"Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who time ables withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, who he stands still withal." Rosalind- As You Like It, act III, Shakespeare. "Smee," he said huskily, "that crocodile would have had me before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock which goes tick tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and bolt." He laughed, but in a hollow way. "Some day, " said Smee, "the clock will run down, and then he'll get you. " Hook wetted his dry lips. "Ay," he said, "that's the fear that haunts me." Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST RESPONDS Having taken a four year break, or walk-about, from the world of wargaming and wargame design, I was more than delighted when I read my good friend, and occasional dinner companion, Bob Coggins' little apologia for that most ancient and artificial of wargame structures; The TURN, or more descriptively, the Fixed Sequence Turn, in is article "Pardon My Chaos." In issue 130 of MWAN He also added to the ever growing list of scurrilous names I have been called in naming me a Deconstructionist (gasp!). As does a voyager returning after years of wandering feels when he first sets foot back in his home country and smells the rich full odors and the familiar sounds of his native landso I felt invigorated by his pungent and florid article. I want to state at the start that I have nothing against `I-Go-You-Go,' or the more flamboyant `I-Go-You-Go-You-Go-I-Go' or even the nimble physicality of the simultaneous move also known as the "We-Go until we reach the center of the table and then I-Go slug you." If you game with friends, are having fun, and don't mind time being portrayed in a limited and functionally restrictive way-so be it. I also fully realize that Bob, Sam, and I all have a horse in this race, and therefore, tend to see our steed as the better horse. I may think "Napoleon's Battles," a sturdy bay, lacks speed, or that that great gray Arabian "Grande Armee" only has leg for certain courses, and that my fine roan, "Piquet" can best them all if he gets a clean start. But so it always is with the breeder of a fine thoroughbred. All are good horses to back and have earned their feed. So I will not argue each rules' merits, which are subjective, but, instead, go right for the core of Bob's misguided musings-the perception of time on the battlefield and its relation to the wargamer's perception of time in a wargame. THE PERCEPTION OF TIME ON THE BATTLEFIELD "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." Bob Coggins, Pardon My Chaos, MWAN #130. Here is the root of Bob's error. Time is NEVER perceived by tens of thousands of people in multiple units as a singularity or as a constant-NEVER. It is perceived by individuals, each of whom is in a different situation, and has different activities, distractions, and stresses upon his perception. This is at the root of that old saw about one minute under a mortar grenade attack is going to seem a whole lot longer than two hours in bed with some babe that looks like Halle Berry. This leads to many battle reports that vary considerably on not only what happened, but when. Prior to the introduction of the pocket watch in the early 1800s-time was only coarsely measured-certainly without the precision of the typical game turn. Even after a few such watches made it to the battlefield they were rarely used to record or measure occurrences on the field other than in the most general of ways. The usual procedure was to estimate from a given point where time was roughly known, and then count up the events that occurred and keep them in some sequence-from th° perspective of the commander. And, of course, there is the Roshomon Effect, where every man's different story of what occurred varies in content and sequence. Think of witnesses recounting an auto wrecktold 1 hour later. And here we have the key perceptual concept. In a battle, the commander of an Army is aware that many occurrences lie well beyond his ability to observe. So he relies on reports from subordinates, who may be right or wrong, early or late, accurate or inaccurate, expedited or delayed, and always subject to the delay of distance and circumstance. This does not occur in most wargames where the player has the table laid out in front of him and has not only artificial awareness of what's occurring over the entire field, but, more importantly, he has instantaneous information of exactly when it is occurring. No "blind spots", incomplete reports, or reports delayed by variable amounts of time. Nor is his response anything but prompt and aimed directly at the problem. For all the worry about 67 or 75 steps per minute in infantry, and how many rounds could be fired in a minute, the whole thing is thrown into a cocked hat by this complete lack of representation of the actual command environment. This is compounded by the obvious conclusion that peacetime drill and firing drills provide an optimum in terms of the efficiency of troops and the technology. The real environment of battle has almost NO accurate data as to these factors. Certainly the rate of fire and movement in the smoke, stress, danger, death, variable terrain, and weather, was not represented by data collected on a sunny day on a flat drill ground with nobody firing back. How badly was it degraded? How widely did it vary from moment to moment or location to location? No one has that precise data. No one. We do know one thing from reading battle reports, and personal memoirs, the battle was observed sketchily, the observer's perception of time elapsed varied from observer to observer, and even what occurred, and the exact sequence it occurred in, was often disputed. Even in battles where a high degree of education and literacy in the combatant armies was common, such as Gettysburg-where enough memoirs and histories have been written to cover the ground from Seminary Ridge to the Bloody Angle, there is no certainty of time or sequence other than in the broadest sense. Carol Reardon in her "Pickett's Charge in Myth and Memory" has a fine discussion of the truth of this statement.  This is the central reason why George Jeffrey's VLB was so impossible to make functional as a game. Trying to keep track of the time elapsed for each separate unit on the table at one central point with enough precision to avoid sequencing problems was simply not possible other than in the smallest of forces, or if it reverted to an umpired free kriegspiel as it always did when George was around. Not only would it give a false sense of the battlefield environment, but always had the generals worrying more about time than about winning a battle. The other, more common, and typical approach is to instill a multi-phased fixed sequence the delineates time rigidly. That is even more problematic as it tends to enforce the exact same number of events in every turn, in the same resolution order, and with a high degree of predictable certainty. Just like the ticking crocodile that warns Captain Hook of his coming, so any gamer can scan ahead in time and see when his risk of attack will certainly arrive. He can "Hear the tick and bolt." Just like Captain Hook. Take that surety away and like Captain Hook the gamer will have a fear that haunts him-just as every person has in battle-the crocodile may strike unexpectedly. What Piquet, and to some extent Grande Armee, do is let the Crocodile's clock run down. ELIMINATE TIME AND GAIN HISTORICITY The single most effective thing a gamer may do to increase wargame historicity is to throw out that old hoary formula of D=R*T and experience his miniature battles as real battles were experienced-as a simple sequence of events where time is subjectively experienced, and only roughly ascribed to a block of time of 15 or 30 minutes. This sequence may even be thought of as purely perceptual and not an absolutely accurate statement of actual occurrence-just an imperfect view of battlefield events as revealed to the gamer/commander. What events will occur in the next few minutes of battle? What order will they occur in? How many different events will occur? No one knows the future. We will only find out as the game unfolds. We will deal with each event as required and make the appropriate decision as to what is to be done. All the while trying to implement our original plan. We have no more need to "time" each singular event than the people that were involved in actual battles did. Just as Napoleon or Lee had , we will have a rough idea-within a halfhour or so-of what is occurring, but only in the broadest terms-no stop watches were clicking on either Seminary Ridge or Cemetery Ridge. A Simple sequence of events will suffice. One of the best ways to implement the approach above is to use a card deck, or some equivalent event randomizer. Does this leave us with only randomness and the turn of a card? Hardly. In fact, the importance of decisions become greater and require more thought than simply following a fixed turn "recipe" where risk is minimized. One must prepare for the unknown and unexpected by holding back a reserve, protecting flanks, and allowing for both good and bad outcomes. All of this is enforced by the fear of the clockless, silent crocodile-not a series of proscriptive rules. It is this management of variable risk that denotes the good gamer and general-not the paint by the numbers approach of IGo/You-Go-fixed sequencing. The fixed sequence rigid turn may generate the MOST ultimate randomness of victory as the only factor NOT random is the combat die roll. That risk has a limited ability to be managed -- other than attack/don't attack-and other than those few people with telekinesis ability die rolls cannot be managed, only suffered. Certainly many games prove that two sides that shuffle forward with observable strong points in their line will find out by a series of die rolls who carries the day. Maneuver plays a limited role, but the dice rule and decisions are few. VON CLAUSWITZ AND MR. COGGINS SEEM To DISAGREE! 1 close with another quote from Mr. Coggins answered by a certain Karl Von Clauswitz: Mr. Coggins premise: The higher the command perspective the more factors that are involved and the more factors that are 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. Karl Von C's response: "In short, absolute, so-called mathematical, factors never find a firm basis in military calculations. From the very start there is an interplay of possibilities, good luck and bad that weaves its way throughout the length and breadth of the tapestry. IN THE WHOLE RANGE OF HUMAN ACTIVITIES, WAR MOST CLOSELY RESEMBLES A GAME OF CARDS." --On War-Karl Von Clauswitz. [Emphasis added] It's not chaos that rings so false-but an excess of the fixed, timed, and predictable. Two very different views of war, but only one is from a man that lived and fought on a Napoleonic battlefield. I'll go with Karl. Back to MWAN # 133 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2005 by Legio X 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