Reactions to Bill Haggert's articles in MWAN 126 I just finished reading Bill Haggert's very well written article Deja Vu Redo in MWAN #126, Sam Mustafa's rebuttal, and what looks like Bill's rebuttal to the rebuttal. It was all good stuff, some of the most thought-provoking material printed in MWAN for along time. Bill took a lot of flak from Sam and others, but he's right. Categories are good. They are a good thing for car-buyers, homebuyers, and music lovers, so why shouldn't they be a good thing for wargame-buyers? Sam's objections seemed mostly to center around who should have the right to impose these categories on rule writers. Perhaps Bill could start with a group of "interested parties", coordinated over the Internet. If the RC airplane folks managed to do it, why can't we? They should have some formal background in game theory and simulation. Also they should not be wargamers. We are too close to the problem. We carry too much baggage. We'd probably get bogged down asking all the wrong questions: "What kind of turn sequence?" "Inches or centimeters?" "How many men per figure?" etc. Since we lack formal training in game theory and simulation, we would be unable to create useful categories. And there would hardly be some Stalinist coercion involved here. It might simply be a list of wargame categories, with examples, so authors could have a starting point to work from. If you didn't like The List, you could simply ignore it. Of course, you'd have to admit you ignored it, and if enough garners were relying on The List, you might wind up not selling any copies of your rules. But even if we could create categories, why do it? Doesn't that stifle creativity? Just the opposite. Playing tennis with the net down does not encourage creativity, just sloppiness. As it is, when confronted with questions such as "How come there's no command control in these rules?", an author is liable to say "It just felt right", or "I thought it would be cool", then shrug and say "Anyway who cares? - It's just a game!". That's a very aggravating answer. It's really just a rationale for "I don't know -- go away!". It would be a lot better if he could nod sagely and say, "That's a good question - the answer is in the rules." Of course, good authors already do try to explain their thinking, just not in a formal manner. A great example is Tactica. It has no command control, and Arty Conliffe says so right up front: "TACTICA is not concerned with simulating occasions when the personal intervention of a great general influenced a battle." He doesn't claim that battlefield intervention never happened, or rationalize that Tactica is "just a game", but rather that command control is not useful in this particular model of ancient battles. Categories are good. In Bill's second article, Chaos and Control in War and Wargames, it seemed like he criticized various solutions for simulating chaos and control without offering any solutions. It would be interesting to see what he could come up with. (If there were some solutions in there then I cringe and apologize for missing them.) Specifically, Bill spent a lot of time criticizing the "command radius" game mechanic. I'd like to defend it. Is it "realistic"? Nope. On the other hand, since (as he himself says) a simulation isn't supposed to be realistic, that's the wrong question to ask. Well, what is the right question? There is a saying in software engineering, "All models are wrong, some models are useful." The right question to ask is whether command radius is useful. Does it force players to tackle the problems the game designer thinks are important? Obviously each author has to answer that question for himself. I happen to like games where players to have to worry about arranging their forces in a way that mimics (albeit crudely) historical reality, but without getting bogged down in too much detail. The command radius mechanic is very useful here. Players can scatter their forces if they want, but they'll pay a price in terms of morale and movement if they go beyond the power of their staff system handle the load. Furthermore, using command figures on the table exposes them to danger, and loss of generals during a battle can be deadly to cohesion: "Hardly had Villars heard the news when he was struck on the knee by a musket ball ... almost simultaneously, General Chemerault dropped dead, and Abergotti fell seriously wounded. This loss of a commander-in-chief and two more senior generals had a paralyzing effect on the French left, and the order to advance was never given." (Marlborough as Military Commander, p.264). Using command figures forces players to balance control against personal risk. So how could you use the command radius mechanic to model Bill's example about Napoleon and Soult from the battle of Austerlitz? In history, both generals are conferring in the rear, and Soult reports that it will take his troops about twenty minutes to reach the top of the Pratzen Heights. Bill says that command radius is an inaccurate game mechanic here: Soult's men are not in either general's "command radius" since they are both so far away. In fact, since Napoleon stayed in the rear for most of the battle, while his army pretty much ran itself, command radius would be a really bad way to model French actions. But is it? Consider this solution: The Soult player has his command figure in amongst his units, so they are all in command and able to move properly. 'The Napoleon player's figure is off on a hilltop. The two physical players are standing side by side talking, and "Soult" says, "It will take me two moves to get up to the third contour". Soult has to maintain a reasonable frontage for his corps (which Bill admits is the main purpose of command control), but he can talk with Napoleon freely if he needs to. End result: The mechanic models the actions of the French army, without a lot of headaches for the players. In fact, you could be ruthless and get rid of Napoleon altogether; his figure really serves no purpose.  Bill also very accurately describes the horrible command problems in the allied forces at Austerlitz; more like the Keystone Kops than a group of generals. How to represent this? Easy: You give each army a "staff rating" which sets the basic command radius of the generals. Then you adjust it according to each general's personal energy and experience. The French might get "excellent" with a base rating of twelve inches, while the poor allies get "rotten" with a base radius of one inch. The result? The French players can afford the spread their units out and do some actual maneuvering, while the allies have to stay in huddled, paralyzed columns. And (crucial point) it's all easy to measure and enforce: It's useful. Ok, I'm finished. Thanks for putting up with almost three pages of soapbox speechifying. I hope I did not offend anyone, and maybe provided some food for thought. Back to MWAN # 127 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com