Wargaming without Dice

[Justin Swanton]

I’ve just started a wargaming blog that will focus on diceless wargaming with reference to my own diceless system Optio, but also cover other wargaming topics. There’s already been quite a debate from my first post. Link here.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[ian pillay]

Justin

Thank you for sharing, some great comments on there, my favourite being, “ all attacks in Chess are 100% successful”,  by Extra Crispy. Never thought of that before! Very thought provoking topic. As for me I like dice, cards and Chess😊 my favourite dice less game is one hour skirmish. That was the game that really made me want to play more card driven games, rather than D6 dice games.

Tally-Ho! Check out my blog at…..
http://steelcitywargaming.wordpress.com/

[Justin Swanton]

Thanks Ian.

“ all attacks in Chess are 100% successful” – well, depends. What’s a successful attack in chess? A combination that leaves the attacker with a material or positional advantage: he’s now a bishop up, or has a knight on d6 or something like that. A drawn attack would be a simple exchange, and a lost attack would be a blunder. That transposes nicely into a chanceless wargame like Optio.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I prefer some sort of randomness in my wargames…command control and movement rates, combat effectiveness, and morale just aren’t precise in real life which we might wish to simulate to some degree .

On the realism front I dislike dice because they introduce a variability in a unit’s performance that it wouldn’t have in real life: on a given day a unit is good or bad. It can’t be good for 15 minutes, then be awful for the next 15 minutes, then be so-so for the following 15 minutes, and so on. Not initially knowing an enemy unit’s capability is fog of war (this is what is meant by unpredictability). But once the unit is engaged its capability becomes clear and doesn’t change for the duration of the fight.

This I think just isn’t true.  I think you’ll find plenty of examples where a unit did not initially perform well, but rallied and came back to victory and of elite units that balked and ran after an initial success.  saying that the subjective measurement of the unit is being revealed by that first die roll but ought to remain consistent for the rest of the day ( or even encounter) just doesn’t hold up in history.  Real life commanders in any case, never had objective measurements of a unit’s quality or ability to stick, fight or move.  Each encounter has new unique variables not apparent before. Even the “judgement” of subordinates officers’ leadership and units’ abilities which in a game are being reduced to numerical modifiers is more precise than what a real general had (with Dunning-Kruger and all that… not every elite labeled unit really is elite)

 

I like Chess and Go and play them a lot, but for a wargame that purports to be at least minimally a simulation one needs chaos and friction. Too it’s a lot more pleasurable to have your little militia levy unit dramatically hold off for a turn or two, the elite royal guardsmen with the necessary rolls of  boxcars, until the last turn of the game to ultimately snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  You’ll  remember that far more often than a checkmate in chess.  (and how much more palatable to your ego to “know” that your losses are the result of bad dice and not from poor intellect!)

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Justin Swanton]

Hi Mick,

If a unit rallies it’s usually for a reason extraneous to the unit itself: it pulls back to favourable terrain, or it sees nearby enemy units routing, or something like that. Optio caters for that. What I don’t like is a unit varying substantially in performance for no reason and me having to suck reasons out of my left thumb to justify the irrational randomness.

But that’s just me. 🙂

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Narratives emerge, I don’t have a problem if it emerges from randomness. Sometimes the phalanx missed the correct path and a legionnaire notices the gap, and unprotected flank.

I just find it impossible to role-play the decisions of a real commander might take, if every variable is precisely in front of you to analyze and conduct with chess like precision.  Even Napoleon extolled about the role of luck in making a good commander.  Clausewitz spoke how war was simple but even the simple was difficult.  “Friction” is what makes war an art, not a science.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Justin Swanton]

I’ve posted an overview of Optio on my blog for those interested. See here.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Patrice]

Personaly I like the fact that the results or events that cannot be exactly predicted are decided by dice (the result of a fight, or the time a unit will take to cross difficult terrain, etc.)

IMHO it’s not about the troop real effectiveness, it’s only about the random factors. The real effectiveness is known beforehand in the scenario: a strong unit is more difficult to hit, but I still need dice to know if it’s hit or not.

But obvioulsy it’s a matter of personal taste. You certainly know a small booklet “Rules for Wargaming“ by Arthur Taylor (1971, I found a later edition many years ago) he agreed with you, the introduction says “it seems to the present writer that rules for wargaming should be based on the principles of chess (…)“

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Justin Swanton]

I like the review.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Mike Headden]

I have a copy of “Rules for Wargaming“ by Arthur Taylor which I got as part of a bundle of books bought with the book token I received for winning the school poetry prize.

“Rules for Wargaming”, “Mastering Magic” and “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” – hats off to the English teacher who had a brief verbal tussle with the Headmaster over whether these were suitable items!

While fond of the physical object for the reasons given above, I was never fond of the rules. They seemed to me mechanistic and soulless.

What I’ve seen of Optio leaves me feeling the same.

To me warfare is mud, blood, chaos and mayhem. Chance is everything. “No plan survives contact with the enemy” and so on.

In a world where you can lose a battle because your enemies troops worship the sun anything is possible 🙂

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

[Justin Swanton]

“While fond of the physical object for the reasons given above, I was never fond of the rules. They seemed to me mechanistic and soulless.

What I’ve seen of Optio leaves me feeling the same.”

One man’s meat….though bear in mind you haven’t yet played Optio.

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Justin Swanton]

PS, if you want to pass on Taylor’s soulless rules I’ll happily take them. ;-

https://wargamingwithoutdice.blogspot.com/

[Mike Headden]

Justin Swanton wrote:

One man’s meat….though bear in mind you haven’t yet played Optio.

Oh absolutely! My post wasn’t intended as “that’s not the proper way to play toy soldiers, old chap” but rather “each to their own … but not for me.”

I’m afraid I’ll stick with “Strength and Honour” for the moment but I hope those who do choose to play “Optio” have lots of fun with it.

Justin Swanton wrote:

PS, if you want to pass on Taylor’s soulless rules I’ll happily take them

My sentimental attachment to the three volumes leads me to politely decline the offer 🙂

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

[Author]

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