Reply To: Do You Need Victory Conditions in Games…

[Glenn Pearce]

Victoria Dickson wrote:

I think it depends who you are playing with, whether or not they will play ‘realistically’ without needing incentives. Most armies benefit from concentration, for example, but it’s no fun playing against someone who sets his force up in one corner of the table rather than trying to cover as much of the centre of his line as he reasonably can. For those types of players you need a reason for them to do that, and that’s where objectives and victory conditions are useful.

We never play those kinds of games. Our table is generally bursting with figures (5,000-10,000+)

Victoria Dickson wrote:

Going back to Waterloo, given a free deployment the player representing Wellington would be wisest to concentrate as close to where the Prussians will arrive as possible. This was not a historical possibility, and any game where he does so is going to have little claim of realism. Plus the players who turned up wanting to refight Waterloo aren’t going to be happy. Even if you fix initial deployments he can withdraw his right and redeploy it to the left.

Wellington didn’t do that for four good reasons. 1) He was afraid that Napoleon would turn his right flank. 2) He was hoping that he could draw Napoleon into attacking his left flank where the Prussians would crush him from the rear. 3) He needed room for the Prussians in case they weren’t able to crush the French. 4) It would upset his ideal plan for his “line of battle” to function to its best ability. We have played Waterloo many times and the players who have no sense of the importance of a line of battle have always lost the game when they do silly things like withdraw the Allied right flank.

Victoria Dickson wrote:

If you can rely on your players to stick to the script that won’t happen, but a published scenario will be played by all types of players, and some will only want to win at any cost or know nothing about the historical situation. Those players need the objectives and victory conditions even if you don’t.

Well I know of at least one published scenario on Waterloo that has no objectives and victory conditions and I’m not aware of any complaints about it. I’ve seen lots of other published scenarios on other battles including a few of my own that are void of conditions and never had anything but positive feedback.