Recently, there have been a lot of words devoted to what some believe to be cutting edge game design. Terms such as chaos, controlling, and random events, not to mention expanding, collapsing, liquid and perceptual time somehow seem more appropriate for a physics or astronomy magazine than MWAN Magazine. But, unlike astronomy, how we got to where we are in game design is rarely examined and when it is it is superficial. The following is my biased take on history, as well as my two cents regarding nouveau design theories.
Years ago, the predominant sequence of play for historical miniatures was the alternate move, or as Sam Mustafa so colorfully put it, "I (still) Go, You (still) Go." My first Napoleonic miniatures rules set, Jack Scruby's Fire and Charge, used the alternate movement sequence of play and, as all rules of the era, generic units of equal size and value. In the early to mid-1960s, Jack's Table Top Talk published Fred Vietmeyer's 1:20 scale Napoleonic unit organization, which he developed for his rules, Column, Line and Square. The articles were a sensation. They not only popularized the rules but also validated the simultaneous movement sequence of play, which they happened to use. Very quickly everyone, myself included, came to believe that simultaneous movement simulated what actually occurred on the battlefield because what occurred on the battlefield was, as everyone at the time agreed, simultaneous.
Thus began the era of simulation and those who did not play games with a simultaneous sequence were openly derided as playing "beer and pretzels" rules. It also began the belief that the turn and the sequence of play were somehow related. Indeed, Bruce Quarrie wrote, if you do not use simultaneous movement you might as well play Ludo. During the next ten years the vast majority of commercially published rules used the simultaneous movement sequence. These included Bruce Quarrie's Airfix Napoleonic Rules, Jim Getz' Napoleonique, George Jeffrey's Napoleonic Wargame and, perhaps the most popular, Scott Bowden's Empire II.
Only with time did the problems of the playability of the simultaneous movement sequence of play become evident. While Fred's games had few problems because he made all the decisions, most games did not have Fred. Lacking an umpire or dialoguer rules regarding written orders were mostly ignored for the same reason that written orders were only rarely used on the battlefield; they were unnecessarily burdensome and they took too much time to write. The result was that gamers immediately reacted to their counterpart's moves within the same turn (sneaking a peek as we called it). This compromised the simultaneous movement sequence of play while causing time-consuming disagreements if not outright arguments, which slowed play and made it difficult to complete games.
As governments throw money at failed programs, designers all too often attempt to solve problems by throwing rules at failed systems. In the case of the problem of simultaneous movement designers threw a combination of mandatory orders, lost orders, delayed delivery of orders and the delayed activation of orders. Thus burdened with additional rules in the name of "realism," it was no surprise that playability was decreased while the lack of fun was increased.
In the event, few if any of these additional command rules had even a tenuous relationship to what occurred on the battlefield. In short they simulated nothing! But by the time most gamers came to recognize this, the terms hundred foot or helicopter general had been added to the game designer's lexicon. Designers now justified command control rules as a method to prevent the gamer from immediately reacting to information that his historical counterpart could not have. The result was Napoleonic wargaming became less attractive and fewer games were played.
In this drang nach cutting edge rules, no one thought to step back and examine what a sequence of play does and does not do versus what the turn does and does not do. That is, until 1981, when Scott Bowden and Jim Getz' Empire III became the first set of commercial rules to brake with the strict simultaneous movement sequence of play. The Telescoping Time Concept (TTC) enabled the gamer to view the table and play the game on both the grand tactical and tactical level, within the same turn. On the grand tactical level orders were written and movement was simultaneous. On the tactical level, there were no written orders and the sequence of play was a move-counter-move sequence with a randomized interruption system, which based on the outcome of combat, shifted the initiative. Jim Getz writes that due to "the activation cast used in the grand tactical part of the turn ... both the grand tactical and tactical portions were to varying degrees stochastic in nature." Jim also noted that, "the tactical sequencing method was based on Bob Jones' Le Jeu de Guerre. This was an entertaining and inventive set of rules which was ignored for the lack of a simultaneous movement sequence of play.
In Empire III, The move-counter-move tactical phase was wholly contained within the turn, which also contained the simultaneous grand tactical phase. What telescoped was the command perspective not time, which was one hour as measured by the turn. It was at this point that designers first began to think that time could be contracted because it was perceptual. Yet it was not! Rather, there are two inter-related sub-sequences of play within an overall sequence of play, all contained within the same turn. Or, as Jim put it, the turn is stochastic.
That the Variable Length Bound (VLB) followed quickly on the heels of the TTC did not help to clarify matters, which had already been muddied by the apparent intertwining of the sequence of play and the turn by the popularity of the simultaneous movement sequence.
The late George Jeffrey, God rest his soul, demonstrated his non- existent rules, Code Napoleon (CN) and the concept of the VLB, at Origins 82. Because the VLB presumed to use events to measure and sequence the linear passing of time, CN had no turn. Rather, units would continue to pursue an action or be involved in an event (combat or movement) until it was completed At that point the unit had a Change of Situation, which then made it eligible for new orders. Because events are variable and time is a constant and because you cannot measure a constant with a series of variables, the concept has not and cannot, even after 20 years of attempts, work. This is because, after a few units are involved in events of variable length, their location in time cannot be reconciled with other units.
The only solution is to measure events at the lowest amount of time provided for by the rules, ten minutes, as I recall. But, to do so, is to return to the quaint idea of using time to measure events, defeating the concept of the VLB. Subsequently, Peter Dennis and Cliff Knight, who worked on the original project, released CN light or Napoleonic Rules for a Large Scale Wargame, a 22 page pamphlet with George's ideas and the VLB's lack of playability. Even so, to this day there is a group dedicated to making the VLB work.
DECONSTRUCTIONIST GAME DESIGN
In the mid-1990s Bob Jones published Piquet. The rules use a die roll to determine initiative and collapse time and a deck of cards, the turn of each that determines what actions may be performed. The expiration of the deck, whether by initiative die roll or the play of all the cards in the deck, marks the passing of 30 minutes. In the designer notes, Bob maintains that time is fluid and because of this, the traditional turn and its structured sequence of play cannot do it justice. Bob also claims the rules are iconoclastic. But, because they tear down time, which is not an icon, a more apt term is deconstructionist.
Considering that Sam Mustafa is a history professor, a profession famous as a repository of deconstructionist thought, his rules, Grande Armee, are, not surprisingly, also deconstructionist. Indeed, they randomize constants to the extent that it is impossible to believe that they simulate anything other than, as Sam has put it, moving toy soldiers on the table. To Sam, Piquet and Grande Armee are, in their randomness, chaotic. To me they are in their artificial randomness, "controlling."
So, over the years the game design continuum of the simultaneous movement sequence, the Telescoping Time Concept and the Variable Length Bound, led directly to Piquet's concept of collapsing time and ultimately Sam Mustafa's claim that Grande Armee does not measure time (it does) while presuming to both expand and contract it in a random fashion.
A CONSTRUCTIONIST VIEW
Considering the above continuum and considering his deconstructionist pedigree, it was not surprising when, in a number of articles in MWAN, Mr. Mustafa represented the sequence of play in Napoleon's Battles as controlling. Nor, considering the lack of understanding of the difference between the sequence of play and the turn, a misunderstanding exacerbated by the VLB's slavish desire to sequence events in a linear fashion, was I surprised when he maintained if an event occurred at the end of a structured sequence of play, such as that in Napoleon's Battles, there was not enough time left in the turn for it to be completed.
What Mr. Mustafa did not take into account is, from Napoleon's Battles' grand tactical perspective, the precise sequencing of tactical events within the time simulated by the turn is not relevant. What is relevant, to senior generals, are the outcomes of combats and the states of order of formations at any one point in time and that point in time in Napoleon's Battles is simulated by the length of a turn, or 30 minutes.
Based on this, the Napoleon's Battles turn was designed to be, and is, holistic, not linear, as incorrectly implied by Sam. So, when an event occurs in the sequence of play has nothing to do with when it may or may not have occurred within the turn. Even the designer's notes in Piquet, which was published after Napoleon's Battles, alludes to the same concept using different terms, while making it appear as if it were a new idea.
In addition, while the turn nay appear to Sam to be immutable and while the sequence of play may appear to be sequential, it was designed to allow units to perform actions and be involved in events that exceed its parameters! Having personally seen George Jeffrey dialogue CN at Origins 82, having spoken with George and having been privy to the painful and very costly attempt by The Courier magazine to incorporate the concept of the VLB into a playable set of wargame rules; the Napoleon's Battles turn was predicated on time being both fluid and liquid. Thus, the location of some units at the end of a turn is a cipher for where they will be at some point during the next turn. Nor do the rules presume that part of the movement during the current turn did not begin during the previous turn. However, unlike the VLB, while units may be involved in events and actions which exceed the time allotted by the turn, they will ultimately be reined-in and reconciled, in time, within a succeeding if not the next turn. Thus, without all of the hoop-la of perceptual, liquid, expanding and collapsing time, without unplayable cutting edge systems such as the VLB, or whatever else, and without attempting to make the sequence of play into something it can never be, a Napoleon's Battles turn is of variable length on a unit by unit basis.
Of course, Craig Taylor and I did not invent the holistic turn. Almost every board wargame as well as all alternate move miniatures rules have holistic turns. The concept of the holistic turn was reintroduced to miniatures with Empire III, long before Napoleon's Battles was designed. It was the VLB and its slavish attempt to represent time as unfolding in a linear fashion that not only made CN unplayable but also confused the matter by attempting to control time, and ultimately the gamers, by the use of events.
So, while the concept of expanding and collapsing time appears to have initially been inspired by the TTC, it measured activity, within a time certain, which was measured by the turn. Over the years, Jeffrey's VLB did nothing to clarify matters and Piquet which has been so well promoted by Bob Jones and his supporters has with its popularity validated the concept of perceptual time to the extent that even Einstein would have difficulty figuring it out.
Yet, time, when perceived by tens of thousands of soldiers in multiple dozens or even hundreds of units on the battlefield, is and must be a constant. It is, therefore, the job of the turn to measure the scale passing of time and by doing so, placing a governor on activity, thus, allowing it to be "simulated" in an understandable fashion. For, without the constant of time it is not possible for rules to represent movement, fire or command in any way that can lay claim to simulating or modeling what occurred on the battlefield.
This returns us full circle to the origins of the confusion between the "sequence of play" and the turn, which began in the early 1960s and continues to this day. The turn is a mechanism that enables designers to simulate the passing of a time certain. In Napoleon's Battles the turn measures one half hour.
The sequence of play is a game mechanic that provides a framework within which events can be seamlessly resolved without unduly interfering with the play of the game. Though more complex, a wargame sequence of play serves precisely the same function as the sequences of play in Monopoly, Poker or Mister Potato Head.
The sequence of play does not, as Sam desires, simulate "an environment.... faced by an actual commander" because an environment faced by an actual commander is a subjective perception and subjective perceptions cannot be quantified and, thus, cannot be empirically simulated. The only thing that can be simulated is the prejudicial perceptions of the designer, which are ultimately controlling.
BELLY UP TO THE BAR.... GRAPH!
Using a bar graph, Mr. Mustafa then represented Napoleon's Battles as "controlling." His basis is his stated belief that the "predictability of a detailed sequence of play ... creates ... an environment that was nothing like that faced by an actual commander."
Conversely, Sam used his bar graph to represent Piquet and Grande Armee as chaotic, implying that chaos is, in some way, a "good thing.". Yet, apart from the impossibility of creating chaos, both sets of rules are, from my perspective, "controlling" in their randomness, which ultimately simulates nothing more than the decisions of the designers.
Predictability, or its lack, depends on the level of command at which one fights a battle or plays a game. The higher the command perspective the more factors that are involved and the more factors involved the more predictable the outcome. Because of this, when allowing for deviations from the norm in grand tactical wargame rules, most events or actions, such as movement or command, are predictable, not chaotic.
True randomness or chance on the grand tactical battlefield is that which determines the outcome of individual combats between major formations, determined by deviations from the expected norm, or inherent military probability (IMP). It is this chance that haunts senior generals, who are too far away to have any control, and it is its effect on command and control that Napoleon's Battles addresses.
WHAT DO GAMERS WANT?
In the end, it all depends on what a gamer desires in his wargaming experience - certainly fun and entertainment. After that, for those gamers who believe, "The fault is in ourselves..." Napoleon's Battles builds a framework or structure, which allows the gamers to make and suffer the consequences of their decisions, just as their historical counterparts. The rules do not use a die roll to create artificial randomness where none existed, but rather allows the randomness of the individual gamers' decisions combined with the lack of total control over the outcome of combats to make it impossible to see far into the future.
On the other hand, for those who would abdicate responsibility for their actions to their stars, there are dozens of other rules that will determine their fate with the turn of a card or a roll of a die. If they lose - well - it wasn't in the stars and, if they win - well - they were brilliant.
In the end, gamers play the rules that they believe best models what they think occurred on the battlefield (sort of like Sam's "it just feels right"). Hopefully, everyone will prefer Napoleon's Battles. Of course they will not! That is both the strength and the weakness of the hobby and I would not have it any other way!
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© Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum
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