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.

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.

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?

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

Thierry Michel wrote: 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.

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.

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

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

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).

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