It is a very strange thing to have written a book. You sort of wait for some sort of reaction, hoping that they will be positive, fearing that they will not be so, and despairing over the possibility of simply being ignored. So it is with similarly mixed feelings that I am attempting to write about it.
Some people, probably the majority, will ignore me. Fair enough. Most folk only have so many hours in the week to wargame, and why listen (or read) someone else? I am not going to argue that I should be given special attention. Others might agree with most of what I say, which is quite gratifying, of course. For some people, according to he reviews, I hit the nail while discussing solo wargaming.
Other reactions have been mixed, some of them slightly amusing, like the person on Facebook who said that the title made me sound about 150. I am old, but not quite that old, although think how much gaming I could fit in if I did live that long. One or two have been patronizing, not about me, but about solo wargamers generally, with one comment along the lines of ‘Isn’t it great that they [solo wargamers] bother to paint their toys and put out decent terrain.’ I’m not quite sure how to react to that, except to politely observe that solo wargamers do not need sympathy from anyone.
Still, the most frequent response has puzzled me, and I am wondering if anyone can help me understand what is being said. The response is along the lines that the book is not very useful because it does not contain any mechanisms for solo wargaming. Someone even went so far as to comment that the book contains lots of ideas but no mechanics, and was therefore not useful.
I confess I am sitting, even now, scratching my head and wondering what exactly this means. Mechanics, after all, or at least, it seems to me, are ten a penny. I do not have any problems, at least, dreaming up mechanisms for solo wargaming. It is usually a pretty simple issue of moving counters or pins on a map, or toy soldiers around a table, and rolling a few dice to decide what happens. I do not really think that deciding on the outcomes needs a great pile of rule mechanisms and mechanics. It just, well, flows.
Maybe, I am starting to think, this relates back to my previous post about the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere is the one that does logic, language, manipulation, and grasping things in the world. The right hemisphere is open to new things, intuitive, and deals with narrative and things like metaphor and poetry.
The book talks a lot about narrative. The attentive reader of this blog will have realized by now that I think that story-telling is important in wargaming. In fact, I think that wargaming is sustained by narrative, by stories about the battles and campaigns that we run. At least, that is what I see, mostly, on blogs around the place. They tell stories about battles, or at least, mine do, and that is how I read other blogs.
But I suspect that we are running into something of a problem as wargamers. Increasingly I see around the place re-fights of well-known battles, either historical or fictional. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, of course, and I do it myself – Marathon has been run on my table half a dozen times or so. But what I am struggling to find in the wargaming world are those works of imagination that spark a new angle, a new set of problems to be solved.
Maybe I am missing it. There is not enough time to read the whole wargaming internet, of course. But a lot of wargaming that I do see, hear, and wonder about seems to be heading towards the more formulaic, where, you have guessed it by now, mechanics become important, as opposed to the storyline. This is not universal, of course, and I am not pointing the finger at any wargamer in particular. It is, after all, a diverse hobby, and anyone who wargames is welcome.
But it does make me wonder about how wargaming reflects society. If McGilchrist is right, then we are becoming more left-hemisphere-driven as a society. Everything is increasingly driven by logic, processes, new tools to be exploited, and so on. In short, the world is becoming mechanical, full of mechanisms for doing what we want, be that building cars or wargaming. The other hemisphere and its activities, the intuitive, dreamy one that does not rely on exact data and precise measurement, gets squeezed out.
I am old enough to remember arguments about whether wargamers should use army lists or do their own research. As it happens the army list has conquered the world, as it were. I use them myself, although I do not think they are, or should be, as definitive as I recall some wargamers thinking they were. But the nailing down of the troops we may use for a given army seems to me a product of our left hemispheres, even at the expense of the historical flow of the narrative.
I suggest that this gradual squeezing out of the intuitive side of wargaming is probably not a good thing, as it is not in society. The world needs both bits acting in harmony rather than the domination of one side or the other. The drift in society is slow and largely unnoticeable, as it is in wargaming, but I do see more ‘off the shelf’ wargaming and, without wishing to point the finger at anyone at all, less wargames of ‘pure imagination’ (to quote Willy Wonka).
Maybe I am worrying unnecessarily, but when I started wargaming there was a propensity for the large-scale imaginary world. Now, there seems to be more interest in the small-scale skirmish. It seems to me possible that we have lost something along the way. What do you think?
"I think that wargaming is sustained by narrative ..." when I started wargaming in my retirement I started at a weekly club but found that each game was a one off that had to be 'won' and that tactics were thought to be a tasty small mint to suck.
ReplyDeleteI stopped going to the club when I overheard a puzzling argument about the colour of marine's epaulettes. It turned out that they were have a serious disagreement about space marines.
The thing with solo wargaming is that you have to think, and that doesn't suit too many people. Reading is also an advantage not well understood and history? Well, it's a thing of the past, innit?
I'm reminded sometimes of a song by Neil Innes: 'Please don't make me use my imagination / I think it must have blown a fuse'.
DeleteBut yes, thinking and reading are not that popular as pastimes, it sometimes seems. And also I suspect the sort of history most wargamers are interested in is not particularly positioned to bring anything particularly new to the hobby.
Having not read your book, I really am in no position to comment on its content especially on its exclusion of wargaming mechanisms suitable for solo play. However, the subtitle does show "A Practitioner's Guide." As a practitioner's guide, I would expect to find instructions on "how" to put solo gaming into practice given that some may be new to the hobby or lack imagination to take the next step to choosing solo-friendly mechanisms.
ReplyDeleteA seemingly constant flow of battle reports (often recreating an historical battle) is tapped out on my keyboard. Almost never are rules' mechanisms mentioned. For me, the battle narrative is foremost. By focusing on the storyline, readers do not need to know the underlying rules of engagement to make sense of the report. Of course, there are many ways to writing a battle report but this is the way I choose. With thoughtful scenario design and development, an historical refight can spark imagination, a new angle, a new set of problems and challenges to be overcome, and perhaps a better understanding of the battle.
Well, not having read it would hamstring a bit, I admit. But it does contain some mechanisms, such as how to play a sword fight solo. So it does put solo gaming into practice. What people seem to be wanting, which I deliberately did not provide, is 'definitive' rules for playing solo wargames. I am not sure I could provide them even if I wanted to, and anyway, I think each solo wargamer, at least, should make their own choices; so I provide as many ideas for sparking those choices into life as I can.
ReplyDeletePlease don't get me wrong - I am not denigrating historical scenarios and their reporting, just that sometimes the set up is taken from a single secondary source and that can get a bit repetitive and seem, to me, to lack imagination. Perhaps, as blogs only report slices of scenario development, it is harder to see the flow thereof.
As to whether we can understand a battle better through a wargame, I will leave that as a question for the reader. But battles are only a single event in a long sequence of a campaign, and a campaign, often, is an event in a long sequence of a war, and so on. Focussing down on a single battle can rather restrict us. I tried to answer that in the book by suggesting reading campaign histories and trying out the battles which did not happen, of which there are plenty.
An overreliance on 'templates' if I understand correctly? That certainly is what I see in many of the digital projects turned in by my college students. Not really much imagination and creativity if we are brutally honest about that. Just select a Google Slides, Power Point, or Canva template, fill in the blanks, put your names on it, and submit a hyperlink to the online submission folder. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteKind Regards,
Stokes
Yes, I think that could be it. Everything is laid on, no need to consider anything too deeply, just get it out and move on. Actually it seemed, just before I left academia, to have got worse - don't bother with the lectures just flip through the PowerPoint on line and call it learnt. Perhaps what I am trying to think about is a lack of reflection, jumping to conclusions and a lack of engagement. And that seems to be McGilchrist's left hemisphere dominance. The question I was trying to pose is whether this is reflected in some wargaming...
DeleteWell as someone who has read it, perhaps I may assist in your ruminations.
ReplyDeleteBefore I read it, a acquaintance found himself in the position of agreeing to review it. He found himself in the position of suggesting, read it but don't buy it, while feeling very guilty at such a negative review.
I had already bought it and sat down to read it. At first I thought he had been too harsh, but after the first few chapters I found myself agreeing with his view. In the end I simply skimmed through the rest of the book.
The title; it promises much but is misleading. In no way can it be described as a practitioners guide. I came away with little I could put into practice, instead lots of "suggestions" and "ideas" but little practical application.
Feedback. May I suggest what you needed was some critical feedback on the content; it reads as if all it has had is a spell check and grammar review, but little by way of critique.
While you decided not to include mechanisms, this was / is a grave error IMHO.
It's a fairly idiosyncratic ramble through how you approach solo gaming so why not present, "this is how I do it" rather than vague references to was to achieve results. The few examples given are to be honest, pretty derivative and incomplete.
I would rather have read how you set up a campaign, the aims you had and how you achieved them and the mechanisms used in some detail, or where they did not work how you changed them or where you decided to fudge a result and the reason why.
I'm sorry but I cannot see it being of much use to either the novice wishing to play solo OR the expert solo player. Indeed, I'm not sure WHO it was actually aimed at?
I'm sorry if this sounds negative or critical; I wanted to get something from the book, but didn't find anything to justify the cost.
Neil
DeleteIn my view the book is certainly a practitioners guide.
I am a recent convert to wargaming and lately, as mentioned above, to solo wargaming. I started with the Don Featherstone books - somewhat condescending and what I now know to be 'old school' - moved on through other uninteresting authors to eventually find Lone Warrior magazines, and Stuart Asquith's solo book. Combining those with Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames rules played solo I have been playing happily-ish.
David's book has brought a new excitement. Chapter two has changed my approach to types of battle, determining terrain and deployment, chapter three focussed my campaign system, chapter four gave me randomisation of weather and chapter six 'sources of inspiration' is an excellent piece. In the first battle after reading, and modifying my approach I was more involved mentally than ever before.
There is still more for me to take and use but a bit at a time as in my thinking between battles I have realised that rules as written can be modified without falling apart, and reading The Frontier 1839-1947 by Major-General JG Elliot shows that my moveable column needs adjustment.
"Indeed, I'm not sure WHO it was actually aimed at?" It was aimed at me, a newish unskilled plodder who is now galloping along. I am sure that I am not alone.
I am glad that you enjoyed the book and found it useful. As wargaming evolves, so my games have as well; trying to write down some of the ways has, in itself, changed them a bit. I am also, as readers of the blog will know, not one to take a rule set as gospel and sacrosanct, and nor do I think anyone should. Warfare is a series of one-off incidents, where many other things could be possible, and our games should reflect that. After all, no army I know of finished a war in exactly the same place as it started, either tactically or strategically, and nor should we. And reading stuff is always useful, if only to wonder if you have got it right, and adjust things if you've not. Plus, in my view, a lot of wargame rules totally ignore stuff which is not within their paradigm - a lot of rules for the ECW do this (not all) and so have a base model which does not accord with modern views of the reality. Whether they are more correct or not is, of course, moot.
DeleteWell, thank you for your comments, although I obviously must respectfully disagree with them. The title is not misleading, in my view, although it does seem to get misunderstood: I am the practitioner, it is my guide. A lot of commenters seem to have missed the preface where what I mean by wargaming as a practice, and solo wargaming as one is briefly defined.
DeleteMoving on, are not suggestions and ideas practical? I confess that the genesis of the blog post above was to question this attitude to the ideas. I had and will have no intention of telling people what to do or how to conduct their wargames. Part of the concern of the dominance of left hemisphere thinking is that it wants everything handed to it on a plate and does not wish to do any more thinking than it has to to get the answer it wants.
Any book is going to be, from some points of view, an idiosyncratic ramble. Actually, it was planned like that. The concept was to present ideas, not to tell wargamers how to conduct their games. Incidentally, it did have critical feedback, including from the editor who is a wargamer. The examples are deliberately incomplete: again, they are designed to make the wargamer think, rather than give solutions on a plate.
If you wish to read how I set up wargames and so on, then this blog and particularly the links on the right will assist. I have a cordial dislike of repeating myself and did not wish to write a book which could already be found for free on the web. One of my pet peeves of modern publishing is people who take a successful blog and turn it into a volume, with very little alteration. The medium, after all, determines the message and the internet and a book are different media.
The term 'derivative' can be taken in different ways. A lot of it is derivative, if the sense is meant that other people have gone along that route, at least so far. That is fair. However, the term is also often used as one of gentle abuse, and I trust that this is not the case.
'Why not present 'this is how I do it?' Well, largely because that is what the book does. It might not be your style or taste, but this is how I wargame solo. If it does not suit you, that's fine by me, but the various unpractical ideas contained in the book are, in fact, how I set about things. We are all different - clearly it does not suit some wargamers.
If you would like a book about my campaigns, then you might have to wait quite a long time - I do have an idea but the rest of life gets in the way. However, it would not be along the lines you suggest, as I think that it would be crashingly dull, as well as a repeat of what is here already. But if it appeals to you, I can give you the address to send your book outline and first three chapters to - just drop a comment with your email address in and I won't publish it.
Not wishing to be rude or critical, but it could be that you have provided evidence of the point I was aiming at in the blog post. Modern culture has trained us to expect things within a certain paradigm, which is, in McGilchrist's view, provided by our left hemispheres. We struggle when something from without the representation of the world from that hemisphere intrudes, and we try to dismiss it. That is part of modern (i.e. post-Enlightenment) life, and is probably not a good thing for Western society.
Who was the book aimed at? Me, of course. Only a fool would write something they did not wish to read themselves. Again, that is set out in the preface. Perhaps if you only skimmed the last chapters of it you missed something that could have been of use to you, but then again, perhaps not.
Rereading my comments they do appear harsh and I had already thought that it would be perhaps better to provide examples; such are the limitations of the written word in the comments section of a blog.
DeleteIf it's a consolation, it's prompted me to examine my own thoughts on the subject on my blog. Before I get into examples I will address something that may arise.
As interesting as the good Dr's theory is on domination of brain hemispheres, I would add that from personal experience and study the subject is much more complex. The brain is still not fully understood and almost ALL activity takes place across both hemispheres and involves apparently unrelated parts of the brain. While it may be useful, his theory "may go beyond what the facts tell us" as one of his critics remarked. I'd suggest reading about plasticity, autism and actual studies of physically divided hemispheres before accepting his theory at face value.
I say this before accusations that I'm using my left brain or whatever emerge.
Let's look at some actual examples. Page 44 deployment - most of the page is a picture which appears in Featherstone - you then proceed to caution its use, give some vague suggestions about terrain and the personality of the general before a section on ambushes with a simplistic technique. Why include the diagram at all if you don't favour it? What about suggestions of using cards or alternatives for deployment. From that I'm none the wiser as to how I should deploy as a solo gamer - it's not even clear if you favour doing your best for both sides. I'd argue deployment needs more than a page and a half.
Ambushes - if I own both armies how do I keep part undeployed yet have full knowledge of their existence? Your system means every terrain item can have an enemy unit - clearly, this means you play one side and the other is auto controlled, but as owner you will have an idea of what is potentially lurking - although it could be nothing, so in dense terrain half the enemy are thus never deployed. Some suggestion of what to do in this case would be useful.
We then have two and a half pages on random movement. Again, something that could be much expanded. Only vague suggestions of tying this into other aspects, such a the general' s character. This is followed by four pages on bias - I'd argue this belongs elsewhere, in the introduction.
The campaign chapter is mostly introductory, followed by a lot on narrative campaigns. Was the intent to show other types before your preference?
Personalities - you mention Bath but discard him as producing "too similar" characters which is not my experience. You then produce a table with 13 characteristics of varying degrees, some of which seem to duplicate or contradict - a dishonest but loyal intrguer? A reliable vacilitator? Good temper but vicious? How does your system produce a greater range of characters than Bath? Why choose those particular characteristics and how do they tie into other rules or situations?
Split into 2 parts
DeleteBath used his system and suggested extremes cancel out. Yours seem like untested random suggestions, later you suggest councils of war could be simply decided by a dice throw. Then you include logistics in the same chapter. I guess at 7 pages you like logistics, more if we include recruitment etc. Doesn't all this logically belong in the campaigns chapter?
Some of the chapters on air for example, add little and should have been dropped by a proper edit to allow expansion of the key parts.
I could go on. Clearly some people like the book and others don't. For me it's a Curate' s egg and I still dispute the title promises more than it delivers.
But as you wrote for yourself, not others, this is perhaps understandable. The title suggests it's for others but it's more a ramble through your ideas than a guide.
It could have been so much more; a proper critique, review and rewrite would have turned it into a much better final product IMHO. As it is, it would be better termed a "toolkit" in that the reader has to do the work, being critical most "toolkits" are simply incomplete.
It's obviously a personal view whether that applies here.
The definition of a practitioner "is someone who has learned everything about his or her field and is actively working in that field." A guide is "a person who shows the way to others"
After reading this book I cannot say I've been shown everything to help me find my way; rather I've been handed a self-help leaflet.
Neil
I'm sorry to say I've not read your book (yet), so I'm also guessing a bit. At one extreme you can play solo wargames by walking round to the other side of the table and making the best move you can for that side. That was the default approach for years.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of scenarios specifically for solo play: as an attacker, clear all of the enemy from the table (including hidden elements represented by face-down paying cards), or as a defender (at Rorke's Drift) survive waves of opponents who simply charge straight at you until sunset. Those are effectively what you get in Wally Simon's Solo Wargaming Secrets.
Then Grant's Programmed Wargame Scenarios that sets out to define some rules for how the other side will behave, while the solo player concentrates on commanding one army (as if there was a live opponent in the room).
At the other extreme you could play a computer game, where the computer controls one army against the solo player.
I wonder whether modern solo players are so used to computer games (and boardgames with bot opponents like the COIN series) that they want more help with mechanics that control the other side.
This could all be irrelevant, and I promise that I will get around to reading your book. Hope it sells well.
Thank you; yes, I do wonder about the influence of computer games. I can't really say, of course, because I don't play them, but there are a lot of comments around about fighting the AI and wanting systems to do that. Now, they are possible, but are, in my view, a lot more trouble than they might be worth. On the other hand a system which beats the human player can be strangely satisfying. Or maybe I'm a masochist on the quiet.
DeleteI hope you enjoy the book when you get to it.
I haven't read the book, so I obviously can't comment on it. But I have read this post, twice, so I can comment on it. To me, the nub of the issue is in your 5th paragraph. "It is usually a pretty simple issue of moving counters or pins on a map, or toy soldiers around a table, and rolling a few dice to decide what happens. I do not really think that deciding on the outcomes needs a great pile of rule mechanisms and mechanics. It just, well, flows."
ReplyDeleteTo you it may be easy, but to others (who may be dominated by their 'left brain' for whatever reason) it isn't so obvious how, as a solo gamer, you decide what happens. Some people find coming up with new ways of doing things easier than others. I think the interesting question is "how does someone think of new ways of doing things/where do the ideas come from?" If you can answer that, you can help people find their own answers to "how does it flow?".
Yours is one of the blogs I find inspiration in. One that has given me ideas which I have used - even if I misunderstood some of them :-). But essentially I'm copying not innovating. I did ask another blogger recently how he came up with good ideas, but he said either someone else must come up with them or he had too much time on his hands. I suspect it might have something to do with not using pivot tables any more.
Argh! Pivot tables.... I had a colleague whose answer to every question was to put it into a spreadsheet and use a pivot table. Mind you, sometimes she was right....
DeleteI think that you might be correct in that if you get a narrative flow then the next moves, or the possibilities of next moves become fairly clear. But if all you see are mechanics and the possibility of getting one over on the other guy (who, in solo wargames, is also yourself), then you might struggle.
Misunderstand ideas is not a problem - that is, in fact, the basis of creativity (I wrote a bit ago: https://ancientrules.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-creative-wargamer.html). Copying with a twist is innovating. But Good ideas and different ideas cannot be guaranteed, even with time on your hands. In my case, a lot of reading, thinking and trying stuff out goes behind any idea I have, good or bad. Working out which is which is the next problem, of course....