tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737853305204847838.post3051340259993664259..comments2023-11-20T05:27:02.037+00:00Comments on GrogNews: Random Wargame Design ThoughtsBranthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07482746543829626805noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737853305204847838.post-80838165724361434732011-04-27T00:45:25.946+01:002011-04-27T00:45:25.946+01:00Okay, my quick take on these:
1. The answer to th...Okay, my quick take on these:<br /><br />1. The answer to this would often be "it depends". It depends on how intricate your game design is, and whether it's even flexible enough to account for something like this in its play, to any discernible extent at the level you're playing. <br /><br />I'm not familiar with the particular incident you mention; there was an upswell of activity sure, but how bad was it? How long did it go on? And was the severity/extent/duration at all predictable? <br /><br />I often think the "chrome" is not worth it, to creat whole new sub-systems of rules and routines for things that may not happen, or could be just as well modelled at the level at which the action takes place by some more abstract and generalized routine.<br /><br />You can't reliably predict events outside of the theatre of your game, or their ultimate effect. But your game ought to recognize that they do happen.<br /><br />2. There should be lots of irrelevancies and distractions in games. Many of them were placed there by the designer hisself, but not for the reason you'd think! Seriously, there should be all kinds of things happening in a COIN game that don't have much or anything to do with the player or his actions. You don't see more of this, at least in hobby games, because the players want to do lots of shooting and running around, not tyring to figure out what's a threat and what isn't. Fog of war, and most players don't seem to like the taste of fog much.<br /><br />3. See 1. I don't think these factors have much to do _directly_ with the guys on the ground; over time, there may be a change in the ROE or a degradation of morale or cohesion, but the Army is still the Army, and it runs on a lot of institutional inertia. Horrible as it was, the My Lai massacre didn't change how the individual American soldier fought in the field, and while it may have been a shock to hear Walter Cronkite intone that the war was lost, it didn't spark a rush for the boats and transports back home.<br /><br />3.5. Again, while the accounts of correspondents (embedded or not, favourable or not, M88 riding or not) may make for entertaining reading, I don't see them having a discernible effect, at least not in any reasonable time frame.Briannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5737853305204847838.post-32947872663708527122011-04-23T16:22:29.283+01:002011-04-23T16:22:29.283+01:00What if it was a game where one side has no reason...What if it was a game where one side has no reasonable chance of victory through force of arms, but they might force the stronger side to withdraw by scoring sufficient number of political and media "points". If you can force enough bad press on your opponent, they lose resources. If they lose too much, they have to go home. <br /><br />I didn't intend that to be a commentary on the situation on Iraq, but this might be a fair way to describe war from the insurgent point of view.Dan Eastwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14105563883467108602noreply@blogger.com