In a recent "how do I get started" thread, StephenNewberg offered the following thoughts. I thought they were interesting because they represent the perspective of a "conflict simulation" designer, which isn't often represented here. I thought it would be interesting to discuss the differences in process between conflict simulations (aka wargames) and German-style games.
It's particularly of interest to me right now because I'm in the process of designing a historically based game, and though it won't likely be a conflict simulation, it has similar design concerns.
It has been my observation that focus is very much the key to a successful design and devopment process. During the design phase, that means it is not going to be possible, in any practical way, to get in everything you have read about a particular historical topic.
I tend to agree with this, although I will note that a clever designer can incorporate more than you might initially think possible. The key is to accept the need to abstract certain aspects of your theme, and the overall goal is a tightly integrated game where the various systems lean on each other. What I think one wants to avoid is to have systems or event cards that are included solely for historicity, but jar with the compactness of the overall system or worse, force certain occurences on the players rather than giving them a historical motivation for their decisions.
A trivial example of this is Axis and Allies, which starts pre-Pearl Harbor. The game setup encourages Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and makes it a plausible and militarily useful move. That's good. If instead there was an event card that said "Pearl Harbor: all ships in Hawaii are destroyed", that would be bad.
One hears the maxim "start small" quite often in German game designing, and while I think there's wisdom to that, I find it doesn't always work for my process. I think it's often easier to whittle out superfluous complexity than it is to add complexity to a simple and functional system, as doing the latter can feel that additions will mar the elegance of the design.
Instead, go over your research notes on the event you are trying to depict and decide what you thing the key 2-3 elements were for the event. Was it a major deployment or movement error by one side, or did both sides make such errors? Was it a particularly brilliant plan by one side? Were both sides competent but did some event from outside have an influence that was major? Was one side or the other particularly good at one thing or another, while the other side had other skills or lacks? That sort of thing. Then, concentrate your design on displaying these key elements. That is, make the major mechanisms and systems of the design around the things you want to show about the event.
This is definitely a difference in perspective between our design schools. I would say, as a generalization, that conflict simulation designers are more concerned with occurences, whereas, as David suggests in the other posts, German designers are more concerned with atmosphere. So while a conflict sim designer might worry about "what chain of events occured that brought about such an outcome", a Euro designer will worry much more about "how can my mechanics communicate the right 'feel' for this theme?"
I wrote a little bit about taking a theme into a game concept here. It boiled down to three concerns: who does the player represent in the game world, what are the sources of tension that players are deciding between in their actions, and what are the player's goals, which should be what motivates those decisions.
So for example, in my game about the Thirty Years War, eg, a big motivator for Spain was wanting to reclaim the United Provinces. The game's mechanics will encourage Spain to do that by moving troops from Milan to gain control of the Rhine and use it as a highway to ferry troops from Milan to Brussels, from which to attack the UP. But the key is that the game doesn't force this to happen -- it encourages the player to take this action based on his victory goals and from the most efficient way to achieve them.
Briefly, the concept is to find or construct a history of the events the game is to depict from the books you are using for research on the topic, and then step the design through those events. It is essential that an historically oriented game be able to duplicate the events in some rough sort of manner for the scales chosen for the game. If it cannot, they you do not have an historical game, you have an historical fantasy. Or an "alternate' history. A form of Science Fiction, basically. There is nothing at all wrong with this, unless that is not what you wanted. Note please that most designers do not want their design to force the players to a strictly historical result, so I am not suggesting this is the point of storyboarding. Rather, the point is to test the validity of the mechanisms of the design by assuring that if the players make the same moves and actions as happened historically, there is a pretty good chance they will get the historical result. Think of it as a validation check on the design.
One can't help but detect a mild trace of the condescension that one gets the sense that conflict simulation players feel for games that don't recreate history accurately (not that you came across as condescending by any means, but rather, that I think there are conflict simulation players who do feel that way and their viewpoints contain some of the same kind of arguments). I think your take is very reasonable, though: it should at least be possible to recreate the historical events of the game. And, there should probably be boundaries to what could realistically have happened.
In my 30 years war game, for example, Spain could gain access to the Rhine by making a truce with the Elector Palatine. That didn't happen historically, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. They could alternatively make a truce with France. That is probably more of a historical stretch, but it seems like a tough challenge to design a game system that is flexible but also rigid about certain points. I think you don't want to corral the game so much that in the process of preventing ahistorical outcomes, you include rules or systems that aren't interesting from a player standpoint. For example, if I added a rule in my game that says "France and Spain cannot ally". If rules like this don't make the decisions for the players more interesting in some essential way, then it's just an extra rule to remember, and doesn't serve any ultimate purpose.
In some sense, that's one of the essential differences I see in my limited exposure to conflict simulation-type games, namely, that the simulation aspect is more important than the player decision aspect. Not that decisions aren't important in such games, so much as that in German games, the entire game is distilled down to where the player's bases for decision making are clear, and the ramifications of his decisions are transparent. German games are built primarily to provide the players with interesting decisions, and simulation aspects are important only insofar as they make the game more fun or make the decisions more interesting.
I'm hoping to get a chance to try my game out with conflict simulation players at some point. I assume they'll think it's a joke, but it will still be interesting to see...
-Jeff
