Home Forums General Game Design Let's talk about perspective based wargames

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  • #19268
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    I’m into perspective based games. I think that they intrinsically offer a design clarity that other wargames – most wargames – do not.

    What do I mean by “perspective based game”? I mean a game where the design decisions are guided if not dictated by the player acting in a specifically defined role and their actions as well as the options available to them stem from that perspective.

    I’m not aware of many perspective based games. Here are a couple I do know of:

    Johnny Reb 2 is a perspective based game a lot of people are familiar with but it is rarely played from the perspective the rule book indicates. The game’s premise is each player is a brigade commander but nothing limits the player from running two brigades or four brigades and if you see a game of JR2 it is not unlikely players will be running a lot more than 3-5 regiments.

    Legacy of Glory is a perspective based game few people are familiar with, it dictates the player’s role based on various rules that limit a player’s control outside of their role. For instance, since the player is a corps commander, there is a rule that limits how many battalions the player can directly influence each turn – I think the limitation was three.

    Et sans résultat! is a perspective based game that becomes available this April, since it hasn’t been released yet, no one is really familiar with it outside of play testers. The method I used in it was more holistic, rather than telling players they should limit themselves to a specific role like JR2 did, or putting in rules in that say do X not Y like LoG did, I just didn’t provide options that were outside of the player’s perspective, anything that would require a player’s decision but was outside the player’s perspective I removed.

    My experience is that perspective based games are easier to design at a higher level. This innately prevents players from scaling up. If the perspective of the player is an army commander then there is nothing above them. If the player is a corps commander there is only one step they could scale up to. But if the player is a brigade commander such as in JR2, they could play as a division commander or a corps commander or an army commander. Since scaling up like this would require the player to act as both the higher level commander, the lower level commander and potentially several levels in-between, it breaks the perspective.

    Many games break the perspective intensionally. The Empire series is an excellent example, where the player is both enable, incentivized, and expected to play all the levels of command between battalion chief and corps commander.

    The reason I prefer perspective based games to those that allow players to act in all levels of command is that I believe the second category makes it really difficult to design a fast moving, approachable game due to the innate complication added by addressing so many levels of play. I also subscribe to the notion that if you simulate everything you effectively simulate nothing.

    I’m really interested in how perspective based games might be designed successfully at lower levels, how the innate complication might be overcome and how a designer could prevent players from scaling the game up through the use of creative design instead of “don’t do it” statements or rules.

    So that’s my thoughts – what do other people thing about perspective based games?

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #19279
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    My experiences with such games have been negative, I’m afraid. Too often they end up railroading the player, attempting to replicate a particular experience that the designer wanted at the expense of flexibility for the player, frequently to the extent that the game ends up playing itself. It seems to me that if you’re going to go that route, the better experience is had by pairing the game with an RPG rather than trying to create a framework that gives the player a set of “You can’t do that because…”  With an RPG element the gameplay becomes self-limiting, whereas any given designer never really knows what a player will want to be using the game to do, and prejudging what they ought or ought not to do seems destined to produce frustration.  A design intended for flexibility feels more like the kind of game I prefer.

    Nor is the phenomenon limited to the tabletop – the Hearts of Iron games do this in spades, especially the more recent incarnations.  Limitations on gameplay in this dimension focus emphasis on what the designer likes to think about, but not necessarily the player, making such games kind of a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. They can aim to be realistic, maybe. But playability is lowered, in my opinion.

    #19280
    Avatar photoNorm S
    Participant

    There is an immediate problem in wargames in that the player has an all seeing eye, sits as the commander in chief but can control and manoeuvre the base unit. To disrupt that,  systems need good command and control restrictions and an addition of chaos like a random event table to introduce ‘out of ammo’ or ‘orders misunderstood’ type results can help.

    in say napoleonic games, it is tempting to want to show base units in square, line or column – but if you are playing a corps level game, then it is fair to say that you as the army or corps commander should not have control over the formation that base units adopt and that it should be assumed, someone further down the command chain is making that happen ….. for good or for bad!, so either ignore formations or have units perform reaction tests etc.

    Also, giving units orders that can only be changed when your courier delivers the new order (plus ‘X’ minutes to translate the order into actions) can help enforce perspective.

    I played a Quatre Bras game and units were committed by their orders. The situation changed and I wanted to change the order for one Brigade, I knew I would not get the new order out and implemented in time, so was compelled to let the existing order stand (for better or worse), I thought that was a nice gaming moment.

    #19284
    Avatar photoJJ Parus
    Participant

    “What do I mean by “perspective based game”? I mean a game where the design decisions are guided if not dictated by the player acting in a specifically defined role and their actions as well as the options available to them stem from that perspective.

    I’m not aware of many perspective based games.”

     

    It seems to me that almost every skirmish based game – old west, gladiatorial combat, squad level WW II, you name it – the players are acting in a specifically designed role and their actions and options are based on that perspective.  In almost every old west game I’ve played, the sides are driven by how they are defined, skills, abilities, limitations.  A sodbuster is different from a cowhand is different from a mountain man is different from a brave, is different from a bounty hunter is different from a lawman.  In the arena, a secutor and a retarius have defined differences.  In a squad based game, be it WW II, NAM, Af-Pak, whatever, the abilities and decisions of the guy on point, squad leader, medic, heavy weapons guy are all different.

     

    So, is this what you mean in perspective based, just at a different level, or am I missing the boat?

     

    JJ

    #19287
    Avatar photoSpurious
    Participant

    I think it’s one of those things that just works better on PC, not limited by the practical elements of miniatures/counters. Of course it’s a good design goal to have in aiming for a specific level of command and control, but for that to really be achieved for anything more than small skirmishes it requires automation and/or a lot of abstraction. To the point that it interferes with the fun bit of moving toy soldiers around a table. Of course it can also go the other direction, too many levels of command having to be accounted for and the system is going to get messy and slow down.

    I’ll go to my favourite example for this: Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. It very much nails the player into the perspective of the batallion/regiment commander, and limits access to information through fog of war effects that’d just be tedious to account for on tabletop, has units given orders by the player and then left to the simulation to carry out with all sorts of detailing like time for the order to get through, the unit to prepare, delays from enemy action, having to act on their own initiative before the order can be implemented and so on. As a player you can act with incomplete information because it’s being handled by those lower command levels, sure you can look up specifics if you want but there is no need to. It would suck to play as a tabletop game because the players would be spending most of their time referencing information and applying that to a unit AI rather than actually acting as a commander.  But as a PC game, it works pretty well if you like that sort of thing.

    #19293
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    I’ve gotta voice first that I’m kinda excited because I don’t think I’ve participated in any threads with most of the people responding and that’s pretty cool!

    Mr. Average,

    My experiences with such games have been negative, I’m afraid. Too often they end up railroading the player, attempting to replicate a particular experience that the designer wanted at the expense of flexibility for the player, frequently to the extent that the game ends up playing itself.

    I don’t think you’re off-base here. While I am really interested in perspective based games, what I’d tell you regarding your very valid complaint is that I think every method has its own very easy trap. In the case of perspective based games I think the easiest traps to fall into definitely include railroading the player as you say. McLaddie likes to pick on “McClellan rules” that do this by saying, “Oh you’re playing McClellan, McClellan was an idiot, therefore here is a list of rules that makes it really hard for you to do useful and competent things.”

    What I would tell you is that I don’t believe this is a required characteristic of perspective based games. Thought it is certainly an easy trap to fall into.

    JJ Parus,

    It seems to me that almost every skirmish based game – old west, gladiatorial combat, squad level WW II, you name it – the players are acting in a specifically designed role and their actions and options are based on that perspective.

    My local group plays a fair number of skirmish games. Mostly using The Sword and The Flames and Muskets & Tomahawks. From time to time we’ve played some Bolt Action. I don’t know if you’re familiar with those or not, but I’m at a loss to guess what my perspective as a player is in either one. In each of them I (the player) control a host of individuals of varying number. So my question is – in these games, or other similar games – who is the player?

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #19296
    Avatar photoJust Jack
    Participant

    I love the idea of perspective-based games, i.e., you’re the Company Commander, you will only worry about stuff the company commander worries about, you will see only what the company commander sees, and you will control only what the company commander controls.  I do my best to play my games in that manner, but I agree with Spurious regarding the issues that work better on a PC game than a tabletop game, where we (the players) see all and move all.

    I do my best to limit stuff to the relevant, perspective based persona, but it’s tough.  I personally don’t have time for games that don’t even make the attempt (i.e., they have a whole Horse and Musket Army of six Corps’ worth of troops on the table, and the player is the commanding general, but he’s choosing not only the location, but the formation and target of each individual battalion), though I understand there are folks that like their gaming that way, and so more power to them, I say!

    I don’t personally find “McClellan’s Rules”-type situations to have anything to do with perspective-based gaming.  My experience is that it’s simply idiosyncratic rules or scenarios, which I define as “I read that this happened once in a battle so I’m going to use that as the basis for a rule that makes it happen in every battle.”

    Regarding WWII skirmish gaming, I play some myself because it’s fun, but it’s pretty much the antithesis of perspective gaming.  You are the squad leader, with eight other guys under you, but each turn you, the player, get to make every single decision, down to the most minute detail, for every single one of your troops.

    “So my question is – in these games, or other similar games – who is the player?”
    I’d say that I don’t think a lot of games take this into account, though I also don’t think a lot of player’s care too much if the game is fun and feels right.  Personally, I’d like a true perspective-based game, but I’m not willing to suck all the fun out of it by having to  play with eight million charts acting as algorithms to decide what my subordinates are doing (which is exactly where the PC beats us tabletop gamers).

    The other big problem with perspective-based games is they usually require a semi-formal plan with written orders, and I’m a solo gamer, so that’s a pretty tough thing to pull off (whilst ‘surprising’ myself).

    Bandit, can you share some concepts/mechanics of how your upcoming rules attack these issues?

    V/R,
    Jack

    #19298
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    Bandit wrote:

    I’m really interested in how perspective based games might be designed successfully at lower levels, how the innate complication might be overcome and how a designer could prevent players from scaling the game up through the use of creative design instead of “don’t do it” statements or rules.

    So that’s my thoughts – what do other people think about perspective based games?

    Spurious wrote:

    As a player you can act with incomplete information because it’s being handled by [a computer with] those lower command levels, sure you can look up specifics if you want but there is no need to. It would suck to play as a tabletop game because the players would be spending most of their time referencing information and applying that to a unit AI rather than actually acting as a commander.

    Well, first, it would seem that a single perspective role for the player requires an IA component for higher and lower commands to allow for that focus.  Such mechanics can become simply far more administration for the players… resolving the actions of ‘perspectives’ they aren’t actually controlling… Something a computer can do without the player.

    Second, there is the Fog-of-War aspect to that single perspective. You can’t know everything that is going on.

    Third, there is the actual role of the player, that single perspective.  I know for instance that a Napoleonic Battalion commander in a battle had a very limited set of decision/responsibilities.  Napier, at the battle of Corunna spent his time doing three things:  checking his flanks, the condition of his battalion and then going to Moore commanding the army asking if he can deploy his grenadiers as skirmishers and clear the town in front of him.   For an entire battle, that would be a fairly boring game role.  On the other hand, if I’m commanding an army, you don’t necessarily have much to do once the army is set in motion. At Austerlitz, Napoleon didn’t issue any orders or do much than wander the battle field for the first two hours of the battle. At Jena he spent a good portion of his time kicking a drum around.  At Novi in 1799, Suvorov spent the morning napping until the battle had developed.

    And finally Fourth, because of all this, will that single perspective be at all entertaining for the gamer?  I’m sure it could be depending on the level of command and the actual design, but it is a challenge, that’s for sure.

    Most games I know of ignore the issue altogether for all the reasons above.  I just played Axis & Allies WWI.  I commanded the Germans and Austrians.  Now exactly ‘who’ was I in the game?  There is no single historical counterpart even remotely comparable to my role in the game.  The same is true of most miniatures games, even Johnny Reb or Bolt Action.

    So, there are the challenges of creating a single perspective wargame.

     

     

    #19301
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I think McLaddie makes the key point.  The biggest issue is that any given single perspective cannot really be guaranteed to produce a game that is both realistic and interesting for the player.  Playing World War II from the perspective of a Divisional logistics officer is likely to be pretty boring, however critical it may have been to the war effort.  And being a General on the field watching his armies wheel uncontrollably while being unable to stop it because he’s not at the right level of command to order them to withdraw and form up, well, that gets back to my original point of “You Can’t Do That.”  In my opinion, it’s when one takes on the interesting aspects of multiple roles in a battle that the real flavor of a game takes shape.  Any given person in a battle is likely to be panicked, frustrated, incompetent, out of control – and forcing that perspective is likely to force the player to take on a role that is either uninteresting or irritating, for the sake of “realism.”

    Mechanics can solve this to some certain extent, though – how communications are carried out (as Norm mentions), rules based on morale or command abilities of subordinates, etc.  Even three-player, double-blind gaming with a GM is a possibility, albeit a complex one.  But you’re quite right to steer clear of mechanics that railroad someone arbitrarily because “everyone knows that” this or that is what should really happen – it is a grave temptation among designers to tip the scales based on their own prejudices, even though they be reasonable and historically-based.  One such game I’ve played, for example, was set in the Cold War in the 1980s, and the Soviet is almost always on the attack in an unstoppable wave, while the Allies are always falling back, retreating, regrouping, routing, or otherwise failing to measure up, because “everyone knows” the Soviet had a huge army that SHOULD roll over the NATO forces, so it’s built into the system that that’s what is happening.  Which gets very old very fast for the NATO player.

    Or another example, not specifically perspective-related, but of a kindred variety in re: tipping the scales on the designer’s end.  A Russian Civil War game I once played, in which “everyone knows” the Communists were stronger than the Whites, giving them a battlefield advantage in almost every circumstance.  I played both sides at different times, and the Whites felt consistently frustrating, while the Reds were easy to the point of absurdity.  The claim was that the fun was in succeeding despite the system, but that seemed backwards to me.  It really got to where there were only a few determined ways to win in that system, and so the game really began to play itself, since the “right” way to play was the only way to win.  This may have been satisfying to the designer, who got to see his way of things work out, but how much fun is that to play?

    You’ll forgive me for being verbose on the “con” side, I hope, but I think the pitfalls are many, and worth being aware of if this is the route you wish to take.

    #19320
    Avatar photoWhirlwind
    Participant

    “Third, there is the actual role of the player, that single perspective.  I know for instance that a Napoleonic Battalion commander in a battle had a very limited set of decision/responsibilities.  Napier, at the battle of Corunna spent his time doing three things:  checking his flanks, the condition of his battalion and then going to Moore commanding the army asking if he can deploy his grenadiers as skirmishers and clear the town in front of him.   For an entire battle, that would be a fairly boring game role.  On the other hand, if I’m commanding an army, you don’t necessarily have much to do once the army is set in motion. At Austerlitz, Napoleon didn’t issue any orders or do much than wander the battle field for the first two hours of the battle. At Jena he spent a good portion of his time kicking a drum around.  At Novi in 1799, Suvorov spent the morning napping until the battle had developed. “

    To me that looks like it may end up being a short and simple game: but nothing wrong with that.  Austerlitz in half-an-hour of playing time?

    “Or another example, not specifically perspective-related, but of a kindred variety in re: tipping the scales on the designer’s end.  A Russian Civil War game I once played, in which “everyone knows” the Communists were stronger than the Whites, giving them a battlefield advantage in almost every circumstance.  I played both sides at different times, and the Whites felt consistently frustrating, while the Reds were easy to the point of absurdity.  The claim was that the fun was in succeeding despite the system, but that seemed backwards to me.  It really got to where there were only a few determined ways to win in that system, and so the game really began to play itself, since the “right” way to play was the only way to win.  This may have been satisfying to the designer, who got to see his way of things work out, but how much fun is that to play?”

    Whether a game is ‘crackable’ is a very important design issue, but I don’t think it is necessarily a particular problem of perspective games, other wargames can suffer just as much,

     

     

     

    #19346
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    Jack,

    Bandit, can you share some concepts/mechanics of how your upcoming rules attack these issues?

    I’m very happy to, probably too happy to, so much so that I wrote a *very long* response to your question and I’ve since cut it way, way, way down. If you want me to expound on anything, please ask and I will. I just didn’t want to misuse your question as provocation to take over this thread with my project.

    A man I used to work for told me that focus was about saying ‘no’ to all the things that weren’t required of you focus, all the things that distracted from it, not about saying ‘yes’ to what to include. That has been central to how I developed ESR. Constantly asking the question: Does this distract from the point of focus? Yes = remove it. A lot of these decisions were hard, ESR was written over five years during which I did three complete re-writes starting with a blank page. During that time a lot of distractions held on for a long time because I didn’t want to accept that they were in fact distractions. Toward the very end I became confident enough with the simplicity achieved that a couple borderline items were added back in for additional detail, but I think it was literally two items.

    I also want to premise this whole thing with the knowledge that these are the solutions I came to in designing Et sans résultat! and I have no delusions that there are other ways to do things which are also perfectly valid.

    With that pre-ample, here is my answer to your question:

    PREMISE: The player’s perspective is that of a corps commander.

    First – No Battalion Level Unit Formations.
    If battalion level formations are represented then players must decide in every instance what formation the battalion should form or there must be an AI mechanic for handling it. I believe corps commanders did not, should not, will not *always* decide what formation their tactical units are in. I also was not able to discover an AI mechanic that was light enough to flow into the game. So after a very long time I accepted that in this scope of play battalions must be single bases and their formations presumed, not represented.

    Second – Persistent Orders
    A corps commander doesn’t “renew” his orders every X minutes. When you tell a division to maneuver to an objective the outcome is that the division does so until: It reaches the objective, you tell it to do something else, it suffers some form of setback that prevents it from continuing to try. This has been pretty successful in moving the focus on players off thinking in terms of turns and into thinking in terms of events.

    Third – Appropriate and Ample Decision Making
    McLaddie and others have pointed out that too few decisions = a lousy game. I completely agree. My experience with ESR is that there is plenty for a corps commander to do but there is not much for an army commander to do. I strongly encourage players acting as army commanders to either act as a sort of biased umpire helping players on their side or to also run a corps themselves. Army commanders issue maybe a couple two or three rounds of orders during a game at the very most and otherwise will have little going on. Very likely to be Napoleon kicking the drum if you will. The bulk of players act as corps commanders and have a lot of opportunities to make decisions. Each turn players may issue an order and/or take other “leader actions” such as commit engineers and artillery from a reserve to the fight or relocate committed artillery.

    Fourth – Make All the Desired Stuff Easy
    I don’t mean “incentivize the desired behavior” I mean make the focuses of the game easy for players by removing barriers. Lots of “simulation” games have grand tactical, corps commander level decision making but there is so much else going on that you only interact with that decision level rarely. Removing those distractions helps focus the game. Some examples of distractions I removed that might surprise people are:

    • Routed movement of units – Rather than have routed units move X inches or Y dice in inches, routed units just go to the division’s rear area and the division’s rear area must be kept within a certain distance of the division.
    • Nearly no markers – The condition of units is indicated by their relative location rather than a marker. For instance the aforementioned routed units. Any unit in its division’s rear area count as routed, no marker necessary.

    Making stuff easy includes fast resolution of necessary stuff that is outside the area of focus. For instance ESR doesn’t get rid of battalion level combat resolution because I think seeing that is really important, I think the presence of and representation of battalions and squadron groups as well as batteries is important because corps commanders observed them and used them as ways to guesstimate strength and trends in the direction of a conflict. So players should be able to use them the same way. So battalion combat resolution in ESR is really fast and simplistic but necessarily present.

    Fifth – A Few Things are “Automatic”
    Automatic as in the player is just executing not making decisions about it. When you order a division to move towards a destination it moves at its full movement rate towards that destination until it reaches it or is blocked by the enemy. Committed artillery with a target resolves fire, don’t want it to shoot? The easy answer is “don’t commit it” but you could also toss some formed troops in front of it or limber it up.

    These aren’t the only ways that I tried to build ESR around a specific perspective but hopefully they give you some idea. The website may give some more insight and as I said, I’m happy to answer more, just didn’t want to overwhelm with rambling.

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #19396
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    To me that looks like it may end up being a short and simple game: but nothing wrong with that.  Austerlitz in half-an-hour of playing time?

    Tempest:

    Yeah. That is one game solution to the issue, and no, nothing wrong with that at all.

     

    Whether a game is ‘crackable’ is a very important design issue, but I don’t think it is necessarily a particular problem of perspective games, other wargames can suffer just as much.

    Yes, I agree.  The forced result to prove the designer’s conclusions is bad game design.  Games that have a long life are those that are ‘crackable’, but with a wide variety of situations and possible successful strategies.  The flash-in-the-pan games are those in which players quickly discover optimum play and that is that.  Raph Koster in “Theory of Fun for Game Design” writes that games are puzzles to be solved.  One solution, easily solved puzzles don’t get played for very long.  Puzzles with lots of challenges and many solutions do.

    #19398
    Avatar photoJJ Parus
    Participant

    Bandit wrote:

    In each of them I (the player) control a host of individuals of varying number. So my question is – in these games, or other similar games – who is the player?

     

    (pardon me if my formatting is off…still learning)

    To answer your question I don’t know.  Perhaps I was unclear and assumed too much, as in all my skirmish gaming is 1:1, therefore your perspective, what you can do, when, and how well is a function of “who you are.”

    Mountain Man and Tribal Brave might be on close footing for woodcraft, tracking, moving silently, etc, while a homesteader or cowboy would not.  A homesteader might be a reasonable shot with a long gun (hunting for food) but less capable under fire and useless with a hand gun,  A cowboy might have a working skill at shooting a handgun, but would lack the skills for a hollywood style gunfight, while a lawman, bounty hunter, gunslinger, and similar might all have similar high skills.  What they do in a turn is also driven by who they are, whether the decision they must make would be.

    I can see that in TSATF, you would lack that same perspective.

    JJ

    #19403
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    JJ,

    That goes to my ponderings about small scope games and perspective based game design. In a skirmish game where you control a platoon, are you the platoon commander? Should you have direct and complete control over each of your men? Are there non-cumbersome mechanics to allow friction in that interaction that still represent historical issues? Is there an innate way to prevent players from scaling up to commanding a whole company this same way (which would be a different experience)?

    I don’t have any answers to those questions, they are just what I think about with small scope games and perspective design. With larger scope games I have a far more developed view.

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #20343
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    I think a lot of games set out to be from a particular perspective but will drift over time.

    Sometimes it’s hard to resist because you have to step back and say “No, that’s not appropriate”.
    Then we howl when someone makes a skirmish game with no artillery rules or doesn’t let us manually deploy skirmishers in a game encompassing all of Waterloo 🙂

    To some extent, it’s a question of “the fewest moving parts that still make a fun game”.
    If I am playing a platoon leader, I probably shouldn’t be making decisions about whether my squads throw grenades or shoot their rifles, but it’s more fun if I am and there’s only 3 squads in any event.
    Not too many moving parts.

    If I am now the company commander, that’s too many moving parts though, so we cut it out or abstract it away.

    #20463
    Avatar photoPhil Dutré
    Participant

    As a rule of thumb, an interesting game would provide the player with roughly 10 different units for which decisions have to be made each turn. That would imply the game should scale 2 levels up to reprsent an entire force.

    E.g. if the total force on the table is a company, which roughly has 3 or 4 platoons, each having 3 or 4 sections, you end up with 9-16 sections. In the rules, a section should then be a single, undivisible playing piece, without any further granularity. This also corresponds to “real life” where a commander might provide stipulations in his orders 2 levels down, but not 3.

    As a player, I am now in command of each of these 9-16 sections. Whether I am taking up the role of 9 different section commanders, or a single company commander, is irrelevant for the gameplay. I play all those roles simultaneously, and communications between them happen in my head.

    But, am I really a section commander in this game? Probably not, since I can only decide where a full section is being placed, typically the prerogative of the platoon commander. But, if I have to act on my own initiative with my section when surrounded, then, yes.

    Am I the company commander in this game? Most likely yes, since I get to decide where my platoons are being placed. But also no, since I do not have to worry about any coordination happening with other company commanders on my flanks.

    So, you take up different roles in thegame, but typically only specific tasks of the real-life equivalent depending on the role. But combined, it provides for a good game.

     

    #20679
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    So, you take up different roles in the game, but typically only specific tasks of the real-life equivalent depending on the role. But combined, it provides for a good game.

    Yes, and I think a completely focused game on one perspective or command level would be fairly short, simple, or at the other end, weighted down with loads of administrative detail working out the other perspectives/command levels of the game.

    So, from what has been said, a designer has options:

    1. Mix or combine the perspectives to capture the interesting decisions at different levels.

    2. Keep the game simple and perhaps quick with the limited range of decisions a single command level/perspective would have.

    3. Limit the number of game components to an easily manageable size, say ten units

    4. Reduce the level of the game so the perspective is one figure: one player.

    5. OR a combination of two or more of the above

    I think that some approaches have gotten far more attention, like #1 than others, possibly because it is easier to do, but all have their attractions.

     

    #20686
    Avatar photoFredd Bloggs
    Participant

    Actually, pretty much all the Too Fat Lardies games fall into this category as they are written from the point of view that you the player are in a certain role, and the game then revolves around the friction of making it all happen.

    #20708
    Avatar photoJohn McBride
    Participant

    Great topic and discussion.  Is Perspective the same thing as the level of command/decision making?  When I design a game or a simulation (which I used to do a lot for classroom teaching) the question I have to answer is who is the player pretending to be? And what problems is he facing and what assets does he control and what reasonable choices are available to him.

    BLOODY DAWN is my rules for the Alamo, designed for the 15mm Blue Moon stuff. It is one of those games where the starting set up is the most important move in the game. The Mexican team takes a map and planning sheet and decides where and when their five assault columns will hit along the perimeter, while the Texian team decides how to deploy their limited garrison, and in particular which artillery to fully crew. Double blind.

    Once the game begins, it becomes very much a “sergeants’ battle” in the dark. Each Mexican player is now a column commander, and his choices are limited to just three or four: stand and fire a volley at the walls, maneuver to left or right, or charge the walls with ladders. Or fall back if his column’s morale is shaky and he fears a rout is imminent.

    The Texan players each have two or three of the garrison’s officers WHO ARE THE ONLY TEXANS ALLOWED TO MOVE. Except that an officer can yell “Follow me!” or “Half of you follow me!” and take men within 6″ (as far as he can be heard) along with him.

    It’s a bit more complicated than that, especially once a Mexican column gets in, but for the most part the battle runs on auto-pilot, because once the Mexican columns are committed to an attack there’s just not a lot of maneuver choices. (Santa Anna did commit his reserve, and the column that hit the palisade did withdraw and maneuver to the west to attack the 18 pounder — and those sorts of things can happen in a game — but the design is really about EXPERIENCING a confused night assault as opposed to commanding one.

    When I do a game at a con or with a group of kids I don’t really teach the rules; I explain the situation and describe what their reasonable options would be as whatever command role they are playing.

    If this is a bit of what you mean by Perspective, then I wholeheartedly agree that it is fine basis for a game, at least in some cases.

     

    #20737
    Avatar photoDon Glewwe
    Participant

    “…the design is really about EXPERIENCING a confused night assault as opposed to commanding one.”

     

    I really like this phrase, and I think I’ll pinch it for use in describing my WW1 aircombat game in which players ‘control’ multiple aircraft (or even play solo) but the decisions to be made while acting as any particular pilot are limited in scope and the battle/game as a whole ends up playing out as a sum of all those individual decisions rather than as a cohesive plan devised/executed by a single commander.

    It is that robotic-like nature of those ostensibly under the command/control of the player acting as a figure a level or two (or three?) above the smallest maneuver units in a game that really gets highlighted in a genre like aircombat where the influence of, say, an infantry squad commander gets to push around each man/figure as if it were himself.  Some type of morale rule tends to be the only mechanism to thwart the player’s designs, though random activation/movement rules also serve to put a wrench into ‘well laid plans’.

     

    dunno…just babbling (on only one cup of coffee)…  ; )

    #20749
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    John, do you know you look a lot like Fredd? 

    Eons ago, that is where I started my game design career: in a high school classroom.   It sounds like when you do the Alamo game at a con, you are the umpire and source of the rules [applying them where needed] with the kids given the decisions.  It is a great phrase “…the design is really about EXPERIENCING a confused night assault as opposed to commanding one.”  It indicates where the perspective resides.  Obviously, if the design aim was experiencing over-all command in that night assault, the game would be different.  The question with perspective games is whose experience is being portrayed?  I would imagine, even with the limited range of decisions for the Alamo game, they come often enough [and dramatically enough] to keep the players engaged.   So yeah, your Alamo game definitely sounds like it is focused on a specific perspective and thus a specific game experience, that confused night assault.

    Clausewitz stated in the tactical section of his On War that the lower in the command hierarchy you go, the few decisions are allowed, which follows your game design.  He wrote that officers at the captain and lieutenant level 1. don’t see enough to make coherent decisions outside their small command, 2. are the least experienced officers, 3. by necessity are operating with other units in orchestrated ways which preclude a wide range of decisions, and 4. limiting lower command decisions is what makes higher command control possible.  I think that dynamic starts to dissapate when you get into 20th Century combat, where units spread out and communication becomes far more accessable to the lower commands.  More decisions are left to the squad and platoon leaders.  Where a WII platoon-level wargame like Chain-of-Command or Bolt Action can provide an interesting variety of decisions, a platoon or even company commander in a Napoleonic or ACW game would have a fairly boring time of it.

    Don wrote:

    It is that robotic-like nature of those ostensibly under the command/control of the player acting as a figure a level or two (or three?) above the smallest maneuver units in a game…

    Yes, that means there has to be some form of AI mechanics for those lower commands to keep the perspective focused on one level. I would imagine that with a WWI air combat design, it would be tough as each plane can have so many individual choices in maneuver and targets. That, and the fact that a dog fight was such a chaotic affair.   The only way the leader could command is by arm signals and his own flying, IF the others could see him and his signals.  Generally that was only at the beginning of the engagement…

    #20771
    Avatar photoJohn McBride
    Participant

    Yes, I need to do an icon, when I figure out how.

    I should point out that there IS a good bit of planning in BLOODY DAWN, it is just that it happens before the opening move. But then the old saw about no battle plan surviving contact with the enemy kicks in in spades.

     

    Don, I’m curious how your WWI air game works. Is there any sort of preliminary planning?  How do you integrate individual decisions into an overall event?

    Reason I ask is, I have a back-burner project of an assault by goblin air commandoes (riding giant bats) on the dwarves’ mountain base for their balloon boats. Again, lots of different groups running around in confusion in the dark. I have been (slowly — this is a several-years-old project) trying to devise some sort of small group mission system, probably with some sort of card or random event mechanism for injecting a lot of friction. The puzzle is how to integrate a dozen or more separate missions, which however all happen in close proximity with the possibility of impacting each other.

    Sounds a bit like what you are doing, perhaps?

     

    I still remember an early class on infantry platoon tactics, at Infantry Officer Basic at Fort Benning, way back in 1971. Problem was to get past an open space, but with covering terrain on either side, with an enemy machine gun already engaged. Of course we set up our own mg for covering fire along with a rifle squad, while the platoon leader took one squad hooking around the right and the platoon sergeant took the other squad hooking to the left.

    Of course it was a total disaster, and we hardly needed — but got anyway — the profane admonition from the captain instructing us, to KEEP YOUR BLANK BLANK MEN TOGETHER. But there was a very thoughtful follow-up about friction and differing perspectives and problems with multiple decision makers.

    #20788
    Avatar photoSam Mustafa
    Participant

     the Hearts of Iron games do this in spades, especially the more recent incarnations.

    Are you talking about the huge WW2 computer “game”?    Because I gave up on that monster after a few attempts specifically because there seemed to be no perspective whatsoever.  The player was expected to do everything from running the nation’s economy and technology/research, to appointing every divisional commander, to deciding when the Mark-VIb1 tank upgrade got sent to the 174rd Armored Brigade, to launching individual airstrikes (counting every single plane!)   Totally unplayable, at least for my single-tasking brain.

     

    Anyway, I’d say that 95% of games are perspective-limited to one degree or another. I’m not sure that this is really anything significantly new, at least not in intent.

    The issue is: how do you reflect that when it comes time to do all the myriad little fiddly things that are required to actually play the game and move it along.  For example: you might say that the rules limit you to being Napoleon, and therefore you’re not moving individual battalions…   But then, well, umm.. who is moving those miniature battalions on the table, then?  A robot?  Software?  Somebody has to do it.

    The old Prussian Kriegsspielers had referees to do this, with the players “blind” in separate rooms.  Now that’s “perspective-based” gaming!  But the rest of us just pick up the units and put them down, and as soon as we do that, we’re not Napoleon anymore. We’re a hundred little battalion commanders, all psychically linked to our Napoleon-Brain, which is telling us,  “Ooh, don’t move the unit into that marsh… that’s a -2 modifier in combat!  Move it a bit obliquely to the right, so that you don’t get that penalty!”

    Because the moment you do that, Poof! there goes your Napoleon-Only Perspective out the window.

    How to write rules that somehow force a player to move a battalion without thinking about it…?   I’ve seen many very complex attempts to do that, but never anything successful.  No matter what the rules say, players will try to move their units in favorable ways, and avoid unfavorable ones. And is it really worth the effort and all the extra rules required to prevent players from doing what they obviously would prefer to do?

    That was always the obvious problem with the conceit of Legacy of Glory. The rules claimed that you were somehow limited in perspective and unable to think like a battalion commander…  except for all those times you had to move every individual battalion!

     

     

    #20798
    Avatar photoJohn McBride
    Participant

    I waste a lot of time (when I have no one to game against) with John Tiller’s ACW computer games. The computer AI is an idiot, but if you choose the right scenarios and bias the combat results a bit in the computer’s favor you can get an enjoyably challenging game. But the problem is as Sam describes: if you are doing Gettysburg as Lee, but you have to make decisions about the facing of every regiment, and deploy every individual SECTION of guns — sometimes a single gun! — you are certainly not playing from an army commander’s perspective. Not to mention that you know 100 x too much, even with the computer’s Fog of War.

    I have actually done a kriegspiel type game a few times when I had a hall of classrooms available on a Saturday: table with troops in central room, and opposing teams in their respective rooms. Neither side has seen the map. I appoint the youngest kid in each team as cavalry commander, give them a blank sheet of paper and a yardstick (which is almost never used), and 10 minutes to make a map of the battlefield. Then the commanders issue orders and I move troops, once again letting the scout come in and see what’s happening and report back. Continue until things are mixed up and developed, and then I let everyone come in and play the situation as it exists.

    #20799
    Avatar photoJohn McBride
    Participant

    I have played, twice only because it is a lot of work for the referee, games of JOHNNY REB by email. My brother Phil set up the table, and his son my nephew played one side and I the other, we three each being in different cities. Phil would take photos from table level of what could be seen from positions we held. The terrain was high enough, hills and trees and a town, that it blocked LOS. We’d each email orders, Phil would execute them and roll all the dice, then send us results we would know and new photos of what we could see.

    Great fun, and getting a cavalry unit up on that high hill on the side of the table suddenly became very desirable.

    #20800
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    John – that sounds super fun actually.

    #20892
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    Several years ago, friends of mine did that by mail process, only the kind of information sent by the umpire were camera shots at ground level of the miniatures table [Which was huge. It took up an entire basement and more than two years to play out.] Only minimal information was written down. What you could see is what you knew.  The ‘perspective’ was there in mega-watts, including wanting to get to that church tower to see what was going on and deploying in a single cavalry line to make the enemy think there were more troops there than was actually the case.  I think I can dig up some pictures from that game.

    So much of warfare is hiding, deception and surprise.  I just read an account of an Austrian cavalry regiment at Wagram where the colonel slowly moved a squadron behind the his regimental line so the French wouldn’t see it [being a typically large Austrian cavalry regiment].  When the French attacked en masse, the hidden squadron came out and hit the French in flank.

    That kind of thing is very hard to do simply on the table top.   With games that can’t be umpired, you do have players moving everything.  That’s one of the physical things that players enjoy about miniatures as opposed to computer or even most boardgames with cardboard counters.  So that is a challenge.  Games are designed around ‘optimizing’ advantages, so it very natural for gamers to look for every little advantage they can.  It’s more ‘unnatural’ not to do that in a wargame of any kind.

    Creating manageable mechanics that can provide the fog-of-war and limited control is just as difficult as getting an umpired game going, or finding separate rooms etc. etc., only different challenges.  All are about perspective though.

    #20920
    Avatar photoJohn McBride
    Participant

    I did a big ACW game, years ago, with kids in a week-long summer camp. First day the South told me they were hiding a brigade in a woods beside a hill near the place where a road entered the table. Then we all forgot about it. Until Thursday when the Union brought in a bunch of artillery via thta road, moved them onto the hill, and unlimbered. And got destroyed next turn when the Rebs came out of the woods. OUTRAGE! Fortunately I had had the Reb players write it down when they did it first day and kept the hidden orders in my pocket. I had even forgotten they were there. Great fun. But still very limited in overall impact on the game.

    When we used to play JOHNNY REB a lot we made wooden blocks roughly the size of a unit. We always used dummy markers anyway. If two dummies ee each other, remove both. If real sees dummy, remove the dummy and the other side knows there is something there real so a block is put down. Might be cavalry or guns as well as infantry, and might be several units.

    Even with the troops on the table one doesn’t know essential stats like BMP (basic morale point, VERY important) or whether their longarms are rifled Enfields or smoothbore muskets.

    So there are ways to maintain some Fog.

    #20954
    Avatar photoBandit
    Participant

    Sam,

    I’m not sure what you’re saying.

    You seemed to say that all games are perspective limited but then you indicate that you feel perspective is lost in most all games. I’m not sure if you’re trying to say all games already accomplish perspective – which I think is false. Or if no games can accomplish perspective so no one should try – which I think is only true if one too narrowly construes what I said and seeks to discourage.

    Ivan,

    Sometimes it’s hard to resist because you have to step back and say “No, that’s not appropriate”.
    Then we howl when someone makes a skirmish game with no artillery rules or doesn’t let us manually deploy skirmishers in a game encompassing all of Waterloo

    To some extent, it’s a question of “the fewest moving parts that still make a fun game”.
    If I am playing a platoon leader, I probably shouldn’t be making decisions about whether my squads throw grenades or shoot their rifles, but it’s more fun if I am and there’s only 3 squads in any event.
    Not too many moving parts.

    Agreed.

    Phil,

    As a rule of thumb, an interesting game would provide the player with roughly 10 different units for which decisions have to be made each turn. That would imply the game should scale 2 levels up to reprsent an entire force.

    I often watch players struggle with ten units, I’ve often heard the observation that players tend to be comfortable with something in the neighborhood of 3-5 elements.

    As a player, I am now in command of each of these 9-16 sections. Whether I am taking up the role of 9 different section commanders, or a single company commander, is irrelevant for the gameplay. I play all those roles simultaneously, and communications between them happen in my head… So, you take up different roles in thegame, but typically only specific tasks of the real-life equivalent depending on the role. But combined, it provides for a good game.

    Well, my question is about games that don’t do this. I don’t believe this sliding between multiple perspectives is a requirement for a good game. In some cases, not necessarily all, it can be a detriment – as many feel it was in Empire.

    Cheers,

    The Bandit

    #21044
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    Here is a sample of the views the players had of the umpired game I mentioned. Another type of perspective-based game from one player’s after action report using the photos he received:

     

    Examples of photos for game

    #21059
    Avatar photoFredd Bloggs
    Participant

    John, do you know you look a lot like Fredd? 

     

    Do you mind, it took me ages to come up with an anonymous graphic like that to show as me!

    #21089
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    Do you mind, it took me ages to come up with an anonymous graphic like that to show as me!

    Fredd:

    Me mind?  Nope.  You and John are both hansome graphics.  Good work.  I just thought you might be related. 

    #21208
    Avatar photoSane Max
    Participant

    May I just say, as a by-the-by, that my very first wargame against other people, when i was about 11 or 12, I was given a Union command at the battle of Fredericksburg, a war and battle I knew nothing about. When I realised after several attempts that I was required to march my blue horde up a hill into the teeth of withering fire and my entire role was to watch them die futilely, I asked if I could try something else. (Not claiming to be clever, I didn’t know what the ‘something else’ WAS, I just didn’t like what I WAS doing) The GM told me no, as that’s not how it happened.

    I did not play another wargame for several years after that, for some reason.

    #21358
    Avatar photoGuy Farrish
    Participant

    Lack of moral fortitude

    (aka common sense?)

    #21372
    Avatar photoMcLaddie
    Participant

    Sane Max:

    “…that’s not how it happened.”   I can understand the reluctance to repeat the experience. It wasn’t a game, it was a re-inactment of ‘how it happened.’   Bad scenario design. So the perspective was a straight-jacket of decisions made for you, rather than a commander’s perspective of options in making decisions.  Which brings up another issue in ‘perspective’.

    Often scenarios have the opposing armies start very close together [particularly when they have 6″ movement or less], AFTER all the maneuvering and decisions on where to attack and such have been made.  For instance, many Scenarios of Austerlitz require the original battle ‘set up’, which means the two players are basically walking through the historical battle plans–which of course, will produce a ‘realistic result’.  True, it is a way of reducing the effects of perfect hindsight, but a lot of interesting decisions have already been made for each CinC, as though they’d been handed a directive from the actual CinCs.   It skews the command perspectives for both sides.

    Glad you came back to miniatures after that…

    McLaddie.

     

    #21386
    Avatar photoJohn McBride
    Participant

    Yes, the initial set up is often the most important move. I understand and totally agree with starting armies close, especially in a convention game. You want to get right to it. But even then there are ample ways to allow pre-battle maneuvering. I use the movement trays for PRIDE units as hidden markers, with some dummies mixed in; the whole is affected by rival scouting (i.e. if you are seriously outscouted you get no dummies, while the other side gets extra.)

    But one fun and effective technique is to have an accurate map, make lots of copies, and let the opposing teams mark deployments. Or, faster and simpler, is to have prepared initial battleplans on the maps, and let each side choose one. THEN deploy.  I typically use about five or six for each side. Strong left, strong right, evenly spaced, strong central reserve with light screen, flank march to a flank, etc.  Each sides chooses one, put the toys down, begin.

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