What do I want anyway?

In a comment on my last post, Johnathon of The Palouse Wargaming Journal suggested that I consider writing "an expanded discussion on your rules' analysis including what works, what doesn't work, what you want, what you don't want, and how your preferences have changed over time".  My first reaction was that it would be like wandering through a maze lit by strobe lights. After some thought, it seemed to me that I might benefit from it and there may be some others would would find it of interest or even of some use, like those cautionary fairy tales, while the rest can skip over it pretty quickly. More than  that, I might even find the exercise useful apart from the pleasure one sometimes gets from nostalgia. 

In 2010, this was the sort of thing I wanted. 
(See 31 January 2010 post.)
This solo game was played using 'Warhammer Ancient Battles'. The rules were OK if played with the right mind frame, and I had friends with 25mm armies who played them, then they released a new version. Amongst other things, they changed the number of ranks of infantry that could fight and suddenly my basing and unit organization was a liability. At the same time, we made our move away from the city and I found  myself playing mostly solo. I decided to write what became the first edition of Gathering of Hosts. 

Luckily for everyone, I don't have much, if any, documentation or pictures from the first 30 years so we don't need to wallow too much in the past.  The present didn't spring into existence fully armed though, so  I will at least touch on the early days in this post. My very first book on wargaming was Featherstones's Battles With Model Soldiers which did not contain a full set of rules but did talk about the advantages of writing your own and how to go about it. It included some suggestions about how to write a simple set and then customize them. So there I was, in high school in 1971, conscripting my childhood friend next door, getting down on the floor with airfix, dice and rulers and enjoying ourselves in a private setting using cobbled together WWII rules!  I was lost! (Last year he mailed me his sole unit of 25mm Napoleonic Prussians which had managed to play one game when I was home on leave from college. He turned to golf instead of wargaming. )

Cold Wars 2010: Scenario 3 from The Raid on St. Michel.  Featherstone's book may have been my first, but Charge! was my first complete set of rules, purchased with my first paycheque as a young Officer Cadet at the College Militaire Royal de St. Jean in 1972. Before I could build two 30mm armies, I was on to WRG Ancients with Airfix  so it was 1998 before I got to play a proper game of Charge!. I still play it happily when the opportunity offers and if I still had room for even my old 6'x8' table, I might well still use it for my Horse and Musket rules but with 40mm figures on a 5'x4' table, it is rather limited. (Mind you, I did consider using it for the French Revolution with reduced ranges and moves.) 

Anyway, I'll largely pass over my college days where I really got into things along with Simon MacDowall (Legio, Comitatus, etc),  so much learned in those days and so many good memories over the decades. I'll also largely pass by my  15mm days, partly because I don't have any pictures, but also perhaps to spare reminding The Single Handed Admiral of his days of being prime guinea pig in the ever changing series of rules that eventually ended up being published in Wargames Illustrated. They were the days when I began to get hooked on writing rules and running multiplayer and convention games though so I can't skip them entirely. 

There were some great games in those years, including a number of multiplayer games at Dalhousie where we ran various 15mm early Napoleonic games involving 6 or 8 players,  not counting us, and multi-national 15mm armies. One of my favourites was one where a player panicked when seeing chaps in the wrong colour unit coming over the bridge towards him and opened up with canister, only to find out that they were his allies in full retreat, while in another, an allied cavalry commander was ordered to move into a reserve position while the infantry in reserve launched an attack. He tried to move out of the way only to be ambushed by French light infantry in a wood so he moved forward out of range. This triggered a charge by some French cavalry who had been in dead ground. His brigade won the melee and had to pursue over the crest of a hill, finding the rest of the French. So it was that his honest attempts to allow the infantry to advance while he manoeuvred  into reserve, turned into an attack that disrupted the enemy plans.  Oops. 

One doesn't really need fake command rules and event cards when you have multiple players and hidden units! 

The "Why" intro from my article in Wargames Illustrated Issue 23 (1989)
This is the published version of the ever being tweaked rules we  used with our 15's.
Bad habits are strong!

Another of those games from the 80's, a refight of Austerlitz at another Dal game day, taught me that its entirely possible to be too clever as scenario designer. In order to recreate the allied command confusion and poor performance vs the small but veteran French army, we put all the most experienced players on the French side with the Admiral playing Napoleon, and all the inexperienced players on the other side. They were each given  a written order but there was no over all Commander to coordinate their efforts or react to events.  Great re-creation but the new players thought they'd been set up so we could make fun of them. Even worse, some walked away before the debrief. Those who did stay understood the idea but didn't appreciate it. Instead of having made 5 new recruits, I suspect most never played another historical mini game. Lesson learned, try to make sure that all players have a chance to have fun at these sorts of events, even if they are doomed as they man the walls of the Alamo. 

And that is at least enough for one post if not too much. The next time I take up this topic I'll talk about MacDuff and the effect on me as a few other people actually played it and how I tried to cope with the struggle between reacting to  changes in me while knowing that at least a few other people were playing the rules thus making me feel that I should avoid changing them, and on another unforeseen consequence.