Historical wargaming and the development of RPGs.

[James Holloway]

Hmmmm, regarding the last two posts, I wouldn't be quite so quick to identify "story" with role-playing and "combat" with wargaming.

I've never understood this idea, which seems to be very common, that there is "combat" and there is "story." Surely there can be stories about war just like there can be stories about crime, or exploration, or... I dunno ... race cars or whatever.  

If "combat" = "detailed tactical combat simulation," then that makes more sense. But many wargames have combat rules which are far less complicated than the average RPG, and they definitely have an emphasis on "story" elements -- or some games do, anyway.

I think the line isn't so clear.

Uh, I guess that comes out to "me too." Oh well.

[contracycle]

I had no problem with Battlesystem, used it several times and enjoyed it.  In fact, when I saw the hit points at work in the mass system, they made infinitley more sense than they had 1-to-1 context.  Sure, so a whole  unit sustained hits till it reached X level, and we removed a figure - easy peasy.

Furthermore, the casting limitations oin MU's made more sense than they had previously, becuase they were there to make the MU's a predictable and accountable input to the battle... a magician who could cast fireballs ad infinitum might make an interesting PC, but couldn't be used for a wargame with any balance.

On the down side, Battlesystem also showed us just how broken D&D was for the kind of play we wanted to have.  It became clear, as soon as we started constructing the armies, that you could do a hell of a lot with magic despite the restrictions (in fact, may of the things which saw little use in dungeoneering - cloudkill, blade barrier etc - got used a lot).  I remember a unit of what, 3rd level elves in woods, IIRC, opening up with a barrage of magic missiles before the charge.  Modern logic started to pervade the tactical decisionmaking; power levels escalated, and the armies got less and less "normal" and more and more like the wandering party on grand scale.  Too much flash, not enough impact.

[Wulf]

Greetings b_bankhead,
Even better, integrating wargaming with role-playing!

Of course you are probably unaware of just how lucky you were to experiance such a thing.  Don't ask me why but role-players (at least in my experience) have been notoriously uninterested in wargames.  

Anyone who knows Dream Pod 9's games Heavy Gear and Gear Krieg will realise they are designed to be played on both an RPG and Tactical Wargame level. We have had no difficulty when running a particularly large combat, in pulling out an ASL board and a collection of 1/300 microarmour and playing Tac scale with RPG rules...

Indeed, we brought back minis (25mm) for position in RPGs to avoid positional arguments in crowded situations:
"I hide behind the table!"
"You're nowhere near the table!"
"What table?"

It's all very well having a creative and fluid play style, but it helps if everyone knows what's going on...

Wulf

[Ian Charvill]

Wulf's comment

Indeed, we brought back minis (25mm) for position in RPGs to avoid positional arguments in crowded situations:
"I hide behind the table!"
"You're nowhere near the table!"
"What table?"

Put me in mind of another quote...

Others find that figures, token or markers give focus to the action, and help in weaving together player imaginations.  Arranging the investigators in marching order shows who can believably whisper to each other and who must shout, or it can show who is at the rear to attempt to listen for pursuers, or it can show who must first risk being entangled in a snare, and so forth.

from Call of Cthulhu (p.14, 5th Ed, 1992).  The passage, "Figures; Playing Position", goes to some length to stress the optional nature of figures and so on.  "Props may lend drama or end up looking silly."  "...they also bring position and physical nature into the game in styles some may find obtrusive." "Many find that so-stressing the use of language and atmospheric description is the best way to play".

Third edition (1986) has a similar passage entitled "Figures and Focus" (p.10 or the Games Workshop printing) which does not hedge its bets anywhere near as much.  "Though it can be played as a strictly verbal game many sessions of Call of Cthulhu, are played using miniature figures."

It's odd that while gaming in the eighties minis were a de facto feature of play for our group (my brother used to paint pretty well), and while we owned a small number of Games Workshop's licenced CoC miniatures, they never really featured during play of that particular game.

[Wulf]

Re: Call of Cthulhu

I must agree, I have never used figures in CoC (other than to show off the lovely Grenadier monster minis - "It looks like this" - "Eeew!"). That game doesn't need careful positioning, as it's primarily a ranged game (as far away as possible, in most cases). We likewise have rarely, if ever, used minis in a SF game (despite massive collections of Traveller maps...). EDIT: except for the wargame-like tactical situations described above END EDIT. We only found them useful in close-quarters combat in crowded or crampd areas. It's not always easy to verbally 'map' a room to the mutual satisfaction of all concerned, and worse if the players are all adding to it. With a map, even a sketch on paper, everyone starts at the same point, and you can sketch on additions and changes. With minis, you don't have to ask as many questions about positions, lines of sight, etc.

But they are a damned nuisance at times. Particularly when the GM is expected to carry 50 lbs of them around every week...

Wulf

[M. J. Young]

M.J....Care to bring me up to date [on BattleSystem], as it were?

Chris, Gareth (Contracycle) has made some good points about it, but I'll fill in a few more. As I think about it now, although I've never thought this before (and it might not be true), BattleSystem might have contributed to our thinking behind the "one each" creature design in Multiverser.

I suppose that the problem, for those who either never played wargames or who never really made the mental connection between the two, is how do you run a combat with hundreds of fighters on each side? I've had parties reach as large as thirty to forty characters (including NPC's and henchmen), and when they go against a like number of adversaries you'll be all night resolving a single battle. War multiplies that incredibly. Now you've got as many groups of characters or monsters fighting each other. When a unit of dwarfs tears into a unit of goblins, you've got to have hit points for all members of both groups, attack rolls, armor class, bonuses and penalties--hours of work to resolve one clash. This is the problem that novice DM's periodically recognize when they write to me for advice on the matter.

BattleSystem's answer was to use averages. Every member of a unit has the same AC and the same chance to hit (if he doesn't, he is removed from the unit and becomes one of the individual heroes involved in the combat). Although in concept individual hit points within the unit vary, they have an average value that represents the hit points of one typical individual. They use uniform weapons (this is a unit of archers, that of swordsmen), and so they do uniform damage on average.

Now instead of rolling, you recognize that if 20 goblins each need to roll 16 or better to hit 20 dwarfs, fifteen will miss and five will hit. If they are each going to do an average of three points of damage, they've done fifteen points to the unit. The dwarf unit is now reduced that much. Similarly, if they have to make a saving throw and need to roll 11 or better, half of them make it and the other half don't. Dice are pretty much eliminated from unit-to-unit combat.

There was also a time frame adjustment. Individuals still used one-minute combat rounds, but units used three-minute rounds. This gave everyone in the unit appropriate time to act, or viewed another way allowed those in the front lines to act multiple times to make up for the fact that those behind could not act as effectively.

Contracycle comments about units of upper level characters using magic against opponents. We didn't have that problem because our world didn't have large numbers of such characters. Outside of a few exceptional people, the world and all its armies were zero-level characters. So we didn't have units of wizards or such, so I can't say how that would have worked.

Re: Multiverser "one each" characters, this is the idea that individual guardsmen and such don't need individual stats, but can all have the same damage value, target value, and strike values, and usually can be equipped the same way. This saves set-up time and reduces paperwork, as the referee need only have one example of the character and can have as many of them as necessary without customizing. Although that was not the argument behind the BattleSystem approach, it is functionally the same in outcome.

--M. J. Young

[arxhon]

i began playing rpg's in 82-83. There was mention in the Basic D&D book of using miniatures on grid paper, but this was not really emphasized. Same deal when i 'upgraded' to AD&D about 4 years later. For the most part, we didn't represent things on a map, and combat was always a slash happy affair where people could attack whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted. The idea never even occurred to us that maps could be used. Fortunately, there were no gigantic conflicts of the size of M.J. Young's description, but the largest i ran, with 13 characters against 20 or so enemies took forever....

I never saw anyone using miniatures for anything. Ever. I did see them in the store, like the Grenadier and RAFM stuff, and actually owned a few (halflings, some "adventurers", a dragon and the "Dwarf with an inferiority complex") but never considered them for use in the game.

Then i got into wargames around 1990 (Warhammer 40'000 Rogue Trader, sigh...the good old days), and things changed completely. I stopped playing RPG's for many years (you can blame White Wolf for that, the last year i really played was the year Wraith came out), except for the occasional 2E excursion (Undermountain).

When i did start a WFRP game up last year, i used maps and pencil drawn marks for the combatants positions. It made for easier representations of combat for everyone involved, and more exciting combats, where people would jump onto tables or hurl chairs at their opponents. I actually played a mass combat as well, which went along quite nicely (WFRP, using the WFB mechanics for resolving NPC groups, about 60 goblins against 30 or so humans and the PC's).

In short, i went the reverse route, from purely imagined combats to ones on graph paper. I still haven't used miniatures for RPG combat though, and probably never will.

[Rob Brennan]

Hi All,

(this is my 1st post so please excuse any formatting boo-boos)
I have found this thread interesting because it deals with the
relationship between RPGs and wargames. I've had a long-time
interest in both hobbies.

I think that much (but not all) of the comment here on the relationship between the two has been "through a roleplayer's eyes". IMO this limits the depth of the discussion a bit.

For instance, there has been a lot of talk about the nature of wargames seems (to me) to refer to an older model of "how
they work". Remember that formal hobby wargames aren't really
that much older than RPGs at this stage :-) There has been parallel rules development ongoing in the wargames world. This has resulted in a new breed of wargames rules (especially for miniatures) that have a very different feel.

These new rules are generally based on top-down rather than bottom-up (raw simulationism?) design. Thus they are simpler to play, generally require little or no record keeping *and* provide a better model of battlefield mechanics than the old sets. I think that these rules are, in a way, more like narrativist RPG designs because they focus on modelling conflict outcomes rather than simulating the details of what's happening on a blow by blow basis.

Two examples of the sorts of rules that I'm talking about are:

- DBM (De Bellis Multitudinis), which is a set of large scale (c15K guys a side) ancients wargames rules.
http://www.richardbodleyscott.btinternet.co.uk/dbm.htm

- Crossfire, which is a set of WWII infantry combat rules.
http://www.10mbfree.com/crossfire/

DBM and it's little brother DBA have been responsible for generating a huge amount of new interest in the Ancients period. This is largely due to the elegance of the design IMO.

This stuff may seem a bit incomprehensible to GW players but in fact the GW style of rules is still based in 1970's-style wargames. FYI this is the stated position of the rules authors, I'm not trying to be contentious.

The above types of games represent one thread of development in wargames which is based around a traditional or compeditive style of play. In addition to this there are wargamers who prefer history, modelling etc to even the abstract "simulationism" embodied in the rules above. Many of these people have moved away from traditional "toy soldier" type rules and play games that are very recogisable from a RPG/freeform PoV. See the Wargames Developments web-page for more details on this:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/TomMouat1/Index.htm

A major part of this movement is the use of "Matrix Games" which make use of structured arguments invented by the players rather than any formal rules to control play. Possibly a true narrativist wargame?

Anyway I hope this has been of some interest.

rgds
rob

[James Holloway]

Hi All,

Two examples of the sorts of rules that I'm talking about are:

- DBM (De Bellis Multitudinis), which is a set of large scale (c15K guys a side) ancients wargames rules.
http://www.richardbodleyscott.btinternet.co.uk/dbm.htm

- Crossfire, which is a set of WWII infantry combat rules.
http://www.10mbfree.com/crossfire/

Hi Rob, and welcome.

Yeah; the thread kind of went loopy from what I was hoping to have it be, but that's the nature of these discussions.

DBx is a strange game, I think; I own DBA and have a couple of armies for it, but I feel like it doesn't actually do what I want it to do very well. One of the reasons is a weird historical nitpick on my part, but the other one is kind of interesting.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, I'll give a very brief description of the rules.

Players control armies made up of "elements": each element represents a certain number of troops. Rather than paying attention to the detail of their equipment and weapons and so forth, DBA classifies them into a number of abstract categories: infantry elements can be Spears, Blades, Pikes, Auxilia, Psiloi, Bows, Warbands or Hordes; cavalry can be Knights, Cavalry, Light Horse, Elephants, or Camels... and so on. Each of these then has a combat value, which is modified depending on the type of troops it is fighting (thus bows are good against cavalry but poor against infantry, while Blades are great against infantry but merely OK against cavalry and so on).

DBM, the advanced set, further classifies them by quality: thus a unit of Blades can be Blades (Superior), Blades (Ordinary), Blades (Fast) and so on.

That's the basic framework, and from looking at that you could think that this is a really abstract combat game:  firstly, it doesn't distinguish between weapon sets within the same category -- so a Viking with an axe and a medieval footsoldier with a halberd are both Blades, because they use the same tactics. It doesn't matter to the game what weapons or armor the guy is carrying; it matters how those weapons and armor make him act. Secondly, the game abstracts combat results: it doesn't matter that two units are touching -- this could mean that they're fighting hand-to-hand, or maybe shooting from short range, or maybe a little bit of both. They're fighting. It doesn't matter whether the troops are all dead, or running away, or whatever. They're out of the fight.

Interestingly, this idea gets carried over into a fantasy wargame based on DBA which is called Hordes of the Things (HOTT for short). Some bright spark realized that since an element in DBA was just a "Blade" or whatever, it didn't matter what it was -- it could be an orc or a skeleton or an elf or anything. So troop types for fantasy wargames were added (flying things, giant monsters, heroes, etc.) and away you go!

But there are still a lot of elements in DBA that are... I hesitate to say "left over" from other conventions of wargames design. So, for example, there's a convention for figuring out how many guys an element represents, depending on how the unit would be spaced out. This kills DBA for me, because I can't shake free the image that there are tens of thousands of guys on a side in my armies, and I know such pitched battles in the period I want to recreate were extremely rare.  And there are raging, heated debates over the army lists, because army lists determine the percentage of what types of elements you can have in your army, and these in turn are based on historical research ... often of very scanty or unreliable sources. DBM actually solves this problem by putting the army lists in separate books: if you prefer your own interpretation, just figure it out for yourself.

So I know that we can't possibly apply GNS to tabletop wargames, but if we could I would say that DBA is an example of "incoherent" design -- but it's mostly functional. Almost all groups use some kind of drift, usually regarding the controversial BUA and Light Horse v. Pike rules.

To go back to the business side of things, the company that makes DBA is teeny tiny. Seriously. It's small by RPG company standards, and the DBx games are probably the most generically popular historical ruleset short of Warhammer Ancients. The production values of the game are appallingly poor. I could do better in a week, and I don't know thing one about layout or art. It would be punk as all hell, except that it's a leading light of the wargames industry.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

So I know that we can't possibly apply GNS to tabletop wargames, but if we could I would say that DBA is an example of "incoherent" design -- but it's mostly functional.

Egad. I really, really hope "incoherent" doesn't become the new "roll-playing" to designate a style or approach one doesn't agree with or like and , thus, it's inferior.

TBH James, what you'd described about DBA ddoesn't sound incoherent to me, but I'm going completely by your description here.

[James Holloway]

So I know that we can't possibly apply GNS to tabletop wargames, but if we could I would say that DBA is an example of "incoherent" design -- but it's mostly functional.

Egad. I really, really hope "incoherent" doesn't become the new "roll-playing" to designate a style or approach one doesn't agree with or like and , thus, it's inferior.

TBH James, what you'd described about DBA ddoesn't sound incoherent to me, but I'm going completely by your description here.

Good God, no. I mean that it's trying to do two things at once:

1) provide an abstract set of combat rules, and
2) model the constructions of real historical armies

I think it does 1) well but this hampers its ability to do 2). Basically, it's fallen between the two historical mini game objectives of "historical accuracy" and "competitive enjoyment." It tries to do both and is hampered by this -- this is what I take incoherent as it is usually used to mean. No?

Oh yeah; I forgot to mention that armies are *fundamentally* unbalanced. I have a Vikings army and a pre-feudal Scots army and the Vikings pretty much always win. Because this is historically accurate; they were better. They won more often. And yet the game has tons of rules which are supposed to facilitate its use in tournament play... and as a result, you never see certain armies being played. Cause no one likes tournaments which are nothing but them getting whupped. So which is it? A chess-like competitive game or a historical simulation?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Good God, no. I mean that it's trying to do two things at once:

1) provide an abstract set of combat rules, and
2) model the constructions of real historical armies

I think it does 1) well but this hampers its ability to do 2). Basically, it's fallen between the two historical mini game objectives of "historical accuracy" and "competitive enjoyment." It tries to do both and is hampered by this -- this is what I take incoherent as it is usually used to mean. No?

OK. Yeah, I think this is what incoherency is, confliction goals of play in the same game. I've just noticed the term cropping up a bit and I know that eventually it will be used in the roll-playing context.

Oh yeah; I forgot to mention that armies are *fundamentally* unbalanced. I have a Vikings army and a pre-feudal Scots army and the Vikings pretty much always win. Because this is historically accurate; they were better. They won more often. And yet the game has tons of rules which are supposed to facilitate its use in tournament play... and as a result, you never see certain armies being played. Cause no one likes tournaments which are nothing but them getting whupped. So which is it? A chess-like competitive game or a historical simulation?

Well, it obviously can't be chess-like since the sides are not exactly equal. This may be a matter of perspective. Someone with a gamist perspective will see it as a strategy game using historically accurate information as the areana of the challenge. Like that scene in Gladiator where they reinacted that battle Crowe's group was supposed to lose. Someone might play pre-feudal Scots against Vikings because they want the challenge of trying to win with a lesser army, to see how close to victory that can geth, as it were. And this is just one gamist perspective. Another you seemed to indicate with the idea of balance armies and equal challenge. And so it goes.

[Rob Brennan]

Good God, no. I mean that it's trying to do two things at once:

1) provide an abstract set of combat rules, and
2) model the constructions of real historical armies

I think it does 1) well but this hampers its ability to do 2). Basically, it's fallen between the two historical mini game objectives of "historical accuracy" and "competitive enjoyment." It tries to do both and is hampered by this -- this is what I take incoherent as it is usually used to mean. No?

Many of these issues are resolved in DBM. It is true that a large proportion of it's popularity stems from its suitability for tournament-style play but there are also large numbers of people who happily use it for both historical scenarios and campaigns. In fact many play principles shift subtly when used in these different manners. This is a real strength of the rule-set, is a tournament game a "historical simulation"? - no not really. But when played with suitable game parameters it does a really good job of being a simulator (at the battle level), much more so than previous generations of "detailed" rules-sets.

Anyway my main point was not to evaluate the merits of these games but rather to point out that they represent a quantum leap in game design (both in terms of historical simulation and playability) within the wargames area. This parallel evolution of wargames goes largely unnoticed by RPers because they are not mass-market items like GW (+imitators) and "wargame" extensions/supplements for many RPGs are very "retro" in wargames terms.

rgds
rob

[James Holloway]

Many of these issues are resolved in DBM. It is true that a large proportion of it's popularity stems from its suitability for tournament-style play but there are also large numbers of people who happily use it for both historical scenarios and campaigns. In fact many play principles shift subtly when used in these different manners. This is a real strength of the rule-set, is a tournament game a "historical simulation"? - no not really. But when played with suitable game parameters it does a really good job of being a simulator (at the battle level), much more so than previous generations of "detailed" rules-sets.

Yeah, I have my own personal reservations about this, largely based on the way Hastings plays out in DBA (you can't "soften up" a target with missile fire), plus the usual BUA and Light Horse things. But to go on about it would be OT. So I'll move on. Don't get me wrong, I like the game and recognize its many excellent features.

Anyway my main point was not to evaluate the merits of these games but rather to point out that they represent a quantum leap in game design (both in terms of historical simulation and playability) within the wargames area. This parallel evolution of wargames goes largely unnoticed by RPers because they are not mass-market items like GW (+imitators) and "wargame" extensions/supplements for many RPGs are very "retro" in wargames terms.

rgds
rob

Yes, they sure are. This seems to me to be largely because RPG design influences are coming back across -- and the kinds of RPGs which usually have wargames attachments are based on design traditions stemming from older wargames.

A great example would be Gear Krieg. I mean, rules for determining whether the radio in a particular tank is knocked out? That's a very RPG-y kind of mechanism, and I would normally only expect to find it in verrrry small-scale games; but GK isn't really one of them.