Designing Manual Games
Designing Manual GamesThe subject chosen for the game in this book was the attempt, in 1944, of General Patton's Third Army to penetrate the German lines around the old fortified French city of Metz and thus reach the Moselle River. Doing this in mid-September, 1944, would have had the effect of collapsing the entire German defense effort west of the Rhine River. The losses the Germans would have then suffered in retreating behind the Rhine with their non-mechanized forces would have made it possible to end the war five or six months earlier.
Now, that's the description of the situation being simulated. It was not chosen just for its historical interest although that was one important reason. A more important reason was that the situation could fit on a 5 x 8-inch game map. In addition to the small size of the situation, it is a relatively simple one. The scale of the game is such that regimental-size units are used, thus giving 8 American units and 11 German. The basic concept of this game, then, is a teaching game, one that will fit in a book and which will have sufficient simplicity to easily demonstrate various aspects of game design.
It is important to remember that in any historical game you basically have two concepts you must adhere to. One is fixed and that is the concept that the historical event must be accurately simulated. The other is more variable and has to do with how much or in what detail you wish to portray the historical event. The different levels of complexity available in a historical situation have much to do with the game's accessibility. A more complex game may give the user much more, but at much greater expense in terms of his time and effort. It's the difference between having a full dinner and a snack. Many gamers prefer to approach a large number of game subjects as they would a smorgasbord-if only to determine which historical period or event they're currently unfamiliar with might excite their interest to the point where they will be willing to expend the great amount of time and effort required to deal with a much more complex simulation on that particular subject or area.
This accounts for much of the popularity of simpler games. Indeed, quit often the same gamer who will spend dozens of hours playing a complex and detailed simulation on a particular situation will also be found playing a much simpler simulation on the same subject when time and energy are short.
This concept stage of game design also allows you to decide what particular aspect of the game you wish to spotlight. You may have a pet theory about a particular historical situation regarding the critical elements. You can do your game stressing these particular elements, be they leadership, weather, geography, the effects of certain weapons or whatever. Generally, the more accurate your perceptions regarding the critical elements in the battle, the better the game will be. But even if your stress in the game is at variance with the real critical elements in the situation, you still end up with a rather interesting game. It's simply a question of what aspect you will be viewing the historical situation from.
Now that we've decided what we want our game to be, we have to put it together. This is the second step of designing a game, the research step. It was your knowledge of the situation which led you to think about doing a game on it in the first place.
The sources that will go into the Drive on Metz game number about a dozen volumes in all. These include the volumes which must be resorted to for technical details of things that go into the game. But the main source, the one that is followed to determine the faithfulness of the game to history, is The Lorraine Campaign by Hugh M. Cole. This is an exceptional book in that it contains information on just about every aspect of the game. This is unusual. It's no accident that The Lorraine Campaign is put together this way as it is one of the volumes in the U.S. Army's officially sponsored series on the history of World War II. Indeed, the book was published for the U.S. Army by the Government Printing Office.
The book contains rather complete Order of Battle information, excellent maps and the results of additional research that Army historians did through interviews with German participants in the battle. I've worked in the Army archives in Washington and not only is the research done from the "enemy point of view" invaluable in doing a game, but the American Army did an admirable job in incorporating much of this information in its official histories. Indeed, the only fault one can find with the Army's official histories (especially when compared to those done by European countries) is that they do not include real nuts-and-bolts information on the organization and real abilities of the equipment and units. This is covered to a certain extent by other volumes in the U.S. Army series, particularly those involved with the procurement and training of ground combat troops. But for a game of the scale of the Drive on Metz. The Lorraine Campaign is quite adequate.
Although Drive on Metz is a simple game, this simplicity was achieved only through the use of extensive knowledge of the event and period in which it took place. The following bibliography consists of secondary sources that contain extensive information:
The Lorraine Campaign (Hugh M. Cole, Government Printing Office). This volume is part of the U.S. Army's official history of World War II. It is a thick book, unbiased, and goes into considerable detail on the campaign which the Drive on Metz belonged to. Basically, though, this source was a detailed diary of the battle.
Handbook of German Military Forces (U.S. Army intelligence). This was an official document prepared during the war and gave the most complete (in one source) details on the German Army (organization, tactics, weapons, etc). There are usually reprints of this book available in specialized bookstores.
"The Organization of the U.S. Army in Europe (1944-45)" (Strategy & Tactics magazine #30). This article contains organizational, tactical, weapons and other information on the U.S. Army.
Arnaville, Altuzzo and Schmidt (MacDonald and Mathews, Government Printing Office). Another of the U.S. Army official histories. This is one of the specialized volumes, in this case a detailed study of three battles in Europe. One of these battles (Arnavile) took place during the Drive on Metz. The section on Arnaville gives much detailed information on the entire period covered by the Drive on Metz game.
I could go on with bibliography related to the game. As one designs more games one draws upon more information. The above sources, however, would give the average person 95 percent of the data needed to design a Drive on Metz game. The other five percent is hard to put on paper.
Our first step is to make our map. This is done very simply. On page xxx there is a black-and-white reproduction of the full color map taken from the many maps in the Lorraine campaign book. The area covered by our game is outlined. This map is then overlaid with a hexagonal grid (we usually do this on a light table, putting, the map under a blank hexagon sheet and using the light shining from underneath to simply trace the terrain features; you could use a window on a bright day for the same effect). The next map is the play-test map (again a black-and-white rendering of a color mp). And finally we have the finished game map. In this case, the map was done to be reproduced in black and white. Although color helps, you can see from this map it is not absolutely essential and l the terrain features are clear, distinct and capable of being played upon. The terrain analysis was not difficult at all. Indeed, the following excerpt from The Lorraine Campaign coupled with a reference (hexagon numbers) as to the map in question will demonstrate how simple it is:
The XX Corps Crossing of the Moselle
The military value of the Metz position lay not in the size of its garrison or in the intrinsic strength of its numerous fortified works. Instead, the long defense of Metz must be ascribed to a combination of factors favorable to the Germans: the presence of elite troops during the initial stages of the battle; the moral and physical strength derived from steel and concrete, even in outdated fortifications; and the possession of ground that favored the defender.
The eastern face of the Meuse Plateau, whose heights average some 380 meters, falls sharply to the plain of the Woevre and a mean elevation of not more than 220 meters. In this plain the Imperial German armies had deployed for the bloody frontal attacks against the Verdun salient in 1916. Beyond the Woevre the Moselle Plateau rises gradually to command the western approaches to Metz. The western edge of the plateau coincides roughly with the Conflans-Mars-la-Tour-Chambley Road (hexes 0206-0207-0208-0209). The eastern heights, averaging 370 meters, drop abruptly to the Moselle River. East of the river some blocks of the Moselle Plateau reappear, but these are dominated by the higher ground on the west bank. The main plateau, if measured from Conflans to Metz, is about 10 miles in depth. The western half is moderately rolling; on some roads the ascent to the east is barely perceptible. The eastern half of the plateau is high, rugged and wooded, grooved by deeply incised ravines and innumerable shallow draws. It would be hard to imagine a terrain more compartmentalized and conducive to defense by small tactical bodies.
The Metz salient, as it confronted the XX Corps at the beginning of the September operation, extended for some 18 miles in a perimeter west of Metz and the Moselle. On the left the German position rested on the Moselle near Arnaville, about nine and a half miles from the center of Metz. On the right a western affluent of the Moselle, the Orne, marked the limits of the German line, which was anchored near the village of Mondelange (hex 0103) approximately 10 miles due north of Metz.
At the southern end of this bridgehead position, the ravines cut obliquely through the wooded Moselle scarps and the defile down to the river channel. The Rupt de Mad, farthest from Metz, is traversed by a road that angles from Mars-la-Tour via Chambley and reaches the Moselle near Arnaville (hex 0510). The middle road riverward can be entered either at Mars-la-Tour or at Rezonville. It then passes through the village of Gorze (hex 0409), lying in the main throat of the gorge to which it gives its name, and attains the Moselle bank at Noveant. The third and northernmost of these ravines, the Mance, forms an "L" whose upright runs from north to south through a small
depression in the Bois des Genivaux. Near Gravelotte this shallow gully descends into a deep draw, finally turning toward Vaux and the Bois des Ognons. Just east of Gravelotte the main high road between Verdun and Metz dips to cross the Mance, while a secondary road (hex 0508) branches south at Gravelotte and follows along the bottom of the ravine to Ai-sur-Moselle and the river.
These three defiles would canalize any attempt to turn the Metz position on the south by a drive to and across the Moselle. But a close-in envelopment or a frontal attack in this section would be hampered chiefly by the ravine of the Mance. In effect, therefore, the natural anchor position on the German left was formed by the lower Mance ravine, the plateau of the Bois de Vaux north of the ravine "and the plateau of the Bois des Ognons to the south. On the eve of World War I the German governors of Metz had reinforced this natural abutment by the construction of a heavily gunned fort on the river side of the Bois de Vaux Plateau about a mile southwest of Ars-sur-Moselle. This strong work, renamed by the French in 1919 as Fort Driant, was sited so that its batteries dominated not only the southwestern approaches to Metz but the Moselle Valley as well.
North and west of the Bois de Vaux two villages, Rezonville (0407) and Mars-Ia-Tour, served as outpost positions for the southern sector of the German front. They blocked the main road to Metz and controlled passage from north to south through the Mance and Gorse ravines. Beyond Gravelotte, the Bois des Genivaux and the wood-bordered Mance combined in a strong defensive line and masked the German forts farther to the east. These rearward positions lay on the open crest of a long ridge whose western slopes were outposted by a sprinkling of isolated but strongly built farms.
North of the Bois des Genivaux, the forward German troops occupied a plateau marked by the villages of Verneville (0406) and Abbeville. The strongest position in the German center, however, was farther to the east. Here the village of Amanvillers, located on a tableland, lay under the guns of forts hidden on wooded ridges to its rear. The Amanvillers Plateau continued northward on the German right. In this area the forward defense line included the villages of St. Privat and Roncourt. To the rear rose a welter of rugged heights and heavy forests, running diagonally northeastward to the Orne. This northernmost portion was held only lightly. The main German line was a kind of switch position extending from the Bois de Jaumont along the Bois de Feves ridge. This switch position was strengthened by a series of forts and walls. In this sector, however, the Moselle scarps do not come clear to the Moselle, as they do south of Metz. Here, in the area of Mazieres-les-Metz, a wide, level floodplain offered a gateway to the Metz position, once an attacker had cleared the western escarpment.
In sum, the ground west of Metz gave a very considerable advantage to the defender. Long, open slopes provided a natural glacis in front of the main German positions. Wooded crests and ravines screened the movement of troops and supply from the eye of the attacker. Broken terrain permitted the most effective use of small defending groups. Ravines, draws, and thick wood-lots offered ample opportunity for counterattack tactics, both in force and/in patrol strength. Finally, the German soldier had used this terrain as a maneuver arena and was prepared to exploit every accident of ground.
-From The Lorraine Campaign by Hugh M. Cole
Now we get into the third step which I call integration. Here we integrate this research material into game components. I am also jumping right ahead into the fourth step which is preparation of the prototype. Indeed, at this point we can even stretch out into the fifth step, which is preparation of the rules. I will explain how I can be stretching ahead of myself like this by describing the tools available to a professional game designer and how they will, if properly used, produce a highly effective game with a minimal expenditure of resources (not to mention decreasing the migraine headache count for both players and publishers). Once you've got your map, the next thing you do is integration in the truest sense of the word. You have to put together your Order of Battle, or your units that will be represented as playing pieces in the game as well as your Terrain Effects Chart and, to a lesser extent, your Combat Results Table.
The playing pieces contain information relating to their combat abilities (combat strength) as well as their movement ability (movement allowance). Both of these numbers are subject to change as the game is developed, but you must put down on the Terrain Effects Chart and the Combat Results Table some numbers to start out with. For Drive on Metz I did it like this. The scale of the game map is 1:250,000 which comes out to four kilometers per hexagon. A unit moving through a hexagon actually moves farther since one does not move in a straight line. So the actual distance in moving through a hexagon would be closer to five or six kilometers. Most of the units are infantry divisions. Their infantry is not motorized and, without special transport being attached to the division, the infantry marches on foot (at least the infantry does).
Most of the rest of the division is motorized, particularly the heavy equipment and the units that carry supplies, but the division as a whole can move no faster than the infantry can march. Moving on good roads, you can expect the infantry to move about four hexes or 16 kilometers a day. Motorized units, despite the fact that nobody is walking, are not that much more efficient if only because of the sheer size. Motorized units are also more limited in a tactical situation by the fact that a division does contain a couple of thousand motor vehicles and the road net is never dense enough for all the units to move everywhere they want at the same time. All of these problems conspire to give motorized units no more than two or three times the movement ability (in most situations) of non-motorized formations.
This being the fact, we assign the movement allowances to the various formations. The Germans get a somewhat lower movement allowance for their motorized units because their equipment is not up to the standard of the Americans and the American air power has by this time developed a rather nasty habit of blowing away German motor transport with sickening regularity.
Getting back to the Terrain Effects Chart, we thus have the road movement requiring one movement point, the clear areas requiring two since the basic assumption is that it's more difficult to move through fields (no matter how clear they are) than to move on a road. Rough terrain simply represents more slopes and rough terrain in general. The forest actually is the most difficult terrain to move in, especially for the motor vehicles. It can be done, but very slowly.
Calculating the effects of terrain on combat is a bit more difficult, but as with most problems encountered in game design it is best to approach it from a rather simplistic view. First of all, the Combat Results Table is constructed on the assumption that all combat will take place in fairly open terrain. Thus, all of the effects of terrain on combat have to do with improving the position of the defender. On our Combat Results Table, different types of terrain reduce the attacker's odds by the simple expedient of moving one or more columns to the left on the Combat Results Table (a +5 becomes a +4 or a +3 depending upon the terrain the defender is in).
Terrain has two advantages for the defender. It will hide him, thus making it easier for the defender to ambush the attacker. Don't underestimate the value of ambush. Most casualties in warfare, especially modern warfare, are nothing more than successful ambushes. For the defender to successfully ambush the attacker he must be capable of concealing his presence. Granted that the attacker may know that the defender is in the general area, but any battle comes down to those individuals up front making contact with individual enemy troops up front. A forest, a town or exceptionally rough terrain is not a welcome sight to a soldier mainly because of what he cannot see. The second advantage conferred by terrain is protection from enemy fire. Some types of terrain will conceal you from sight but not from the effects of modern weapons. Thus, a forest can be a mixed blessing. Indeed, many types of forest are more dangerous when hit by artillery fire because the exploding shells create additional lethal wooden fragments when they blow up trees. You're just as dead from a tree crushing your skull as a bullet wound. A town should, ideally, be the best type of terrain to defend in. However, as can many other types of terrain, it can aid the attacker also. Once the attacker gets into the town he's covered (from the effects of enemy fire) and concealment works both ways.
Rivers, streams and similar bodies of water are a special case. Their main effect upon the attacker is to "embarrass" him. That is, the attacker must first of all appear on the bank of the river and then (never quickly enough) attempt to build a bridge or use boats to get across. At the same time, the defender has a golden opportunity to kill all of the attackers before they can get to the other side. This often happens. The only way the attacker can overcome it is to use his artillery and long-range fire weapons to reduce the effects of the defender's fire as much as possible. That being the case, a frontal attack across a river is always a dangerous operation.
The fortified hexes on the game map are the most important for the Germans. They represent, as the name implies, fortifications. These complexes consist primarily of artillery and machinegun positions built into concrete buildings covering areas from a few hundred square meters to a couple of acres, usually occupying the high ground and having open areas around them to make it difficult for an attacker to approach them without being seen. Since these forts generally blocked the movement routes through each of the hexagons on the map, they posed a major obstacle to an attacking force. However, these forts were of use to the Germans only after they were occupied (a German unit in the fortified hex).
So there's our map and, coincidentally, the Terrain Effects Chart. The next step is to put the playing pieces on the map.
First, we have to construct the Order of Battle. This is initially nothing mare than a list of the major formations that took part in the battle.
The scale of the game generally determines what size the units represented in the game will be. The battlefield for our game covers an area 44 kilometers wide by 36 kilometers deep. During World War II, it was normal for a division (the basic unit for ground combat for the last hundred or so years) to cover a frontage of 10 to 20 kilometers. However, it was not unknown for divisions to stretch themselves out over 50 or 60 kilometers. Since a division size game unit, with it's adjacent zone of control hex could only cover three hexes (12 kilometers), we have to take a look at the next level.
In the drive on Metz there were four divisions on the German side and three on the American side. Note that this is too few units for a "normal" game. Generally, you need about 10 per side to make it interesting. That is, provide sufficient decision-making opportunities for both sides.
Since each division consists (usually) of three regiments or brigades, we achieve, by this simple piece of logic, the decision to use regiments, in the game. Regiments and brigades normally cover about half a divisions frontage. One third of a division or any other unit is kept back as a reserve, if possible. Thus a division holding a 20 kilometer front would put two regiments up front, each holding ten kilometers and keep the third regiment back as a reserve. This solves our problem. If we use regiments, they will be covering as much terrain (12 kilometers max) and provide a sufficient number of units (about ten each side) to make the game interesting. Each playing piece will represent one of the regiments that participated. The next thing we must do is to make up a lit of all the regiments that did, indeed, take part. This is usually pretty straightforward (although for some battles it can be a real headache), and on this list we should simply note whatever information we can obtain on the quality and quantity of each of the units. In our Metz game, for example, subunits of the three American divisions (the 7th Armored, 5th Infantry and 90th Infantry) were all fairly equal, using the standard organization then prevalent in the American Army. The 5th Infantry was a bit more experienced and the 7th Armored, because of its equipment, was a bit more powerful as well as being completely mobile. Each of the American regiments consisted of (with all attached and supporting units) some 3,000 to 4,000 men. On the German side it was a somewhat less uniform situation.
The Germans had four divisions available but one of them wasn't really a division. Two of the others were only remnants of divisions. The "complete" division was the 559th Volksgrenadier which consisted of recently (albeit, well) trained but green troops in one of the new divisions the Germans had organized since the Normandy invasion three months before. In terms of manpower, the regiments had a bit less than two thirds of that available to American regiments. In addition, the German units (if not many of the senior individuals) lacked experience relative to the American units and, more importantly, did not have the lavish levels of equipment and ammunition available to the Americans (even with the current American supply difficulties).
The German "nondivision" was division number 462. It was referred to as that because it was simply a divisional staff (a few hundred officers and clerical staff) whose main function was to gather under their control whatever units that could be remotely considered combat worthy and to attempt to function as a division. Actually, division 462 did rather well in this respect because it had available to it in the area of Metz the staff and students of two training establishments, one for officer candidates (the regiment Fahnenjunker) and the noncommissioned officers school (the regiment Unterfuhrer). The Fahnenjunker regiment had a strength of 2,200, but mediocre equipment. The regiment Unterfuhrer had only 1,600 and about the same level of equipment. The 3rd regiment of division 462 was the 1010th Security regiment, a unit that just happened to be in the area. This unit was reduced to a level of 600 second-rate troops, but they were fairly competently led and could hold a position for a while. Finally, there was the Metz garrison which were primarily support troops in the area of Metz itself. These troops were not very mobile, but there were a few thousand of them and they could provide some resistance if it came down to actually defending Metz.
The two remnants of divisions were actually of rather high quality. There was the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division and the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division. Each of these divisions had only two regiments (which was the way they were organized) and each of these regiments could muster only a few thousand men at most. In effect, these divisions were now two segments, each of its two regiments. The divisions had been battered about considerably in retreating across France during August, but their morale was still good and they were starting to rebuild. Indeed, the 17th SS had just incorporated into its ranks two SS brigades (the 49th and 51st) that were being sent forward to reinforce the crumbling German front. The 3rd Panzergrenadier had come up from Italy where, although it had been punished a bit, it had remained in pretty good shape. Finally, the Germans had one reserve unit available to them during the battle. This was the 106th Panzer brigade-a few thousand men with good tanks and other equipment, but very poorly trained and led. This unit did not distinguish itself.
Assigning combat values to these units is a fairly simple process initially. Simply take the worst unit (as best you can determine it) and assign it a value of "1." It's a good idea at this point to take the best unit (as best you can determine it) and ask yourself the question: How much better is the best unit than the worst unit? If you come up with a number no greater than, say, 9, you're probably in the ball park and at that point all you have to do is fit all the remaining units in the game in between the best and the worst by just asking yourself the question: How is this unit in comparison with the best and the worst? If it sounds simple, it is. There's no mystery involved in it. The system is further refined when you start playing the game and any misjudgments you have made quickly become evident in your attempts to recreate the historical event. You then modify the values on units and eventually end up with a rather accurate numerical appraisal of each unit's combat ability.
We now place the units on the game map. Simply put, the units will start the game in one of two ways: either they will be placed on a specific hex at the beginning of the game or they will enter the game map from a specific side (or even hex) where the originally entered the area. In this particular battle, the German units are placed on the map where they were historically on September 7 and the American units enter as they did in early September.
At this point, it would be a good idea to explain the concept of "level of abstraction".
On September 7, when our game begins, there were actually American units on the map, but not units in the sense of the game. These were very small formations, primarily reconnaissance patrols. Since we are not dealing with a game that includes units as small as half a dozen men and two jeeps (a reconnaissance patrol), these units will not show up. They will be "abstracted" when the "main force units" enter the map. The small recon unit will be assumed to be wandering in front of the playing pieces that are used in the game. This is a common and necessary practice in designing games. It is not possible to include every element, no matter how complex the game you are trying to design. When you are designing a game you must keep firmly in mind what level of abstraction you are working at. New designers often have problems in keeping this straight. If their game components (size of the map, number of playing pieces) are not adequate to the level of detail they have in mind, they're going to have big problems and the game is not going to work. You must, in a case such as that, either change the size of your game or change your level of abstraction.
When putting together your game prototype, you should think back on how you react when encountering a new game for the first time. A lot of psychology goes into designing these games. We are taking advantage of a lot of quirks in the way people think. All games do that and the general game system presented here is the end result of over a thousand games designed in the past and millions of game playing sessions. I don't presume to know exactly what goes on in peoples minds when they play a game, but I know what works.
One of the things that you have to wrestle with to make your game work are the victory conditions. These are the objectives both sides are pursuing in order to win the game. These should also be the goals of the historical conflict the game is based on. Sometimes, the historical victory conditions are straightforward, but not always. Wargames based on battles, battles which are part of larger campaigns, are often more complicated situations. A prime example is the Drive on Metz game in this book. Both sides would consider it a victory if they could simply destroy all of the other sides combat units. But this was very unlikely, it is almost always very unlikely. Even in older periods, where the historical account speaks of one side "destroying the enemy host," most of the enemy host simply ran away. In the Drive on Metz, seizing the city of Metz or simply getting by it is the primary US victory condition. For the Germans, victory is avoiding an American victory and doing it with as few troops as possible. The Germans had many other battles to fight at that time and they needed all the soldiers they could muster. So don't consider victory conditions simple or easy, they're not. But coming up with workable and realistic victory conditions is often one of the most stimulating and rewarding metal exercises you'll encounter in designing a game.
You are well advised to begin by designing a fairly simple game. This will hone the basic skills you will require to handle any game design chore and will do it in a way that will not leave you frustrated from tackling something beyond your abilities. Even the largest and most complicated game is basically an application of the techniques I am detailing here. It is simply a question of being able to have more things flying through the air at the same time.
Getting back to our 10 steps we find that we are now up to step four. We have a prototype of the game. We have a map. We have playing pieces. We have a Combat Results Table and Terrain Effects Chart. The next step is the rules.
Beginning on a following page (click here to see) are the game's rules. These were prepared by me in the space of a few hours. I used what we called at SPI a "rules master." It is a basic set of rules for no game in particular and was stored in one of the computers. All the staffer has to do was sit down at the terminal and order the machine to change all references to "First Player" to "American" and all references to "Second Player" to "German" and make a few other minor changes. One must type in one's Terrain Effects Chart, Combat Results Table, order of appearance, victory conditions and the like. It takes a few hours and provides one with a first draft of the rules. This is a common procedure learned the hard way. In fact, I was first introduced to this procedure by Tom Shaw of Avalon Hill years ago when he asked me to design my first game for them, the naval battle of Jutland (in 1916). I asked, "How do I start writing the rules?" He said, "It's simple. You simply take the last game we published and use it as a model." I thought for a moment and then spoke up, "The last game was Guadalcanal" (a game of U.S. Marines and Japanese infantry slugging it out on a tropical island in the South Pacific in 1942). Aside from that apparent mismatch, the idea is basically valid. It's not as easy to do as it used to be because of the great proliferation of different game systems, but you can usually find a game that matches the one you are currently working on. With the current proliferation of PC based text scanners, I know of more than one game designer that has scanned another games rules, done some heavy editing, and finished his own rules writing job much more quickly than in the pre-scanner days.
A good example of the "rules master" approach occurred when, in mid-1979 I designed and developed a game called Demons: The Game of Evil Spirits. This was a fantasy-type game based upon the Lesser Key of Solomon, a medieval magical system for finding treasure. As the game system developed, it progressively became a solitaire game. Although it was a rather simple game, I was using a rules master for two-player games. This required a considerable amount of editing on my part and the critical contribution of half a dozen other people (testers and other staff) to get all the wrinkles out of it. When I was finished, though, I had a good rules master for small solitaire games which I promptly appropriated before it was even published (I grabbed the galleys) for a game I did a few months later called Timetripper (the classic case of the 20th-century soldier getting bounced around through a bunch of historical battles as he shoots his way back home). This one also worked very well as a solitaire game and, what do you know, there was a rules master there, even if I did have to make it myself.
Step number six, as I mentioned earlier, is the most difficult one. This is game development: taking all these neatly put-together little items and exposing them to the harsh criticism of the player. Play testing usually isn't too difficult. There are plenty of gamers around who are more than willing to sit down and play a brand new game. Most play testers are also keenly aware of the fact that they are in a position to make a substantial contribution to the game's final quality. While the designer and the developer are the people who get their names on the cover of the game, it is not for nothing that the testers are listed under the more extensive credits found inside the game itself.
The biggest single problem one has with play testers is when you get one who would rather play the game than test it. When I began testing most of my games I didn't really have any victory conditions other than the obvious ones that are apparent in the game situation, particularly if it's a historical situation. The players generally know something about the situation. They know who won originally and some of the reasons why. Of course, more precise victory conditions must go into the game eventually, but in the early stages you are merely testing the mechanics of the game. If someone at this point merely plays to win, he is going to have two problem. One, he doesn't have a precise definition of what winning is, and, secondly, he is going to take advantage of obvious loopholes in the rules as they exist at the beginning of testing. Quite often, this is merely a lack of maturity. I have used testers as young as l2 or 13 years of age. These fellows are usually quite precocious, but as long as they keep their minds on what the testing is supposed to accomplish (the mechanical debugging of the game), I was glad to have them. With older testers, this is much less of a problem. The best play tester you have available to you is yourself. People are often fearful of their own creations, but these fears are generally baseless. When it comes to playing the game you simply sit down and put yourself into "play mode" and play the damn thing. Turning it over to someone else for play testing is something of an acid test and a double check. But you'd be surprised, when you think about it, how many things you taught yourself and how few had to be caught by a play tester. In a case such as this you might overlook the fact that games are very susceptible to the smallest problem in the rules or the game system becoming a critical impediment to the game's working. I say this to drive home the point that you can catch a great deal of the problems in a game yourself, playing it by yourself before having to go to play testers. This is important also because even when using testers there's always a communications problem. What they may see as a problem may simply be a result of their playing with the wrong rules. Again, this is the reason for getting your rules down on paper as soon as possible. When you're playing the game yourself, you still have the problem of misinterpreting your own rules, but you're more aware of the problem and it's much simpler to solve it, unless you're prone to losing arguments with yourself.
During this testing process you make changes in the rules as necessary. Depending upon the complexity of the game, you might have to play it anywhere from a half a dozen times to dozens of times during the testing stage. This is only a fraction of the testing the game will get before it's finished. The bulk of this testing will take place during the blind testing phase.
Blind testing is nothing more than having the game played without the designer or developer in attendance. You are, in effect, sending out the closest thing to a finished version of the game and the people who are playing it are approaching the game as if they had just bought it in a store.
After a few rounds of blind testing (occasional in-house testing will also be continued to check various "patches" in the game), your game will be finished.
I am assuming that many of you could follow all of these procedures. All you need is a few game-playing friends to help you with your play testing and some other people, either local or otherwise, to help you with your blind testing. All of the corrections and patches on the rules can be made by simply editing the manuscript on your PC and printing out a new set. It's also useful to put the date of the change in brackets (as in [3 Jun 93]) next to each change so you, and the testers, know what was changed and when.
The eighth step is one you really don't have to go through unless you are dying to get the game published. This is the editing, wherein somebody else takes your finished product and tries to pick holes in it. This should be someone with some experience in dealing with game rules because he will be looking for very subtle things. Most people who work in publishing in a copy editing function (not just copy editors, but most editors in general) could perform this function. It isn't really all that necessary if the game is simply for your own and your friends' amusement and entertainment. However, if you want to get the game published, send it to a publisher and, if it meets the standards set forth in this section and it's on a salable subject, it stands a good chance of being published. Many of the other, smaller wargame companies are interested in outside submissions. Your chances of getting your game published are improved tremendously if what you submit to the publisher is in the format I have just outlined.
The ninth step is handled by a publisher, whether that be yourself, if you're actually going to prepare a limited edition of the game for distribution, or a regular publisher. Every time the copy is retyped, primarily for typesetting, and then pasted up for printing there is a probability of something getting scrambled or dropped or whatever. At this stage of the game you simply have to sit down and reread the copy quite a lot.
The last step is the one that never ends. This is the evaluation of the game. Was it good? Was it bad? For what reason? The results here are often ambiguous because any game, no matter how "bad" it is considered to be by the majority of people, has a small but dedicated group of admirers. I have found this to be true even for games that not only I disliked, but a majority of gamers disliked. When talking to the small group of admirers, I find that there were indeed elements in this game that did have merit. It's simply a question of what you're looking for and how you look at it. Frankly, I like nothing better than to sit around and mouth off about what game was good and what game was bad. In fact, parts of this book consist of quite a lot of that.
Why
the Rules Are the Way They Are
