This article was inspired by a discussion with one of our in-house playtesters (John Best) who thought the subject might be of interest to others. Dealing with the abstraction inherent in any wargame, one frequently comes across situations which appear clear cut on the game map which are misinterpreted if taken literally. This article addresses this "non-linear translation."

Any wargame "event" (combat, movement, whatever) consists of a dynamic action of a mechanism (organism?) of many parts functioning in a complex series of ways. Regardless of the game, topic, scale, or level of detail, the actual event must be shoe-homed by abstraction into the simplified-even simplistic-version of that event given in the game.

Take a basic game combat event. In the game, units move up, an event occurs which is called combat, it occurs once, one side is attacking while the other docilely "takes its lumps," a "result" occurs and the combat ends. Cramming the unbelievably complex series of movements, weapon firings, mistakes, brilliance, valor, initiatives, and lost opportunities into one-single, that is event is almost incredible.

That the results given can be at all reasonable is even more so. It is not that designers (except the more naive ones, that is) actually think that what is going on in the game closely follows the actual events. No, they understand that an abstraction is apparent, but that it does generate a reasonably close model of the actual events and gives a reasonably close approximation of the actual effects.

What is "reasonable" is, of course, in the eyes of the beholder. I'll leave that question out of this discussion.

Hidden

The amount and extensiveness of the actions hidden under a given game "event" grows in size with a game's scale. A man to man game has the counter "hit the din." While that leaves out such details as how the soldier does this, which leg hits first, whether he skins a knee or lands on a rock, it cannot compare with the multitude of abstractions that occur when the World in Flames army moves one hex and attacks.

Neither level is wrong, each is appropriate for the given scale of play. Where these things go wrong is when the designer couldn't quite figure out at what level he wanted the game to be. An operational (gasp, strategic) game with lots of "tactical feel" would be an example of this. A few, brilliant designers might be able to pull this off. Most can't.

What looks like a lot of nifty detail soon overwhelms the real system and the game dies a most unfortunate death usually exhibited by the growth of long cob webs from the game's dusty comer of the shelf. Personally, I prefer to be more rigid about where I draw the line-this fits, that doesn't-to the point where I must endure the slings of all those who were offended because their pet idea or nuance was ignored or abstracted out of their control in the system.

Most games make a player operate at several levels of echelon when he plays. This is fine. Those who may demand that a game rigidly place them in one command position alone, affecting the "war" in only the manner that level could are bound to be disappointed and bored. This is because the real commander at a single level has a relatively limited ability to affect his surroundings--the commands of his superiors and actions of his subordinates narrow this-and a vast amount of his time is taken up by things gamers would hate to do in their games (making sure chow arrives on time, haranguing rear area commanders for repair parts he needs, worrying about the number of AWOL's this month, etc.) which would be dumped by any designer who wants to keep designing.

Limited to the things the one level can affect which are "good" would leave the player with an amazingly short list of things that can or should be done. And, once all the annoying "drag" items are dropped, the remaining decisions can be trivially simple. Especially so since the game player need not worry about the life or death nature of his decisions.

Now that the player is confronted with controlling multiple personalities, it should not be a great leap of faith that the game actions and events he controls may not be as simple and clearly defined as he might think.

Take an OCS air mission. Here we have a 45- aircraft counter, flying out to some point, taking flak, dropping a load of death and destruction on an enemy unit, and returning to base. Yes, that is what the aircraft of this unit are doing in any given mission, but the keyhere is "how many missions?" A single OCS air mission with one air unit represents the systematic pounding of a given target over what might be several days of time. Even this is variable for a particular target may be dealt with quickly, while others might take longer all within the framework of a "single" mission.

Other OCS examples include that game's limited intelligence functions. Some units, such as trucks, dumps and the like, have an "effective" location which represents their approximate center of operations. This location is clearly known to the enemy player, who promptly launches a thousand-plane raid to destroy it. He is soon to be disappointed. The seemingly invincible mass of air power he used produces a lame result. Why?

Because the trucks he was aiming at weren't all neatly placed in the effective center he destroyed, but were running hither and yon doing their mundane jobs of which even the owning player doesn't control (or care about.) Sure a few unlucky trucks were caught at ground zero, but most were nowhere to be found. Effective locations allow players to believe they know the exact location of something yet automatically inhibits their use of that knowledge.

A further example are supply dumps. Here you are, a hungry, tired German player, and just ahead on the map is the juiciest Soviet dump you've ever seen. With its last three movement points, your Panzer Division's recon battalion lurches into the hex causing a roll on the dump capture table. Incredibly, a small amount of supply is secured but the balance "bounces" 5 hexes away-out of reach. "Foul," you cry, and proceed to write me a nasty letter about how "unrealistic" the game was...

But wait. Your battalion has just jumped on the effective location of the dump-which is not the its literal location. You have secured that portion of the dump which was actually there--the rest, your intelligence reports, is just 5 hexes ahead. You send forward a motorcycle battalion to check it out. It enters the dump's hex only to find a few more crumbs and a further report of a huge dump just ahead-another 5 hexes. In the case of a dump, you are finding bits of its real locations by jumping each of its effective locations in turn.

Eventually, you will probably unearth it all. If you are really unlucky, you may never find even a trace of the dump you knew was there. Other times, you might get it all in one shot.

A final OCS example, with a look at the artillery ranges that will drive some players to drink. The Katyusha ranges in GB are 3 hexes. 15 miles you think, quizzically, as you pull out a reference book to determine that the actual range was but 5 miles (that's for a BM- 13, before you yank out the aforementioned book-range 8,000 to 8,500 meters.) Now, before you write the nasty letter started in the above dump incident, this is why.

The Soviet player must set up and prepare for his offensive. This was true in real life and I wanted it to be so in the game. He must move up the launchers, set in, and then fire. At a minimum, this procedure will take a couple of days. Yes, the launcher need only pull into position, and fire, which by itself takes but minutes. The other factors involved (making sure everyone is set, bringing in the needed supplies, establishing coordination between nearby units, integration of fires with the overall plan, re-checking everything, positive controls established from on high, re-checking everything again) take time.

To keep the German in suspense as to the exact location of the hammer fall, the range was extended a bit giving an effective location for the unit. If the unit had these set up constraints, and a one-hex range, it would be a sorry German unit that would ever get caught by Stalin's Organs. While some units were able in action to pull back and allow the rounds to harmlessly pummel the steppe, most knew "something was up" but were not able to do so. To reduce an effective offensive weapon to the status of two kings chasing each other around a chess board would be absurd, hence the anomalous range.

That our other series do not show the addition of effective locations is a product of my "learning on the job."

Examples

Examples of 1+1=3 do, however, abound. In the TCS, tank fires contain multiple shots. The number of these vary from unit to unit (behind the scenes) such that a Stuart's terrible penetration value is somewhat compensated by the larger number of rounds coming out of the muzzle. This fact always raises eyebrows when players examine kill probabilities looking at a "single shot does what" level. Here too, the 20 minute game turn has its effects. In a given firefight between two groups of tanks, it seems that a limited number of shots were made over the course of a third of an hour.

This initiates another spate of letters. The turn adds another twist to the fabricated "reality" one is perceiving. Not only did each shot represent more than one round, beyond the fact that each of these multiple round shots were considered different due to rates of fire, the actual firefight lasted but a brief amount of the total time of the turn. These are all abstractions which can quietly lie in the background and take their effects (matematically) in the tables into which they were built. They only puzzle those who are knowledgeable enough about these combats to notice that something didn't seem to be adding up. They are right, at face value, they don't. But there is more depth there than it seems.

False Notions

When a designer (usually a novice one) sits down to create his "perfect" game, he usually does so operating under two false notions.

One is that more detail equals more accuracy and the other is that each game event equals each real life event. A tank fire is one round from one muzzle doing just what the Aberdeen Proving Ground round did to its test armor. This leads to layer after layer of added detail which, due to false assumption number 1, he adds with glee--rates of fire, points of hit, mobility kills, firepower kills, differing armor values for each part of the target, and on and on. The result, while potentially modeling a single tank round's flight to mathematical perfection (doubtful), is an unplayable mess.

This layering up is the exact opposite of what I do when I design a game. I hew out the whole thing first-assembling the parts which I think will give me the whole I want. The process then becomes one of trimming away excess and polishing what's left to give the correct results. Occasionally a detail is added, but only to fill a void created by mistake--not to add some cute detail. Eventually, the process becomes one of hefty decisions about the value of a given concept vs. the effect of its loss.

As the trimming continues, the line between the "keepers and losers becomes harder to tell and eventually I reach the point where I feel further trimming would eliminate the game's value as a simulation of reality.

Step Losses

Another "man behind the screen" game effect is that of step losses. Many games take advantage of the front and backs of counters to provide a method of strength reduction due to losses. Often, the back or reduced side of the counter is 1/2 strength. Upon first look, it would seem that the unit has lost half its manpower and/or vehicles and thereby becomes "half strength." In the minds of some designers, that is exactly what happens. In doing so, they miss a great opportunity to introduce subtle effects which could show such things as the effect of losses on different unit types or between units of different capabilities.

That aside, is the casual observation that half strength represents half casualties correct? In any but the most simplistic examination the answer is no. Take a mid to late 20th century infantry platoon. The bulk of the firepower of this unit resides in the medium and light machine-guns residing in its ranks. Certainly, the accumulation of automatic weapons in these units dilutes this effect (to the point where today the line between what's a machine-gun, and what isn't, is very fuzzy.) This latter effect aside, when does the platoon become half-strength? When half its men are out of action? Certainly not, the half strength effect occurs when half the MG firepower is eliminated. What this says about numbers is that a range of values can be called an infantry "platoon." A veteran outfit with a mere 20 guys would have the same strength as the green one with a full 50. These effects can be exploited by game designers who have the historical background to know what they are doing-those whose "historical training" consisted of "playing a lot of games" won't.