All Sizzle and No Stakes

[Easy E]

I love B-movies, and I have for a long time.  The hey-days of Golan Globus, Cannon Films, AIP, and many, many more.  Now-a-days, they are much easier to track down and are often available for free.  Streaming services are starving for content, and B-movies provide it in spades.

A famous B-movie schlockmaster, perhaps the infamous Roger Corman himself; had an old saying about a good B-movie.  If I recall correctly, it went something like; "Give them the sizzle and the steak".  Basically, he meant give the audience an interesting premise or titillating idea and then deliver on it.  Give them a reason to keep watching, and deliver on what your premise leads to.  If a movie was all sizzle and no steak, the film didn't deliver the goods.  It was a weak film in his mind.   

This saying came to mind when I was thinking about wargame design recently.  I was thinking about what made an action scene in a film compelling, what made a combat scene in an RPG exciting, and therefore what made a wargame interesting to play.  Through this thinking, reading, researching, and analysis I came to one conclusion; Stakes. 

I have some thoughts about Stakes in Wargames here:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/04/wargame-design-all-sizzle-and-no-stakes.html

Is winning/dying the only stakes that matter in a tabletop wargame or is there something more to it?  Is that enough to keep them compelling?     

I come to the conclusion that ultimately, they are not.  Avoiding dying/losing is just not compelling after a few battles.  That becomes a baseline or expectation for game play.  the question becomes, how do you make more compelling stakes for wargames?

[fred]

Interesting article - but for once I’m going to disagree with you - I don’t think the stake of a wargame is that important (it certainly isn’t to me) I think a wargame is more about the journey than the destination.

Games that get played lots are interesting and enjoyable to play - this makes us want to go back and play them again.

Winning is fun - but quite often in a wargame the winner isn’t that clear. And as long as the game isn’t totally one-sided losing can be fun, if the game is engaging.

[Pattus Magnus]

What fred said - for me wargames are about having fun through the process. Winning may or may not be part of that on a given day.

[Dentatus]

What Fred said.

[carlos marighela]

I have a teenage son who, when not working, studying or playing sport, immures himself in his room and plays first-person shooter games. This is done online in a co-operative or multi-player mode, which is annoying as the air is frequently peppered with shouts, screams and the liberal use of expletives coming from his room.

From lengthy, albeit unenthusiastic, observation, the key take aways, the steak rather than the sizzle for him is:

1) The immersion in the game.

2) The interaction with his fellow players (or imaginary friends, as I, unkindly, like to call them  )

Despite been a teenager Jorge is far from dim and the repeated shooting, knifing or axing or collections of pixels doesn't seem to be the key motivator. That happens so frequently it would bore you if that was all there was. He enjoys tournaments and winnning but I discern that victory is not the biggest reward rather it's being in another world with his mates.

Personally, I feel if a game allows you to while away some time, immersed in another world and the mechanics are unobtrusive enough not to shatter that fourth wall, then you can count the game a success, at least as a recreational activity.

My 2 centavos.

[Old Contemptable]

Nice article but are you talking about rules or scenarios? A set of rules is what we use to play games. I find that the scenario is as important as the rules themselves. You can have the best set of rules on the planet but paired with a poorly designed scenario will make for a bad game. 

[dadlamassu]

Intersting article.  I have played wargames, fantasy games and RPGs almost every Monday with a friend since 1970.  Our games have used the same rules since then.  The Rules are generally written by one or other of us, been amended and adjusted.  We have played single games, narrative games, camapigns, linked games and during the pandemic remote games.  The concept of stakes, I suppose, is valid in commercial, profit based rules which are different to our fun based rules.  In our games the goal is for enjoyment and social interaction and it works.  Our public participation games, until age and ill health stopped us, had a nimber of regular participants through 3 generations of families using rules dated 1960s (WW2, ACW, Ancients, Medieaeval, Napoleonic etc , 1970s fantasy, gangsters etc and several later.   We have used commercial rules but few have the longevity of our home grown rules.  Why?  They lack the enduring fun element.  The amount of time spent thumbing through screeds of text is fun time wasted.  Our rules are written in sections clearly defined without fancy pictures and blurb.  Just what is needed to play.  Remember, we had to type them, no word processors.  If we wanted extra copies then we used carbon paper or Roneo/Gestetner skins. 

The evidence is over 50 years of continual friendly warfare!

[carlos marighela]

Intersting article.  I have played wargames, fantasy games and RPGs almost every Monday with a friend since 1970.  Our games have used the same rules since then.  The Rules are generally written by one or other of us, been amended and adjusted.  We have played single games, narrative games, camapigns, linked games and during the pandemic remote games.  The concept of stakes, I suppose, is valid in commercial, profit based rules which are different to our fun based rules.  In our games the goal is for enjoyment and social interaction and it works.  Our public participation games, until age and ill health stopped us, had a nimber of regular participants through 3 generations of families using rules dated 1960s (WW2, ACW, Ancients, Medieaeval, Napoleonic etc , 1970s fantasy, gangsters etc and several later.   We have used commercial rules but few have the longevity of our home grown rules.  Why?  They lack the enduring fun element.  The amount of time spent thumbing through screeds of text is fun time wasted.  Our rules are written in sections clearly defined without fancy pictures and blurb.  Just what is needed to play.  Remember, we had to type them, no word processors.  If we wanted extra copies then we used carbon paper or Roneo/Gestetner skins. 

The evidence is over 50 years of continual friendly warfare!

Christ, you've just brought the smell of Roneo fluid back into my nostrils.

[Harry Faversham]

My old mate always used to say that, his weekly visit to the Emporium was like a trip in Doctor Who's TARDIS!
For an hour or three, a meander through time and space, limited only by yer imagination. He'd say that the real world stopped at the door. For a dunderhead with the IQ of a beer mat, old Baz could kind of nail it, much better than any of us long winded baskits!

[Belligerentparrot]

Also agree with Fred.

One other thought, which I was surprised you didn't mention, was that "stakes" can in a sense be built in to the rules with realism. You say in a one off battle there aren't really stakes - and one manifestation of that is the way a certain kind of player might incur severe casualties in pursuit of a win. That is unrealistic in the sense that in many concrete historical situations, that kind of approach would have been incredibly reckless. Some rulesets are silent on that, but you could build in mechanisms that encourage the players to handle their units with more care to their preservation for another day.

That seems like a way of building in the idea that there is more at stake than just the outcome of the game, without actually writing a campaign set of rules.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Playing to survive/not die within the game is getting boring?  You could up the stake by putting money or the evening beer tab on a game’s result.  I am told this is fun.

Or you can go whole hog and any figs defeated in the game get a hammer taken to them by the victor for the ultimate simulation! 

[jon_1066]

A swing and a miss for me as well.

Part of the joy is that there is nothing at stake.  I like Harry's chum - it is a way to immerse yourself in a different time and place and with absolutely nothing on the line.

Campaigns can be good but generally they either snowball or bog down and never get finished.  It also rather pushes the question of stakes just one step further removed.  If you are trying to win the campaign what is at stake for that?  Usually exactly the same as a one off battle - sweet FA or just bragging rights.

To misquote Reinier Knizia "When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning".

[Belligerentparrot]

Campaigns can be good but generally they either snowball or bog down and never get finished. 

Quoted for truth! When I was young I inherited some Military Modelling magazines and loved reading the Hyboria (sp?) campaign. It sounded fun. Never managed to play a campaign myself that was nearly as fun as that sounded. 

[Easy E]

Perhaps I get to play more games a year than I expected. Very few people play a game just to experience a games mechanical interactions, and if they do that works for only a handful of games.  You will want more, and very few people play games just to win or lose, and if they do that only lasts for a handful of games.  So?  What gets people to play more than a handful of times?   

I think a key thing you guys are missing is that I mention two ways to create stakes:

1. Add a campaign
2. Create a method to build a community

Most of you are playing wargames to spend time with your mates.  Ummm..... that's the Community I was talking about in the article! You probably are not playing the game to "experience the mechanics" of the game or even to win/lose.  So what ARE you playing for?  The memories, the community, and the "fun". 

Why?  Because eventually, winning and losing in a game is meaningless when there is no context.  It is more fun to create memories with a community about that time X happened, or Y overcame Z, or that one time that tank's turret blew off and crushed Alpha, etc.  The games themselves are no longer in a vacuum, and that lack of vacuum is what creates some stakes. 

The stakes become the memories and friends we make along the way!  More game designs need to think about how the facilitate this community building aspect of their rules.  I guess my articles was not very clear on this point.     

[fred]

I’d not picked up the community bit in the article - so sorry if I’ve led everyone else’s thinking on the wrong lines.

I’d very much agree with the community bit - getting together with your mates for a game is what it’s all about. Some rules are better at creating epic memorable moments - Warmaster is certainly one that comes to mind for me (although it also has some bad parts too)