Two letters in the July Newsletter - one by P.J.Stallabrass, and the other by Christopher MacLachlan - took up some of my earlier comments on Napoleonic wargames. In their different ways they both seemed to call for a reply, so here it is.
First of all, I was very flattered at the good references they both gave me, and thank them for their generosity. It is also good to see that the Newsletter continues to be a forum for responsible and good natured controversy by thinking wargamers. Some other magazines one could mention appear recently to have launched an attack against any sort of controversy at all.
As for P.J. Stallabrass' letter, I was very struck by its coherent and realistic analysis of what makes wargamers tick - the mixture of gamer, historian, artist, and romantic. This is the first time I have seen the full implications of the mixture spelled out - and defended! It is well known that wargamers really do contain such a mixture (although I would perhaps substitute 'competitor" for "gamer"), but the inconsistency of this has usually either been blindly accepted as a fact which requires no further comment, or else attacked (e.g. by myself in these pages). It is therefore refreshing to find a well reasoned case for the defence.
Mr. Stallabrass points out that each part of the mixture requires a rather different perspective towards the wargame. The gamer wants "to be exposed to the full range of decision options; the historian wants historical accuracy; the artist wants nicely painted figures and scenery; and the romantic wants "personalised" units, and imaginative titillation. So far so good. Personally, I would say that each of these four elements is really in conflict with each of the others, but Mr. Stallabrass' argument is that only the historical part is in direct opposition to the other three.
I would also maintain that the conflict between all four can be consistently resolved within a single game, whereas he does not think that they can. He therefore accepts several inconsistencies between historical accuracy on the one hand, and the game, art, and romance on the other. He boldly puts forward the suggestion that we must learn to live with these contradictions, because they are an essential part of what we expect from our games. We must shift from a small unit perspective (individual musket vollies, limbering up individual batteries, etc.,) to a divisional perspective (the command of a group of battalions), and then to an army perspective (taking each unit under command to represent a division) within the same game. He claims that it does not matter that we switch so easily from one level to another in our minds, because the problem for a commander is "essentially the same" at whatever level he is operating. The same skill is needed to deploy a battalion as a division, etc.
Now my reply to all this is that different skills are required to deploy a battalion, a division and an army. At each level the real-life commander has a quite different degree of control, a different set of tactical principles, and a different perspective of what is going on. To make only one rather obvious point, the battalion commander will probably be under fire when he tries to deploy, while the army commander will be miles away from the enemy, putting his feet up in his tent. Not only are the technical problems quite different in the two cases, but the psychological ones are, too. In "gaming" terms, the two problems will require separate sets of rules, and separate game structures. In artistic terms, also, you will be talking about totally different landscapes - the difference between Raffet's studies of "grognards" in close-up, and Lejeunet's broad panoramas of the whole battlefield.
From the romantic point of view, again, the emotional picture of the brave battalion commander rallying his men round the colours will be quite different from the stereotype of Napoleon sitting on a hillock behind the lines, glowering over the fate of nations, and occasionally sending off a dashing a.d.c. to change the course of history.
A lot of wargamers may miss this point, because the literature tends to confuse all the different levels of command in precisely the way Mr.Stallabrass describes. We hear of Wellington rushing up to individual battalions to change their formation, or Napoleon rallying his men for the last desperate assault over the bridge at Arcole (actually, he had just fallen into a muddy ditch at the precise moment). We hear nothing at all, in most books, of the arts of the divisional commander -- and precious little about the moment-by-moment command skills of an army commander in a big battle. Artistically, even the most grandiose battle panoramas have the habit of putting the occasional grognard in close - up in the foreground; and always show the commander in chief waving his sword in the front line, in the thick of the fighting.
But none of this necessarily means that we should be fooled by the literature and the conventional confusions. There is nothing to stop us fighting a battalion game when we want to look at battalion tactics; a division game when we want to look at divisional tactics; and an army game when we wan to look at army tactics. Why can't we have a different game for each, using different scales of figure and different types of rules? Each would be satisfying to all four parts of the wargamer's make-up, without the need to accept any contradictions at all. (As a footnote, I might add that as a matter of fact I have a book forthcoming which will deal with how to set up a game - in the full sens of the word - at each of these levels!)
Turning now to Christopher MacLachlan's letter, I would certainly agree that "wargames without maps" have a great deal in common with the techniques of D & D ... but why not? Surely there is nothing wrong with pinching their good ideas and ignoring their bad ones. In the same way, I would like to see more borrowing from the tried and tested techniques of the general staff "kriegspiel", the university international affairs game, and the educational committee game. Why should we, as recreational wargamers, stick rigidly to the conventional format as it happens to have evolved up to 1979? That road means that we have too many inconsistencies to defend ... but now I am back to where I started. Let us press-on.
Morale
The question is posed: "how can we reproduce the morale of division and brigade commanders?" Conventionally, wargamers have assumed that this is adequately covered by the fluctuations in the player's personal morale as the game progresses. In a good wargame, the victorious player will have discovered his opponent to the point where he concedes the match, rather than have annihilated all his troops. There are still games around where one man is left on each side at the end, one of whom kills the other; but I hope these are not Napoleonic large unit games!
An alternative is not to use divisional generals' morale, but divisional morale, i,e. each battalion has its own morale tests, in the normal way, but in addition to this there is a further test for the "base" morale of the whole division (or brigade etc.,) at certain times. The mechanism for divisional or brigade morale is fairly similar to that for individual battalions, but it affects all the sub-units in that formation. This new technique is applied at the Chestnut Lodge group in Streathan, and in the Lancaster Jomini group, to my certain knowledge. It may also have evolved elsewhere, as far as I know. I believe it has a lot to offer.
But now the suggestion is to legislate for the morale of the divisional or brigade commander himself, as distinct from the player (who is presumably representing a higher commander still), and from the general unit morale of the division or brigade as a whole. In the past there have certainly been attempts to characterise the ability of commanders (my own system, evolved from Peter McManus' suggestions, classifies each commander on a scale between "A" (excellent, experienced commander) and "D" (does silly things, drinks too much, and often falls off his horse); but never, to my knowledge, their morale as such. This is a fascinating idea.
It makes sense, because normally calm commanders may have their moments of panic (e.g. Napoleon before Mantua), and normally incompetent commanders may even have an uncharacteristic moment of decisiveness (many are the generals who have been promoted above their level as the result of one lucky victory). Christopher MacLachlan identifies three problems in making rules for generals, morale: when to test it, what factors to take into account, and what results to derive from the test, Let us look at each of these in turn.
(i) The morale of generals was tested, in battle, every time a new development arose or a new report arrived. This was often, although not always, the time when a new decision was demanded from the general. If one could identify these moments, one would be near to establishing a timescale for morale tests. "Fresh developments" might mean simply that a pre-conceived schedule of objectives started to run late, or it might mean that some spectacular defeat had been inflicted upon one of the units under command.
In his The Ship, C.S.Forester suggests that the really important turning point in a general morale (or, in this case, an admiralfs) comes when some small reverse follows a stream of generally depressing news: it acts as the last straw which breaks the camel's back, so to speak. One could perhaps allocate each commander a number of morale counters, and allow them to run out at different rates, according to the nature of each new development. If the first piece of news (e.g. that half his command had run away) was worth nine points, and the second (e.g. that one of the battalions had lost its prize mascot) was only worth one, then a commander who had a reserve of ten morale points would not panic until he heard about the errant ceremonial goat, or whatever it was.
(ii) As for the factors to take into account when allocating a commander's morale, one could really go to town on this, as mediaeval and fantasy wargamers often do, and allocate a complex personality profile to each commander. As I have already said, a simple four point scale (A-D) is probably enough, which could easily be translated into an initial allocation of morale counters to be drained away as bad news arrives, and replenished by either goods news or a good dinner.
(iii) As for the results of a morale test, these will be reflected either in the orders the general gives, or in his personal behaviour. If in full morale, the general may give reasonable orders. If especially elated he may order rash attacks; if depressed he may order excessively cautious defensive actions. When he cracks completely, he may order a headlong retreat, or he may issue no further orders at all, and ride forward to embrace a lone but glorious death on the field of honour.
Alternatively he may simply run off, leaving behind perhaps the most damaging impression of all. One could go further, and give different probabilities for each of these results for each grade of general and each number of morale counters remaining to him. The possibilities are endless, although it would probably take quite a bit of work to complete the system.
I look forward to hearing more about the results of all this, as I have often thought that a very great deal more could be done to emphasise the particular roles of the commanders at each level in the Napoleonic wargame.
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© Copyright 1979 by Donald Featherstone.
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