The Manchurian War

Del Tre (Part Three)

Tenet 7. Understanding what simplicity means in wargame rules. In a nutshell, simplicity means sacrificing historical accuracy for ease/speed of play. This is not saying that trying to achieve simplicity is a bad thing in rules. What it does mean is that simplicity must be applied in such a way that it appears historical to the players. 

This tenet ties back to Tenet 1: Player decision must causal to the outcome of the game and Tenet 2: The rules place the players at their echelon of command. The rules reflect what the author believes are the important aspects of a battle or war that must be incorporated into the rules so players see the rules as historic. This is based on the author’s research and analysis of why/how events happened on the battlefield. It is the author’s vision of what such battles should look like on the tabletop. 

This vision is embedded in the rules through the decisions the author allows players to make during play. These decisions are explicit in the rules; they don’t happen unless the players decides to do so. Battlefield deployment at the start of the game, which units move to which locations, timing of moves, etc. These decisions should replicate those that an actual commander would make at the echelon in which the player is placed. 

To place players at their scenario echelon of command requires a degree of abstraction. 

Decisions which are not proper for the player’s level of command are usually abstracted into the unit’s (entity’s) behaviors. Firing canister, using skirmishers, the many micro actions that happen during close combat, etc. are some examples. These abstracted actions should fit within the timescale of the game turn. If a unit could historically perform several different actions within the timescale, then any adjudication should incorporate the execution of those actions to standard. Any possibility of failure of any of those actions should be incorporated in the result chart with the die adding the stochastic element to the adjudication. 

There is also a middle ground to player decision. As I pointed out in Tenet 2, miniature rules can’t escape players making some decisions below their echelon of command. Deciding whether to charge, which enemy to fire upon, etc. are all decisions below the echelon of command but are needed for the game to ‘work’. These decisions often activate the abstracted behavior of units. They are routine in nature and in themselves are not causal to the outcome of the game. The players’ reactions to the results of those decisions can be causal. 

The simpler rules become, the coarser/granular the decisions/results become. Nuance is lost as the situational relationship between mitigating/dependent/independent factors are fixed and unchanging within the adjudication process. Results tend to become more all or nothing as simplicity demands that incremental tracking of status/current condition be abandoned. Adjudication becomes more stochastic and the range of results can vary widely to incorporate a larger range of possibilities. Luck now becomes a greater casual element to success and can exceed the causal elements of a good plan or good decisions. 

Tenet 8. Good wargame rules educate. Players should see the history of the battle or campaign unfold before their eyes. This is not stating that every game of Waterloo ends in Allied success. What it does mean is that the tactics, techniques, and procedures that players have read about should work or fail on the tabletop as often as they did in history.  If combined arms (the use of infantry, cavalry, and artillery together against a single objective) was a major technique for success, then the rules should allow players to create combined arms attacks and defenses. The rules must also replicate the difficulty in using those techniques (maneuvering forces into the correct positions, managing space on the battlefield, timing, etc.).