One of the advantages of having known Bob Jones for 20+ years is that you get advanced peeks at the projects on which he is working. Just last week Bob sent me a copy of the final draft of Piquet and asked if I would write a short piece for the newsletter about my initial impressions.

I had first been introduced to Piquet the previous February but had not seen any updates since that time. I eagerly plowed into Piquet to find what wild and crazy ideas Bob had hidden away to excite me. I was not to be disappointed, there was excitement over his new approach to gaming, but I kept hearing myself mutter, "Oh, but Bob, why did you do that!"

After about the fourth time, I said to myself, "Now, why can't he do that?" And came to the conclusion that why I was saying he couldn't do something was why-as in "WHY."

The Reasons Why

Each of us enjoys this hobby for a different set of reasons. For me it is the rule creation that is the major fascination. In a certain sense, I would rather design a game than play a game, which is probably the reason I never play games I design after they are published! Designing is fascinating to me because I want to know the reason "why" things happened as they did. Building a rule set acts as my vehicle for gaining this understanding. Game players also want to know why, and there is nothing at all wrong with this, except I would contend that the need to know the reason "why" complicates rules more than any thing else. The better the rule set explains why the events on the table are happening, the more complex that rule set is. The corollary to this is that the more we as gamers will accept not knowing why something happened, the simpler the designer can make the rule mechanics. I might point out that living with such information is really more realistic from the commander's perspective. No commander in the real world ever had the amount of information that the wargamer has about why things happen. The real world commander was lucky if he even knew some things happened, let alone why they happened!

Another reason "why" is the joy of arcane knowledge, the pride in being able to quote chapter and verse of rule set minutia. But can not the arcane knowledge we enpy be history? Why can the mastery we love to display not be using a simple rule set to recreate an historically accurate wargame? A wargame that is accurate not by weight of rules, busby pride of craftsmanship and personal discipline. This is a far more challenging undertaking than merely learning a set of rules.

Of course one of the biggest reasons "why" is probably tradition. Much of what we do in wargame rule sets is done because it has always been done that way. We look at a rule system and if it does not have rule "X" or mechanic "Y" then it must not be done correctly. This keeps the art of game design from advancing. There will never be new breakthroughs in game design if we always want the same old things!

I can assure you from my reading and experimenting so far, that Piquet is not the same old thing. Bob has flung down the gauntlet and challenged us to come out of our ivory towers and take a dose of reality. Piquet is focused on decisive events and it requires you, as the table-top general, to respond to these events; not in some lock step, predetermined fashion but at the moment, using what time and troops are available.

Planning will be needed, a good plan, and you will have to work hard to remember it and carry it out, for the game will conspire to sidetrack you. This will not be a comfortable experience. There is no reassuring consistency in the game flow. There is no well defined predictability to the combat mechanics. This is not to say that things happen randomly, it is to say that events happen as they do in the real world - when least expected and when you are least prepared to deal with them. You will have to scramble, to extemporize, to be creative, to take risks, to display leadership and initiative, to seize the momeet. And I think, to have fun!

Napoleon is said to have always asked if a general was lucky, meaning could he identify and take advantage of the opportunities that battle would present to him. Napoleon would understand this game.