Why don’t we already have the perfect wargame?

[blinky465 17028xp 4]

In a recent thread, @horus500 asked

Why don’t we already have the perfect wargame? People have been writing wargaming rules for millenia. There are plenty of genres and mechanics. Why hasn’t someone taken all the best bits and made the ultimate wargame yet?

 

I think we know why. But why don’t we do it? Why don’t we, collectively as a community, come up with the best bits of all the rulesets we’re familiar with and build The Ultimate Wargame?

Then, as the thread descends into arguing and sniping about how someone else’s brilliant mechanic is stupid and can never work, we might just uncover the real reason as to why nobody has been able to “take all the best bits and made the ultimate wargame”.

 

I’ll start:

Cards instead of dice for everything.

It creates an element of resource management (if you can see a number of cards in your hand) it creates the same number of “good” and “bad” score values for every player, it distributes “luck” across all players (since every player will have the same number of high cards, and the same number of low cards) and gives the player more control over how they manage their “luck” (instead of a dice roll, draw a card – for “better” characters, draw two cards, discard one, play your favoured result; for “hero” characters, draw three etc.)

The Ultimate Wargame has cards at the heart of its decision making mechanic.

What else? 😉

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 0]

one mans meat is another’s poison, thats why 😉

I will throw in should play as well physically as virtually and be scale agnostic…

Time could also be an interesting mechanism, egg timers to complete an action in, or delays before things can be played (think how RTS’s play, its as much time management as it is resource management)

But what would stop this being a jack of all trades, master of none ruleset, how do we define boundaries for what it does, dont want yet another everything and the kitchen sink ruleset where you end up micro managing ammo allocations, or so blunt as your card says “attack” and your opponent draws “miss”, where will the flavor come from, how will the unique aspects of a setting come into play, maybe im lacking inspiration but i cant see how say rules for bronze age combat could be compatible with intersteller fleet warfare, or be both good at skirmish as well as mass battle, you go i go, or do we have interrupts they are pretty much fundamental design decisions and you cant be both at same time

[scribbs 14509xp 1]

For me, scale is a difficult problem to resolve with a single rule set. I’m not talking about model size, but the relative size of the conflict and types of decisions that are appropriate to include.

Take a navel engagement of a handful of ships on each side. Having a set of rules concerning the the type of shot loaded in each ship (chain, grape, double shorted etc.) provides a level of detail that works for that level of game. However, if you are playing a large fleet engagement (say Trafalgar), that level of detail can become a book keeping and time soaking nightmare. It’s easy to think of similar situations where rule details become more or less appropriate as the size moves from individuals to larger and larger formations.

I can’t really see a single universal rule set being appropriate for all without having a lot of bolt on modules to cover different eras and scales. But perhaps there can be a core system so at least the fundamentals are there.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 2]

There isn’t really such a thing as perfection, it’s an abstract concept.

[sundancer 42973xp 1]

Cards instead of dice for everything.

Simply said: no. And I’ve got a good reason why: “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force” There is always the element of uncertainty. That’s why dice are so prominent.

And they are more suited to throw around. Also like Tim said:

one mans meat is another’s poison

There is no such thing as *the* perfect wargame because it’s a different beast in everybody’s mind. Scale, rules, time and setting… you name it

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

@horus500 – do you have your answer yet?

I mean, obviously @sundancer is wrong about cards 😉

But already we’ve got conflicting opinions about lots of stuff! Do we carry on? Miniatures or tokens? (for me, it’s not a “tabletop game” without miniatures – but I’m perfectly willing to accept that wargames can be played with tokens with arrows drawn on top of them). Will this eventually just come down to symantics?

[sundancer 42973xp 1]

Here’s another reason why we have not got a perfect game: technology changes. Just think of it how perfect bronze weapons where. Until some twat invented steel. And later guns. Same in games. From simple chess like pieces to AR driven stuff of today… who knows what is next? (My personal highlight would be a holo table like on the millennium falcon …)

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

“no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force” There is always the element of uncertainty. That’s why dice are so prominent.

Whilst true, i dont think dice are the only way, or necessarily have to be used to play the game, you could just as easily generate some random values with a coin and branching tree of modifiers before the game starts to set parameters, in fact procedurally generated parameters of engagement could be a way of having a core framework of rules and mechanics, with specific parameter trees for the setting/game type.

The problem would be more with does the combat feel right, and does the game play radically differently with a well shuffled deck vs a badly shuffled deck. Decks can be easily manipulated and are rife for cheating with slight of hand, card marking etc, so unless you are deck building i cant see competitive play being as fair as dice, unless you go fully digital or have a third player in a GM or croupier role

[blinky465 17028xp 2]

I always forget about “competitive play”. Simply because I don’t get it.

And yes, I know a few sleights and a few dodgy dealing tricks (thanks to Jay Sankey on Youtube) but it would never even cross my mind to use them when playing a game with anyone! Cheating at a game where you’re pushing little plastic men around – one step away from going “pew pew” like a six-year-old – is that really a thing?!

[limburger 21704xp 0]

The dice we use aren’t guaranteed to be fair … there is no system in place to ensure perfectly distributed results.
I don’t know if casinos have special dice, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

It isn’t *that* difficult to cheat with dice either … and it is pretty hard to ensure you get a good roll (or throw?) without things like dice towers.

It would be interesting to know if there is any science behind dice throwing and which tower works best …

// —

We don’t have the ‘ultimate’ wargame for the same reason we don’t have the ‘ultimate’ videogame or the ‘ultimate meal’.
People’s tastes and priorities are too different for that to work.

I also believe that there are two types of people in the world :
– the makers : build anything and evertthing from scratch whenever possible as the ‘creation’ aspect is an integral part of the hobby
– the consumers : prefer the convenience of someone else doing the heavy lifting and focus on playing/collecting

@sundancer to paraphrase : games … games never change
We get prettier things and tools to make them even prettier, but the core concepts haven’t changed that much.

@scribbs I think it all depends on how abstract the core ruleset is and what the essential changes are.

The key question that needs answering is this :
do all players in a single game/match play at the same technology level and strategic level ?

Keep everyone at the same technology level (like world war 2 or dark ages) makes things easier.
It should be a given that when one player fields a warband then the other player is not planning a grand strategy game by pushing pieces on a hexmap.

The idea would be to increase the level of detail as you zoom into the battle from the upper strategic levels down to the individual units.

So you’re not going to worry about ammo types when pushing fleets of ships, but you will worry about every single strike and parry when playing a 1 vs 1 duel set inside the throne room of a death star.

Forget dice vs cards..

what about activations ?
Do we play ‘I go / You go’ where one player executes all the actions of all of his units ?
Or do we ‘action / reaction’ where one player only executes a limited set of instructions and a secondary mechanic decides who gets to go next ?
Is there any reason why ‘I go / You go’ still exists ?

@sundancer if you use an order-based system like Legion and Bolt-action do then you still have the ‘random’ factor that can mess up your plans while keeping the ‘predictability’ that cards would provide.

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

I always forget about “competitive play”. Simply because I don’t get it.

Fully agree with you, but to be the ultimate wargame it would have to cater for people who dont like to play like i do (for fun, narrative driven, uncompetativly, if you cant abide by R.I.O.T [relax its only toysoldiers] dont play with me)

Cheating at a game where you’re pushing little plastic men around – one step away from going “pew pew” like a six-year-old – is that really a thing?!

unfortunately yes, think there is a subredit dedicated to it, but would go hand in glove with the mindset of minmaxers, rules lawyers and people who will use any loophole for advantage, so it has to be robust to attack while still being fun, so unless you can codify tactical suicide to ensure fun gives you a competative advantage without being open to abuse i think its a tricky one to square the circle with.

[athelstaneParticipant 698xp 1]

I like cards and dice.

Cards to influence the dice gives a bit more agency to players.  Sorry, but rolling lots of dice and looking up for lots of modifiers doesn’t do it for me anymore.  Other than bringing the right unit to attack the right target what decision making/skill is there?   In all too many games the most skill seems to be in choosing your army before the battle.

One other reason I like cards is that, if you set conditions on their use, you can elegantly bring in extra rules about cover, types of weapons, even morale, without having to cover them in a lengthy rulebook.

A topic not mentioned is having the battles in long-term, campaign setting.  I like how being invested in the development of a character/unit brings out ‘real’ morale issues far more effectively than any number of tables.

I’m at about alpha to beta stage for my cards and dice Dark Age mass battle rules (which run to about 6 pages), if anyone is interested pm me.

[horus500 11505xp 1]

I doubt we’ll ever get a ‘One Rules to suit them all’  scenario however I often see mechanics introduced to rule sets that are ‘better’ than others. For example, ‘You go, I go’ may have cut it 25 years ago but very few people are singing it’s praises today. Random unit activation like Bolt Action gets a much better reception. The Warmaster method of issuing orders was another system that was well loved and there are many others.

In regards to probability and randomness I know we’ve recently engaged in the ‘Cards vs Dice’ debate recently (sorry @blinky465 but I’m with @sundancer on this), but it becomes a case of what players really want in terms of ‘luck’. If you use cards there are set outcomes that are predictable ie there are only 4 Kings, 4 queens etc. If the cards aren’t returned to the deck and shuffled immediately after use then the ‘luck’ becomes predictable. D6 have a  16.7% (roughly) weight per pip. If you want greater range why not D10 or D20? I heard an interview with Rick Priestly where he said Warhammer, and eventually 40K was originally going to be D10 games but the D10 mechanic became popular just prior to the games release so they went with D6 to go against the flow. Personally I think Warhammer and 40K would be much better with D10s. Would most other wargames?

Scale comes up all the time. There are at least two problems of scale, the first is that it just doesn’t work with some types of warfare. 28mm Bolt Action is great. 28mm War at Sea not so much. Then there’s the size of the battle/warfare.  The battle of Kursk done with counters is fine, if somewhat fiddly. If it was done in 15mm Flames of War you’d need a table 2km long and 1.5 km wide. Having said that I doubt anyone has gone past one of those demonstration games at a convention where they are doing a 28mm massed ranks warfare like Ancients, Napoleonics or ACW and not gone “Wow. Looks amazing. Glad I didn’t have to paint all of them”.

What I imagine is that if we looked at certain genres, that there would be a preferrable size, scale, combat system and luck mechanic for each of them.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 3]

If you want to make a perfect anything you have to define what perfect is. I can’t really think of anything that could be described as perfect beyond simple shapes (i.e. A perfect circle or a perfect sphere). Generally speaking unless you can define something mathematically it’s really hard to classify it as perfect.

So why don’t we have a perfect wargame? Because we don’t actually have a mathematical definition of what a wargame is or what it should do. And were we to try and create that definition, we would all draw different conclusions. So the best we could ever hope to achieve is the perfect wargame for ourselves – something that probably does exist if you go and look for it, or at least something very close

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

@onlyonepinman i suspect a mathematically perfect wargame would be bloody awful to play, you need imbalance, if everything is perfectly balanced you have rendered it to a coin toss, what would the point of different factions be, other than for aesthetics, the imbalance is what makes things fun, learning the strengths and weaknesses

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