Essay on Scenario Design

[Bob_Mackenzie]

Hi Gents

This is now several years old but I though I'd repost now we have a shiny new room to post it in

Cheers

Bob

http://www.testofbattle.com/upload/bob/ ... design.htm

[Faustnik]

As always an excellent article.

[billk]

Bob, its still good!

Bill

[dead1]

Excellent essay and thanks for sharing.

I think the essay doesn't apply just to scenario design but rules design as a whole.

[SABOT]

Thanks Bob , very useful .

[Alanmccoubrey]

Excellent, thanks Bob.

[Hincmar]

Thank you. I think I may have read this essay before but have printed it out to read on the way to work tomorrow. A much needed guide after a couple of duds that I devised recently!

[Bob_Mackenzie]

I think that much of it is pertinent, but rules design goes further.

At a first stab at a definition of a good rules set...

The best rules set allows for the highest amount of meaningful player decisions in a give amount of (real) time

The trick is then how to achieve this. its also clouded by aspects of "realism". Peoples' taste for realism varies so this is highly subjective. there is also an interesting quandary between realism of process and realism of outcome

Cheers

Bob

Excellent essay and thanks for sharing.

I think the essay doesn't apply just to scenario design but rules design as a whole.

[dead1]

The best rules set allows for the highest amount of meaningful player decisions in a give amount of (real) time

The trick is then how to achieve this. its also clouded by aspects of "realism". Peoples' taste for realism varies so this is highly subjective. there is also an interesting quandary between realism of process and realism of outcome

I think the highest meaningful player decisions automatically translates to a degree of realism.

The most popular games are usually the least realistic and they usually have very few meaningful decisions. Indeed decision making is often limited to army list selection and target selection. Even something like Flames of War promoted inactivity and limited decision making by say infantry who were on an objective and whereby the rule set promoted only one option - sitting on the objective and not shooting, let alone moving. Or Soviet tanks who again only had one real option - move forward and brave enemy guns to be able to have a chance of hitting the enemy (meanwhile the Axis player is forced to stay stationary as moving 3 Panzer IVs towards 21 T-34s is suicidal). Something like WH40K has even less decision making - simply pick up bucketfuls of dice and roll.

But if the game promotes large numbers of meaningful decisions, it means that both stationary fire and manoeuvre are equally valid options. This of course creates realism in terms of tactical approaches as everything offers both a risk and a reward.

[Bob_Mackenzie]

I do take your point, however I think you are confusing rules and scenario design, though to be fair in points based games like FOW the rules drive the scenario generation

I have played FOW a grand total of once, however it was not like you describe. I strongly suspect this was because the battle was a "proper" scenario not an even points battle using one of the "potted" situations in the book.

If you ignore the points and scenario generation system in the rulebook and do a historical scenario I suspect that FOW gives a reasonable game, if with a somewhat "Hollywood" flavour. This doesn't mean that FOW is a good set of rules IMO but it isn't that bad

What I think we may be able to agree on is that points based games with potted situations usually produce dull games

Cheers

Bob

[dead1]

I do take your point, however I think you are confusing rules and scenario design, though to be fair in points based games like FOW the rules drive the scenario generation

You may be right and I could well be confused. I understand the point though - the scenario is a specific "game" and a good scenario is transplantable across different rule sets whilst retaining it's positive qualities.

I also agree that rulesets might drive scenario generation. To use the FOW example, a system where the rules mean that infantry can't effectively be hurt or pinned/neutralised when dug in will stymy any scenario based on kicking them off an objective.

I have played FOW a grand total of once, however it was not like you describe. I strongly suspect this was because the battle was a "proper" scenario not an even points battle using one of the "potted" situations in the book.

If you ignore the points and scenario generation system in the rulebook and do a historical scenario I suspect that FOW gives a reasonable game, if with a somewhat "Hollywood" flavour. This doesn't mean that FOW is a good set of rules IMO but it isn't that bad

I played it many times until it got too tedious even with historical scenarios (of which only 1 out of about 10 guys playing the game was interested in - more on that below).

We found that infantry heavy games generally resulted in a stalemate with the biggest problem being the "camping on an objective" and confused assault rules. My main opponent and I stopped playing the game when we were playing a Stalingrad campaign and each game degenerated into a Mexican standoff. Clearing the enemy out of a building becomes impossible when the ruleset emphasises assault but then allows every unit within 8 inches of the defending troops to open fire on attackers.

The ever growing number of special rules didn't help either - for example you could use a unit of American towed 3 inch guns as stealth assault units that pop in out of the blue. That kind of stuff just killed the level of immersion.

What I think we may be able to agree on is that points based games with potted situations usually produce dull games

Agreed.

The biggest problem is getting other players to play scenarios though. The locals prefer their game as mindless as possible - doesn't matter that it's British facing Russians on a jungle board. Getting them to play the assault on Ponyri Station or Operation Epsom is a hard task especially when they see the games might be unbalanced.

Indeed even a loosely historical Bagration FOW campaign we played got players whinging that the games weren't balanced and a quick petering out.

[Bob_Mackenzie]

I bow to your superior knowledge of FOW!

The trick with "unbalanced" scenarios is to have clear victory conditions which give each side an even chance of winning per the conditions. The main problem with this is that is very hard to do. I have written over 100 scenarios and I still only get it right about 50% of the time.

[dead1]

The trick with "unbalanced" scenarios is to have clear victory conditions which give each side an even chance of winning per the conditions. The main problem with this is that is very hard to do. I have written over 100 scenarios and I still only get it right about 50% of the time.

Your scenarios are awesome and I hope you don't mind but back in the day I stole a few of them for Flames of War and then never played nearly any of them cause only 1 player I knew was interested in playing them even when I was offering to run the game and provide all the models. Every one else just wanted to play tournament practice games.

Great thing about historical scenarios is that at least you have the historical objectives set out and the historical outcomes as goal posts (and with each player trying to beat the historical outcome to varying degrees).

But yes it is hard.

I recently was trying a new Force on Force scenario I created based on Operation Red Wings (and that horrible Marky Mark movie) and we struggled getting it even close to historical performance. We actually managed 2 playtests in 30 minutes in which case it both went horribly wrong for the Taliban! The third playtest went better but we still didn't get close to the historical baseline result (ie Taliban thrash the Americans soundly).

Problem here is again one of ruleset - Force on Force has some innovative rules mechanisms but they make insurgents behave atypically and very weak even in large numbers. Instead of small numbers of fighter engaged in hit and run style attacks, it literally turns them into WH40K-esque Ork hordes who die in droves without much effect on the "good guys".

Thus balancing a game that pits the historically acknowledged 25-35 Taliban versus 4 SEALS becomes hard when using the recommended force attributes means that the SEALS will easily chew through that many Taliban in literally 2 turns. We defanged the SEALS considerably for game 3 yet by the end of the game, all 4 SEALS were alive and all the Taliban were dead!

And I've given up on the FoF rule set for WWII platoon level actions - it's too hard a system to design scenarios around because of the way all the interactions between units work. I use Battlegroup these days but I just play standard missions cause I don't play often enough to get a good feel for the rules (which in my opinion then facilitates scenario design).

[Bob_Mackenzie]

I'm very pleased you stole my scenarios - that's what they are there for

I've not played FoF so can't comment on the rules but any rules set should be able to produce a historical result some (most?) of the time.

I strongly agree that familiarity with a rules system is pretty much a pre-requisite for designing balanced scenarios. This means something is "off". Given that all historical rules sets are aimed at producing historical results (one supposes, though FOW for example may not have that as a design criteria) knowing how the "real world" works should be sufficient to design a balanced scenario.

One of the problems is that no one really understands how real world combat works (well as of the late 1990s) - even the professionals, so what chance do the amateurs have (I intend to buck the trend )? I have read a whole host of references on professional combat modelling and the one sense you get is that war is a highly variable business and massively unpredictable even when you try to analyse it. Many people only analyse part of it.

Where many rules sets fail IMO is they try to model process rather than outcome. This is doomed to failure as the process is hideously complex and probably unmodelable in sufficient fidelity. For success, process (ie rules mechanisms) should be aimed at producing the correct results with the minimum complexity level. One interesting revaluation for me during the BBWW2B design process was how little effect the nuances of AT vs armour process has on outcome. Other factors swamp the combat effectiveness of units. This seems to indicate that any rules that concentrate on gun-armour interaction are pretty much doomed to failure as they won't have enough "rules space" to allow for the more important interactions

Anyway enough rambling for now

Cheers

Bob

[TacticalPainter]

Interesting discussion. Realism for me relates to the command level the rules attempt to emulate. Are the decisions the rules are asking me to make similar to the decision making at that command level in real life? The ultimate test of the rules is how well they blend the obvious abstractions and limitations of a table top game into something that is at once playable yet plausible.

So, for example, with a set of rules where I can micromanage all my units and be in effect the overall commander and simultaneously every single subordinate, I ask myself, what am I replicating on the table? I have no reference for this type of command decision making in the real world, therefore the rules for me lack realism. Which doesn’t mean the rules are bad, but I have to ask, is it a wargame? Or is it simply a ‘game’, first and foremost and ‘war’ is just a theme layered over the rules for colour.

The same translates to scenarios, does the premise of the scenario replicate a command dilemma likely to be found in a real situation? It would follow then that for this to feel as though it replicates something in reality the force structure for each side would require an historical basis. If I can just use points to build an optimal force with no basis historically then the scenario would lack realism.

If, as I do, you read a lot of first hand accounts, then the command challenge on the table and the way you try to solve it should feel as though it bears some relation to that faced by our historical counterparts.

I know some people mistakenly think realism relates to the depiction of violence and that our games can therefore never be realistic. That is to miss the point entirely and I think Bob points us in the right direction by putting the focus on the decision making cycle.

[dead1]

Great post Tactical Painter.

[wrgmr1]

Excellent read Bob!
I’m positive most of us who design scenarios already are aware of force ratio. But for the beginner it may be worthwhile to say something about this?

Cheers
Thomas

[Bob_Mackenzie]

That's an interesting point...

Force ratio is tricky and I'm not sure i have more than an intuitive handle on it. There are very many factors involved and I don't always get it right first time.

Best advice I can give is playtest!