The Commander Series Forum

Or Gratuitouly Pretentious Pontification on Something Inherently Simple.

Recent comments in this section have made me revisit my conceptualisation of what I think I am doing on when I play solo.

Why do I need a ‘concept’? Am I not just playing solo because there isn’t anyone else near me who likes playing wargames. Well, no. I think there is often an unnecessarily gloomy assumption made by gamers that solo is at best, second best. It needn’t be so.

Many, maybe most, people playing solo decide to:

1. Be the umpire, administering the game in a neutral way.

2. Play both sides with full knowledge of what they are trying to achieve and how they are going about it. A sort of zen dissociation from the one side while contemplating the other.

3. Play one side and pre-program the opposition using a sort of branch chain logic with as many options as you can think of beforehand to fulfil a plan.

There are variants, but all try to recreate a face to face game with one player either administering both sides’ plans, or playing one side against an opposition he has somehow pre-programmed. But if we look at the solo game as an entity of itself and not a poor copy of the face to face game, there is an alternative.

I used to spend a lot of time, effort, and occasionally some thought, trying to identify what was going on in the world for a living. The evidence was usually fragmentary and I knew I would never get it all. But the partial picture based on the evidence was better than a beautifully complete and coherent one that had nothing to do with reality. This may have coloured my thinking, and since those days I have thought a lot about what history is and how we construct a narrative to make sense of the past.

What’s that got to do with solo wargaming? Well I think wargamers generally have a very modernist, mechanistic approach to history and gaming. We like logical, predictable games. We want the unexpected to be in tables we can consult. We like control. We experience life forwards but understand it backwards. Wargamers want to understand it forwards, they want the thrill of a game but want to be able to predict all the events precisely. Solo gaming can deliver this to the nth degree of course, but if we use it for this we miss some of its greatest potential.

The opponent provides the uncertainty in a face to face game. His needs also impose certain restraints on a game. As he isn’t there you can take the opportunity to play those games where one side just isn’t going to ‘win’ in the conventional sense. You don’t need to be ‘fair’ in the scenario choice and balance of forces. But Solo can offer much more.

Instead of trying to pretend we don’t know the enemy’s plan we drew up as we play the game, how about not knowing it? How about experiencing the battle forwards, and having to make sense of it as you scramble to keep to your plan as it makes contact with the enemy?

Pick your side, ask yourself ‘what is my mission’? A sweep to find arms caches? To find, fix and destroy the enemy? To defend a ridge line until reinforcements arrive?
Then ask yourself why you have been asked to do this with this force. Because intel says there is a cache in a lightly defended village, because your General is being pressured by politicians to raise the bodycount, because you happen to be there.

And then, randomise your enemy, his size, composition, timing of arrival, entry points, locations, not before the game – but AS IT PROGRESSES. Set boundaries if you like, but they shouldn’t be too rigid. There should be some restraints: if you are fighting in Vietnam then a regiment of T80s aren’t going to appear, nor a coven of invisible flying witches. Keep within historic bounds, but having said that chuck dice, draw cards and place chits. Don’t go into a game knowing it is going to be Ong-Thanh, instead go rushing after that unknown number of NLF your politically pressured Colonel tells you is ripe for the taking and watch as events unfold. Of course it may not develop into Ong-Thanh if you are randomising correctly, but when it does you’ll be taken by surprise.

This isn’t a pre-programmed enemy. This way presupposes you don’t know the enemy objective and you will have to work very hard to work out what is going on. The command uncertainty in CWC/BKC will take care of most of the difficulties a commander faces in controlling his own men. The whole package may look too random at first glance, but combat as it is happening often does. You can make sense of it later when you write it up – for the forum, for a diary (follow a company’s fortunes for a bit- usually scary), or just to see what you might have done differently. You’ll have some great solo games. And you might start thinking about the often artificial narratives we put on the world as we attempt to make sense of it.

Inspirational stuff, Guy

so what you trying to say LOL

Great stuff Guy - I cross-posted some thoughts from someone on the 6mm Yahoo group a while back in relation to uncertainty [can't find the thread at the moment but will dig further...]

I don't see solo play as a "poor copy" of a game: for me, as it overwhelmingly the majority of my gaming, it *is* the game - and, while I can attain the Zen-like state you describe, I'm always looking for new ways to play. Your thoughts here are very welcome & have got me thinking [much harder than I thought I would be on this Sunday morning!]

I've been looking recently at the Mythic system - which I've used for solo RPGing - and considering how to use elements of that system for wargaming; there have been discussions of this in the past & the author at one point was looking at developing something...not sure where that's got to. In the meantime, my own thinking has been about using the Mythic engine to run my opposing commanders as NPCs in the game: in effect randomising the character [& therefore likely actions / reactions in-game] of those commanders [at all levels]. It strikes me that stress / time factors could be easily introduced into this process [adapting the Chaos factor of Mythic] which again would remove predictability of individual NPCs.

Another idea is to use conflicting missions for OpFors - so instead of, "I advance to sweep the village for arms caches & the OpFor's mission is to stop me getting into / seizing the village" you have, "I advance to sweep the village for arms caches & the OpFor's mission is to hold me *in* the village while reinforcements are en route".

Similarly, "I try to seize the ridge & the OpFor defends it" becomes, "I try to seize the ridge & the OpFor feints a resistance before yielding...just as the scheduled airstrike arrives".

Of course, in order for the conflicting missions to work in solo-play there needs to be further randomisation involved so that I don't know what the OpFor's mission is until too late...so you might need to have a default starting position [attack / defend] before introducing variables: it is then through the graduated implementation of those variables that the OpFor's mission becomes clearer to me [as the 'player'] and I may be able to adjust my own mission as necessary.

Hmm...time for more coffee methinks

Found the random variables I was looking for: posted in new thread.

'so what you trying to say LOL '
I was hoping you were going to tell me

Hmmm, so you're wondering about a sort of 'experiental' wargaming as opposed to the usual control based variant?

I've seen this working in big multi-player games where only a CinC absent from the tables is ordering forces about based on their own reports etc. Interesting, but maybe a little frustrating I thought?

There'a a book of 'programmed wargames scenarios' by charles Grant (I think) that enables you to play one side vs an intelligently planned opposition.

Also those 'paragraph' adventure books might offer some ideas for your branch chain logic option.

Julian, not wondering, doing.
Re the multi player games - depends what you mean by frustrating as to whether this is good or bad. I've played in really big multi-player games (80+) where some players moved figures 'at the front' and others formed command cells remote from the battlefield but heavily involved all the time. The frustration reflected real life command frustrations not the inability to play with the toy soldiers. It was two (or possibly more) games in one. The Command cell game and the table(lecture theatre floor)game with liaison umpires running between umpire cells and players to keep the thing coordinated.

Re the solo element, I think Nik mentioned Charles Grant's book somewhere, and I can see the superficial attraction, but again its that lust after rationality and control. I'm trying to get away from the branch chain logic (and to my own satisfaction have succeeded).

I do use it partially at times but I don't want to have a programmed narrative for the OpFor, I want to discover it.

Nik, (and Julian)
This is all good stuff.
I suppose I like to pinch a few ideas from anywhere I can and RPG games have certainly influenced some of the theory behind some of my solo stuff. I guess its not that new, Featherstone had a section on ‘narrative gaming’ in one of his books I think.

Regarding the conflicting missions idea eg ‘I advance to sweep the village for arms caches & the OpFor's mission is to hold me *in* the village while reinforcements are en route’. Much more interesting than the straightforward bash. But you are right Jules, I want high frustration, I want to think it is a sweep and not realise until it happens that the OpFor have laid a trap.

The Chandaran 1 sweep by the Soviets I wrote up was supposed to be this sort of thing. http://corrigenda.pbworks.com/Chandaran-1
.
The Soviet commander Ulyanov had been ordered to sweep the valley and its two villages to disrupt an insurgent build up. I sort of pre-programmed the Afghans, using hidden chits and variable force levels if and when triggered. I had expected the Afghans to be on the valley sides and in the Green zone. Those who read it will probably have realised that the Afghans had way too much Command and this was done to allow them to give the Soviets a really tough time
.
But, by a combination of the randomised placement and force strength the Sovs hit a major concentration in the first village, which, thanks to the CWC command system and my dice throwing, legged it at the first opportunity, the HQ not showing up until everything had gone to hell, and no-one materialised on the Soviet flanks. It wasn’t what I had expected. Now I have to let the GRU work out why. More analysis needed I think before the next episode in Ulyanov’s rise to glory.

On a practical note, I had thought about tweaking Ulyanov’s command rating or capping the number of orders he can issue, but he seems to be inept enough without too much help from me. That said he does seem to be amazingly lucky in the end results, (he’s still alive for a start).

The discussion/argument about whether the command system in CW/BK/FW/C is 'broken' intrigued me. Far from being ‘broken’ I think it is one of the best things about it as a simulation vice a game. Pete says several times how best to approach this. Don’t just think ‘***** hell, double 6’. Think what could have gone wrong and weave it into the game. Things don’t work perfectly in real life – hence the phrase ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’ (or sometimes your own troops!).

"The discussion/argument about whether the command system in CW/BK/FW/C is 'broken' intrigued me. Far from being ‘broken’ I think it is one of the best things about it as a simulation vice a game. Pete says several times how best to approach this. Don’t just think ‘***** hell, double 6’. Think what could have gone wrong and weave it into the game."

Hear, hear. Absolutely - I think you ignore the narrative to your detriment.

Sign me up as a fan of the narrative.

About a month ago I was playing my first "real" game of CWC. It was an Iran/Iraq war scenario, I was playing the Iranian defenders of a town. I had a pair of T-55 units that rolled phenomenally against an Iraqui T-55, knocking it out. I rolled a comand check to fire at another T-55 and I got a blunder, with the "fall back" result. As Iranian tanks in defensive scenarios are dug in and immobile, the tanks were considered knocked out.

So I thought about it for a minute, and decided the commander had radioed the tank crews after their successful shooting to say "good work men, you shall be rewarded for that!" When the tank crews heard that, they decided the commander meant that literally, and promptly bailed out of the tanks and ran for the town to collect their reward.