Simulation at the Level of Detail

There's a section in Frank Chadwick's classic WW2 miniatures game where he recounts using a squad-level WW2 war game to simulate a massive Eastern Front battle. Squad by squad they played out the gigantic battle, and the by the end they realized the outcome did not reflect reality at all. The battle never came out that way, the squad level individual fights played out, and the entire game kind of fell apart under the weight of improbability.

You can imagine a game of this size, a massive amount of gaming tables, maps covering Poland and Russia, and literally thousands of counters or miniatures tracking every vehicle crew, LMG, engineer squad, field car, tank, and supply unit all being moved in hours-long turns in painstaking detail. Every battle for a farmhouse - simulated. Every meeting engagement on a road - simulated. Each battle for a forest or hedgerow - simulated. Every tank battle - simulated down to each shell fired.

Why didn't it come out just like reality? I mean, it should have, since each man-to-man engagement was handled in painstaking detail, and a result like the one that happened in history should have been the outcome, right?

Part of the outcome of this battle led Mr. Chadwick and his designers to simulate these battles in a larger scale, with larger company and corps level units. They realized that simulating large systems down to the smallest detail does not always provide the best reflection of reality. They found if the smallest unit was a tank company or section, they could get a better overall large scale simulation than if they worried about every gun's ammunition, every broken track, and every individual squad. They could write rules that handled larger groups and simulate the historical real-world happenings of these classic WW2 battles, so thus Command Decision was born.

Of course, we do all this by computer nowadays, so why are WW2 miniatures war game rules important? What does this have to do with tabletop roleplaying?

Because today's pen-and-paper designers still make the same mistakes.

Shouldn't a detailed sectional hit points system with hit locations, rules for slicing tendons, and medical trauma charts more realistically simulate medieval combat? Shouldn't an almost slow-motion martial-arts inspired combat system with half-second turns and action points laid out for every move of the arm, swing of a blade, and pull of the bowstring more accurately simulate personal combat?

If we can simulate that level of detail on a man-to-man scale, then we should be able to put twenty people on each side and get a near picture-perfect simulation of medieval combat, right? Especially with miniatures, where we can second-by-second track line-of-sight, force field-like attacks-of-opportunity, and arrow-by-arrow ammo counts. Spells have interlaced count-down casting times. Weapons have speeds and reaches. It should be perfect!

It often isn't, and again, the too micro level of detail breaks down, and you more feel like you are playing a miniatures gaming rules simulator than you anything remotely realistic. The game doesn't know if it wants to be battle chess, a simulation or reality, or a miniatures combat game. Many games try to be everything and fail at everything. Some adopt a "way of thinking" almost like a war-gaming ideology and shoehorn that mantra-like system onto every action, even if it doesn't fit or should be handled by the referee as a one-off without the rules.

You have to be careful with games that dive into too low level of detail, or that try to simulate reality at too granular a level. There will be tons of individual rules simulating how a dagger cuts through leather armor and how that wound affects movement based on hit location and it will look cool and feel great when it happens in game. It is the same thing as the small Russian squad on the Eastern Front holed up in a snow-locked farmhouse holding off an entire onslaught of German attacks, tanks, and aircraft, becoming the heroes of the Eastern Front. Those are cool moments in isolation (and the latter is a great small scale scenario), but in the context of a larger system, they take up too much time and attention from what should be a balanced and even attention of time and focus upon the large system being simulated.

If the game is about a story adventure, yes, a wounded leg may play into that, but are the rules around getting that wounded leg so heavy they take away from the larger story-based experience the designer wanted to focus on for the game? Are all the characters in the story walking around with wounded legs, hands, eyes, clavicles, sprains, pulled muscles, and bandages covering cuts so they won't bleed to death, and the king and queen of Storyville are sitting there wondering why this group isn't in the hospital because they are in no shape to find out who stole the king's crown? If the game is about intrigue, make it about intrigue, and there is a laudable design goal to de-emphasizing things in the rules that may take away from that experience.

You can't put everything in a game and expect it does everything well. Imagine Monopoly with tax forms, IRS requirements, local zoning ordinances specific to each color group, investment income, random events like hotel fires, slumps and building booms, random economic events, a stock market, union protests, a global economy, industrial development charts, WW2 breaking out, populist elections, political wheeling and dealing, and so many layers of detail that yes - this is how a real real estate economy works, and it should all be in there, right?

After all, a game without this level of detail that focused just on buying, selling, building would be seen as too simplistic and not worthy of a true real estate game, right?

No, that stuff doesn't belong, and the job of a good game designer often lies in saying "this is what my game is about" and cutting the cruft and "cool features" that worm their way in during design. "Too many cooks" is a real problem in game design, as is "the cook doesn't know what he wants" or "the cook is trying to copy the best features of several dishes."

It's a taco with Kung Pao chicken, refried beans, pizza sauce, wrapped in a hamburger, and wrapped in a spicy gordita with cheese melted on top.

You get games that are like that, and you get things like that at taco place. It looks great on the menu, but it is typically something you eat only once if you are crazy enough to buy in. Or you're so embarrassed you bought one you start defending it and selling it to your friends.

But seriously, there is such a thing as focus in game design, and games that know what they are trying to do and focusing every rule - from character design, combat, skill use, exploration, and interaction one that one activity and making the parts that matter...matter. They also eliminate the cruft, pointless small simulation, and unneeded detail, and focus on delivering the core experience in the best way possible. If this game is about dungeoning, then let's focus on dungeoning. If this is a storytelling game, let's deliver the best storytelling rules possible and cut out the rest.

Again, we go back to design. This is what makes great products, from cell phones to role playing games.