About designing a game - general thoughts

[barbarian]

Since the BKCIII-gate, I have been having a lot of thoughts about game design in general and in this particular instance.

I feel the challenge is to find the right balance to appeal to both the old guard and the new comers into a system (and into wargaming).

The promoted format (and this need to be decided by the publisher, mainly for economic reasons) should be playable into around 2H00, deployment included. Ideally even 1h30 should provide a complete game. There are several reasons for that : players at a club night that need to set up and put away the table (even at home, only a few amongst players can leave a game set up on week ), tournament plays where you want to fit as many games into 1 or 2 days, and basically because most of people don't have the patience and time for 3 or 4 hours games.

" But I like to play 8 hours on huge tables and with 5 other friends with several hundreds of miniatures !!! "
Good on you, but a system well designed will obviously be easy to adapt for bigger games and play time than the contrary (contract a bloated game into an acceptable length of time) : I trust the lovers of "big" games to fit big games !

Another logical point : The system should be easy enough organically to be learnt in just a few minutes, to welcome new players (really important point ) and to let the player focus on tactical choices and not trying to remember the rule 31 chapter 4 coma 5 line 2. The difference between a master and a beginner shouldn't be the knowledge of the rulebook but the tactical awareness.

Third : Historical tactical choices should produce historical results. Ideally, the players should be able to actually learn real world tactics and to apply them with success. i.e. a deliberate attack onto defended positions without a 3 to 4 numerical advantage should be doomed.

This was the introduction.

Now my experience with BKCII is really particular because I painted and prepared games for mainly boardgames and RPG players, not "real" wargamers (and most of them had a really poor english !). So my games were long because I wasn't playing with "proper" players. I even drew an hexagon map to play with hexagons and divide all measurements by 5 to speed up the game.
Another factor was that we were playing with at least one battalion of INF (9 stands plus all the Supports) and at least 10 tanks a side + assets : I felt we were toward the upper limit of the game.

I'd like to hear what other players experience was. For the older players, try to remember the first games you had with BKC or BKCII and what stroke you the most : this is what we must keep and build on !

My impression was that choosing the command groups, launching the dice to order was a good idea and already "occupy" the mind. It was the core of the game. I felt like shooting and saving and launching for suppression was tedious and not really fun. Especially when you have a lot of troops with different values. Playing more, I discovered that the recon game was almost the most important part of the game.

In conclusion, my opinion is that we should always try to "cut the fat", especially for wargame rules. And the design of a game should always have a purpose (see my intro) and every design decision should be the result of a choice.

What are your thoughts ?

[fred.]

Good post

Cutting the fat is always important.

What I think is hardest with rules is getting the feel of the period, from the game. This is obviously hard, and can be very much a personal thing. And getting this right allows historical tactics to work.

I probably played more BKCI rather than II. But more due to different interests at different times. Personally I no longer find the WM command system great - it seems too erratic in results, lots of units do nothing, some do loads. While you can weave this to a narrative, it dosen't always make a great game. In our home brew rules we do like some friction, but generally at a much lower level of impact, perhaps a 10% chance of a unit doing nothing, or just doing a half-move. But this is due to us as a group having played loads of games with the WM style command system and probably just needing something different.

[Norm]

Cutting fat and streamlining is a good part of game design, but not for its own sake.

You need to be extremely careful that you don't simply dumb down in the process.

[Chris Pringle]

In conclusion, my opinion is that we should always try to "cut the fat", especially for wargame rules. And the design of a game should always have a purpose (see my intro) and every design decision should be the result of a choice.

Certainly the designer should have a clear idea of what is to be achieved. It's the first principle of war: maintain the aim! The scale of the combat to be represented, the table space it will need, and the time a game should take, are basic parameters that should influence design decisions.

I learned a lot about this from working with Scott Fisher to help him design CY6! - the "Check Your Six!" air combat rules, recently voted best in their genre. Scott was very clear about the mission and was great at staying focused and stripping away unnecessary chrome to get to the fundamentals that mattered.

Having said that, as fred and Norm point out, cutting the fat needs to be done carefully - sometimes it is the fat that provides the flavour, and people have different tastes. In designing "Bloody Big BATTLES!" I was pretty ruthless about throwing stuff out to ensure the game met the aim of making the biggest historical battles feasible for a typical wargames club night (maybe 4 players, 6'x4' table, 3 or 4 hours max including set-up and take-down). And still there are people who find some aspects of it too detailed - while there are others for whom it is too stripped-down.

So I think I'm saying yes, I agree: game design should have clear purpose, design decisions should be in line with that purpose, unnecessary fat should indeed be cut away; but whatever you do, you aren't going to please everyone.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BBB_wargames/info
http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.co.uk

[FierceKitty]

Cutting fat and streamlining is a good part of game design, but not for its own sake.

You need to be extremely careful that you don't simply dumb down in the process.

Are we being nasty about DBA?

[Norm]

No - not sure why you would think that. I was responding to the OP, who was making proposals about game design in general and to BKC III specifically.

[FierceKitty]

No - not sure why you would think that. I was responding to the OP, who was making proposals about game design in general and to BKC III specifically.

Not an accusation - an indirect comment on how DBx looks to me.

[fred.]

Great point Chris, the focus of a rule set if critical. It's far too easy to add things, that aren't really needed. For instance air support in a WWII ground combat game. You need air support, as it directly impacts the ground stuff, but it needs to be done in such a way that it dosen't become a game in itself. One of the later versions of Warhammer had a magic phase like this, the magic phase was so involved it was its own game and could take 30-45 minutes to resolve in a big game.

GW have recently gone on epic levels of fat cutting with stripping back their core rules to just a few pages. But they have still kept lots of special rules for units / armies as a way to keep the feel and flavour. Part of this seems to be a way of getting back to the game, rather than the über list building focus.