How can a wargame be realistic?

[TacticalPainter]

Wargaming realistic? Daftest question I've ever heard, only a wargamer could come up with such drivel!
Does playing Monopoly give a good insight into the world of high finance?Does the CID (coppers in distress) learn detecting things from playing Cluedo?
A wise man once said 'there's no such thing as a daft question'.

'Are wargames realistic?'

Now, that's a daft question!

 

I don’t mind you disagreeing but I do mind being misquoted. I asked ‘how’ can a wargame be realistic, which is to pose a very different question. At least you had the honesty to admit you never read the article, which incidentally takes people with your opinion into account.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, but it is just that.

[Harry Faversham]

Thanks for sharing your opinion, but it is just that.

Exactly, don't fret. Opinions are like arseholes, we've all got one, and we all know wot comes out of 'em!
 

[Big Rich]

Fortunately, some arseholes are easy to spot. 

[Captain Blood]

Annnnd - relax.

(Not your arse hole though).

Please keep your disagreements agreeable, lest the thread be realistically killed.

Thanks chaps.

[Rickf]

Further to my reply about how we use wargames in the military. I would just like to add that although a game can never be realistic as in actual combat, they can give realistic results, IF they are played using the actual tactics of the day. The biggest thing that makes games unrealistic is the massive casualty rates accepted by gamers. I often get comments like 'this is your job, why are you so rubbish' because nobody is making me roll a 6 before crossing the Line of Departure!

[jon_1066]

How can a war-game be realistic?

It can't, on any level.  It is a game, pure and simple.  Toy soldiers, toy terrain, toy buildings.  And, no, I did not read the 'article' though I glanced at it.  Like Harry, life is too short.

Who wants the bile in your throat, the horrible smells in your nostrils, the gut wrenching fear, seeing your best friend blown to unrecognizable pieces, or a life long trauma from the experience?  Certainly not I.

Yeah, sure, we can do our best to recreate a historical battle using terrain and orders of battle, done it many times, and - always - five minutes into the game the history is gone and the 'gaming' is on.  But sometimes the game has a 'historical' result, more or less.  And that is cool - but it is never like the real battle, just the result is similar in interpretation.

I land here and this is all I need to know, "Wargaming is grown men, mostly, playing with toy soldiers.  And having too good a time to care what others think."  I long ago got over trying to take it seriously.  But the 'take it serious' folk are still popping up here and there.

If I want history, I read a book.  A game is supposed to be fun.

Rules should be just enough to avoid real bloody noses and not much more.  Simpler rules, funner games.

Fun folks.  That is supposed to be the goal.

The problem with this approach is that it reduces a wargame to a completely barren exercise.  If "fun" is the only goal what constitute fun?  Why play a wargame?  Why play a miniature wargame?  Even at your reductionist simplified extreme there has to be a work of imagination in there somewhere or we could as easily play monopoly.  The game needs to engage your imagination and allow some suspension of disbelief in the same way a movie does or a novel.  You can stand there thinking this could have happened and the wargame is telling a story of what might have been.  Just like in those entertainment forms the point at which the game jumps the shark is when it loses that suspension.  In an extreme case if an F16 turns up on a ww2 battlefield you lose that.   So there has to be a hard limit to what is acceptable in a game.  Even if the game is a time travel Final Countdown rendition it still needs to operate within that context.  So you would still need the rules to be accurate to an extent such that Zeros can't fly as fast as a Tomcat.

Where that accuracy meter has to sit will be different for different people in the same way some people can enjoy watching Michael Bays Pearl Harbor and others can't.  It's like comparing  A Bridge Too Far and the aforementioned film.  The later looks more like WW2 to me and I'm able to enjoy it more because of it even though there are inevitable errors in the film.  Sometimes I can sit and watch SAS Rogue Heroes because I know what it is going in but sometimes I really want to experience something that tries a little harder to take you closer to what actually happened. 

To me this is the ultimate wargame or that Western Approaches Training Unit referenced earlier.


Something that take the hard factors of what we know and is able to provide a decision tree to players based upon that.  The WATU game was all about fog of war and training the captains in what were the best approaches to take to protect the convoy and intercept the u-boats.  They did that with restricted information given to the players that mirrors the situation the captains would have found themselves in.  The accuracy of the game was an absolute given in terms of ship performance, turning circles, etc.  Still sounds like a fun game to me.

Any game that can get closer to that feel is what I would count as "fun".

[carlos marighela]

The problem with this approach is that it reduces a wargame to a completely barren exercise.  If "fun" is the only goal what constitute fun?  Why play a wargame?  Why play a miniature wargame?  Even at your reductionist simplified extreme there has to be a work of imagination in there somewhere or we could as easily play monopoly.  The game needs to engage your imagination and allow some suspension of disbelief in the same way a movie does or a novel.  You can stand there thinking this could have happened and the wargame is telling a story of what might have been.  Just like in those entertainment forms the point at which the game jumps the shark is when it loses that suspension.  In an extreme case if an F16 turns up on a ww2 battlefield you lose that.   So there has to be a hard limit to what is acceptable in a game.  Even if the game is a time travel Final Countdown rendition it still needs to operate within that context.  So you would still need the rules to be accurate to an extent such that Zeros can't fly as fast as a Tomcat........

This.

[carlos marighela]

Further to my reply about how we use wargames in the military. I would just like to add that although a game can never be realistic as in actual combat, they can give realistic results, IF they are played using the actual tactics of the day. The biggest thing that makes games unrealistic is the massive casualty rates accepted by gamers. I often get comments like 'this is your job, why are you so rubbish' because nobody is making me roll a 6 before crossing the Line of Departure!

Indeed. I think few games accurately reflect the added friction that even relatively small numbers of casualties can create. They also often overestimate the ability to hit things in the first place.

[Mindenbrush]

Whilst a wargame cannot be completely realistic, how you play it can be more “realistic”.

I was gaming with people that had no idea of tactics and would often get their forces wiped out which ruined the game.
The newer group look at the game from a more personal view in that they know that throwing that “Napoleonic” column of Union troops against defending Confederate infantry and artillery is going to end in defeat, so look for an alternative approach.

This is one reason why I like rulesets that have “casualty withdraw” levels (F&F, AoR) or the morale system as in CoC.

[ced1106]

I believe the only real breakdown in accuracy/realism in most of table top games comes from lack of true fog of war with our accurate helicopter views of the terrain and the positions of all units both enemy and friendly.  Real battlefield commanders rarely had that level of precise knowledge even of their own forces.  This coupled with immediate command control annd constant movement rates and our games are closer to chess than to real battlefields.

Exactly that. I'll also add:

* Balance: As I understand it, most battles in history were uneven. Yet at least the fictional wargames constantly emphasize balance, obviously giving a skewed idea of war. Yes, orcs don't exist, but if this is your only experience with warfare, anything you don't know is false you might assume is somehow accurate.

* Commander incompetency: While we accept die rolls of less experienced troops vs. experienced ones, we lose control when we introduce both less experienced commanders working under you, and incompetent higher-ups giving you bad orders. Who'd want to play that? The current war in Ukraine is plagued by bad decisions at all levels of command. I doubt anyone would want to play a game where you know you'll lose because of your own side.

Perhaps "wargame" is the wrong term, as "game" suggests player vs. player, when it's a "what if" simulation that the military was more interested in, so they could make decisions in war without expending troops and other resources. "War simulation" "War recreation" "War modeling" might be better terms...

[ithoriel]

In an effort to get back to the original question I'd like to suggest that if realism (for a certain value of real) is your aim then campaign games can lead to miniature battles that are not fought to the last man, where unequal battles may be unavoidable but where fighting retreats may prove more valuable than Pyrrhic victories.
The added paperwork need not be onerous. The KISS principle is essential to prevent the campaign collapsing under it's own weight.

[Easy E]

At it heart, what makes a wargame "fun" varies.  However, when I work as a designer, I try to focus on creating meaningful decisions where the act of making the decision IS the fun.

So, what is a "meaningful decision"?  I try to think of a simple formula to help visualize what a meaningful decision is. 

- Inputs are the game rules and mechanics
- Outcomes are what happens when you apply the rules
- Impacts are how the game is changed by the outcomes

When you have to consider how to use all three together, that is a meaningful choice.  If it does not impact all three than it is not a meaningful choice and should be removed from the game. 

Inputs + (positive/negative) outcomes + Downstream impacts = Meaningful choice

In this equation, "realism" can play a role in all three of the elements; Inputs, Outcomes, and Impacts.  However, as I talked about before all three elements can also be charted on the Narrative (story-telling), Simulationist (Realism), and Gamist (playing) triangle.  The closer you move to one point, the further you get from the others.

That is how I look at it.   

[Harry Faversham]

Rickf kinds of nails it. Arguably, the British Army has the best training in the world. But even that can't reproduce the devastating effect, of seeing yer pal, cop for a proper round of 7.62.
We just play at toy sowjers, wonder when the first wargamer will be diagnosed the PTSD...
Now that, I would call a tad realistic.

 

[Big Rich]

Seems like some straw men are wandering around here.  Maybe not everyone likes the same approach? Just maybe we can all enjoy wargaming in whatever different ways we want? 

Most of us seem to do that without calling other people names or insisting that anyone who takes a different approach is talking drivel.

When we play a wargame we are, I presume, attempting to represent certain aspects of warfare. We are not trying to represent all aspects, and certainly the blood and gore is something we can happily do without.  However, there are aspects of warfare that we can model in a game.  Planning, making command decisions, issuing orders, calculating logistical requirement s (in campaigns more than one-off game); all of these are things that military commanders do and wargamers do. 

If we were to play a motor racing game, we would naturally seek some degree of plausibility. So a Jaguar would not just be be faster than a Reliant Robin, it would handle better, it would have better acceleration, it would brake better.  If we expect that degree of believeability from that type of game, should we not also attempt to make our wargames as believable as possible?

Of course it's all about personal choice.  I wouldn't want to play a HG Wells type of game firing matches out of toy cannons, but I recognise that other people might and I would never criticise them for wanting to enjoy the hobby in a manner different to my preferred route.  Seeking to make our games as plausible and as realistic as possible is not 'drivel' but rather a sincere attempt to produce the game that we want to play.   
 

[FifteensAway]

Not meaning to be rude on any level, truly not, but the below is hilarious - supporting realism with something that isn't even real. . But hey, if that's what floats the posters boat, more power to him.

"An example:
In my favourite ruleset (2nd ed Space Marine, if you're wondering) there are at least two very unrealistic rules. One is that  shooting at the largest by far machines on the battlefield requires an extra test to see if you hit. I never play this rule, even though the mechanism is fun (and a hang-over from an earlier game where the mechanism made sense because there were no small targets). Despite the fun, I find it unplayably silly for a shot that would hit anything small to somehow miss a target bigger than a large building.

The same ruleset gives invulnerable saves to certain characters. That is also silly: a large bore artillery shell is realistically going to pulverise whoever it lands on, hero or lowly private. But the miraculous escape of the hero leading a charmed life adds fun to the story, so I don't mind the rule."

---

As to what constitutes fun, sure, that is in the 'experience' of the 'beholder'.  But I'm pretty sure in my earlier reply I didn't try to define fun, just stated that was the goal. 

My simpler rules that I like to play (Rank and File, Fistful of Lead, MMWBK (maybe on the last)) do meet many of the criteria others have put forth.  Most importantly, RF and FFOL (bigger battles anyway) do not lean towards playing to the last man, quite the opposite.  Part of why I like them.  Simple rules that work and work well are probably the hardest rules to write. 

I know there are people deep into the whole 'rules' experience but I'm just somebody who likes to set up a nice looking table and push figures around - and history comes much, much more from appropriate terrain and buildings and, most importantly, from appropriate troops with appropriate paint jobs (quality of paint jobs aside).  The rules don't really do that - though I agree they should point to the appropriate period tactics - but, again, that is more down to the knowledge of the players than of the rules themselves.  If you don't know your history, how do you have any idea if the rules give a proper tactical feel?  And, yes, I like a 'tactical feel' in my games - but not in my wildest dreams to I expect anything along the lines of 'reality'.  I don't expect fun, either, but that is absolutely what I hope for.  And I seem to have gotten pretty good at finding it and providing it when game mastering if what the players tell me is truth.

I did my stint in the military, never in harms way, but that was as close as I want to get to 'real war'.  Like I said earlier, if I want history, I read - and that prodigious reading makes it clear how horrific real war is.  Why seek to replicate that?