Home Forums General Game Design Historical near run things = Tabletop foregone conclusions?

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  • #51163
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    In the course of developing ESR Campaign Guides, one of the things we do is go look at what other people have done with the same scenario. This is along the lines of: If you are going to design an alarm clock, go buy several alarm clocks to evaluate. See what is good, see what is bad, try to avoid mistakes others may have made, etc…

    This has led me to an observation that there is an apparent tendency towards avoiding specific situations, commonly by fast forwarding the scenario until those circumstances have passed.

    A specific example is Dresden on the morning of 26 August 1813 before Napoleon has arrived with reinforcements.

    Another example from a different period is Buford’s cavalry defending against Heth on 1 July 1863 at Gettysburg before the lead elements of Reynold’s I Corps arrives.

    I’m starting to wonder if we consider lead-in actions that were historically very close calls or successful against odds too likely to be walk-overs on the gaming table.

    Do you know of many scenarios for larger actions like Dresden or Gettysburg that start, right at the start?

    Opinions?

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #51168
    Avatar photoMcKinstry
    Participant

    I’m not sure this is what you are looking for but several naval actions such as Dogger Bank and Jutland start with the light forces brushing against each other.

    Little Big Horn starts with Reno flunking his part before GAC starts his ill-fated move.

     

     

    The tree of Life is self pruning.

    #51189
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    Yeah, actions like that, where there is a precursor that historically was a hard fight where the underdog held out long enough for support to come up but which on the wargames table it is more common to skip that precursor – *I think* – because we fear they’d be a walkover and change the whole course of the larger action too predictably.

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #63954
    Avatar photoDeuce
    Participant

    To take perhaps the best-known “near run thing” in history, how would you consider Waterloo from this perspective? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scenario which starts with the Prussians already on the table.* However, it might be that such scenarios do “compress” the battle, so that the British are left alone for less time – relatively – than they were in history.

     

    *That said, Napoleonics isn’t my field, so my sample size is very low.

    #64016
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    For battles that fit into “stages” (Gettysburg, Waterloo) maybe it’s better treated as a mini-campaign where the outcome of the “initial stage” influences the later battle?

    If the particular stage is indeed a walk-over, make it so only the likely loser of that stage can win a bonus for outperforming their historical counterparts?

    #65129
    Avatar photoWilliam Minsinger
    Participant

    Yeah, actions like that, where there is a precursor that historically was a hard fight where the underdog held out long enough for support to come up but which on the wargames table it is more common to skip that precursor – *I think* – because we fear they’d be a walkover and change the whole course of the larger action too predictably.

    Or too dramatically.  In the Gettysburg scenario as an example, a battle where Buford gets run off early can easily means the real fight would not happen around Gettysburg at all and the Army of Potomac would choose (or be forced on to) different ground somewhere to the east.  So if you start the battle from the very earliest stages you might need to make some sort of allowance for different operational choices to be made based on the outcome of the initial contact.

    -Will

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