Why are Wargames Rules so Complicated ... ?

[Steve J]

I'm with you on this Andy as solo gaming or with a few friends at home I've found much more preferable than my old club, where a few members could eawith their remarks and behaviour .

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Who won?

I have no idea. To be fair it was in a seige supplement, and the bees and bears were supposed to be released in a tunnel.

[Chris Pringle]

I believe that for some tournament players, complication in a ruleset is actually a virtue. Certainly I have heard competition gamers at OWS say how they enjoy the challenge of mastering the rules. My impression is that they like the fact that by putting in the effort to understand all the wrinkles they can earn an advantage over a player who can't be bothered. It's not my thing, but I can see a logic in that.

In designing BBB I tried to strip out as much rule clutter as possible and make the rules as simple as possible so that players could concentrate on tactics (and fight a whole battle in an evening). Consequently, the BBB FAQ is more of an RAQ - rarely asked questions - and most questions seem to be hangovers from players' previous rule experiences: even though BBB doesn't require them to do X or ban them from doing Y, they assume that they must do X/can't do Y because that's how the other rules they've played operate. And that despite what the BBB rules clearly do state, and the examples given to illustrate how they work ...

As for restricting yourself to solo gaming because club members are irksome: I have to say that's a pity and you might be missing out. I'm sure that all of us are irksome to some of our fellow players, but by the same token (probably available from Litko in fluorescent plastic) there are wargaming soulmates out there for all of us. If you go to a club you give yourself more chance of finding them.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Well there is a WRG set covering enraged bees and bears.....

I own that army...

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

I own that army...

You bloody weell would Will 

[Big Insect]

Are they like "Hostile Huns" ?

I think that was a WRG'izm - if there were 'hostile Huns' in your opponents army - all your troops knees turned to jelly and they became simpering nervous wrecks - or something similar.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Think thats 3rd or 4th edition. Given an almost 100% record with Huns in FoG I'm not surprised

[Ben Waterhouse]

Who won?

The bees of course...

[John Cook]

I'm with you on this Andy as solo gaming or with a few friends at home I've found much more preferable than my old club, where a few members could eawith their remarks and behaviour .

Quite agree with both of you.  I haven't found a club I liked so, for several years now, it has been a mixture of solo games, which is where computer moderated rules work very well, or games with less than a handful of kindred spirits far away from a club environment.  

[steve_holmes_11]

Clubs have been at a bit of a disadvantage during these times of lockdown.
With home visits also banned I'm surprised there hasn't been more posted about solo gaming.

At its best, a club ought to provide a stimulating environment where there's plenty of other stuff going on to inspire.
That does require a bit of outreach by the established members, and a willingness for all to play outside their core rules and armies.

And that returns me to the subject of complicated rules.
If I were to roll up to a new club, to be told "We play (Ruleset X)" this could work out several ways.
* It's possible that I have previous experience of rueset X and utterly hated it.
* Maybe I have previous experience, and loved it, indeed I have armies (provided I match the scale and basing of teh club guys).
* If I've never encountered the rules before, it's a real problem if they are complicated, as it's difficult to join in a game without spoiling it for the others.
* If I've never encountered the rules before, but they are simple, I'd hope to be up to speed part way through a first game - and enjoying myself if the other players chip in with some handy advice.

But we all have different complicated thresholds.
As mentioned above, I think  some players enjoy the page count and the potential for winning by being better read than your opponent.

[steve_holmes_11]

Having grumbled about complicated rules, it's perhaps time to spare a thought for the poor beleaguered rules author.

I'm sure many of us have had a go at producing some rules; for use among friends, for the club, or that happy few who have been published.
Having gone there, one begins to understand how difficult it can be to explain simple things.

Movement seems simple, but try describing a move that involves wheeling around a small stand of trees, or deployment form buildings back into a fighting formation.

These descriptions tend to come at three levels:
* The one page set, that details moves, ranges and hit values, and leaves the rest to the players standard practice.
* The evolved club rules, which add a bit of details about flanks, manoeuvre, and work well while one of the co-authors is present.
* The professional job with clear description of most common situations and a running order that matches teh flow of teh game.

Level 3 is incredibly hard to master, probably the result of lots of practice.
But hats off to everybody who takes the first step on the journey; some will arrive.

[Big Insect]

The Berkeley Vale Wargames 'Club' has been a harsh testing ground for rules over the many years I have played with the members (ooo-er missus!).

We have some fine examples of home baked rules - with an excellent 5 figure gang 28mm Western game called 'Liberty' (using an ordinary deck of playing cards - long before Dead Mans Hand was published) - the rules are literally one side of A4 and the you can expect the wrath of all the other players if anybody tries to pull a fast one. The 'owner' of the game - Shaun - is also a sculptor and so the town is inhabited by an assortment of odd characters - like the homeless bag-lady (Teresa May) or the town drunk (Donald Trump) and extra points can usually be scored by gunning them down at first sight. The game usually revolves around acquiring bags of kittens - which Shaun has modelled up and which are scattered around the town. Each gang has to collect as many as possible and stay alive.
I have a gang of 5 appropriately painted up lady 'cowboys' - my Nolan Sisters gang - and there is a Brian May gang with highly decorative waistcoats - and a bunch of 'filthy' Mexicans you get the idea.
We have been known to play the game with appropriate country & western music on the juke-box in the pub - even wearing appropriate hats and moustaches ... you get the idea.

We play all manner of 'commercial' rules - but it is a pre-requisite that all of them are amended to incorporate a really good 'Recrimination Phase' at the end of each game. In fact the better a set is the more likely that the recrimination Phase might occur actually during the game or on several occassions during game play.

[toxicpixie]

Chris - BBB and "reading rules that aren't there" - I've been guilty of that. "But it must be complex than it is!". Nope. That's actually been very helpful recently with Oathmark which sparked a lot of that discussion and shows why FAQs cover seemingly redundant obvious explained in the text stuff.

Because it isn't.

*You* may know what it means, and why it's structured like that, you're regulars and your play testers may know, but a lot of people just won't share your common assumptions. Commercial rules are a devil for that - incredibly hard to write the assumptions and background in without ending up unusably long and obtuse.

And that's before editing and proof reading and printing errors...

Eg in Oathmark, Giants lacked the Enormous keyword. Simple, obvious editing fail. Low to mid level Goblin heroes lack the Magic Item trait, unlike other races. Which looks the same, except... that's authors decision as they're both to weedy and cutthroat AND treacherous to be given/retain a magic item... zero way of knowing that unless answered...

Similarly the army lists say two war machines per territory granting them as an army list choice. Except halflings, which is written in the singular. It's doesn't say "two catapults", it's says "Catapult". I assumed exactly as written, many many others took the examples of *every other warmachine* and read into it that it meant two...

Perfectly clear and obvious text to me and about 25% of the player base, completely opaque and confusing to everyone else I may have been forewarned though as I'd made a similar assumption with Undead Chariots and that they should be a unit of "monsters"
So three of them make a unit. And nope, they're used singularly like other war machines

[steve_holmes_11]

One feature common to a lot of successful "non complicated" rules is consistent mechanisms.

There mat be a way to resolve fighting, which can be applied in all fight situations.

A guaranteed route to runaway complication is to introduce different mechanisms based on situation.
* Here's the drill for a normal infantry vs infantry fight.
* This one applies when tanks are involved, it's different so if a combined arms situation you have to resolve 2 separate fights.
* Here's some stuff for aircraft, they don't show up frequently, but we're wargamers, so every game deserves a dogfight.
* And Artillery, not much of a game without bombardment - these are different to the other fighting rules.

By the second edition the poor beleaguered author's dealing with requests for boats, gliders, engineering vehicles, mines, wire, tunneling, street fighting.
Street fighting with boats and gliders and air support...

What did he do to deserve this?
The poor guy just left the "different mechanisms" door open and his players crashed right on through.

[Leman]

The last group I played with, back in Liverpool, were a great set of lads, but for Ancients and Renaissance were wedded to FOG, which I found more irksome to read than uni textbooks. Just could not get my head round why it was like that Russian block game of tesselation, and why on earth melees seemed to go on for ever, and wishing to god it would end and we could go to the pub. Anyway, when I left the UK I gave them all my FOG stuff and certainly won't be picking that up again, or anything similar.