One Set to Rule Them All? (With apologies)

[Guy Farrish]

I was recently reading a forum dedicated to a 19th century set of rules (aimed principally at large late 19th century battles featuring breech loading rifles and rifled artillery – though with allowance for rifled musket and smooth bore cannon). Someone wondered if the system had been modified for ECW or 30YW. Apparently someone has had a go.

Now I’m not trying to criticise the rules, which are very good (excellent?) at representing the period they are aimed, at and I’m not knocking anyone doing what they want as their interpretation of the hobby. (The author, and no doubt many contented players of the rules, post here so honestly no disrespect intended to anyone).

With that caveat posted, it seemed a bit odd to me that you would try and tweak a set of rules aimed at the specific tactical and operational circumstances of the late 19th century into a set dealing with smooth bore weapons, pikes and cavalry swords as the principal arms. Leaving aside the differing cultural mindsets of pre and post enlightenment, pre and post industrial revolution, societies in arms. Also the control of c30,000 men in an army in battle vice c250,000.

Can you successfully give yourself a feeling of what the problems faced by a commander were in such widely different periods using essentially the same set of rules? And if you can, are the rules more or less saying ‘Unit A is better than Unit X, throw a die to see if any unmodelled variables affect that superiority, highest score wins’? If so, is the only difference between Platea and the Battle of the Bulge in wargame terms the colour you paint the models on the table?

[Deleted User]

I know what you’re saying, Guy but it’s a broad church out there.  When I read HG Wells’ ‘Little Wars’ two years ago, I was astonished at his rules. Take away the match stick firing cannon,and they weren’t that different from any modern wargaming rules.

I think (I’ve never played them) Black Powder rules cover a fairly large number of periods with the aid of various period-specific bolt-on rules.

Again, I’m not sure if it’s true but someone, in the past, marketed a set of rules for Stone Age to Rocket Age.

So I wouldn’t say a rule set for periods from rifle to matchlock is impossible. I’m not sure it would meet my exacting standards (cue: eye roll) but given that I use 6 different rule sets (for periods from Bronze Age to WW2), I sometimes wish I had one basic set for everything!

 

donald

 

[Guy Farrish]

I applaud your exacting standards! 

I suppose it depends on the level of action you want to model to some extent – if you are pretending to be an Army commander then you probably don’t want all the chrome of tactical nuance,  you just want to know: does division A defeat division X? (Although the grand tactical approach decisions are going to be very different for Spicheren compared to Cannae – probably).

I suppose what I meant was – even if it were possible, is it desirable?

For me I suspect not so much. Even with a very large game where I am supposedly in charge of 100,000+ I want the rules to reflect the difference between tactical ranges of several hundred yards rather than 30 yards, and how I deploy my units in accordance with the effectiveness of my weaponry and tactical doctrine in relation to the terrain and enemy.

Talking of which – I think your current wargame rules must be different than mine – Little Wars: no infantry fire, no variables in melee – simple fight until one side = double the other then they win?

I suppose you can fight any period like that, but then we are in the realm of chess – a wargame of sorts perhaps but not as we know it Jim (sorry – Donald!)

[Deleted User]

I’m not sure you & I have such differing views on what we want from a wargame. But I am standing as advocate for the huddled masses who may not be as exacting (nit-picking/anal….take your choice) as us.

On the Strelets’ forum there are chaps who don’t paint or base their figures & have games that involve rolling marbles at them. And I say….BRAVO!

They’ve quite a different view about wargaming. Some years ago, I engaged with one, suggesting he “up his game” (so to speak) and try out DBA, Charles Grant’s rules & even Wells’ rules.  They were, he wrote back, far too complex.Marbles worked for him.

So is it desirable to have a generic rule set? Depends upon who you ask.

Ancient sets of rules tend to encompass millenia, vastly different cultures and infinitely different armies, tactics weapons etc. with a very rough “one size fits all” philosophy. Do they work? For many people, yes. I, for one, use Field of Glory for the Bronze Age & the Punic Wars. Could I get possibly better more specific rule sets for both periods? Probably. So maybe, I, too am one of the aforementioned “huddled masses”. I do recognise that I am far more picky about rules for Napoleonic gaming which I take more seriously (if that’s the word) than I do for other periods.

donald

[Not Connard Sage]

I suppose you could lift the mechanics and rework them. Essentially that’s what Barker did with DBM and DBR, and before that what Gush did with WRG Ancients.

And if a final edition of Barker’s Horse, Foot & Guns ever sees the light of day, that’s the WSS to WWI in one rulebook…

 

 

 

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Mike Headden]

I’ve played in a very successful naval campaign set in WW2 Pacific which used 1/2400 ships, a huge table and …. the Battlefleet Gothic sci-fi spaceship game rules!

As long as everyone is having fun and history isn’t too badly bent out of shape I’m happy.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Guy Farrish]

And did the Battlefleet Gothic sci-fi spaceship game rules reflect, within an acceptable degree of accuracy, the historical outcomes of WW2 Pacific Naval Battles and Gothic Spaceship Battles?

[Norm S]

I sometimes wonder whether additional chrome / complexity / detail etc always produces a result that is more accurate – or rather is it the case that it is the process of getting there that provides us with the stimuli / entertainment that we seek.

So, if I play One Hour Wargames (Neil Thomas)  to reflect the battle of Quatre Bras (with occupation of the crossroads as the victory condition) and then play the same battle the next night with Principles of War or Over the Hills, will the outcome be guaranteed to be broadly different?  or will I ‘feel’ like I have played something that is a better simulation / more accurate etc.

Then there is ‘need’, so if a dad and his young lad want a fun game that can be played midweek, surely the ruleset that works is the one that allows that to happen, rather than being a barrier. Likewise, having a full weekend to play with mates who are aficionados in a period, perhaps something meatier is warranted.

Getting older is making me want more fun, easier plays and more frequent play.

I do know that my wargaming tastes are all over the place and I struggle to keep all the rulesets in my head – going simple or universal has its advantages and certainly maintains a higher level of actually getting gaming done, than to become locked into a cycle of reading rules instead of gaming.

[Guy Farrish]

Well, I agree.

I’m not at all arguing for more ‘chrome’, or detail, just the ‘correct details!

I want an elegant, easily understood and simply played rule system that allows the correct tactical decisions to be rewarded.

I am a bit suspicious that mechanisms that cover such broad periods ‘successfully’ are so abstract that you could be playing Naseby with Prussian Uhlans and Mitraileuses and that seems wrong somehow! I want my little lead commanders to have to deal with a tactical problem that allows musketeers and pike to advance at a slow walk to within 50 metres without getting shot to ribbons. I’m not sure the same mechanisms that deal with that are necessarily the best to deal with a chassepot unit milling away at 1,000 metres at advancing Prussian Guards.

As I said above, if you are being the army commander the actual mechanics of skirmish lines and managing the ‘flight to the front’ won’t bother you, but knowing the effective engagement ranges, how that affects your approach routes  and when to employ your artillery as the main force to destroy the enemy will. It is, or should be, a very different set of considerations than a seventeenth century commander entertains as he tries to get his men to close quarters with the enemy. So even at that level I would think a bespoke set, aimed at the problems of the time would be better than a generic, one size fits all set. Not chrome, but the essence of the period.

Maybe?

[Mike Headden]

Guy Farrish wrote:

And did the Battlefleet Gothic sci-fi spaceship game rules reflect, within an acceptable degree of accuracy, the historical outcomes of WW2 Pacific Naval Battles and Gothic Spaceship Battles?

Worked surprisingly well for Pacific Naval games.  It handled CAP, aerial bombing runs, torpedo attacks by destroyers, occasional naval gunnery and did so fairly speedily. Needed a house rule for smoke screens, of course.

How accurately it modelled space combat in 40,000 AD is open to debate 🙂

 

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Anonymous]

Hmm.  In trying to figure out how to articulate this thought I find it comes out very similar to when people ask me about painting such small scale (6mm and 1:6000) miniatures.  My reply generally is something along the lines of “I don’t actually paint *all* the detail, I just paint the *impression* of that detail, and when you see the stand from feet away on the tabletop your mind will see a little human running with a rifle and fill the rest in yourself”.

One of my favorite wargaming rulesets is Crossfire, which focuses heavily on WWII company-level actions.  While the rules are very effective for playing games in that setting, the mechanisms by which they do so (variable length turns, movement limited only by reaction fire, powerful but limited support assets) don’t need to go into overwhelming specificity (one nation’s rifle squad, MG team, mortar battery, or medium tank is close enough in performance to another’s that the difference doesn’t show up in play).

So although written for WWII, the rules are quite functional in any setting where personal weapons are sufficiently accurate and rapid-firing to make maneuver in sight of the enemy prohibitively costly.  They would fit much any infantry combat after the implementation of automatic weapons, including sci-fi settings as long as personal defenses haven’t eclipsed firepower.  This flexibility isn’t at the expense of its original setting; it’s because the game focuses on the dynamics of the tactical problem for the unit commander rather than the details of the equipment.

In your example, the tactical problem at a smaller scale (say, up to a battalion per stand) is different enough that even if you played with the same rules, the weapon qualities would give a significantly different experience (which doesn’t mean the rules don’t work: they could easily still give the expected result for the period).  At the scale of whole armies, though, the command & control situation is going to be similar.  So if you’re playing the game for the overall commander’s perspective, the rules will work just fine, but if you want a very granular look at the process, that won’t cut it.

[MartinR]

From a Commanders pov there isn’t a vast difference in Armies in Dutch order in the 1600s and those of 1914. They are all linear, firepower based and manouvre in plain view fairly close together. The weapons supposedly get more dangerous, although hilariously casualty rates  per day actually fall over the entire period, but the command decisions are mainly the initial deployment, which sectors to attack and the commitment of reserves.

So yes, you could quite easily take a set of rules like Bloody Big Battles (itself derived from Fire and Fury and use it to model army level command from the end of the Renaissance to the start of the short twentieth century. The relative effectiveness of the various weapons  systems and Tactical formations are just maths.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Alan Millicheap]

I am one of the people guilty of using Bloody Big Battles for purposes other than what it was intended for and I make no apologies.

To date we have used it for the Caesarian Roman invasion of Britain, Modern Africa, French Indian Wars skirmishes and squad-level Sci-Fi.

Admittedly I have changed certain rules for some of the periods. For Ancients I dropped the melee mechanism and used the firing mechanism instead. For Sci-Fi I generated a points system to create any type of weapon with regards to range and effect

The rules work for me for several reasons.

Firstly my memory isn’t what it used to be so using one set of rules really helps
Secondly although it is a simple set of rules but it works in all of the right places – command, manoeuvre and combat
Thirdly the troop attributes, eg passive, aggressive etc, allow for a wide range of troop types
Finally additional home-grown attributes can be added to cater for different periods eg armour

[Phil Dutré]

If you add enough layers of abstraction, in the end everything becomes the same thing 😉

As for miniature wargames, if you take away the layer of specific die rolling procedures or other game mechanics, what really matters is the relation between movement distances and effectiveness of combat in function of distance. In other words, if you want to engage the enemy, should you move forward to inflict more damage at close range, or can you lay back and wait till he routs under your long range fire? Or as seen from the defender, how much damage can you inflict on an approaching enemy before he overruns your defensive position? Note I don’t make a distinction between fire and melee – melee simply is combat at very short ranges.

If the relative relationship between movement and combat remains more or less the same (and throw in some tactical doctrine that tends to be conservative), you can easily transfer rules between periods.

It’s only when rules include very specific period-dependent factors such as force organizations, hardware, or terrain elements as part of the inner workings of the rules (and hence are difficult to strip away without affecting the rules themselves), that it becomes difficult to transfer rules between periods.

[Blackhat]

I find that using one set of rules for a number of periods just makes me feel that I am paying the same game but with different coloured figures and why am I bothering?  I would rather use a set of rules per general period so that I get the feel of playing a different game rather than just pushing around different shaped pieces in the same game…

Mike

 

[Chris Pringle]

Guy, thanks for posing the question. I’ve been holding off responding so as to give the discussion a chance to develop first, but I can’t resist any longer.

Clearly it is possible to adapt rulesets across widely differing periods. I suppose the greater the difference, the more need for period-specific tweaks or modifiers. Personally I think there is a major difference between pre- and post-1790s warfare which I’ve ruminated on before (stop me if I’m boring you): http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/2016/04/airing-some-prejudices-on-one.html

(In fact I once reviewed a manuscript for a textbook on war and society and I took issue with its claim that “nothing much changed between 1750 and 1850” … but I digress.) Anyway, that major difference between pre-Napoleonic linear warfare and post-1790 impulse warfare strikes me as one that any ruleset spanning the two needs to give special attention to. Not saying it can’t be done – in fact it needs to be done when you have old-style Austrians facing new-style French in 1796 – but it’s a serious challenge.

As for whether it is not only possible but desirable: Mike, you say

Blackhat wrote:

I find that using one set of rules for a number of periods just makes me feel that I am paying the same game but with different coloured figures and why am I bothering? I would rather use a set of rules per general period so that I get the feel of playing a different game rather than just pushing around different shaped pieces in the same game…

Well, there are a few possibilities, aren’t there. We could:

a) push around the same pieces in the same game

b) push around different pieces in different games

c) push around the same pieces in different games

d) push around different pieces in the same game

I guess a) is of limited application, it’s what you do if you want to try different plans to win a particular historical battle or tactical teaser. Or chess. b) is what you, Mike, evidently prefer, and I guess that provides maximum variety of experience. Fair enough. c) is perhaps the least satisfactory – that would be what happens when we keep trying different rulesets and failing to find one that we like for use with our particular pair of armies. d) is the situation raised by Guy’s OP, where people are using the same core mechanism across widely different conflicts.

I suggest there are a couple of advantages to d). One is, as mentioned, that it can reduce the brain pain of having to learn new rules for every different game. To my mind, another big advantage is that it actually gives you a better appreciation of differences between armies and between conflicts. By that I mean, when one army behaves differently from another on the tabletop, you know that it is because the army is different, not because the ruleset is different. For instance, I have had the experience of playing a lot of Franco-Prussian War battles with BBB, then doing a Sikh Wars BBB scenario with essentially Napoleonic weaponry, and finding I was using FPW tactics and they just weren’t working – the armies function differently. Go forward to Balkan Wars, still with BBB, and it is radically different again.

Sorry, I’ve gone on too long already. Wish I was as succinct and to the point as say Martin or Phil. I can be, honest! I just think this is a really interesting question.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!

 

 

[Guy Farrish]

Glad you think so Chris! I hoped people, especially you and Alan (if you guessed it was BBB, and I suppose it was a bit obvious! Sorry) would take it as interesting rather than critical. It was meant in that spirit. Alan – absolutely no expectation, or need for any apology!

Martin, not sure I can agree that 1914 was essentially the same as 1600. ‘They are all linear, firepower based and manouvre in plain view fairly close together’?

I think the linear nature had broken down into thickening massed skirmish lines by 1870 (possibly before), they were trying not to manoeuvre in plain sight where possible, and when they did they sometimes ended up like the Prussian Guard did at St Privat. Firepower based? Possibly but I think there was a competing doctrine that was aiming to use shock tactics – to weaken the enemy with fire then throw in formed reserves to break the morale of the enemy. Effective range of 600-1800 yards makes for an extended range to cover to impose that will – a different proposition from closing to effective range of 50 yards with the early 16th century musket.

Phil – melee as just close range combat misses a qualitative difference between seeking a result of attrition by fire and seeking a result by threatening contact and winning a morale victory by closing. There is a difference in training, doctrine and morale.

Whether and how you represent this in the rules is another matter.

At a certain level of command representation this probably ceases to matter – if the mechanics are geared to represent brigades + in combat then simply having a different number to plug into the range for close v ranged combat may work across the entire 19th century say. This is essentially what Volley and Bayonet does. Indeed it is designed to cover 7YW through FP and has been tweaked to cover ECW and 1914. I like it for Napoleonics but remain to be convinced about how it handles later 19th Century battles.

I suspect there is a granularity issue somewhere I am striving to get clarity on.

Maybe at big battle (bloody big battle?) level it doesn’t matter as much – the abstraction perhaps makes it work – although I think 17th to 19th centuries is too much of a stretch for me,whereas ‘divisional’ battles would benefit from different mechanics from the bigger set-to and for different (quite close) time periods?

 

[Ivan Sorensen]

Mate of mine ran Napoleonic games using 40K Rogue Trader, in protest at the hardcore guys at the club being jerks about “the proper rules” so who knows 🙂

I think for most/many/some/a selection of people the benefits of a rules system you like and understand outweighs the drawbacks of it not being a perfect fit for the period.

I also think it does depend on scale.
The smaller the scale the more it just becomes a question of adjusting the weapons stats.
Moving, shooting and taking cover isn’t THAT different in 1864 and 1964, beyond the fire rates and accuracy.

Meanwhile, operating a regiment in 1864 is basically incomprehensible on the 1964 battlefield, so we’d start running into trouble.

But then again, maybe not? 1 Hour Wargames condensed all human warfare into “1D6 +/-2” and with one or two exceptions delivers a rather good game for each period.

[Norm S]

Monopoly has all the base ingredients of a wargame, but is wrapped in specific period speak. It has owning property to harm others as firepower, it has 2D6 as movement allowance, it has player cash + properties owned as morale (gives you the capability to stay in the game) and it has player cash as stamina / casualties (no cash and you are gone).

A consistency that does work throughout the periods is the human creature. Human nature gives us fear and capability with better training, we work confidently in large bodies and feel vulnerable once people fall around us. The software side of wargaming does seem a fairly consistent building block and people like Quarrie used to use the much argued over National Characteristics as a central platform to his rules, so that even within a specific period ruleset, differences were highlighted for that ‘right feel’.

Hardware on the other hand significantly changes, including the capability to better communicate – most notable in 1940, when tanks with and without radios had a significant performance gap. There are plenty of examples of same period differences, such as smoothbore giving way to rifled muskets / canon, the introduction of the Gatling gun. Weapon ranges and accuracy significantly improve over relatively short periods of time. I seem to remember reading somewhere that in WWII, the 5 – 6 years period of war, advanced technology by an equivalent 60 years of peace-time.

Tactics crosses between the software and the hardware and those that brought new tactics to the battlefield prospered, until the other side experience (learned) how to use the new tactics – Napoleon’s early battles and blitzkrieg being classic examples.

So on the question of rules, it seems to me at least that you can have a fairly basic bock of rules that covers a general period, but that you then need to build chrome into it, to get the right ‘feel’.

The One Hour wargames rules by Neil Thomas is an interesting study. Firstly his approach to minimal rules is interesting in its own right, how far can you strip rules back and still have a viable game.  For my own money he has crossed a line (just) and there is more game than wargame in there. For another page of rules, he could have modelled morale and command. Secondly, it is fascinating to see what small tweaks he makes to each period rules as they advance through time, what it is that he identifies as the essential elements of change that make the period (military speaking) what it is.

To deal with the issue of complexity, available gaming time and how many different rulesets we can hold in our head, I prefer a light approach to the base rules, with general wargame principles being observed and then some chrome to give it feel and meaning, but then I am fascinated by multiple and diverse periods in history. The gamer who is lucky enough to be hooked on a single period, may well want their one ruleset to be meatier.

[MartinR]

Martin, not sure I can agree that 1914 was essentially the same as 1600. ‘They are all linear, firepower based and manouvre in plain view fairly close together’?

I think the linear nature had broken down into thickening massed skirmish lines by 1870 (possibly before), they were trying not to manoeuvre in plain sight where possible, and when they did they sometimes ended up like the Prussian Guard did at St Privat. Firepower based? Possibly but I think there was a competing doctrine that was aiming to use shock tactics – to weaken the enemy with fire then throw in formed reserves to break the morale of the enemy. Effective range of 600-1800 yards makes for an extended range to cover to impose that will – a different proposition from closing to effective range of 50 yards with the early 16th century musket.

I quite agree that what the Russian might call the ‘tactical technical characteristics’ of the elements are different, a 1914 battalion has the same footprint as a Regiment in the FPW and an entire Napoleonic brigade and can shoot rather further, but that is just maths and can be simply modelled in the movement and combat results tables, say, giving our heroic BEF chappies armed with maagzine rifles and operating in line/supports/reserves  +5  with elements representing 1000 men, while the wicked musket armed Napoleonic Frenchies operating in assault columns with a skirmish screen, might get a +2 an an element represents 2,500 men. Just as they do in Horse, Foot and Guns.

From a command pov, you can still play the different periods using the same rules, but you aren’t going to have too many rifled QF guns in 1690, nor too many pike blocks in 1914 (unless they are unfortunate Russian militia).

So yes, rules like Fire & Fury, Volley & Bayonet, HFG, Black Powder and dare I say it, BBB, can happily cover the entire era of big blocks of blokes wandering around in plain sight armed with  guns. One Hour Wargames of course covers an ever bigger period from classical Ancients to 1936ish, and I’ve seen AK47 used for Biblical Chariot warfare. Same game, period specific tweaks in each case.

But as ever, wargaming is a hobby not a job, so play whatever floats your boat.

 

 

 

 

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Phil Dutré]

Some rules also market themselves as rules for this or that period, while the only period flavour is to be found in army lists and terminology. A wile ago I played a commercial ruleset “Skirmish Rules, 1660-1760” (can you guess which one?). However, there was nothing in the rule mechanics that would make you think the ruleset was designed with that specific period in mind.

Many rulesets end up being remarkably similar: “Infantry moves 6 inch, firing range 24 inch, hit on a 5 or 6, save on a 6.” Even though the designer might have started from historical research and period tactics, if you boil it all down and end up with a fairly generic set of rules, then exactly where is the period-dependency encoded in the rules?

Most rulesets focus on the technicalities of movement procedures and  combat resolution, which are by themselves mathematical procedures to resolve a decision, but do not provide a framework to make sure that decision made by the player is an historical plausible decision a military commander would have made. Although we say wargames puts the player in the role of commander, not many rulesets provide rules to make sure the player just does that. Mostly, rules do the easy bit: how to resolve a firing action, or a melee action. An insane amount of detail goes into procedures like that, while ignoring other things that can make the rules more period-specific.

I think that the period-specificity in our wargames is more dependent on our choice of scenarios, deployment of troops, hsitorical tactical doctrine used by the player on the tabletop, rather than on specific gaming mechanics. Sometimes rulesets enforce such factors on the players, but very often, they do not. Hence, the reusability of rulesets for a range of periods.

[Alan Millicheap]

Phil Dutré wrote:

I think that the period-specificity in our wargames is more dependent on our choice of scenarios, deployment of troops, hsitorical tactical doctrine used by the player on the tabletop, rather than on specific gaming mechanics

Spot on!

[Guy Farrish]

So, to summarise: we are looking for one set of rules that can have different numbers plugged in and period specific scenarios and we cover the whole of human history?

 

[DM]

Being an aged bear of very little brain I’m keen to keep the number of rules systems that I use down a minimum. Hence my games from ancient to ECW use DBA or variants thereof. Similarly my fast play naval rules use the same game mechanics. But in each case they are tailored to be period specific. so a player familiar with the Renaissance set will recognise the mechanisms used in the pre-dreadnought set so will be able to assimilate the later period rules quite quickly, but will find that the actual rules, whilst using the same mechanisms, have (what I hope is) the right period “feel”

 

Similarly I’ve been involved in Alan’s amendment of BBB to a range of periods, most of worked well (the only one I didn’t really like was the sci fi skirmish), and previously we’ve tried applying Bolt Action to anything from ancients through to moderns – WW1 and western gunfights worked well; interestingly WW2 was the least satisfying game). Which reminds me, I must did out the Pony Wars variant I wrote and give them a go at the club…..

[Frank Wang]

I don’t know if you’re talking about something like universal rules, but what I’m going to say is, I find myself getting more and more interested in universal rules.

If you like a real fight, you need rules that are specific to the features of the fight. There is no way that one set of rules can perfectly simulate all periods. But the universal rules are really interesting, not only making it easier for designers to design new games, but also making it easier for players to learn.

[Guy Farrish]

I confess to being a little confused by your search for ‘universal rules’ and ‘There is no way that one set of rules can perfectly simulate all periods.’ I suspect I do not understand what the phrase ‘universal rules’ means, as the above seems to be a contradiction – I’m sure it isn’t if I knew what ‘universal rules’ means in this context!

[Whirlwind]

Guy Farrish wrote:

Can you successfully give yourself a feeling of what the problems faced by a commander were in such widely different periods using essentially the same set of rules? And if you can, are the rules more or less saying ‘Unit A is better than Unit X, throw a die to see if any unmodelled variables affect that superiority, highest score wins’? If so, is the only difference between Platea and the Battle of the Bulge in wargame terms the colour you paint the models on the table?

You probably can’t, but then again lots of rules don’t attempt to give much of a feeeling of the problems faced by a commander in widely different periods in the first place.  And if the rules aren’t doing that, then they are doing exactly “roll a die, add some modifiers, highest wins” to some degree. Most “rules families” have been doing that since the beginning of hobby wargaming AFAIK.  And the way the different modifiers interact with the differing terrain and ranges does produce fairly different games.

 

[Norm S]

As a boardgame player, over the past 18 months, I have re-structed a goodly part of my collection to focus on series games, so there are common rules within that period / genre. Each individual game then comes with the scenario bolt on rules – it makes board gaming life a lot easier instead of 60 different rulebook for 60 different games etc.

Looking at the Hail Caesar / Pike and Shotte / Black Powder figure rules. There are enough similarities across the three books / periods to show their lineage and sisterhood nature – there are also enough differences to get confused for those that dabble in all three. They are good stand alone games, but are enhanced by the period specific expansion books that follow each set.

There are a few example of very popular ancient / medieval sets that eventually morph to also encompass ECW / TYW etc.

It is much easier to have universal rules for periods that are of secondary interest, a main interest on the other hand is bound to get a more critical examination.

I don’t like seeing non-historical match-ups, so Vikings playing Wars of the Roses armies, but they would at least offer an opportunity to look at the success or otherwise of universality and if you know enough about the those periods, the fault lines where the rules fail to represent an army’s rue capability or limitation should be glaring.

 

[Not Connard Sage]

Guy Farrish wrote:

I confess to being a little confused by your search for ‘universal rules’ and ‘There is no way that one set of rules can perfectly simulate all periods.’ I suspect I do not understand what the phrase ‘universal rules’ means, as the above seems to be a contradiction – I’m sure it isn’t if I knew what ‘universal rules’ means in this context!

 

4500 years of ‘ancient’ warfare probably ticks some boxes 😉

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Guy Farrish]

Now 4,500 years is just silly – 4,485 years on the other hand – perfect sense.

[Not Connard Sage]

Holy Arbitrary Cut Off Points, Batman!

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[grizzlymc]

I think it was Patton who said something along the lines of” Wars are fought with weapons but won by men” Now, Mr Patton and I have had our differences but the men have not changed much over the last few millennia. I have lived in Melanesian villages whose culture has not changed much since warfare started getting organised and the culture gap was considerably less than that between me and the City of London.

Does this suggest that there is a basis to a set of universal mechanics? Yes! Does it imply that warfare is independent of technology, no!

I suspect that you can model flight or fight, and the interplay between missile and shock on a universal basis. But if you are using the same rules for Agincourt as for Snipe, you might be missing a trick or two.

[Don Glewwe]

This thread is almost/as good as/worse than those “unpainted lead” ones.  You made me think = that’s bad.  ; )

 

Games (imo …isn’t that assumed by the posting itself? …why is that a thing?) are about a commander’s decisions…sometimes.  Sometimes (mosttimes?) they are about the behavior of elements on the field of battle, and since the elements (not the decisions) directly impact the results of those commander/player decisions, the characteristics of those elements play a key role in the game.  This leads me to think that period specific games are better than generic ‘Ugh kill Ooog’ ones, insofar as they address the mindset as well as the tech/weapons of the combatants.

 

Give me another cup of coffee, and I may change my mind… ; )

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