For the historical miniatures wargamer who has never written his own set of wargaming rules, doing so can initially appear to be an impossible task. If one is ued to playing with commercially available rules which appear to be capable of handling virtually all situations (is there such a set?) and one assumes has undergone years of playtesting, one can feet somewhat intimidated to say the least. My first attempts at rule writing was concerned with the American Civil War and I only did so because I finally gave up the quest for the perfect set of rules to fit "my" needs or view of what the rules should do. I struggled with each portion of the rules feeling as I described above; that they had to be perfect and every section had to make complete sense to everyone. Well, that would have been nice, but now I can look back on it and realize that even the best conmercial set of rules doesn't come close to meeting those requirements. Since that time I have written rules for recreating Rorke's Drift and Isandhlwana as well as a very basic set of rules for the ACW for very large actions. None of the sets has been published, nor do I expect to do so, and since writing three sets of rules, two of them for very specific actions, as opposed to writing them for a "war" which covers perhaps four years, as did the ACW, during which the type of action evolved into something very different than it was at the beginning of the war, does not qualify me as an expert, by any means. It does, however, in my own mind at least, qualify me to some degree to relate in this article the considerations I made in writing rules which is my intention for this article. The first thing I always do is to determine the level I want to represent on the wargames table. With the ACW, it was an army-level action with the lowest possible unit being the regiment. With Rorke's Drift, it was individually based stands with perhaps 500-600 figures although I later rebased my Zulus to six figures per stand for ease of movement purposes. While doing Isandhlwana, it became company sized units for the British and an army for the Zulus. In order to write your own rules, you must know which level of gaming you wish to represent. The second factor is to determine the complexity of the rules I wanted. In every case, I desired simple, easy to learn and play rules. I determined that if historical accuracy interfered with ease of play, historical accuracy would be sacrificed although it was hoped that it would be retained enough so as to reflect the "flavor" of the period. If not, one is just playing a "game" where the armies might change but the rules remain the same and none of us really wish to have that happen in our games.  Armed with the above goals, I immersed myself into reading about the period. What I was looking for was what really happened at the level of action I desired? Since I wanted simple rules, I could deal with generalities as opposed to specifics. My task in writing rules for Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift was much simplified as I didn't have to consider the whole continium of possibilities that occurred during the entire Zulu War. At Rorke's Drift and Isandhlwana, the Zulus just kept on coming, not in any organized, commanded fashion, but just mad dashes halted only by superior rifle fire. Thus, the Zulus, in my rules, are essentially controlled by the dice although I would not say this to the players who command them during the game - it might take the fun out of it. I enjoy fiddling around with the ground and unit scale quite a bit although I already have a good idea of my figure scale I will utilize before I do anything. Since I like large units, my units have lots of figures, usually at least 1 to 20 and many times between I to 10 and 1 to 20. I like the ground scale to come close to the unit frontage although I do not get too carried away with this. What I do is measure the frontage of one of the regiments I am using, convert it to yards, consider the fact that I want to portray large battles and think about how much I can actually fit on to the tabletop. Once this is done to my satisfaction, usually with a fair amount of fudging, I begin putting together my thoughts as regards movement, chorale, firing and melee based on my reading of the period. As far as movement is concerned, I review as many other rules sets as I can find for that period to see how they handle movement. I then select movement rates for one type of unit, i.e., British line infantry, and then do so for the rest of the types of units involved. I like to keep regular intervals for different types of units and try to stick with multiples of "three", i.e., line = 6", column = 9", Road Column = 12" as I believe it is easier to remember in a game. In considering all other factors such as morale, melee and firing, I try to keep things very general. For example, in the ACW, units might break easily, but many times, they could be regrouped fairly easily as well. Musket fire was quite effective and since the range was quite long, artillery fire against infantry was a risky business as the gunners were within range of the infantry. Cavalry did not do well against infantry unless they found a flank, etc. Again, in my case, I mm not looking for "THE" set of rules. I am looking for a set that satisfies me and other rules writers would write their rules keeping in mind what they thought warfare of that time period was like and how it should be represented on the tabletop. I try to cover the main factors in the body of the rules, such as pass through fire, angle of fire, when to check morale, etc., however, I do not attempt to cover all possible loopholes as I am the one who will be present umpiring the game. A comnercial rules writer must cover as many loopholes as humanly possible as people buy their rules and expect to do a minimum of interpretation. When I have written up basic rules for the period, I set out some troops on the table and try out the firing, morale, movement and melee sections by myself to see how they mesh. Corrections and adjustments are then made before trying it out in a formal game with friends for additional feedback. When I do host a game for others, I try to write down any unusual events or circumstances that are not covered by the rules as well as ny, in my opinion, valid remarks regarding how people feel the rules should be changed. I always try to keep in mind that my rules are written to reflect my own likes and dislikes and interpretation of what I feel should be happening; other people may have very good points about problems with my rules, but since I do not intend to publish them, I don't always have to change my rules because someone doesn't like a certain section as they are what I want them to be, a real advantage over using someone else's rules. I hope this short article provides some worthwhile information to readers about the way I write rules. I would be most interested in hearing as to how others write rules and would appreciate anything they would care to contribute as regards this issue. Back to MWAN # 20 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1986 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