Quote from: HaffrungYou know, I've never found a fantasy-themed wargame that worked well as a game. Divine Right and Dragon Pass are very cool and evocative, but the gameplay is awkward and slow.

I've found this to be true, as well.  The best I've found was the Dwarfstar game Demonlord, which strikes a nice balance between playability, detail and replayability.  Most of the Dwarfstar microgames are free for download, too, so it's worth checking out.

I think a fantasy CDG would be an instant hit, and I'm surprised no one has tried it yet.  I still have a draft copy of just such a beast that I designed, home-made counters, map, cards and all.  It was based closely on Hannibal's implementation of the system.  Still having trouble balancing the thing, though I'm happy with the magic system.  When I get the energy back to tackle it, I'm going to attempt a ground-up redesign.

That sounds like it could be a winner, Ken.

Shocking observation: So far in this thread, no love whatsoever for ASL.

Question: When does a wargame become a simulation, and which is more enjoyable?

I own Austerlitz (IIRC--some Napoleonic battle), by The Gamers, a fairly recent one, from circa 2000 or so. I did a trial run to see if it might be fun to play, and, well, not for me.

The French were a small but fast elite force, and the Russians were superior in numbers, slow, and low on morale. They canceled each other out, the fog of war rules added chaos to the stalemate, and the terrain rules got the artillery stuck in the mud and made sure you couldn't heroically charge a hilltop.

All the above is from sketchy memory, but to me that made Austerlitz too much of a simulation, and too little of a wargame:

a) narrow range of likely outcomes (minor victory for either side), modeled on historical fact

b) chaotic environment, ditto modeled on fact

I guess what this boils down to is: In a simulation you aim to repeat history, in a wargame you aim to change it.

EDIT: ROFL, just found a review of Austerlitz by what must be the Ken Hite of wargaming:

QuoteAusterlitz is one of the main philosophical pillars of the Custer-Rorke Syndrome of game design, subjects fascinating to read about and discuss which are either so one-sided or dull that they defy the intentions of even the best designers, a group in which Dave Powell assuredly resides. This is a game for Bonapartists, pure and simple.

Historically, the Allies, under the dual aegis of the two emperors - Tsar Alexander I of Russia and that Hapsburgian House of Military Horrors, Francis I of Austria - have such insolvable command problems, ranging from a non-existent hierarchy to inbred ineptness, that they stand around like a boxer whose foot is nailed to the center of the ring while his opponent - here, Napoleon at the height of his military powers - jabs, hooks, uppercuts and then simply bludgeons him onto, and then through, the mat.

Even if you eschew the historical situation and, as we did, allow the Allies to ignore and replace their original orders, you are simply delaying the fiasco. Once each of the Allied commands carries out his original set of instructions they're, once again, stuck in the mire of their command-system mud. Most Allied corps commanders need a dieroll of '12' to do any original thinking, and that's a 1-in-36 chance. Given the game is only 20+ turns, there's a good chance Original Thought will never even occur to these dolts.

One can argue till the serfs come home whether this is an accurate representation of the depths to which Russo-Austrian command had sunk or not. In game terms, it's like playing with dice which your opponent has been given two weeks to shave.

http://members.tripod.com/~RichardHBerg/brog12.html

A game should have the sorts of things that make games fun - lots of options, balanced victory conditions, opportunities for the loser to recover from a bad position, and mechanics that are constructed on the basis of what's fun or challenging for players to do rather than fidelity to history. A simulation cares about none of those things. In design conflicts between what would be historical and what would be fun for players in a game sense, simulations always side with the former. Note that many wargamers find following along a historical avenue is both interesting and fun. Simulations are often designed to be played solo.

In my experience, some designs do manage both historical insight and enganging gameplay quite decently. EastFront, Bonaparte at Marengo, and the OCS series * come to mind. I think the key there is a focus on a particular level of command, and/or an effective fog of war element to the game.

* I think the OCS series does fall down with its complex and convoluted air combat system. It's a major distraction in energy, scope, and rules bloat from the operational campaign approach of the rest of the system. The games would be better served by a more abstract approach to air power.

Richard Berg is quite his own animal.  Acerbic wit (sometimes downright mean) but one hell of a designer in his own right, though he does get a bit too fiddly when there's no one there to rein him in.

Oh, and I quite like ASL.  I just play too many other games to devote the attention to it that it requires.  I can pull out SL+ and just play.  ASL requires a thorough knowledge of the rules (and thus very regular play) to play quickly and competently.  The Starter Kits look mighty tempting, though...I have too tight a budget to get them at this point.

Quote from: Elliot WilenThat sounds like it could be a winner, Ken.

Thanks!  I'm hoping to get back to it this winter.  The thing was getting increasingly complex, which was something I was trying to avoid.  Fast-playing and on the level of Hannibal or Twilight Struggle in terms of complexity is the sweet spot.

May I suggest you cast about on Consimworld (specifically talk.consimworld.com) to see if you can find some interested collaborators? Playtesters and/or developers help a lot in making a great game, IMO.

I'm a subscriber and regular reader of CSW.  When the game goes through a few playtests here just to make sure it all works properly, I'll probably cast about for outside playtesters, or just post the thing up on a website somewhere.  Outside playtesters are definitely a major plus, and can identify problems and holes with rules much better than a designer can (witness the Empire of the Sun revisions...it was incredible under v1.0, but is now very slick and wickedly cool).

Quote from: KrakaJakI hear squad leader can get pretty intense (especially with expansions)

Things may have changed, as hinted by Ken's mention of ASL Starter Kits, but my experience/impression is that:

a) If you just play original Squad Leader, there's a ton of game there for the time/money, and the rules are fed to you in very digestible chunks. BTW, there's an alternate "sequence" for learning the rules (plus offering a new set of "learning scenarios" if you dig around at advancephase.com.

b) If you play SL+gamettes, things are still manageable up through Cross of Iron, and don't really get crazy until GI: Anvil of Victory. Crazy in terms of both layers of complexity, and in terms of backwards incompatibility--with vast numbers of original counters being replaced, and many American tanks being represented on a different scale of detail from the German tanks they're fighting.

c) If you play ASL, you get a "clean sheet" implementation of a complex but integrated version of SL; unfortunately, it's all-or-nothing in terms of cost and learning curve (including skill maintenance). When you play ASL, your hobby is no longer "wargaming", it's "Advanced Squad Leader".

For this reason I dabbled in acquiring some of ASL, then decided I'd never really get round to playing it much, and sold it off. I still have my original game plus the three gamettes.

I think I read somewhere that there's a group of people who are trying to develop a set of rules that use the SL components and basically work from CoI as a standard. That would ultimately be the game for me.

Quote from: J ArcaneI've played aroudn with a few.  Really liked Tactics II, and in theory, I like the idea of a lot of them.

For a while, not sure now, game companies were coming out with "beginner's games" like the Smithsonian Series; unfortunately while many of these probably were nicely streamlined and easy to learn, I suspect they don't have the depth of the AH "Classics" such as Tacticts II, Afrika Korps, or D-Day--which also had pretty brief (and fairly standard) rules, but simply by virtue of having more counters and smaller hexes/squares, were more "meaty".

QuoteI still have a copy of Panzerblitz I rescued before my storage unit went up for auction, and maybe one day I'll actually play it.

Panzerblitz would have made my list but I also haven't played it quite enough. I think I like the small innovations added to Panzer Leader (mainly opportunity fire), but when you think WWII tanks, Eastern Front is the main show.

Go to this site for tons of Panzerblitz goodness: new maps, new countersets, etc.  All of this was vetted by Alan Arvold, an old grog of SPI vintage who wrote several articles on Dunnigan's methodology for rating the units in the original games.  It opens up virtually all of WW2 for the system.

I still kinda want to try the Lock and Load series, especially Vietnam.  It seemed from what I saw of the demo game and such, that they've done what is essentially a much more approachable Squad Leader.

I also really want to try adapting the Stargrunt II rules to hex and counter.  They're really just about the best ruleset for modern combat I've ever found anywhere.  Realistic feel, but dead simple to understand and learn.

Lock'n'Load is okay, but the games just didn't capture the SL magic for me.  I found the systems clunkier than SL, actually, and the map graphics (the "hex halo" that obscures hexside terrain...which can be very important!) were really distracting and ugly to my eye.

And JA, if you really want to try a good hex-n-counter wargame on an operational scale, I'd avoid Tactics II.  It's fun for seeing where the hobby came from, but it's not a great game; the situation bogs down rather quickly and it becomes an attritional battle.  For just a *pinch* of added complexity, I'd go with The Russian Campaign (old versions of which can be found on eBay or thru online retailers for a song...there's a newer version with nicer graphics out, but they increased the size of the map to something larger than my dinner table can hold).  It's a great game that allows both sides to take the offense and gives a great feel for the deep penetrations and swirling battles on the eastern front.

Mixed feelings on Berg. I think I've enjoyed some of his games (e.g. Shogun Triumphant) and others look like they'd be good if I had a chance (e.g., the old SPI The Crusades) but he has a reputation for layering on the chrome and pumping out unplayable crap. It may come as heresy to some but I think one of his worst offenders is the Great Battles of History series; admittedly, the system is as much the responsibility of Mark Herman, whom I consider a very solid designer, but when criticisms of GBoH appeared, it was Berg who engaged in a very silly defense campaign.

About simulation vs. game, to begin with I disagree with the wording that a simulation is intended to repeat history; rather I'd say that the most "simulative" of simulations try to put the player in a definite role by representing the constraints on information and control that the role could exercise. By "role" I mean a person or a close-knit group the speed of whose internal communication and decision-making process gives it a unity relative to the scale of the game. Because of this, some simulations make lousy games--I do not think I would enjoy playing a tactical simulation of Agincourt more than once; same would probably apply to Gaugamela and, it seems likely, Austerlitz. The commander(s) of one side or the other simply had very little influence on the battle once it had been joined. Since a number of battles were basically lost from the outset, simulations of these battles will tend to repeat history. They might be useful as dynamic illustration of a thesis ("why did Henry V win at Agincourt?"), and so have some value...but not gameworthy enough to justify the bookshelf treatment that SPI's game got.

However, there are historical situations where the decision makers had enough latitude and enough control that a simulation of them is also a very interesting game, as long as it doesn't get bogged down in details. Agincourt was a blowout, but the Hundred Years War (or a portion thereof) could be an extremely interesting military-diplomatic simulation. (I own an operational game called Black Prince that was published as part of the Book of Sandhurst Wargames, and a "big view" HYW game that was published in S&T a while back, but I haven't had a chance to try either one.)

Basically, what Haffrung said.