In July, Russ Dunaway asked Pete Panzeri and me to develop a set of rules for the Texas War of Independence and the Mexican-American War to go along with the lines of figures that Old Glory produces. Because he wanted Santa Anna Rules! to be published at about the time that his Alamo line of figures was being released, the development cycle was very short. Most good sets of miniatures rules seem to take about two years to develop. We had about five months. In this article, I will discuss a few actions we took to speedup the development process without (hopefully) sacrificing quality. The Problem When we undertook this project, the timetable did not overly concern me. Like most gamers, my assumption was that warfare in this period was essentially Napoleonic. Having done a lot of research in the past when writing Battles for Empire (published in 1990), I felt confident that I understood the tactics well enough. As it turned out, the battles may look Napoleonic, but there are many key differences that make this period much more than the Napoleonic Wars with smaller armies. (A personal pet peeve of mine is that many game designers design rules from other rules rather than from a knowledge of the period. While this is fine for club rules or club variants, I think that a person who expects someone to give him ten dollars of his hard-earned cash for a set of rules owes that buyer something. And that something is a modicum research.) This project was complicated by the fact that I had recently moved to Texas from Maryland. College Station, Texas, is the home for many Magic, Fantasy Role Playing, and Games Workshop players, but very few historical miniatures gainers. The closest batch of quality historical gamers is in Austin, an hour and a half away. While the fantasy types in my town were willing to play the game, their play test comments were of limited use. Original Design Soon after Historicon, I purchased or borrowed a dozen books on the Mexican-American War and started to read. The best, concise summary of tactics of the period actually happens to be in a Civil War book, Attack and Die by McWhiney and Jamieson. Another good tactics reference was With Musket, Cannon, and Sword by Brent Nosworthy. There were many good references on the war itself, including The Mexican War by K. Jack Bauer, So Far From God by John Eisenhower, and The Story of the Mexican War by Robert S. Henry. While this is certainly not an exhaustive list, these books provide a good starting point for the interested reader. My feeling is that a good set of rules should present interesting tactical problems to the players, have simple mechanics, and represent the key aspects of a period that differentiate that period from others. I determined that the differentiating aspects of this period were the rough terrain on which most of the battles were fought (as opposed to the open plains of Europe), the extreme command and control difficulties of the Mexicans, the role and quality of cavalry on both sides, the dominance of American artillery, the size of the battles, and the fragility of units. Because the battles were smaller than battles of either the Napoleonic Wars or the American Civil War, I decided that the appropriate command span for a player would be a brigade. This would allow multiple-player battles with a reasonable number of figures. The question was how to make commanding as few as two regiments interesting. One way to do this was to add some friction, make it difficult for players to control their units. The other decision was to "unabstract" something that most rules, by convention, abstract -- and that something was stragglers. As we all know, most rules (including my own Napoleonic Wars rules) just lump stragglers and casualties together. I chose to separate these two concepts, giving the players the explicit responsibility of managing stragglers and their recovery. Within a month and a half I had developed some ideas and threw together some draft charts. But how was I going to play test these rules? Play Testing Because I needed to get a lot of play testing accomplished in a short period of time, I determined that I needed to get several groups to help me. Since I move every two years of so, I have found gaming groups in many parts of the country. I had friends in Baltimore, Atlanta, and Detroit who volunteered to conduct play test games. On the Internet, while asking for information on the color of Mexican cannons, I found a group in St. Louis and a group in Charlotte who offered to conduct play tests as well. And of course, I conducted play tests myself, here in College Station and in Austin. Having groups far away conduct play tests was forced upon me by circumstances and time; however, this turned out to be a great method. This is the real point of this article: plays testing for commercial rules should be done by remote groups and (if possible) groups that have never played any rules written by the author. Of the seven play test groups only the ones in Texas had the benefit of me to explain what I meant. The other groups had to read the rules as written and try to figure them out. This proved to be excellent, since these groups provided much feedback on parts of the text of the rules that were unclear. The groups in Charlotte and Detroit included people who were knowledgeable about the period. (This was vitally important, since the groups in Baltimore and Atlanta were not familiar with the period.) The Charlotte group was full of Piquet zealots, so I was sure that they would provide mostly negative feedback (which turned out to be a poor assumption on my part). The group in College Station was unfamiliar with historical gaming in general. Other play test groups sent back single-line responses like, "We thought the rules were fun," so they were of little use. The synergy provided by the various disparate play test groups resulted in the rapid development of a really nice set of rules (if I do say so myself). It was also interesting in the early days of play testing how different groups had different foci. The Baltimore group seemed very interested in the mechanics of the game as a game, while the Charlotte group, which went through the rules with a fine-toothed comb, seemed most interested in matching the rules against their knowledge of the period. Several members of the Baltimore group were very knowledgeable on the Napoleonic Wars, and their suggestions in some cases seemed to be based on the supposition that Napoleonic tactics could be directly extrapolated to the MexicanAmerican War. This still made their suggestions of value, since they made me go back to my sources and confirm or deny my initial observations. It was good to have some groups that have been doing historical gaming with many rules for many years. Those groups provided a great deal of feedback on the mechanics and flow of the systems. The consensus among those groups usually resulted in changes (and in one case the scrapping of a bonus-roll idea I was toying with). These groups were able to make useful suggestions about how well the fire system worked, how they liked the movement system, whether the straggler notion was a good or bad idea, etc. These groups were also very important in finding logical holes or inconsistencies. It was also good to have a few groups who were familiar with the period. They were important in validating my interpretations of artillery effectiveness, fire effectiveness, command and control problems, role and quality of cavalry, ratings of troops, etc. In fact one member of the group developed a chart with all the units involved in the war and the battles in which they participated that will be in the final copy of the rules. Most useful were the groups that had never played a set of rules that I wrote. They truly had to base their interpretations on what I wrote, not what they thought I meant. The group in Baltimore (which has played my WWII skirmish rules a great deal) kept asking me questions about whether you could do this or that, like you can in the WWII rules. (These questions from the Baltimore group were understandable, since the command and control systems in the WWII rules and the MexicanAmerican War rules bear many similarities.) The comments from both groups helped me clarify the text. Another important issue for play testers is that they should be willing to tell the author if they dislike something. I was confident that the guys in Atlanta and Charlotte would be honest. One of the gamers in Baltimore specifically hates everything I have written, so I knew I would get criticism from there. One of the Detroit gamers (and a good friend of many years) rarely has anything nice to say about anything. Finally, I had never met any members of the St. Louis or Charlotte groups in person, so I felt that they had no vested interest in being nice to me. It was also very interesting to see the reaction of gamers who were completely unfamiliar with historical gaming in general. Their feedback related primarily to issues of simplicity, flow, and enjoyment - all of which are important issues. Some historical gamers are willing to sacrifice some simplicity for the sake of historical accuracy. All the College Station gamers were interested in the rules as a game. The Bottom Line In order to make a set of war gaming rules really good, the group of play test groups should have the following attributes: They should be remote from the author so he cannot help them interpret the rules. As much as possible they should not have played rules written by the author in the past. You can ignore this rule if the current game system is in no way similar to any previous systems, but players, not the author, should be the judges of this. At least some of the groups should be very familiar with the historical period. They should be willing to tell the author if they dislike something. I was fortunate to have found all of these attributes in my play test groups. I must admit that to some extent, this was serendipitous; however, it will certainly be a part of my play test plans in the future. Implementation In this rules design process, I was lucky to stumble upon groups that possessed all of these characteristics. The trick, however, is trying to replicate this in the future. Ideally the author would like to find the fewest number of play test groups that possess all these characteristics, since it becomes difficult to get all the groups the latest updates of the rules. Unfortunately, this is a difficult task with no simple, cookbook solution; however, I have a couple of thoughts on how to do this. The Internet can be a source of play test groups. This is how I found the Charlotte and St. Louis groups. I suggest that the author "lurk" on his bulletin board or news group of choice, looking at the substance of the postings by various writers. He will find that the same three or four dozen people do ninety percent of the posting. The author should avoid the posters who quickly digress into name calling and "flame wars" and hunt for the rare few who actually apply some thought to a question before blazing away with insults and hog wash. Some of these posters will make good candidates for play testers. Once the author has identified potential people, he should send them Email and ask them about the composition of their groups, how long they have been playing, and their willingness to play test rules. In this letter, he should state clearly what he would expect from a play test group (e.g., number of tests, amount and format of feedback, etc.). For those of us who do not have access to the Internet, the letters columns of most of the major journals will do equally well. Reading through the last five or six issues of MWAN, The Gauntlet, Miniature Wargames, or some other magazine will reveal a short list of gamers who are interested in your period (or one close to your period) who have thoughtful, insightful comments to make. Usually the author can forward a letter to these people through the editors of the magazine where he found their names. Clearly the author will use his local club as guinea pigs, but he should exercise a few cautions here. First, the author must understand whether his own club will be honest with him. Some clubs will have a player who hates everything that is not rules "X," and players in other clubs may merely make a few, polite, unsubstantiative comments. The author, as I was, may be forced to drive some distance to find a (or another) suitable play test group. If he wants to make his rules publication quality, the author should not rule out traveling to conduct play tests. Everyone knows some gamers who do not live near themselves. We have met gamers at conventions, via Email, and in previous clubs of which we have been members. The author should use at least one of these remote acquaintances to proof the rules and play the game without the author thereto help interpret the rules. When these groups ask rules questions, the author should not just answer the question. He should write it down. Then later he can go back through the rules and see if he answered it in the text already and the players just missed it, if he mentioned it but the wording is ambiguous, or if it was something he omitted. After the rules are on the market, the players who spend their hard-earned money on the rules generally will not have the luxury of calling the author whenever they have questions. In the past I have done much of my play testing in participation games at conventions. This is a good source of feedback once the rules are "mostly" done. Players in convention games (at least here in the United States) are very willing to tell you if they hate something about your rules. Also, the author will find himself bombarded by self-proclaimed experts who will challenge every minor detail, even if he explicitly stated that he chose to leave this out of the rules. As an example, while play testing a set of rules I call Beer and Pretzels Skirmish (WWI to the present), I had a player at a convention ask me how my rules (which were meant to be beer and pretzels -- simple) reflected the fact that on the right side of the French Char B there was an access panel that was easier to penetrate than the rest of the vehicle. And this question came after I had just explained that in BAPS you don't roll for hit location; armor and penetration are abstracted as several levels from very light to very heavy, and you roll for penetration on a table which cross-indexes these values. Still, players at convention games may provide extremely useful feedback on flow, enjoyability, and historical accuracy. Again, there are no easy answers to constructing play test groups. Often rules authors put little thought into the composition of their group of play test groups. Careful attention to the four basic tenants stated in the previous section will greatly improve the, quality of the play test effort. Back to MWAN #92 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1998 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com