How can a wargame be realistic?

[Pattus Magnus]

It doesn’t seem like your brain box is performing poorly, Ray, even if it is past the warranty date on the original circuitry! That all makes a lot of sense to me.

[Patrice]

Uber realistic skirmish games make 5 seconds of actions take 5 minutes of gaming, at the other end of the scale turning a huge formation that would take ages for real takes 5 minutes on the tabletop.

This.

I wouldn't dare to engage too far in this debate, but for me sure it's a main issue (but then, I play mostly RPG-minded skirmishes, and that's me).
I can't believe that an action which takes more time on the gaming table than in reality is realistic. If players have to calculate lots of things that their characters / commanding officers on the gaming table cannot even imagine, it breaks my immersion in the reality of the gaming situation.

[Belligerentparrot]

Great posts, Ray and Patrice.

I've also now read the article, which I enjoyed, and it really just reinforced for me a question I tried to articulate earlier. I think I can articulate it better now I've thought about it a bit more.

There are two parts to a wargame, for me: the rules, and the actual game.

I certainly want the rulesets I use to handle some aspects of realism. E.g. when shooting, very large targets shouldn't be harder to hit than small targets. I also don't mind if some aspects of Fog and Friction, to use Ray's great terms, are handled by (perhaps modifiable) chance. Too much of that gets frustrating though - it is no fun if it is too hard for your plans to come off due to dice.

But I'm not sure I want rulesets to handle immersion. Isn't the best way to achieve a really realistic game, whatever you want that to mean, to play with people who are playing in the same spirit? That's the "game" side of things, rather than the "rules" side of things.

[TacticalPainter]

Ray’s post covers many of the issues I raised. When I talked about the human factor and its variables I meant this for both sides. I think friction is a big part of this. As Clausewitz says, the most simple things are often difficult. They are certainly difficult for the commander to predict. It’s one reason I like variable movement in a game, which is not to be confused with random movement but allows for a bell curve of possible variation in the way a unit moves.

Many games avoided fog of war to avoid the bookkeeping, no gamer I know likes keeping notes. For that reason I particularly like the idea of blinds, or even better the jump-off-points in Chain of Command or the combat patrols in O Group, these are elegant mechanics for a very playable fog of war that produces plausible outcomes.

Crossfire introduces both in a combined way by doing away with a predictable turn length (actually no turns at all) and the possibility of continuous movement. Both introduce friction and fog of war and in doing so go some way to removing the all-seeing control of the players’ helicopter view .

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Personally, I enjoyed your article, TP.
I was a little dismayed at some of the strong feelings expressed here, as this is usually a very friendly forum.  Out of interest I also read the comments on another prominent forum discussing your post.  A similar range of responses there.
We all come to wargaming for different reasons, but some of us do wargame for the purpose of trying to understand the history of war - not the experience of it (far too grim) but either the tactics or the difficulties of command.  Others do just want to push toy soldiers around.  Wargame rules for the latter are far easier to come by.
I liked your comment that perhaps "realistic" is the wrong term and perhaps "accuracy" is better.
Some rules aim for very realistic mechanisms which often slow down a game and don't always achieve the realistic outcome they are aiming for.
I have become more drawn to games that have, what many would see, as unrealistic mechanics but do achieve a more realistic or accurate outcome.  Perhaps it depends on whether you feel the ends justify the means or not. 
Command radius is a good example.  I have seen arguments for and against these.  While, in itself, a command radius is unrealistic, does it help achieve a more accurate outcome?  Rather than just thinking this limits how far a commander projects his influence it might also reflect just how much the commander can see and respond to.
As much as I personally don't like Black Powder rules, I can appreciate what they are trying to do with their activation system.   Poor battlefield visibility or misunderstanding orders might see a brigade halt.  Inspired leadership may see a brigade move across the battle with alacrity.  This system may also allow for the percieved difference of the passage of time in different parts of the battle.

There are many things we don't know about historical battles, as others have already mentioned.  Rather than agonising over how things were done I prefer rules that fudge things a bit but deliver a believable outcome.  Preferably without lots of tables or calculations.  A long game with fast action is what I am after.

Anyway, thanks for your article and for all the comments that others have made.

Edit:
A couple of things came to mind after posting.
Possibly we want "selective realism" - there are some aspects we are looking at trying to replicate while other aspects we are not so worried about.
And perhaps the aim for some of us is to "approximate realism" rather than be realistic.

[Easy E]

People who lean into the Game side of things hate Friction and Fog of War. 

People who lean into Simulationist demand Friction and Fog of War.

People who lean into Narrativist tolerate Fog of War and Friction as a way to help the story unfold.

Therefore, as a Designer there is a tricky balance to put in enough Fog of War and Friction but not too much of it. 

[Elbows]

To me, realism in a wargame (both fictitious and historical) consists of a few things:

1) Things should function more-or-less as intended in the real world.  Rifles shouldn't kill tanks, etc.
2) Some realistic aspects are presented - even if abstract. Command chaos, unit morale/fatigue, etc.
3) In a historical context maneuvers/strategies should work, and things which didn't work historically should not suddenly become useful in the game. (i.e. breaking the game's realism by abusing a poorly written/designed rule).

Flying in the face of realism, as others have stated, it must also be a game.  "Real" historical combat was often short, fierce, and one side retreated or fell back to solve the problem in another way.  Short of set-piece battles in the age of muskets or sword/shield...plenty of battles were decided with very minimal casualties.  That gives a game a feeling of "dressing up for nothing".  No one wants to see their units of 100 fusiliers lose nine men and retreat from the fight, etc.

Likewise, a lot of players hate command chaos.  They hate that they can't issue an order - and the unit responds perfectly without question.  I personally enjoy that, but I understand plenty of people don't.  If there's one thing I've gleaned from vague studying of military history (from ancients to modern combat) it's that stuff never happens when you expect it to, or how you planned.  Historical combat is filled with units arriving late or not at all, commanders refusing to engage out of spite or ignorance or cowardice, etc.  So this is a game feature, which while realistic, can piss off some gamers.

While I agree no game - regardless of scale - can accurately reflect the dangers and bloodshed experienced by a normal soldier...it's also not supposed to.  Abstract concepts can accomplish all that.  A general sitting on a hill, for instance, sees a unit under his command at a distance - often in order, or not.  The unit is is either holding the line, advancing, or retreating, etc.  The general isn't concerned with the lone soldier's trauma...but rather how the unit is performing as a whole.  So I'm fine with abstract considerations.

I think the most unrealistic thing present in...almost every single wargame which is not tied into a campaign, is the level of violence/risk that we all enjoy.  Even the most historical of us will issue a semi-suicidal charge in the hopes of winning the game.  Wargames frequently have casualty rates of 40-80% which would be ludicrous in all but the rarest of real battles.  So...to that extent it is just a game.  This slightly silly stuff is diminished if you move to a grand strategy game (such as a hex-based boardgame where you're moving divisions or armies), as you can abstract the dangerous orders you tend to issue.

To me all game design is taking a convoluted, crunchy, detailed thing...and converting it into some simply understood dice rolls, and structured levels of chance.  That's what sets it apart from something I'd label a "simulation".

[Easy E]

This thread prompted me to write down some of my thoughts on the Designer's Triangle on my own blog.  It might be helpful to this discussion:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2023/07/wargame-design-ngs-narrative-gamist.html

I discuss what the Triangle is, how to use it, and walk through an example with Castles in the Sky.

However, I think Elbows and I are pretty well-aligned on this topic.

[Dolnikan]

For me, there are a few aspects that play into a feeling of realism which of course is pretty different from actual realism. There isn't really a way for a game to simulate how careful with lives and materiel you have to be as a real general because of the consequences even a victory can have for your future. There also is the issue that real commanders don't have nearly as much influence on a battle, especially if you go more into the past. Once the army was committed they could mostly just look on and maybe interfere at a few points. That however wouldn't make for much of a game.

So those aren't things that play into a game's realism for me. Factors that do are more like units and tactics functioning as they should (forming square for instance shouldn't be a great tactic to resist artillery and you shouldn't easily take out a tank with pistol fire). Another aspect is in command and control. It makes no sense for all orders to be followed perfectly but many realistic outcomes, like a unit going the wrong way, can't really be put into a ruleset because that would just be too complicated. Morale also should be a factor because people aren't suicidal robots. Most of the time at least.

[frd]

As someone (relatively) new to the hobby, it's interesting to see everyone's take on the topic (including the disagreements). Seems that the "tales" I head of trying to get a group of wargamers to agree on something are not that far off 

Had a convoluted message here about my take on the topic, but in the end I realized it doesn't really matter to me. Our hobby wargames are games first and foremost, and as such can't really ve realistic - rules limit the possibility of what can happen and how players can respond. Professional wargames are not really games and can get a lbit closer to realism.

[nou]

After reading both the article and responses, I think one take on „realism” has not been raised yet - „realism” in SF/fantasy genres context.

Obviously, no „hard realism” can be achieved here. There is no way of validating „plausible historical outcome”, we have magic and all other imaginary elements. And yet some SF/fantasy games feel more „realistic” and some more gamey. In my opinion, this boils down to the priorities of perspective: is the perspective of the player as a commander more important, than the perspective of the model and soldiers/creatures they represent within a setting. This is somewhat related to the Fog of War / Friction and their reception by gamist/narrative/simulationist player types, but encompases broader array if game aspects.

For example, there is a purely gamist interaction in 40k, called tri-pointing. If you surround one model from the enemy squad with three models from your squad so that there is no room to physically move the enemy model’s base between those three models, no withdraw rules can be applied, neither volountary nor mandatory. Gamist players call this interaction „tactics”, narrative/simulation players call this interaction unrealistic nonsense.

To keep this post brief - for me, the baseline for „realistic” is the reception of the flow of the game - does it feel more like your toy soldiers enact an in-world battle, according to concise enough „engine” of their imaginary world, or does it feel more like a gridless boardgame, where pieces can move a non-discreet distances and affect other pieces at a distance, and every other aspect is just decoration.

One particular aspect of the discussion above is really baffling to me - the argument from the discrepancy between how much it takes to perform an action in the real world and how much it takes to resolve it in the game. Of all possible arguments to be made against the realism of a simulation, this is the most bizzare one. All of the most realistic simulations in science take either way more time than the simulated event or way less time. Does anyone really expect a skirmish wargame to be played out in mere minutes and naval games to be resolved in days?

[Brummie]

Its a good question and I agree with the general sentiment of the original post.

So long as the game achieves the basics in terms of the military theory of its day rather than attempting to replicate too hard the nuances of reality, I'm generally satisfied. Like imagine a rule set that adds random pre-battle events; "Unit X (your elite unit) had a dodgy breakfast this morning and are now afflicted with the sh*ts, combat effectiveness is now halved" or "Pte Conscriptovich and company received new combat gear and a commendation from command for their bravery in a previous engagement, 1+ to all dice roles for this unit".

Wargaming certainly has a value to it though. Being part of a unit that follows activities as close to "wargaming" as the army allows (big room with lots of maps and counters), the importance of wargaming is to help provide - at the very least - a basic understanding of why things have occurred and the events that lead to them. In one event I managed to predict an enemy attack days before it happened, but was warned off because I lacked the hard evidence to back it up - I simply had a hunch based off the enemy disposition/doctrine and lay of the land - I argued my case, presented it to whoever was pretending to be our CO and was ignored as other events took precedence at that time. As an event it was very enlightening; it replicated a very specific part of what the army does, so was realistic; but we didn't delve into the nitty-gritty of events, or track the exact (to the the last 0.1 of a km) range of artillery or its expected expenditure, or how a mechanized company conducted an attack, or what types of munitions might be used to conduct an airstrike - generally that wasn't our problem and more importantly would be a waste of time trying to track.

Wargaming is something that we apparently don't (to our detriment) do much in the British armed forces. The U.S and others do a much better job of wargaming as a means of informing how a conflict might pan out or be fought, some have even been arguably quite close to reality when things do occur.