How to make a war game more interesting

This is a very interesting topic. Basically, the question is: why isn't my game fun? This is always a very hard question to answer.

When I sent in my first design, Urban Construct, in for the Hippodice competition, I was certain I had a winner. The game had simple enough rules that were well explained, the mechanisms worked well, playing time wasn't too long, not too much downtime or kingmaking or other obvious flaws. When I finally got feedback from the Hippodice they agreed with me on those points. However, the only thing I had forgotten was to put "fun" into the game...

So what is "fun"? There are various things that make a game fun. Different people have a different idea of what is fun, of course, but I'll try to list a few things that make a game fun for some people.

1) Direct player interaction. Negotiating with other players. Coercing other players to follow your plans, or get them work together to attack another player. Making deals or trade resources. Some people enjoy this social aspect of games. Example: Settlers of Catan, where you can trade resource cards and have to negotiate with other players, or Diplomacy where you have to negotiate with other players about your attacking plans.

2) Indirect player interaction. The ability to mess with other people's plans through the game mechanics, to obstruct or annoy another player, smiling gleefully when you make that move that causes the downfall of another player. Example: Pompei, covering other players' pawn with lava and throwing them into the volcano. Bang!: shooting at other players or putting them into prison.

3) Making plans. Coming up with a long term strategy and short term plans to execute that strategy, and over the course of the game seeing your plans come to fruitition, or adjusting it based on circumstances. Example: Ticket to Ride, choosing your initial tickets and then trying to connect them during the game. Puerto Rico: saving money for a certain building that goes with your long term plan (ex. wanting to buy the Harbor to go with your diversifying, shipping strategy).

4). Luck. Pure luck, randomness, can be fun. Cheering at the dice, hoping to roll the right numbers, or praying to draw the right card. Shunned by hardcore gamers, but loved by many casual gamers. Example: Candyland, Yahtzee, LCR, the dynamite mechanic in Bang!

5). Uncertainty, surprise. Making a plan, or performing an action and not knowing for certain if it will work or how exactly it will play out. This may be because other players may mess with your plans (see #2), or because of luck (see #4). Hidden information, such as cards in hands of other players, often plays an important a role here. In open information games, such as Chess, there's uncertainty because you cannot possibly calculate all the moves and countermoves, and you have to hope your evaluation of the moves you can calculate is better than your opponent's evaluation. Almost all games have a certain degree of uncertainty. A counterexample is Tic-Tac-Toe, which has no luck or hidden information, and where the decision tree is so narrow and shallow that most grown-ups can calculate all possible moves and countermoves, making the outcome predictable.

6). A tight feedback loop. This is something we recently discussed in another thread here. It's a bit vague, but what it comes down to is that a player periodically has to get feedback about how he is doing. If long periods of time (turns) go by without a player getting any idea of how he is progressing in the game and how his moves turn out, then a player may feel like he is just going through the motions, an excercise in futility.

7) Tension, friction between plans and (sub)goals, forcing tough choices. It's fun to come up with a plan, but it's not much fun to come up with a plan and then just go through the motions executing that plan. It's more fun if along the way a player sometimes is presented with a dilemma that forces a player to make a choice between various subgoals, or an opportunity that might urge a player to deviate from his current strategy and follow another plan.

I'm sure there are many more, but these provide a good starting point I think. Not all games need all of the above, but they certainly need some of them.

Like clapjaws said, your game is like checkers, a luckless, open information game. Checkers works because players are able to formulate short term goals and long term strategies, and because it has a relatively short feedback loop. It is possible that your game lacks these things. One thing that caught my eye in your game is that each player has 6 movement points per turn, unlike checkers where each player only has one movement point per turn. This might result in making it hard to plan ahead beyond one's own turn, because there are so many possible countermoves during the next player's turn. If this is so, then this would diminish the feeling of being able to formulate a plan. I would recommend you to try and give a player less movement points per turn (perhaps only 2 or 3) and see if this makes the game more strategic.

Another option is to add a few pieces that are more powerful or valuable than others, like the Queen in Chess. This gives the players a mid term goal to work with - protect your own valuable pieces, while at the same time attacking opponent's valuable pieces - besides the long term goal of capturing the general.

One other thing to keep in mind is to know what your playtesters like. Perhaps they are not huge fan of abstract games. Do they like similar games like Connect-Four, Stratego, Chess, Checkers? If not, then perhaps it's not through a fault in your game that they don't like it. I'd recommend to try it with players of which you know that they like abstracts, or at the very least don't dislike abstracts, and see whether they enjoy the game.

Good luck!

I second this suggestion. I'm currently designing an abstract, perfect information game (tentatively titled "Zone of Control"). My original design was to allow players to move two or three pieces per turn, and each piece could move a certain number of spaces in any orthoginal direction (depending on wether or not their HQ was still in play) and some could change direction mid-move. Basically, some of the qualities were very much like your own game. Heck, it even has a river in the middle! :) After reading the thread about feedback loops, planning and decision trees I realized that this my game was destined to fall into the very quagmire that was being described in the thread. As a result, I'm reworking all of the movement rules of the game to make it easier to create meaningful plans. Players will only be able to move one piece per turn (I've given the HQ another benefit) and the movement of each type of piece is more narrowly defined.

Another thought is that your game does sound remarkably like chess/checkers. Sure, with different movement rules for the pieces, but what is the fundamental difference? What does your game offer, other than a movement point allowance, that seperates it from the "classic" abstracts of chess, checkers, shogi (japanese chess) and xiang-qi (chinese chess)?

A final thought is that on a board of your size, moving pieces only one or two spaces is kind of slow. You should definitely consider adding some pieces that have large, dramatic moves (like the bishop, rook and queen in chess). Otherwise players may feel like they're just "plodding" along.

I hope some of this was helpful.

Jeff K.

I think your explanation was clear enough. I don't think your game is exactly like checkers or chess, but it does share certain features with those games. They are all open information games without luck and pieces that have certain movement rules. Therefore it may be a good idea to look at those games and see how certain problems are solved in those designs.

You call your game a "wargame", but, apart from the theme, it doesn't fit most typical "wargames". Do you think chess is a wargame? Usually when people talk about wargames they talk about games with many different units, each with their own strengths and weaknesses and special rules, a map with varying types of terrain, battles decided by dice or card playing, hidden information through card or hidden units, etc.

Your game is an abstract game, like chess, checkers, go, etc, because it does not have any luck, and it is all open information. To put things in perspective it may be a good idea to think of your game as an abstract, because designing an abstract game requires a different mindset than designing a wargame.

A possible solution to this is to make the map smaller and start the units closer together, so that there is the possibility of conflict right from the start.

Again, I urge you to consider the possibility of reducing the number of movement points per turn. This will reduce the possibility of "lightning strike" attacks and make the game slower and more strategic.

Why not try a different starting position? Perhaps a small squad of unit starts on the opposite side of the river, or a few units start close to the opposing player's general. Try things, go crazy.

Sounds good.

Might be, might not. I don't think it is the root of the problem, though, more of a result of other problems.

What you should try to avoid is start tweaking and balancing the game, before you have found it whether the basic mechanism of the game is actually fun. My guess is that, because of the lackluster response of your playtesters, the game is not yet fun, and trying to balance the map will not help a great deal. A fun game is fun even when it is not perfectly balanced. Yes, yes, I know, a game with a balance that is completely out of whack will not be fun either, but it's different. You know your game has that spark of life when you see it, even when it is unbalanced.

So, take one or two steps back in the design, and be prepared to rethink things you thought were unchangeable. Try out things that seem crazy or weird, shake things up, who knows where it leads you.

i think the adding cards element might work. for example each player has 5 cards in his hand he may use 1 card at each turn. you can decide that when players uses cards he draws one from the deck or player have only thier 5 begging cards which will make them careful when to use each card. the cards can change rules/make special abilities like: your Cs can got to 2 directions (thus he doesn't have to move in a straight line) in this turn. or instead of moving one of your pieces move an enemy's piece. things like that. that might make it more tense and adds more careful planning. i didn't play the game of course so i don't know if that helps, just an idea....