Many years ago, Dick Bryant of the COURIER gave me a small questionnaire which he said was distributed to participants of a game each time a scenario was presented at his club, the Old Colony Wargamers. The questionnaire was solely to evaluate the scenario and its presentation, and not the rules used. Evidently, the Old Colony Wargamers wanted to keep their thoughts on the rules to themselves. As editor of the COURIER, Bryant gets lots of freebee copies of rules sets... it's to his advantage not to publish too many off-the-cuff remarks about how rotten the rules were. This scenario questionnaire contained five questions, with each question focusing on a different aspect of the game. The answers were to be given in a number format, 1 to 5, where 5 denoted 'great', and 1 denoted 'poor'. The sheets looked like: PLAYABILITY. Measure of how well scenario played without redesign during the game. BALANCE. Measure of how well each side had a chance to meet its win requirements PREPARATION. Measure of how well prepared the organizer was. Were maps available before the game? Was terrain set up in timely manner? Was organizer sufficiently familiar with the rules? REALISM. Did the scenario reflect the period? (This is not a measure of the rules' historicity) FUN. If this has to be defined, you didn't have any! I discovered that the sheets were useless to me. I am not a great scenario designer per se. The only reason I place troops on the table is to test out a new set of rules. Which means that most of the time, first, I set out the armies concerned, and after they are placed on the field, it's then that I begin to put out random terrain pieces, just enough to ensure that some of the troops have a place to hide. As far as objectives go, most of the time it's "smack the other guys on the table, and try out the firing, morale and melee rules as much as possible". Recently, I derived my own set of questions, 6 in number, and this time, they're devoted to evaluating the rules themselves. Answers will range from 1 to 10... an answer of 10 denotes metaphysical perfection, and a 1 indicates lousy. Now I must note that, to me, the majority of the questions, which relate to the 'historicity' and 'accuracy' of the rules, are sheer horse-puckey. There are, indeed, lots of gamers who disagree with me... these gamers are convinced that you can reproduce old-time battles on the ping pong table with the roll of a 6-sided die, that what's being presented to them on the table should be a true reflection of the bygone eras of warfare, and if the rules don't agree with their own assessment of the era, then the rules are not historically accurate. More horse-puckey. Here are the 6 questions I noted down. Remember, 10 is superb, and 1 is rotten. The rules provide a fast moving, entertaining game. The number of references (charts, tables, dice throws) is adequate and not overwhelming. The rules give "the flavor of the period". The various types of units are proportionately represented in terms of their relative capabilities. The rules allow you to carry out the tactics of the period as you know them. In terms of the scales (time, distance) of the rules, units carry out their functions without distortion. I tossed in this last question because, many times, in my own rules sets, I use magic and mysterious procedures to symbolize various aspects of the battle. For example, I occasionally use a 'wafting' procedure to transport troops from one section of the table to another. You need reserves? Then just to save time and keep the action going, reserves are magically 'wafted' to your units instantaneously, instead of making you wait while they march over to their assigned positions. Many times, this magic hyper-space method of transportation does not go over well with the participants. Leaving hyper-space aside for the moment, the most important items, to me, are the first two questions. These focus on the game, and if, in my own mind, it's not fast moving and entertaining, I abandon it. That's happened many times in the past, when, in an effort to get 'cutesy', I added so many phases to the sequence that the bound became unwieldy and slowed down the proceedings. This issue contains a description of a Napoleonic game I presented, and after the game, I handed out the questionnaires. Three people filled out the sheets, and here's a summary: a. The first two questions pertain to the 'gameability' of the rules. At 10 points each, there's a total of 20 points per person, or a grand total of 60 points if all three present said I had achieved perfection. The total score, out of 60, that I received was 48. Not too good, but not too bad. b. The other 4 questions on the sheet, pertaining to the accuracy and to the historicity of the rules, added up to a potential grand total of 120 points for absolute perfection. Alas! Perfection, in the field of verisimilitude, was not achieved. I garnered only some 67 points out of 120. Which was probably higher than I deserved. Some time ago, I wrote an article on the "recognizable patterny" of wargaming rules... given an historical era, what should a set of rules contain to 'truly' represent troop tactics and capabilities? For example, given the ECW era, you should have some 'pike guys', some 'cavalry guys', some 'musket guys', some 'artillery guys', a forlorn hope or two, and so on. But, a thousand different authors, when asked as to how to set up the relative capabilities of the troops, will give you a thousand different answers. Back to PW Review April 1999 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 Wally Simon 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