I have just received the second edition of your Wargame Design magazine. I still don't know what to make of it, but I like it. Since I already have subscriptions to The General, Moves, and Strategy and Tactics, my hope is that your magazine will not try to copy any of those mentioned but instead bring unique insight into the field. Personally. what I had hoped for is a wargame magazine that would discuss particular problems in wargame design (in some depth) and how they could he handled in various design types. It is this type of information that almost never appears in the existing magazines.
Your article "The Game of OSC" was a fascinating way of handling the problem of describing your operating conditions to game players. It made me " government employee" much more aware of the fragility of a new company in a low profit field...
It is my hope that OSC's The Campaigns of Robert E. Lee will include forced march, political considerations. relative hidden strength and movement, and fortifications among other considerations. The inclusion of historical folders is a great improvement over the cornpetition. In Napoleon At Leipzig the narrative would have been much improued by adding situation maps, even though they weren't present in the original book. The set-ups listed in the Order of Battle are difficult to use. After a number of games it became easier, but could still be improued. While the map is striking with its liberal use of color, I am so used to green being woods that it is still hard to accept. It also makes set-up and crest hexsides difficult to see.
***
After reading the second issue, (I never did get the first one) I am elated by the brooding dissatisfaction inherent in the meditation offered in your essays. I moved away from the city four years ago, vowing neuer to return but your collective efforts really test my discipline.
No...no, I'm not an esoteric freak thrown forward against my wishes. I used to hang around the Friday night playtesting at SPI and seriously considered taking-up work there. But I was as dissuaded as you, though it never required my working there to get the gist of the fact that it was going to turn-out to be the kind of grind you've described it as being. I really admire what you've accomplished.
With the exception of Panzerkrieg I'm delighted with what OSG has published to date. I recently sent a reuiew of PanzerKrieg off to the UK Wargamer which, I'm afraid, wasn't a rave review but what the heck, we're only human.
After looking over Hardy's work in WBS I truly can't think of a reason why you'd'ue had him do the work on your Campaigns of R. E. Lee. It was poorly done in spite of the conditions he may have had to labor under, and it's origins as a resealed version of the S&T-Dunnigan ACW is too obvious to go into...
Good luck flourishing in this arid world, you deserve good things.
***
Hope you are fully recovered (heard you were ill). Have all your games now. The aesthetic side of games is vital to me, and yours really rank high there. Hope I get to play them soon.
I share your liking for Mahler. I particularly like the "Kindertotenleiden."
Number one & two of Wargame Design haue been, to me, embarrassingly pretentious and high falutin'. Delightful to think of this as such an intellectual hobby, but must we boast of it so?
***
The Lanchester Equations
Hobby wargames have come a long way in the last 10 years or so, and I find it somewhat suprising that. in one critical respect at least, they still fall so far short of professional wargames in terms of realism. The problem seems to stem from the way they model the "Dynamics of Combat" in their combat results tables. Though they'ue come to include more uariables, the typical hobby wargame CRT, compared to those in use in current Operational Research, is a woefully primitive and unrealistic interpretation of the quantitative aspects of combat. Back in 1916, long before Operations Research was known as such, F. W. Lanchester (Aircraft in Warfare; the Dawn of the Fourth Arm) devised the differential equations now known as Lanchester's linear and square laws. Contemporary non-tactical professional wargames are usually based on modifications of those equations, but I've neuer even seen a reference to them in the hobby, let alone a CRT that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be based on them.
I've been on the lookout for a hobby wargame to which it might be feasible to apply them for some time, but without mur h success. Most operational or higher leuel CRT's seem ad hoc devices made up not to reflect the realities of combat, but to make the games come out "right" -- haue the historically victorious side win most of the time. Consequently, changing those has usually had an unfortunate effect on the outcome of the game itself.
Rommel & Tunisia seems an exception, however. Probably because of the important role given Operations Points, adopting a CRT based on a probability analysis of the Lanchester Equations seems to work well with it. We're in the process of playtesting it locally, and the question of what do with what we've learned has come up. At first I was inclined to do an article on the equations themselves, but the mathematics involved are complex and not really suited to treatment in SWABBERS or magazines like Fire & Movement. It occured to me OSG might be interested in the revision, particularly if sales of Rommel & Tunisia weren't up to expectations...
The basic equations (Lanchester's Square Law) take the form:
where m and n are the combat strengths of the two sides, M& N; E is the exchange rate, " or the M:N casualty ratio, and G is the "intencity of combat" as a function of time t. In that form they give the rate at which each side's strength declines in a simultaneous assault. ie. each side assaults the other. I've modified them to give the strength derivatires in the case of one side assaulting the other and done a probability analysis of the resulting differential equations. using my own function for a casualty based stop time, or t, at one side or the other's "break point." I then solved the equations for M:N ratios from 1:1 to 10:1 and "E", or Tactical Advantages, ranging from 0-4. The results are expressed in the standard CRT M:N ratio format, and a percentile die is used to determine casualties (in reductions, disruptions, and eliminations) and breakthrough movement points, if any. the system is entirely compatible with the rest of Rommel & Tunisia and could he changed to allow the use of a six sided dice, but the 1 -10 scale, with its equal probability for each result, is easier to implement.
Lanchester's Aircraft in Warfare is hard to find, but its a land mark in the quantitative approach to combat. and you might find it useful and interesting.
Mr. Colleran is now at work ona second edition Rules Folder for R&T, rtargeted for release in January.--ED.
The Campaigns of Wellington?
I'm extremely pleased to see your group emerge from the jungle of conflirt simulation design and establish an avenue often visited, but sledom traveled very long. Having traverrsed the hobby since the mid 1960s, I look upon your efforts as tops in the field. You have taken the best of a decling giant and tooled a product the recipient can feel comfortable with and count on professionally. Your games are without a doubt above the average and smack of that handcrafted care seldom seen these days. For the record, you can count On my purchase of every Napoleonic game in your series, in time. Napoleon at Leipzig could and will put many competitors games in the wargame dumpster. If I have to cancel my subscription to Strategy & Tactics after 50 plus issues, I will, to justify the investment. You have my backing 100%!
I have one constructive comment on your series. What happened to the peninsular campaign? We can't deny the challenge in Spain is there, not only in game design, but as a scenario in the grand Tactics of the Emperor. If, indeed the purpose of this series is to illustrate Napoleon's warfare in its entirety, utilizing a step by step campaign design, why not insert the Peninsular War as it occured and measure its impact as a campaign all it's own coupled with it's influence on other campaigns in progress.
Another sidelight is the historic challenge of commander Wellington vs. Napoleon's marshals or Napoleon himself if events elsewhere would allow it. In reading literature on the period you feel the temptation to get out a game and settle the issue. Isn't that what wargaming is all about? Soult couldn't do it, Suchet couldn't, Marmont couldn't; could you and/or I handle the British at that time and place with those troops auailable? To be complete, your series needs the Peninsular Campaign, just like a book on the Campaigns of Napoleon includes it!
Free Subscription Unfair?
First. I am a co!lege student who is working his way through. This fact, combined with my mental make-up, leads to a combination of cynicism (from my tender youth and collegiate influence) and a niggardly attitude towards my hard earned dollars (learned from the college of hard-knocks)...
I dislike being forced to buy your games to get the 'zine. Now I'll probably keep buying your games but remember. I am a cynic. I would much rather pay $5 a year to get the 'zine independently of any game purchase. [But if we take your $5, we have an obligation to publish on schedule -- Ed.]
Back to Wargame Design Vol. 1 Nr. 3 Table of Contents
Back to Wargame Design List of Issues
Back to Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1979 by Operational Studies Group.
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