Morale and identification [split from Wargames]

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Man, I'll tell you. I'm not much of a wargamer at all. Mostly because I just cannot treat any of my units as cannon fodder. I just can't march a group into certain death. I think this is an RPG perspective getting in the way where you don't want your character to die. I just can't get past losing even one model. Never mind that I have a hundred other models on the table. Good thing I'm not a career officer. I would lose.

[contracycle]

Hmm, dunno Jack, I consider being parsimonious with your troops a good thing, its just that sometimes the safest route in the long run is a high risk strategy now.  But, to wrench this back to RPG:

Rob wrote

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.

I don't think this is narratavist design, so much as Gamist design.  More elegant gamism more suited to the kind of game even the historical players often want to play.  

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?

I've playd Matrix games and have mentioend them on the Forge previously; I don;t theink they are narratavist either particularly, but they are IMO a lot like directorial machanics.

Incoherence:
I would suggest that Incoherence probabaly was correctly pegged, in that I think the basic conflict of goals of play - sim or gamist - is there in a very similar manner to that of RPG.  So frex, it may well be that a sim/historical player might be better of attending campaign events that are framed around historical sequences of events, rather than competitions to determine a winner.  But of course, some of the validity of the sim requires genuine competition, and I feel that this is indeed introduces a tension between gamism and simulation.  Just as James describes - if the sim component is to have value to a historical player, surely the unists *should* be translatable back into real numbers... at the very least, institutionalised conventions can rub you up the wrong way.  I think that there are many wargamers who don't fully enjoy what they do but at the moment, this is the best they have, in a manner highly analogous to dysfuncitonal RPG play.  Indeed, as described, the game is trying to focus on two things at once.

[Thierry Michel]

Mostly because I just cannot treat any of my units as cannon fodder. I just can't march a group into certain death.

It has been argued that it's not a realistic feature for wargames as well, especially the willingness of your figures/counters to fight to the death and to let themselves be marched to certain death.

[Mike Holmes]

It has been argued that it's not a realistic feature for wargames as well, especially the willingness of your figures/counters to fight to the death and to let themselves be marched to certain death.

Good wargames take this into account well, and are not so unrealistic. AD&D had rules for morale, so you could determine when the monsters ran. Which was in there presumably to counter the phenomemnon from even earlier editions where monsters always fought to the death. Handled as yet another vestige of wargames. One I'd almost completely forgotten.

Mike

[clehrich]

My rather dim recollection of some of the more detailed wargames (I'm thinking Advanced Squad Leader, which was sort of from hell) was that morale was not even a question of a roll or whatever.  First of all there were various factors that had to be considered: were they surprised, what was the strength of the squad's leader, could they see him, were they in continuous radio contact with HQ, what sort of weapons were used upon them, etc.  Once they broke, they might hunker down and wait and pray, or run like hell, depending; furthermore even trying to get them back into control was itself a morale-test, so trying to soothe them too early would actually make things worse.  The point is that if you knew all the rules dead cold, you could determine when you would have the best shot at having a leader get the broken units under control, and then move the leader to be in position at that time.  Horrendously complex, but it sure got around the "why do my guys march into combat like idiots" problem.

Seems to me that in a lot of these games there is the "what if" situation set up.  You have a given historical or ahistorical situation, and then you have a simulation-system that leaves relatively little to chance (but a lot to skill or command).  On the one hand you're trying to win, but on the other hand there's a sort of intellectual puzzle: if there were a battle that went like this, who would win, and how?  Ideally, the game would actually also be a way to express something, to make a kind of argument, which is how some chess masters talk about their game: as a co-created art-form.  I just thought we ought to get that on the table, since I think it's something various RPG folks claim as a contrast from wargames, but the wargamers sometimes see it precisely in opposition.

[arxhon]

I just can't get past losing even one model. Never mind that I have a hundred other models on the table.

gonna go OT for a moment....(sorry)

I play a skaven army for WFB, and love it when my little rats die. That means they are doing their job (it's what they are best at). >:-D

you may now resume your regularly scheduled thread....

[Thierry Michel]

Good wargames take this into account well, and are not so unrealistic.

True, but one of the inherent problems is the fixed time limit in the game itself. If your victory depends on holding hill H at time T, then you'll be ready to accept horrendous losses to do so, even though a "real" general knows that life doesn't end when the  counter reaches the last box in the turn track.

There are some fixes to that problem as well, but generally paper generals are less attached to their units than real ones (at leaast, I hope so).

[Valamir]

True, but one of the inherent problems is the fixed time limit in the game itself. If your victory depends on holding hill H at time T, then you'll be ready to accept horrendous losses to do so, even though a "real" general knows that life doesn't end when the counter reaches the last box in the turn track.

Thierry, you might want to look up battles like Porkchop Hill in Korea, where the mission for both the U.N. and Chinese was precisely to hold hill H at time T (where time T was the next meeting of the peace talks) and horrendous losses were accepted on both sides to do so. Bastiogne would also be an example (where time T was the time when the German armor would run out of gas).

Cle, if you haven't seen it, you might enjoy Combat Mission, the PC game which is basically advanced squad leader in full 3d real time (broken into 1 minute "turns"). In fact the game was initially going to be a licensed ASL game though that fell through. You can watch your squads behave exactly as you described in full (though slightly dated) graphical glory, turning and running in the face of hellacious MG fire, or being pinned by incoming arty. All with 0 fiddling by the player except to give the orders (and figure out which are good orders and which are stupid).

[Thierry Michel]

Combat Mission is a good example, because it has both realistic morale rules and a "last turn" effect (also known as "Flag Rush") where the player tries to overrun a position just before time runs out, so that the defender can not mount a counter-attack.

Now, to go back on topic, I remember playing at least one wargame with "role-playing" attributes such as experience and improvement (it was the french version of the old tactical wargame Outremer - translated and enriched by an old hand wargamer/role-player).

It worked, in the sense that players were reluctant to send their veterans foolishly into battle, but that said veterans were extremely useful to force a decisive victory. (the strategic nature of the game also meant that there was less of an "end of the world" effect, one could play entire dynasties).

[Mike Holmes]

Close Combat has improvement mechanics in spades. And morale is the key to the whole thing.

I was just talking ASL last night in the Indie-Netgaming Cornerstone game.

Thierry, sure there are scenarios that are designed in an unrealistic manner. That's just bad design. But as has been pointed out, generals IRL, often have imperatives that they cannot ignore. This does not mean that they don't care for their men. But if they trust their superiors then they relize that the casualties that they are forced to have their men suffer through are neccessary, and that not employing their men as neccessary is to fail to achieve a greater good. Yes, it seems impossible that there can be a greater good than the lives of men. But if it means, say, freedom for a nation, then, yes, that's worth the lives of men. Usually, though it's more pragmatic than that. If you don't lose X men at point A then you're going to lose more men at point B. So you choose the lesser evil.

I feel I can speak with some confidence on how generals operate. Not only do I wargame a lot, but I did fifteen years part time with the military (WIARNG). Oh, yeah, and my father was a general. :-)

BTW, this all has great pertinence to RPG play. These are great situations to get PCs into. Have one of the other PCs as a low level guy in a unit. Then the general PC has to decide whether or not to commit his friend's unit to "certain death". Cool.

Mike