ZEROING IN ON THE TARGET FOR THE RULES WRITER To become widely accepted a rule set must fulfill the needs of the "average" wargaming group. These needs include the restrictions brought about by the limitations on personel, facilitie:, and troops. Too often good rules become useless to a majority of wargamers because they exceed the limitations of a wargaming group by requiring 20 people to man the 'chain of command and 40 people to push troops, monster tables (gymnasium floors or something tnereabouts), or 10,000 figures per side. I would venture to guess that the "average" group consists of about a dozen individuals of which six or eight attend any given gaming session. The "average" facilities consist of a room in someone's basement with a table ranging from 4' by 8' to amazing' by unbelievable' with the average ending up about the size of your everyday 5' by 9' ping-pong table. The availability of troops is a function of the age (and thus the available finances) of the gamers and the favored scale of the group. I would place a good range for troop availability to be around 500 to 1,000 figures per side for something Pike Napoleonics or ACW. These are the limitations and the size of group that I perceive should be targeted in order to have the rules set support the needs of a majority of people in the hobby. In summary, the average group is 6 to 8 people playing on a 5' by 9' table using around a thousand figures (for Napoleonics or ACW). How close do these numbers come to representing the group(s) you game with? Having defined a "target group" for our wargaming rules, the remainder of this installment, as well as a few of the future installments, will be a walk through the process required to generate the a set of rules while trying to keep things in "layman's" terms. Defining a rule set requires the following process: 1. Define Primary Objectives. 2. Derive Secondary Requirements, 3. Prioritize Areas of Importance. 4. Research. 5. Decide Possible Implementations. 6. Rough Draft. 7. Playtesting. 8. Additions and Changes to Rules. 9. Repeat 7 and 8 until satisfied (may even require going all the way back to step 5, or possibly even step 1). 10. Final Rules. 1. Define Primary Objectives This category would be based on a statements such as "I want to design a set of rules for ACW using 25 mm. figures", $x each side should field about two Corps of Infantry and a Corps of. cavalry", "the average battle should play to conclusion in 4 to 6 hours of real time", "the rules should allow us to fight battles anywhere from the size of Raymond, Miss. to Gettysburg". and so on. Specifically, the primary objectives that need to be defined are: A. Era of warfare (Napoleonics, ACW, AWI, Ancients, etc.) B. Scale of the battle. (Army, Corps, Divisional, etc.). C. Table size for typical battle. D. Time required to play average battle. E. Troop scale. (15 mm., 25 mm., etc.) Era of Wwarfare (Napoleonics, ACW, AWI, Ancients, etc.) What specific era do you wish to game? The only caution here is to not try to cover too large a time span. There will be trouble creating a solid set of rules if the time frame covered spans a period of time in which multiple types of new technology or new tactics were introduced to the battlefield. Scale of battle (Army, Corps. Divisional, etc.). What is the overall size of the opposing forces expected in the AVERAGE' game? It is important to note that well written rules will usually be readily usable at one level of scale above that for which they were designed. (Depending on the level of maneuver elements in the rules, they may not be usable "down" one level.) A good set of Corps or multi-Corps level rules will be usable when you wish to stage a "monster battle" (Borodino, Gettysburg, Leipzig, etc.) for a convention or local bash. Going back to our "target group", I would tend to expect the average Napoleonics or ACW battle to be played at one of two levels (Corps or multiCorps). Table Size for tvpical battle What is the size of the AVERAGE table you expect to play on? Avoid a real pitfall early on and DO NOT select the table size to be that of the biggest and best table available in your group. If you design the rules specifically to that size, gaming on the smaller tables with the same set of rules may become tedious or impossible. Remember that ranges, movement, visibility, and so on will all be proportional to the table size. Shifting from a larger table to a smaller table may mean that you have units that are able to shoot or move the length of the table. Again going back to our "target group", rules should generally be created for play on a 5' by 9' table. Time required to fight the average battle How long are you Willing to play (real time) in order to fight the AVERAGE battle to conclusion? There are two cautions in this area.. First, don't expect to have much in the way of maneuver, realism, combat, or historical flavor in a large scale battle, if you are only willing to allocate an hour or two to your gaming. Second, rules that start with an eight or nine hour time limit usually take ten or twelve hours to complete. For our "target group", . I expect four hours fits well in a weekday evening but weekend games probably run nearly twice as long. A good average game length to shoot for would be five or six hours. Troop Scale (15 mm., 25 mm., etc.) What scale of figures do you use? With the advent of smaller and smaller miniatures, this question has gone being from a non-issue to requiring some thought. My own feelings are that 10 mm., 6 aim., and 2 mm. are passing fads and that our "target group" will remain in or return to 15 mm. and 25 mm. 2. Derive Secondary Requirements The secondary requirements are DERIVED from crossing the primary objectives with the limitations of the "target group". The specific secondary requirements that need to be derived are: A. Command level. B. Unit level. C. Ground scale, frontage, troop ratio. D. Time scale and bloodiness factor. Command Level The command level is based on the scale of the battle and the fact that the "target group" does not have enough extra people to man a chain-of-command. The lead player for each side will have a command at the same level as the scale of the battle (overall commander). The other players will have a command one level below the scale of the battle. In addition to his overall command, the lead &layer may have a normal command (for groups not having enough players to dedicate two people specifically for overall commanders). For example, in a single Corps level game the lead players would be a Corps Commander and the other players would assume roles as Divisional Commanders. Unit level The unit level is based on the command level and the fact that the average player can only control between 10 and 20 units without too much confusion. For example, a game in which the player acts as an ACW Corps commander would use Brigade size units assuming 3 Divisions per Corps and 3 to 5 Brigades per Division plus associated artillery. In this example, the player would control between 9 and 15 infantry Brigades in addition to the attached artillery. IMPORTANT: Please note that many attempts to create rules sets break down at this point. How many of us (myself included) want to have an Army level set of Napoleonic rules in which each player would command a Corps or two or three or four and then want to have Regimental sized units (possibly with even Squadron or Company size maneuver)? The fact is that the average wargamer will not be able to handle even a Corps in a timely fashion if the units within the Corps are smaller than Brigade size. The amount of time and effort required to write orders, move units, resolve fire, resolve morale, resolve melee, and so on will ,become so cumbersome that the game will slow to a crawl. How many of you have played in a game where the first few turns went like a flash but as soon as the opposing forces came within range of one another the game ground to a halt? A certain drop in speed of play can uo expected as different phases that were not needed at the longer ranges begin to be used (like small arms fire or melee). But I have played in games where each player had to write orders, (hove, calculate to hit numbers, roll dice, extract casualties, calculate morale, roll more dice, make morale failure moves, and so on for as many as 40 or 50 units each turn. Needless to say, the game slowed to a crawl and the fact is that the problem was more a function of the number of units per player than the complexity of the rules. Ground Scale, frontage, troop ratio Based on table size and battle scale, a beautiful article in MWAN 130 by Phil Jones gives some good guidelines in this area. Basic fact is that you can't fit Gettysburg in 54 mm. at a 1 to 10 ratio on a 4' by 8' table. There are problems with trying to maintain an exact relationship between the size of the miniature, the ground scale, and troop frontages. Tony Adams pointed out in his recent article on Movement that limiting the ground scale to an exact relationship with 25 mm. figures results in the need for an extremely large table just to stage, a small battle. If ranges are thrown into the arena (especially for modern warfare), it becomes more obvious that ground scale,, ranges, and frontages must be based on the table size, not the size of the miniature. (Much more will be said on this relationship in a later installment of "The Anatomy of a Rule Set".) In it's simplest form troop ratio is determined by the number of figures available to the average group and the battle scale. If the intent is to field a multi-Corps sized battle with 30,000 participants per slide and the number of miniatures available per side is 500, the troop ratio will be 1 figure = 60 men. However, it is necessary to examine the orders of battle from the era you intend to model before finalizing the troop ratio. It may be that the standard paper strengths or actual field strengths of the units in your chosen era do not divide by 60 but may work well with 50 or 80. Some thought should also be given to the overall number of figures in the "standard unit" of the era. Finally, units with an odd number of figures are not easily placed into aesthetically pleasing columns or double lanes. One other comment npeds to be made about troop ratio. There is a practical limit to the density of figures on the table, Even if your group should be lucky enough to have enough figures to field armies of 3000 figures per side (1 figure = 10 men) in a multi-Corps sized battle, attempting to field all of those figures on a 5'x9' table will have the figures lined up 30 deep assuming a 1 inch frontage per figure (troop density is approximately 1 troop per 2 square inches). With this sort of density, maneuver does not exist and the game degenerates into some sort of die rolling contest.  Time Scale and "Bloodiness" Factor Based on the troop ratio, the battle scale, and the length of time for the average game. A day long (game time) battle that is to be fought in an afternoon (real time) will end up with turns in the 20 to 30 minute range (game time). The time scale will not only determine casualty rates (time scale multiplied by casualty rate with randomness factor applied) but also will determine how bloody your melee combats must be. For example, a game with 1 hour (game time) turns will need a close combat/melee system in which one or the other or both participating units come away pretty well decimated. SUMMARY: It is important to realize that the objectives and requirements for a set of rules should generally reflect the needs of the "AVERAGE" gaming group. 1. A general set of rules should NOT be written that require GIGANTIC tables or HUGE armies. If the table size or army size exceed the capability of the AVERAGE group, they become unusable by a majority of the wargaming community. It is far better to design a set of rules for an AVERAGE battle on an AVERAGE sized table with AVERAGE sized armies because it can always be used "up one level" to play a monster battle. 2. The number of units in a command should reflect the capabilities of the "AVERAGE" player, not the brilliant intellectual in the group that can control three or four times the number of troops with such ease that the game never slows. If there actually is such a person in the group, give him three or four normal commands, rather than tailoring the rules to him and allowing the AVERAGE players in the group to be overloaded to the point where they flounder. It is also important to realize that the secondary requirements must be DERIVED from the primary objectives and CANNOT be determined purely by player preference. Some limited flexibility can be used in integrating the players wishes into the objectives and requirements but extreme caution must be used to prevent creating an insurmountable imbalance before the actual writing of the rules has even started. Next Installment: Prioritizing Areas of Importance Back to MWAN # 38 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1989 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