A History Of (Simulated) Violence

[wombat_socho]

Before baseball, before rock music and other pleasures of the flesh, almost before science fiction, I was a wargamer. Today gaming is splintered into a number of subgroups: there are console gamers, PC gamers, people who fiddle with Angry Birds on their phones, card gamers, miniatures gamers (the oldest part of the gaming community) and

Comments

[harvey_rrit]

I've never been able to get into historical wargames, due possibly to the fact that you aren't allowed to steal the enemy's entire order of battle (1), give the better commander a slice of watermelon to cure his dysentery (2), or shoot the horses (3). It takes all the fun out of being smart.

1 - Nisei Richard Sakakida did this to the Japanese after faking his defection (and undergoing enough torture to convince them he meant it). My father, a historian, introduced me to him back in the 70s. Very quiet man. --We never lost a battle after Sakakida delivered that.

2 - Napoleon spent Waterloo in the privy. Wellington went to his grave still twitching about how narrow the victory was.

3 - This restriction did not apply Upon Saint Crispin's Day.

[wombat_socho]

1) If you're playing a wargame and don't know what the enemy OB is, you screwed up by not reading the rules and paying particular attention to the scenario setup instructions.

2) If you want that kind of pointless detail, the RPG and LARP types are over there. ----------------------->

3) Nonsense. There are a number of games about the siege of Bataan, and all of them that I'm familiar with specifically address the 26th Cavalry (PS) becoming dismounted. Rules that call for horse holders in Civil War games also imply horse-shooting, as do games that have separate limber counters for horse-drawn artillery. See also miniatures.

[harvey_rrit]

2 ) Pointless? The man would have remained Emperor of Europe until his death in 1821. (And, given his-- and to be fair, practically any conqueror's-- harebrained notions of economics, the United States would include a hell of a lot more of Mexico. He'd have needed the money.)

[wombat_socho]

Pointless I said, and pointless I meant; in the context of the single battles most games cover, such long-term consequences are beyond the scope of the game. In most wargames, the entire point of the game is that you, not the historical generals/leaders, are in charge. This is why SPI's Agincourt is an excellent simulation but a horrible game: with 600 years of hindsight, it is nearly impossible to find somebody as dumb and arrogant as the French were historically. So in order to reproduce the historical results, you have to hamstring the French player with a lot of command and control rules which force him to act in a historical manner. Nobody has done a game on Cannae (that I'm aware of) for the same reason, and most games dealing with WW2 on a strategic level don't force players to deal with Hitler's craziness, because the whole point is to see what would happen if you were running the war.