stroke players can take nothing for granted! Danger is everywhere. But since arguments are based on logic, they only need to look for danger in obvious spots. Mind you on a battle field these are everywhere, but there you have it. Players get one argument a turn, but a turn consists of all the players getting to move and shoot at least once. Arguments left unused at the end of the turn are lost - so there is no advantage in not using them. Players make their argument and pick out an enemy player to rule on how strong it is. The strength determines the roll needed to make it succeed. Players roll 1d6 to see if their argument succeeds. VERY STRONG 2,3,4,5,6 STRONG 3,4,5,6 AVERAGE 4,5,6 WEAK 5,6 VERY WEAK 6 STUPID 7! The argument either happens or it doesn't. Players may jump in and make arguments to oppose other players arguments. These arguments are logically inconsistent. One of them is guaranteed to happen. Players roll for their own argument in a dice rolling contest. They keep on rolling till one argument is in and all other arguments are out. If multiple arguments are in play then it may take several rounds of rolling - with arguments dropping out on the way. If all the arguments roll out they all come back and the contest starts anew. Of course players will get arbitrary in ruling on arguments. When that happens don't pick that player to be your referee again. Players can also pull in any innocent bystander to be referee. WHAT DOES UNCERTAINTY DO TO GAMES? I use this method in all my games now. It has an electrifying effect on players. They start thinking like real commanders - concerned about the possibility of ambush and terrain effects. I've seen long time gainers enjoy acting out their pet strategy that they could never do in a conventional game and new gamers hooked because even though they knew nothing about gaming, they did know how to make things up. Both have come back to play again. OKAY, OKAY, I ADMIT IT. IT'S A MATRIX GAME. BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? It's to the point that the worm has totally eaten my brain out. I can't do a game straight anymore. Those pesky little Matrix Game ideas slip in everywhere. Anymore though, I don't even try to stop them. This addition to games is a no brainer. It can be added to any game on the spur of the moment and doing so add a depth to games that can not otherwise be gotten at. For years I thought that Matrix Games were no good at handling battle situations. I've changed my mind. Battle may be predictable on one level but it is also inherently unpredictable. So it is perfect for MGs. Try it out. I think you'll like what it does. Back to MWAN #100 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1999 Hal Thinglum 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