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CLWG, design, games, WW2

Preparing For War – Onside Report

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British evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk
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Rather than run a conversational design session at the November meeting I decided to try and do something that was at least vaguely playable. My reasoning was that I’d been somewhat frustrated at the conference with discussions of games that looked like they could actually have been played, and I’d felt that perhaps by playing it we could have tested whether or not the perceived problems were actually real.

Anyway, I did a sort of role-playing game about re-constructing an infantry company after the evacuation from Dunkirk. John Rutherford was the first person to arrive (after me) and so I cast him as the first officer to report to the village in Devon I’d decided to put the company in. Chosen only because the OS map of Devon/Dorset was the first to hand when I was collecting materials for the game, they might equally have ended up in Scotland! John’s character, 2/Lt Robson was a recently commissioned officer who had been sent to France within days of being commissioned and then evacuated a few weeks later.

On arrival in the village by train 2/Lt Robson discovered that he wasn’t expected, and nor was his company! He set about contacting the local policeman, the vicar, chair of the parish council and other notables in the village.

Staying overnight in the village pub he established that the company could be billeted on the Mill when it arrived. Within a day the remainder of the company arrived by train under command of the Major (Jim Wallman). Shortly afterwards Lt Hanse (Mukul) and 2/Lt Duff (Dave Boundy) reported for duty. The company was swiftly sorted out into platoons and sections, on the basis of sharing out the experienced men and the good NCOs as well as those with dodgier records.

The first few weeks were played out in organising the company, the accommodation, acquiring weapons, worrying about area of operations, responsibility for guarding bridges etc and also getting everyone to do lots of drill. Having worked all this out and got to the beginning of September I moved to monthly turns where the OC set the training priority and each month I asked for volunteers for Officer training (and later on Commandos) as well as setting some small incident for resolution, e.g. scrounging a coal lorry, or the Christmas do. If I was going to run this game properly I’d do some more research on some of these things and ensure that the players had some better background. As it was I was making it all up as I went along, including the mechanisms, so it was in areas no doubt thinner than it ought to have been, and probably quite ahistorical.

On the whole we managed to pass four and a half hours playing the game before I drew it to a halt so that we could have some discussion. For me the main point is that there is a game in all of this as there are many decisions to be made. Largely it is a building/development game in its purest sense, although what you are building/developing in this case are your soldiers. Probably the best way to improve the game would be to make a small card for each soldier which could be updatable with their stats, rank etc. That would simplify record keeping as the platoon commanders can just keep those in front of them organised into sections etc. The platoon commanders could also have a mechanism for developing people which would give them some decisions about how to improve their platoon, and also about how to interpret the OC’s training priorities.

We had some discussion at the end about leadership styles and now these should affect the development of a platoon/company. This certainly needs further thought, and I think it could be a good way to develop things, but I’m not sure exactly how it ought to impact on the game mechanisms.

If I do get further thoughts from people then I will do something on this.

One thing I am conscious of was not having a well thought out mechanism for exercises, partly this was because I didn’t think we had enough time to break into a proper wargame. My inclination would be to play this sort of game as a campaign, and play each exercise as a largely kriegspieled wargame using the figure resolution of the combat mechanisms (which I did prepare, but didn’t use and I think I’ll need to re-do in the light of the outcome of the session).

On another point, we semi-randomly picked 6th Battalion DLI to be the battalion that we were part of. A quick look at google afterwards showed that 6 DLI were a territorial battalion and went to France with 50th Northumbrian Divison in early 1940 and then were evacuated through Dunkirk, they went to North Africa in April 1941 (when we finished our game) and then fought through the rest of the North Africa campaign, Sicily & Italy. They came back to the UK at the end of 1943 and were in the assault troops on Gold Beach on 6th June 1944. Probably one of the few battalions to have been at the sharp end all the way through the war.

Here is the spreadsheet (Open Document Format) that I used to speed things up during play (although this will be printed onto cards before I next try this game). Company Roster.ods

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CLWG, design, games

CLWG Design Conference 2009 Reports

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Onside Report – WW2
Mechanisms

I lead a discussion on
whether an operational research article could be used to produce some
mechanisms for running a WW2 wargame with resolution (i.e. smallest
unit represented) at somewhere between platoon and battalion.

The article1
in question was first published back in 1987, so quite venerable. I
came across a photocopy of it tucked into an old copy of British Army
Training News from the saem time period. I have subsequently found
PDFs of a slightly different version of it, along with a follow-up
article looking at urban combat.



Offside Report – Come
One Come Eorl

Andrew Hadley brought
back the Scottish component of this game for another try having
modified some of the mechanisms from the previous playtest. We didn’t
really play the game as we spent a lot of time talking about the
mechanisms and it sorting out in all the players’ heads what it was
all about, why the mechanisms worked the way they did and what we
were supposed to do.

For me there is clearly
a very good political/military game that should make an excellent
megagame, but it was clear from the session that we had that some
people are going to struggle with the game as it currently stands.
There needs to be some more elegant mechanisms around calculating
income, especially where there are sub-kings etc. It might also be
possible to dispense with influence completely as a separate token
and just make it part of game play, the title cards could just allow
certain activities to be done.

Without the benefit of
playing more than one turn of the game it appeared to me that the
sole use of influence was to get political actions done in the
‘parliament’ phase of the game. Obviously there needs to be a limit
to the number of actions that the High King can introduce, and this
limit should change as power is centralised (or de-centralised).
Bearing in mind that each title allows a player a vote (so players
tend to have multiple votes) then the influence of the High-King is
naturally limited by needing to keep at least some of the players on
side. But if they are the only person that can propose
actions/decisions then that gives them some leverage also. However
this doesn’t quite work if you want to be able to build up influence
over a period of time or if you want to trade it between nations.

Overall I’d like to
just play the game for a bit and then try and de-construct it to give
feedback. One of the things that I sometimes find frustrating is that
we talk too much about the mechanics, the briefings etc when we ought
just to be trying the game out. The talking means that the game
doesn’t actually get played as a game, which means that I don’t think
that we get to test it properly. Only by giving things a reasonable
chance are we going to see the second and third order effects that
the combination of rules, player decisions and luck have on the
outcomes, and whether this is an acceptable game. Sure there is
validity in discussion and working through things in slow time, but
we do need to be clear (i.e. the game presenter should say what they
want) when putting on sessions on whether we want to try mechanisms
or whether we want a design discussion. As participants we need to
respect the session presenter’s wishes and do our best to make it
work that way, even if we think it is fundamentally broken. It
doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t tell the presenter what we think
during the session, but we should try and work round our issues.


Agincourt Logistics

Jim has been
commissioned by the Royal Logistics Corps museum to produce a
training exercise for recent recruits to give them some understanding
of the history of logistics and how the predecessors of the RLC were
involved in moving and supplying armies. The scenario given was
fairly straightforward from our perspective, but would certainly
offer the opportunity for someone unfamiliar with logs planning some
challenge. There was a finite limit (20) on the total number of units
to be taken (including the pack horses) which drove some decisions
about force composition (although not size for us as we’d take up to
the maximum with extra pack horses and supplies).

The choice was between
knights (needing food & fodder), archers (food & arrows),
pioneers (food, fodder & maybe pioneer stores), the siege train
(two fodder and food) and pack horses (fodder). Each of the pack
horses could carry 12 units of supplies and there was a choice
between food, arrows, fodder, pioneer stores, and tents. There were
multiple solutions to the problem, which is always good, and some of
them got very complex (particularly Jerry’s optimised reducing
horses).

The game met the design
constraints as far as CLWG players went, and in fact we seemed to
have been too generously supplied with pack horses as we had arrows
left after we’d killed all the French, however both times one of the
units of knights was left behind (which was probably a correct
decision as the archers did 95% of the killing). However it is
entirely reasonable that another group might take 3 knights with them
which would add to the logistics burden and force some harder
decisions about load mixes. The first group to do it also had to
starve the soldiers because they were delayed en route, although if
they’d had a different mix (another day’s worth of food instead of
some arrows) then they might also have been fine. Both of us
immediately discounted artillery and tents reasoning that that they
weren’t needed on a forced march and would just slow things down.

My intention is to try
this on some of my work colleagues (they’re all business analysts
with little understanding of military history). I think it will be
interesting to see how they approach it.

Second Life

I had a shot of playing
with second life in the Sunday morning session. Overall I was pretty
impressed with the engine and what you can do in it. However it was
also clear that it is for people with large monitors and hefty
graphics cards. My little 10″ netbook only just gets to sneak in on
the ‘low graphics’ setting (despite being brand new).

There is a chance that
I’ll stick a better graphics card in one of the computers at home
which has a larger screen, but since I tend to buy desktops second
hand I’m not too sure whether or not this is something I’ll get round
to soon. However I will probably have a go at one of the CLWG second
life gunboat sessions sometime in the not too distant future. All
depends on whether or not family commitments allow a couple of hours
on the computer.

Minions of Evil

Brian Cameron started
off a design discussion about how we might create a game out of being
the evil players. He had observed that traditionally the heroes are
reactive and that the evil geniuses have a plan which they want to
execute to achieve some narrow aim, e.g. world domination, or
accumulation of riches.

We talked around a lot
of ideas, largely there seemed to loads of opportunity to create a
sufficiently detailed background to set a game in, whether
comic-book evil genius, some relatively real world evil (e.g.
corporations, mafia etc), an illuminati style game or even something
set historically. There was a general consensus that whatever the
scenario each evil genius should have some sort of fatal flaw that
would lead to their downfall and that there ought to be a specific
(but possibly unidentified to the players) nemesis.

One of the ideas that I
was quite taken by though was the idea of trading off how far you
were willing to go to achieve a rational objective for additional
character flaws and irrational objectives. This fitted into another
idea of evil merely being a matter of perspective. The example quoted
was Magneto from the X-Men who is fighting for mutant rights, which
if you are an oppressed mutant might well seem like a heroic
perspective. A more real example was Churchill, who ordered the
sinking of an allied fleet and also invaded a neutral country. For me
the morally grey area would make an interesting game as it would
allow the players’ choices to determine whether or not they were
truly evil or simply misunderstood. Also I tend to prefer complex
half-tones to black and white. There is probably some scope for a
game about corporations which covers this ground.

Players would represent
key investors in a corporate portfolio on a global basis. In their
individual player briefings they would have some objectives (possibly
self set at the beginning of the game) to determine what they were
looking for as a rational outcome. Examples might be: control of
media; political influence; vast riches; domination of a particular
market. There would then be a trade off between legal and moral
constraints (or otherwise) and the starting resources. The fewer
constraints you had the easier it would be to operate in certain
areas, but at higher risk from government institutions.

1David
Rowlands, Degradation in Combat

Books, games, History, WW2

St.Valery: The Impossible Odds by Bill Innes

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This is a collection of first hand accounts, mainly posthumously published from three men who were ordinary soldiers in the 51st Highland Division in 1940. None of them were officers (although one was commissioned after his escape and return home). The main part of the book is a personal account originally published in Gaelic and subsequently translated into english as “A Cameron Never Can Yield”. This forms just over half the book and tells the story from the start of the German attack on 10 May 1940 through surrender at St Valery on 12th June 1940, escape on the march into Germany and then life in Marseilles in the winter of 1940-41 followed by a winter crossing of the Pyrenees and time spent in Spanish prison camps before returning to the UK. The other two stories are relatively similar, although neither of the men managed to return back to the UK and they both had different experiences in their prisoner of war camps and work details. All three of them had a horrendously rough time of it, which seems to be the norm for these early POWs (and the later ones too).

Even though I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about the 51st Highland Division and also lots of personal accounts of both combat and POW life this book was different. Each of the accounts started with a potted history of the person and what they had done before the start of the war, and then ended with what they did after demobilisation. That provided a bit of context, but the most refreshing thing about it was that it was about private soldiers and not officers, which is unusual. Most of the books are written by officers (if first-hand accounts) or by those that would have been had they not become history professors. This puts a different slant on life and makes for a whole different side to the story.

Also, unlike other stories of the 51st Highland Divsion in 1940, it didn’t end on 12th June at St Valery, in fact that was where most of the story started.

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figure, games, History, Scottish, WW2

Battle of the Hills, 21 January 1943

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Seaforth Highlanders
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This is a short article about the advance of the 51st Highland Division in Tunisia in the follow up from El Alamein. I wrote this to be played as a tabletop wargame using Command Decision.

Ground
The coast road between Homs & Corradini in Tunisia. On the right (from the perspective of the British advance) is the sea. The coast road lies a few miles inland at places. There is a steep coastal ridge on the left flank of the battle area with desert to the south. Within all this there are a large number of steep sided, but small, wadis running from the hills to the sea. There are also one or two significant hills that sit astride or on the road.

To quote Captain J.A.F. Watt (OC B Company 5th Seaforths). “At the Assembly Area we met the CO. We were to attack two sharp conical hills we could see faintly outlined against the sky two or three thousand yards away. One of them was farther away than the other and to the left as we looked at them.”

“From what we could make of the maps and what little we could see of the country, it seemed as though the road ran past the right of our objectives. This assumption proved to be wrong. The road in fact curved sharply to the left across the line of our advance, then right again between the hills.” On the right flank a deep wadi blocked the advance of A Company.

Situation
Elements of the German 90th Light Division are dug in forward of two conical hills on either side of the main road 3 miles short of Corradini. Broken ground & wadis lie to their front.

The previous evening 51st Highland Division had been delayed at another hill with a fort atop it (named Edinburgh Castle) on the road between Homs & Corradini. The initial attack failed but an outflanking movement caused the Germans to withdraw well before dark. The initial failure had earned the Divisional Commander a ‘rocket’ from Montgomery and therefore inspired him to issue orders to his subordinates to speed up the rate of advance.

The British are in two main groups. One group (154 Brigade) is marching on foot along the coast to outflank the enemy near Corradini. The second group (spearheaded by Hammerforce) is moving up the main road from Homs to Corradini.

Hammerforce
Commanded by Brigadier Richards (23rd Armoured Brigade).
A Company, 2 Seaforths
A Company, 1/7 Middlesex (MG)
Tank Squadron, 40 RTR
2 Troops, 61 AT Regiment
25lber Battery

5 Seaforths with 40 RTR (Valentines) make assault from 3000 yards (60″). 1 bty 25-pdrs in direct support. The tanks have serious problems moving from the start line because of the terrain.

154 Brigade
Commander – Brigadier Stirling
7th Bn Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders
2nd Bn Seaforth Highlanders
7th Bn Black Watch
Tank Squadron, 40 RTR
25lber Battery, 126 Field Regiment RA

90th Light Division
A mixed battlegroup. No detailed information available, although the British histories report the following, which suggests depleted Regimental strength:

– Germans have MGs & mortars.
– 3 MGs dug in on one hill (Weapons Stand)
– counter attack by infantry & half-track (only 1 – so no model)
– retreat in captured British vehicles with several AT guns and a tank
– heavy 210mm guns
– many 88 mm AT guns (2 stands)
– 12 dual-purpose 20mm guns (3 stands)
– many mortars
– 260 prisoners & 10 guns captured

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Making A Killing, James Ashcroft

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Making a Killing: The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq

The author is a former British Infantry officer who subsequently became a private security contractor and worked in Iraq for eighteen months from the end of 2003 to the beginning of 2005. It was co-written with a professional author.

Synopsis

Car bombings are a common form of attack in Ir...
Car bombings are a common form of attack in Iraq during the Coalition occupation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An insider’s account of life as a private security contractor in Iraq. In September 2003 the author arrived in Iraq at the start of an 18-month journey into chaos. In “Making a Killing”, Ashcroft provides a first-hand view of the world of private security where ex-soldiers employed to protect US and British interests can make up to $1000 a day. But he also reveals a new kind of warfare where the rules are still being written. Although hostilities are officially over, the fighting goes on. Scores of US soldiers are dying every day, Coalition Forces are struggling to defend their own bases, let alone bring order and every insurgent killed only recruits a dozen more to fight Western forces.

From the Back Cover

The Lure: $1,000 a day as a hired gun in Iraq

The Reality: For every insurgent killed, a dozen more rise up

In September 2003, James ‘Ash’ Ashcroft, a former British Infantry Captain, arrived in Iraq as a ‘gun for hire’. It was the beginning of an 18-month journey into blood and chaos.

In this action-packed page-turner, Ashcroft reveals the dangers of his adrenalin-fuelled life as a security contractor in Baghdad, where private soldiers outnumber non-US Coalition forces in a war that is slowly being privatised. From blow-by-blow accounts of days under mortar bombardment to revelations about life operating deep within the Iraqi community, Ashcroft shares the real, unsanitised story of the war in Iraq – and its aftermath – direct from the front line.

James Ashcroft is a former British Infantry Captain who served in West Belfast and the former Republic of Yugoslavia. He served as a private security contractor in Iraq from September 2003 until spring 2005.

Review

For me quite close as the author was on the commissioning course I would have been on had I pursued joining the Army and some of the
others I know from the UOTC would have been at Sandhurst with him. Makes it more thought provoking when you know it is a career path that chance turned you away from.

Overall I found it a very readable but there were a few points where I wondered if it was an accurate reflection of what actually happened or the temptation of the publishers to sex up the story to get more sales (as was done with Bravo Two Zero, amongst others). Certainly it isn’t a wholesale celebration of war or of the situation in Iraq, and there has certainly been some thought put into why we were there by the author.

It certainly came across as being written by someone who had been there and who had taken the opportunity to understand what was going on and why it was going on, that in itself is enough to make it worth reading for all those that wonder what is going on. The news doesn’t even come close to giving you the side of the story shown here, and it isn’t entirely positive for those prosecuting the war or attempting to rebuild Iraq or maintaining the peace.

The section towards the end of the book (around pg. 210) where he asks a load of US officers why they are fighting the war is priceless, and
possibly the best discussion of the reasons behind the war and the management of its aftermath. Better to spend time reading this book
than watching the news.

ISBN 0753512343

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CLWG Games Weekend 2007 Reports

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Some reports from the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) games weekend.

Siege of Yendor Tryout

Jim put on a session to try out the mechanisms for the upcoming megagame. We spent some time trying to bring down a section of wall, and also seeing whether or not it was possible to directly assault the wall without first undermining or demolishing it.

Jim’s Breeding Idea

This was a design session rather than a game, but we gave it a good go none the less. Jim had come away from the Light of the Trees megagame with an idea that it ought to be possible to do a sub-component of a game about breeding heroes using some real genetics theory. The main aim was that, like in real life, the players managing the breeding programme wouldn’t actually know what the actual genetic make up of their characters were. Over time those players that were keeping an eye on things and using the evidence that they were accumulating would be able to make some educated guesses about the best pairings that would drive their breeding programme in the direction that they wanted to take.

We all started off with a single individual each, although without worrying about whether that individual was male or female (as this was thought to over-complicate things). The idea was to work with a bloodline rather than a series of individuals, although each generation would be split into separate individuals representing the main lines. This was felt to be necessary to allow the breeders an opportunity to selectively breed those with the correct traits with individuals from the other bloodlines.

The fact that we rapidly bogged down was fairly predictable as we tried to track several individuals. There was a fair amount of mechanical detail involved in generating the offspring as well as the players not having enough information to make good decisions about which individuals to breed with which others. There would have been a better handle on it if we’d played out a bit more of the game before moving into a general discussion of the issues, approach and suggestions of how it could all be achieved.

As a design session it was very thought provoking, and I carried on thinking about it for almost a whole week, on and off. Jim’s conclusion from the session was that it probably wasn’t practically possible to achieve what he set out to do. At the time I would have agreed with him, but a few days of thought have changed my mind on that.

I come to this with more than a smattering of background, I studied “Genes, Organisms & Evolution” as an undergraduate, the course forming a major part of my degree. That said I’ve forgotten most of the detail in the intervening 15 years since I graduated. However the text books are still on a bookshelf nearby.

I think that the general premise that Jim was trying to attain is a sound one and that with some streamlining and appropriate background that it can be achieved. The key is to stick with Jim’s bloodline idea and not get drawn into dealing with individuals, except where heroes or other primary characters are required, and these Heroes should have nothing to do with the breeding stock, although their characters will be determined by it.

The key assumption I am working on is that that this is a sub-component of a game that plays over generations rather than a game in itself. As part of the background the designer of the main game needs to make some decisions about how many characteristics need to be tracked, whether these have any inter-relationship or are independent and also how often he wants particular characteristic levels/attributes to feature.

For example let us assume that a game designer wants to track both personal bravery and intelligence in the hero bloodlines. He might decide that these will not be related to each other. For bravery he might decide that there are four possible states, Heroic (no morale required), Brave (positive modifier to morale), Normal (no modifiers) and Cowardly (negative modifiers). Of these outcomes he might want Heroic to be quite rare, Brave to be common but not a majority, Normal to be the majority position and Cowardly to be less common than Brave, but more likely than Heroic.

Taking the assumption that bravery is a hereditary characteristic how does this translate into genetics?

Well you could specify three variants of a bravery gene (alleles are they are known), H, O & C. HH would be the Heroic types, HO the brave, OO and OC the normal and CC & CH the cowards. In these cases the H allele is recessive (so only those with two copies are heroic). The C allele is also recessive, but dominates the H allele. The O allele is dominant over C but not over H.

This takes you into a method of at least allocating a characteristic based on genetics, but it doesn’t address either simplicity of recording it nor of proportions. Not all genes are evenly distributed in the population. Those that confer survival advantages propagate more widely and those that lead to disadvantages rapidly leave the gene pool.

In this case you would expect O & C to be widely distributed, possibly equally. H is likely to be less frequent as though it confers an advantage when hunting it becomes much less advantageous once farming is available, and in fact becomes a positive disadvantage over time. If 10% of the population carried the H gene then 1% (i.e. the proportion with two copies of it) would be heroic. If the O allele was 50% of the population and the C allele the remaining 40% then you would have a distribution as follows:

H (10%)

O (50%)

C (40%)

H (10%)

1 (Heroic)

5 (Brave)

4 (Cowardly)

O (50%)

5 (Brave)

25 (Normal)

20 (Normal)

C (40%)

4 (Cowardly)

20 (Normal)

16 (Cowardly)

Heroic

Brave

Normal

Cowardly

1

10

65

24

Let us also assume that there was a decision to track intelligence as a numeric score also with three alleles generating a score when summed. The alleles being 0, 1, 2. These would be distributed as 10%, 80%, 10% in the general population.

Tracking Bloodlines

The method I thought you would use to track each bloodline is a table with each of the attributes to be tracked down the side and the alleles to be tracked along the top. Each allele would have a score between 0 and 10 to show its relative proportion in the population of the bloodline. An example of this is shown
below.

Bravery

H (r)

O

C (r)

Bravery alleles

1

5

4

Intelligence

L (0)

M (1)

H (2)

Intelligence alleles

1

8

1

In each generation the player running the breeding would be given some feedback of their bloodline’s characteristics. In this case they would be told that they were of average intelligence and not especially brave. The breeder player would then make a decision about trying to improve the bloodline either from the general population, another player’s bloodline (with the specific approval of that player) or from within his own bloodline.

The general population bloodline should be determined before the start of the game and remain constant for the duration of the game. Player controlled bloodlines are very likely to change over the course of generations as the genealogists recommend good matches for strengthening the bloodline based on observed characteristics of other bloodlines.

Breeding from the General Population

There is a general assumption that there are other bloodlines that the genealogists are aware of but which are not part of the played groups. These probably represent the minor nobility or some other class that the main bloodline knows but are lower than those represented by player teams. When breeding from these it is assumed that the characteristic which is sought to be improved is always manifested in the individuals that are to be added to the bloodline for breeding purposes.

Using the general bloodline track (see example above) the umpire checks whether the person has one or two copies of the appropriate gene. In the case of characteristics which are recessive then there are always two copies of the gene. (e.g. If you were trying to breed heroes into your bloodline then you would start off with two copies of the H allele to breed in).

For each of the genes recorded (i.e. Bravery and Intelligence in these examples) you would determine which alleles were to be incorporated into the new bloodline. Roll 1d10 for the copy to be imported (except where we have previously determined that recessive characteristics give an exact gene). We’re already getting an H from the hero, we need to roll 1d10 to see which intelligence allele will be passed on. This is most likely to be an M result.

These alleles will then displace one of those in the general bloodline. If a 2 is rolled for the Bravery gene then the new H allele displaces an O allele. Another 2 for Intelligence has the new M allele displace another M allele, so no real change. The new bloodline track looks like the example below.

Bravery

H (r)

O

C (r)

Bravery alleles

2

4

4

Intelligence

L (0)

M (1)

H (2)

Intelligence alleles

1

8

1

The feedback to the player would be that the family was of average intelligence and above average bravery, although with a larger number of cowards than one would expect. (There are now 4% heroic, 16% brave, 32% Cowardly). This might prompt an attempt to breed out the cowards, harder than might appear as the C allele is largely recessive.

What this system needs is a proper game to sit within. Ideally one of dynastic succession and involving at least a bit of individual character impact on the outcomes. Sadly that isn’t something on my current project list.

Religion in ‘Hapsburg Ascendant’

Brian started off a discussion of the role of religion in games set in the 17th century, particularly his upcoming megagame. His wish was to get some roleplaying of the religious motivations that were what made the 30 years war happen and to get the players to warp their rational decision making process (if you can describe wargamers as rational) to fit the religious mindset prevalent at the time.

We had a fascinating discussion, aided by Arthur having a stack of relevant textbooks to hand in his classroom. We talked around the issues of not giving perverse incentives and not making it too easy for players to work out how they got advantages from religious behaviour.

The conclusions that we came to were that each of the major sects needed to have its own set of rules, that there ought to be a league table so that there was a visual incentive to act correctly (this being a lesson from the Sengoku megagames) and that once a defined level of behaviour had been reached that there ought to be a direct umpire driven reward for the correct behaviour. The reward needed to be strong enough to show that it was ‘God’s work’ but also not so strong that it caused problems. Also we felt that because ‘god works in mysterious ways’ that the players should not get to determine what might happen if they had their god’s favour.

Orange or Lemon? – Onside Report

This game was intended to show the political goings on in the attempt to get a revolution settlement in Scotland following on from the English parliament’s declaration of Prince William of Orange as their King in February 1689 (new style).

The game we played was a highly entertaining roleplay of some of the issues and certainly gave a good flavour and reached, more or less, the historical outcome. I certainly enjoyed it immensely, and I think the players did too.

I designed the game with almost a board game like level of mechanism for winning the support of the non-played members of the Convention (which is essentially an unofficial Parliament as it had been called by Prince William of Orange and not King James).

Almost none of those mechanisms were tested in the game we played, but it worked as a game anyway – almost a proof of the old saying that you could stick a bunch of CLWG members in a room with some game money and an a game would break out. Instead of money I gave them a map of the Edinburgh High Street and an idea. I’ll leave it to the players to tell you how the game actually went.

In terms of future development I will refine the player briefs (I was still working on these when I started the session and a couple are not yet fully complete). This will improve player understanding of the period and importantly make their personal objectives a bit more tailored from the generic ones of:

  1. Stay alive.

  2. Ensure that the clan/family remains in being and in control of its territory.

  3. Increase your/the clan wealth (either through plunder or by increasing territory).

  4. Increase the influence of Clan Cameron.

  5. Have your King accepted as de facto sovereign.

  6. Ensure that your enemy is diminished.

For the lowlanders you can replace ‘Clan’ with ‘family/heirs’. These do work, but there need to be a couple more triggers to get some of the characters to get stuck into being active. There is also a need to explain the general apathy of the population in their support for the King who has antagonised most of them in the last decade, even before he became the King.

Blitz Firefighting

An end to the weekend with an extended bout of firefighting during the London blitz. This game actually started at the same time as my session and I joined in when we’d finished playing Orange or Lemon? I ended up as one of the LFB professionals sent along to bolster the firefighting force.

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CLWG, design, games

CLWG Offside Report – November 2006

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There were three
sessions at the British end of the November ’06 meeting of CLWG; no
doubt Daniel and Nick will enlighten us separately on what we missed
at the continental meeting. In order of appearance the attendance was
Trevor, Mukul, Jim, Brian, John, Peter Howland and myself. The
sessions were:

  • Torchwood.
    A Victorian roleplaying game run by Brian Cameron

  • Starship
    Marine. A classic figure game run by Jim

  • Remember,
    Remember. An old favourite re-run by both Jim and Brian covering the
    gunpowder plot of 1605.

Torchwood
(Brian)

Brian started this off
with a short clip from the end of the Doctor Who episode that had
inspired the game. The episode (titled Torchwood) involved the Doctor
saving Queen Victoria from a werewolf in the Highlands in 1879. At
the end of the episode (after QV has knighted and then immediately
banished the Doctor and his assistant Rose) there is the scene that
Brian showed us. QV says that there are clearly otherworldly enemies
out there and she wants Great Britain to be able to deal with them,
and with the Doctor should he reappear. To achieve this aim she has
the ultra secret Torchwood Institute established.

To work out the finer
details of how the Torchwood Institute should be set up Brian had us
as a hand picked group of Privy Councillors to form some
recommendations to Her Majesty. The Torchwood Committee was chaired
by the Duke of Cornwall (Trevor) with the Earl of Sutherland, Lord
Taunton, Sir Hardly Worthitt (Secretary) and Sir Rupert Effingham
(Page of the Back Stairs).

Arrayed in comfy chairs
we set about the task of establishing how Torchwood should be lead,
what it should do, to whom it would report and where the money would
come from.

There was much
entertaining discussion over the right sort of chap to provide the
necessary sort of leadership for the institute. Taking as read that
he’d been to the right school and wasn’t the sort to have gone to
University to become a dangerous intellectual (or worse still, a
liberal) the chap was to have a modicum of intelligence. He needed to
be an excellent judge of character so that he could recruit the right
people to get the job done. Lastly he needed to be of stout heart and
high in moral fibre (good for the digestion don’t you know). It was
felt that the best place to go looking for all these sterling
qualities was in the Admiralty. A check round those present suggested
that Admiral Hood was the soundest chap we could think of.

The conversation moved
on to discuss the merits of having other sorts of chaps as deputies
to the good Admiral to make sure that he would be well advised. The
committee agreed that it was vitally important to have a theologian
on the management of the institute and also a General. There was much
discussion on the merits or otherwise of engineers and the scientific
mechanical sort. It was resolved that a natural philosopher might be
useful as a deputy but that the mechanical aspects should be left as
humble servants. General Flashman VC, known as a stouthearted, loyal
and brave subject was selected as a suitable chap to provide military
expertise to the Institute, it also being remembered that he had been
involved in political activities in his younger days. The choice of
theologian was to be referred to Her Majesty’s chaplain for a
recommendation but that would need to be someone well versed in
divinity as well as being devout.

On the matter of
exactly what the Institute would do we recommended that there should
be a collation of information on strange phenomena, probably through
setting up a journal of some kind to collect these stories and paying
readers a bounty for submitting those that were felt fit to print.
The Institute should also be involved in investigating reports,
perhaps using some of the most advanced and modern methods being used
currently by the Special Irish Branch, whereupon it was felt that one
of their suitable chaps should be seconded to head such a section in
the Institute. There needed also to be a research arm to look into
the phenomena to see what we could learn about them and how to deal
most effectively when they should turn up. This latter point lead to
the need for an arm to respond to any incursions or clean up
otherworldly evidence after the fact.

Funding for the
Torchwood Institute would mostly come from the Admiralty Vote via the
Royal Dockyards. There would be some money from an endowment from Her
Majesty and the Institute would engage with loyal and trusted
entrepreneurs to ensure that there would continue to be sufficient
funds should there be problems in the future with obtaining money by
Vote whilst maintaining absolute secrecy as to its purpose.

As regards secrecy it
was felt that with the exception of the Torchwood Committee, the
Leader of Torchwood and his immediate deputies, there was to be no
acknowledgement to those involved of the exact scale of operations.
Each operation or arm and each area office would be kept in isolation
of each other. Those involved would only be told as much as was
necessary for them to do what was asked of them and the reports would
all be submitted to the Torchwood Committee by the Admiral as
required. There was discussion of telling the government of the day.
The prevailing view was that it would be only be appropriate to tell
Ministers of the Crown that came from the upper House and even then
only if it directly pertained to their responsibilities. Should Her
Majesty require one such to be briefed then she could perfectly well
have him admitted, as a Privy Councillor, to the Torchwood Committee.

Whilst not perhaps
covering every question with a detailed answer we had produced a good
basis for proceeding and what remained to be done could be achieved
by our chosen leadership once they had been formally appointed.

Starship
Marine (Jim)

The CLWG session
happened to coincide with the Full Moon in November. Usually there
are a group of us, mainly but not exclusively CLWG members, that
gather on a full moon to play in a campaign being run by Jim and set
in his universe. Currently we are playing the part of a group of
mercenaries. Rather than attempting to run two sessions in close
proximity Jim brought along some starship marines and a deck plan for
a merchant ship for us to have a training mission prior to our next
mission as mercenaries acting as starship marines.

Brian was nominated to
be the Group Commander in overall command, Trevor was his 2ic and
John Rutherford, Mukul and myself were the squad commanders. Jim and
Peter Howland ran the defending forces.

The ship was all on a
single deck with three concentric sets of rooms with two circular
access corridors running round them, each of these circular corridors
had two short linking corridors. There were two main airlocks at
opposite sides of the ship with two much smaller emergency air locks
at ninety degrees to the main airlocks. The control rooms (main
control and power controls) were in the centre of the ship. There
wasn’t a direct route from any airlock to either power control, you
would need to traverse at least a quarter of the circle between the
link corridors, however there the two link corridors did line up with
the main airlocks.

Brian’s plan was a
relatively simple one. My squad would go in first and secure the
entry point while blasting the doors on the access corridor. John’s
squad would immediately follow through and make straight for the main
control by the most direct route. Mukul’s squad would follow John’s
squad and deal with any resistance that had been bypassed. Once
John’s squad had moved though mine I would take my squad round the
outer corridor and make for the power control room. The Group HQ
would remain in the main airlock area and provide fire support as
necessary.

Our plan largely
ignored what the enemy might do. In itself this could have been a
problem, but the feeling was that it was a straightforward operation
and there wasn’t anything that could go wrong provided that the
defenders weren’t too numerous.

On entry my squad moved
rapidly to the doors (which the defenders had left open in an attempt
to sucker us in). We put demo charges on all the doors within reach
and took up defensive positions. Sure enough one of the doors closed
cutting off a third of my squad from the rest. This was combined with
three enemy marines appearing in other doorways slightly further
away. A short fight ensued in which one of my marines was hit and in
return two enemy were downed. The third ducked back inside a room and
closed the door.

We duly blew the other
doors and placed a demo charge on the door of the room the enemy
marine had disappeared into. John’s squad moved through my
position, Mukul’s came in behind and we moved to cover the trapped
enemy marine.

The next turn saw half
of my squad dealing with the enemy marine and the other half
progressing up an empty circular corridor to the next link corridor
to get to power control. John’s squad also moved towards power
control and met some of the crew attempting to dispute their
progress. The results were no as one-sided as we would have liked,
but John’s squad wasn’t slowed much (although he did take a
casualty).

John & Mukul met
the main enemy resistance and slowly overcame it in a spectacularly
bad display of shooting from both sides. My squad continued round the
ship and down the link corridor where we found some more crew and
took another casualty when we looked round a corner.

As we massed on the
outside of the door to power control to burst in after blowing the
door John’s squad was just breaking into main control. Yet more
appalling shooting all round kept this indecisive enough for my squad
to take a third casualty from some grenades as well as taking down a
fourth enemy marine in return. Almost as soon as we blew the doors on
power control the ship’s captain decided to surrender as they had
just lost main control.

Remember,
Remember (Jim & Brian)

This was the last of
the three games. The players were all plotters in the Gunpowder plot,
although with varying degrees of ardour in their wish to come to
blows to improve the lot of Catholics. There was a copious amount of
briefing, a few pages on the general background, a page on the main
characters of the plot and then a couple of pages of character
briefing for each player.

The game started off
quite well with some in character conversation about our level of
grievance and what we could do about it. All the players skirted
around the suggestion of blowing up parliament and it took some time
before that was agree upon as a solution (and in fact there were a
couple of points where I thought that we might well do something
completely different).

Having resolved that
was what we were going to do we came up with a plan and then
allocated some plausible roles to the plotters. As my character had
been well educated and fought on the continent I was deputed to go to
Flanders and attempt to buy gunpowder. This I duly did while others
sorted out other aspects of the plot. Mostly what I did at this stage
was join Jim in planting fireworks in the card model of the Houses of
Parliament that he had been constructing while we were chatting
earlier. We also did some testing of fuses and powder trails to make
sure that it would be safe when we tried to set the whole thing off
later. Obviously the people at DTI who regulate firework production
have decided to stop people doing what we did as it was only with
extreme difficulty that we managed to ignite the contents of a
firework.

On returning to the
other plotters I found that there was disappointing progress on the
tunnel that we had been attempting but that a coal merchant who had a
cellar under the Houses of Parliament had suddenly decided to shut up
shop. We duly moved our wine importing business into the cellar and
made a habit of greeting the two guards that came round every night
to check all was well with a tankard of wine. This was a blatant
attempt to make them less worried about searching the cellar
thoroughly and more interested in getting their free drinks.

As the time approached
we moved the barrels of gunpowder into position over several days. At
the last minute the date of the opening was changed. Guy Fawkes
(played by Mukul) was a bit perturbed by this but I insisted that we
should stay and carry on with business as usual until it was time to
make things go bang. This might have been a mistake on my part. On
the night of the 4th of November a whole group of guards
came round to search the cellar, not including our usual two drinking
chums. It was obvious as soon as the arrived that they weren’t
randomly searching and that giving them all some wine wouldn’t
prevent them from searching. Realising that there was no escape for
me anyway I threw an oil lantern on the barrels of gunpowder and then
drew my sword to buy enough time for the fire to catch properly. The
outcome was a huge explosion.

As games went this one
was pretty one sided and it might have been more fun if both
protagonists had been player driven. However I did enjoy it a lot and
felt that it was pretty good as an educational tool to explain the
plot. I also felt a real moment of uncertainty when the state opening
of parliament was postponed. We’d gone to some lengths to ensure
that the plot remained secret, avoiding writing the letter that was
written in history to warn the Catholic Lords not to attend.

As an excuse to build
things and then blow them up it was second to none. We took Jim’s
lovingly constructed Houses of Parliament (complete with fireworks in
the cellar) out to the end of my garden and got Guy Fawkes (Mukul) to
light the blue touch paper before we all retired to a safe distance
to watch the fireworks go off. There was about a minute of coloured
lights and not much else until Mukul said, “It hasn’t really gone
off much”. This was almost immediately followed by a very
spectacular shower of explosions that made us all move further
back…

design

Did McKinsey Invent Matrix Games?

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The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris
The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of today I spent on a training course called “Top Down Thinking” being run by a nice chap from PA Consulting who is the project’s workstream leader for technology.

What was most interesting for me was the way it boiled the presentation of just about anything down to a ‘Governing Thought‘ and some key lines that summarised your arguments (no more than five of those). The general style of it was very similar to the Matrix Games format where you say I think x will happen because … and give three arguments to support your case.

Apparently the basis for this approach was a book called Pyramid Thinking written in the 1970s by a woman called Barbara Minto who was the first female partner than McKinsey had. So on that basis I think it could be fair to say that McKinsey invented the matrix games format (actually I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there is in fact a direct link between the two). What is perhaps a little scarier is that this might be how major decisions are made throughout the corporate world…

 

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Hot Blood & Cold Steel – onside Report

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This was a design session on how to do a WW1 skirmish game, focusing mainly delivering a participation game for Jerry Elsmore’s 50th Birthday con. I’d already done a first darft of the rules but wanted to talk through some of the principles about what I wanted to achieve.

I found the discussion particularly useful in clarifying my methods for running a participation game at a show. Gone is the idea of having all the action in a static circle of squares that represented all that could be seen (I may do this at CLWG sometime as I still like the idea, although it would be too time-consuming for being run at a show). I did get some ideas for making changes to the terrain though so that it would only become clear when figures entered the square in question.

Also useful was the discussion on how to simulate disorientation and when that might be appropriate. This means that I have some ideas for retaining the confusion that can happen when patrolling at night, especially when shooting starts.

The next version of the game in a complete and playable form will be around at the January meeting and again in February so that it will have had a couple of outings by the time Jerry’s birthday convention comes round. Any volunteers to help run the game on the day will be more than welcome.

In the meantime the draft rules (which are an evolution of Jim’s Starship Solder rules converted to work with 2d6 and have a WW1 flavour) are on the web. http://www.cold-steel.org and there is a fledgling mailing list (using my usual server) at list@cold-steel.org (send a blank e-mail with ‘subscribe’ (no quotes) in the subject line).

Also if anyone has photos (preferably aerial ones) of trenches or shell craters (regardless of period) then I wouldn’t mind if you could send me some scans. I need to make up a stack of terrain cards for the game and one of the things that impressed me at the conference was Jim’s use of laminated card pictures for counters. I reckon that terrain cards made up the same way would look pretty good.

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Revolutionary Warfare

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When I played Andy Grainger’s A Month in Country I immediately thought of some of the parallels with the Revolutionary Warfare (RW) game that I have run myself a couple of times, although with only a few players. I would particularly like to re-do my Palestine game as the players I ended up with (well one player in particular) didn’t give me the sort of game that I was expecting as they couldn’t cope with the whole concept of the role that they were given. (I won’t name names, but those that were there know who I am talking about – the British Governor wanted to hold elections for a PR power sharing assembly between the Palestinians and the Jews).

Anyway, the concept I was playing with was similar to Andy’s but played on a slightly larger scale. At the time of design I had been toying with the idea of producing ‘Lion Comes Home’ as a megagame and the RW module had to work very smoothly. It is essentially one sided, there would be a small group of roving revolutionaries that would start a new revolution when their current one had been crushed, or at a point determined by the political control team. I haven’t completely shelved LCH, but development has stalled over the last couple of years. Anyway I’m not volunteering something like this as a megagame until I’ve written it all.

In the RW module the resolution is at province level, in the Palestine tryout there were 16 provinces. This could be too low for a megagame but I didn’t want governments suddenly losing control of entire colonies as that just didn’t happen historically. The Government players would set the rules of engagement and the alert levels for the police forces and any military units in the colony.

Each province has an unrest level that can be affected by the actions of both the government and the revolutionaries. If the revolutionaries are successful (or the government inept) then the tension levels can escalate from content to ungovernable via stable, unrest & tense.

The forces of revolution will normally start out with a small amount of support to get them going. They can gain support from the effects of their actions. They also use up support to perform actions as there is only so much support that can be called upon at any time. Revolutionaries may espouse peaceful or military action or a combination of both. At different stages of the revolution different strategies will reap the best rewards in increased tension levels and the downfall of the government. The stages of revolution are broadly:

1.Raising Awareness: getting the people to realise that there is a problem with the government and that they can help to change this;

2.Low Intensity Struggle: starting to make small demonstrations against the government and perhaps attacking key figures or installations;

3.High Intensity Struggle: making the country ungovernable and forcing the government to make concessions to the revolution;

4.Open warfare: becoming a government and opposing the old regime openly to ensure its downfall.

In Andy’s game the revolutionaries are somewhere between stages 2 & 3 depending on where they are in the country. Some parts are probably even in stage 4.

The role of the government is not a purely reactionary one, it is possible to be proactive and prevent terrorism before it has any great effect. The setting is such that there will be an overall political framework to be worked within and the government players will represent the colonial governor and possibly the garrison commander. There may also be scope for the home government to become involved in solving problems. For the purposes of a tryout I would either play it one-sided (more accurately with several revolutionary factions) or have a couple of reliable players to play the local governor and military commander.

 Government actions are determined on a matrix of the current alert state and the general intention of the active units under command. Each police district and company sized unit can be given an intention and an area of responsibility. Doctrine for dealing with internal trouble is of police primacy unless a state of emergency has been declared. Declaration of a state of emergency is not something that should be done lightly, and certainly not before the police have lost the ability to deal with the situation.

 Anyway if there is sufficient interest, and the dates are finalized early enough to let me book cheap flights, I could run this at the Games Weekend. It would need five or six players and would take about three hours all told. If interest was very high I could even run two simultaneous colonial engagements. I would also like to do a design session on modeling opinion polls and elections.

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