- Make the board a lot bigger--say, 400 squares instead of 64.
- Instead of black and white squares, make them different terrain types. Mostly level open ground, but some hills, others woods, rivers, roads, villages. Different types of units will move and fight differently depending on the terrain they're in.
- Instead of each side having the same units, they may have different numbers, different types, different capabilities. One side might have lots of knights and pawns; the other side might have only a few pieces, but almost all rooks and queens.
- They may set up differently. A player might put all his knights on his left in one game; in the next game, he might keep them back and start with his pawns halfway to the center of the board.
- They wouldn't necessarily know what pieces the opponent has or where they start.
- The players might get to move more than one piece at a time. Or pieces might refuse to move at all! One player may not even know which pieces the other player moves, or where.
- When one piece attacks another, the outcome isn't certain; the defending piece might turn the tables and capture the attacking piece.
- And to make it more interesting, instead of using stylized knights and rooks, pawns and bishops, set the piece's movement, moral, attack and defense capabilities so that the battles mimic those of a particular era, whether the Crusades or the Napoleonic Wars or modern battles. Let the player study history just by playing the game.
So, yeah, it's "playing with little soldiers"--but it's a bit more than that as well.
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1 comment:
That is a good mechanical summary.
I think it leaves out one dimension, the most important one to me, which applies most particularly in historical scenarios.
It is an experience of walking a mile in one or more other people's shoes. Putting oneself in a situation where one is faced with similar decisions (perhaps with similar incomplete knowledge) as the actual historical commander or participant was faced with and then having to figure out how you would have done things (the same or perhaps differently) and getting some sort of feedback (game results) as to how your approach might have worked.
This leads you to an appreciation of the qualities of some commanders or combatants, of the stupidity or ineptitude of others, and of the strange mix of heroism, cowardice, compassion and brutality that typifies conflicts throughout the many eras of Man.
It can also teach you an ability to put yourself into someone else's shoes which can be useful at work, in your personal life, in negotiations or confrontations, and in thinking about the nature of the world.
Wargames are a way to revisit different aspects of history both as a strictly intellectual puzzle (given X resources, a foe with Y resources, conditions A,B, and C applying... find the path to the optimal success) and as a stepping stone to human understanding of the sharp moments of human experience.
I think of Wargames as simply a codified framework for adjudicating imaginative 'what if' scenarios from our childhood (or more recently for some of us!).
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