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Wargames usually lie somewhere on a spectrum between realistic simulation and pure abstract game.

For example, the old SPI boardgame Air War puts the player in control of a jet fighter. The rules require the player to track detail such as the roll rate and angle of his plane, when going into a turn, since this affects the speed he can do the manoeuvre. At the other end of the spectrum is Blue Max, a GDW game in which each player chooses his next move from a preset menu that defines the manoeuves available for each type of plane. Both games simulate aspects of tactical flying combat based on reality. Air War is a lot more realistic, but arguably, less fun to play, though this depends on the viewpoint of the player. I have enjoyed both games. The moderd equivalent of Air War would be a computer flight simulator. Star Wars: X Wing, is the modern equivalent of Blue Max.

Air War clearly is a game built from the ground up. The assumption of the rules is that by accurately modelling the flight performance of a jet, the in-game simulation will be realistic, and realistic fighting tactics will be generated.

Blue Max ignores most of the details of the technical performance of the actual WW1 planes, and gives you a set of rules that produces a result that feels a bit like a dogfight. How realistic it is I don't know, but anyway, realism wasn't the objective. However, the point is that instead of modelling the detailed inputs of the system, Blue Max loosely models the outputs.

In my view, the Output Model has become a lot more popular since the 1980s, partly because it is simpler to play, but also because of a recognisation by designers, that detailed modelling of inputs often does not produce historical looking results. I feel this is because what happens during a battle is not a collection of mechanical processes, but far more loose, chaotic and variable. This is for land warfare anyway. Air and Sea warfare is a lot more mechanical because it is done by machines.

So, two points to discuss:

How important is realism?
What are good ways to achieve it?

Quite frankly, I am not at all convinced that Detailed Input models are realistic at all. They are good at providing the illusion of reailsm, but have they actually been cross-validated against real world effects? Probably not. The primary benefit of Detailed Input is that it keeps the player busy, and allows the designer to sell a larger rulebook packed with more tables and charts of dubious "value".

Realism is something that sits in the designer's hand, balancing between speed and effort and results. IMO, "realism" should have 2 goals:
1st - reasonable results from reasonable action & tactic;
2nd - minimization of unreasonable results from unreasonable action & tactics.

Consider Chess. As an Output-based game, Chess is hyper-realistic when one considers the time scale to be a up to a fortnight per turn, and "combat" to be political. Chess realistically considers the relative ability for people of station (and their retinues) to move from place to place, and the relative power that they wield in a political sense.

Having enjoyed wargames for about 20 years, yet never having been in a war, I can say that realism is only needed in the "Hollywood" sense.

On top of that, the realism of something like 40k is dependent upon caring about the fluff, which I mostly don't. Again, Hollywood depth is sufficient for me to enjoy playing the game.

Excessive detail just grinds the game to a halt, if you need to record it yourself. In a game like Fallout it is reasonable to track limb damage and the like, because no player input is required. The computer tracks it for you, so it is both "fun" and "realistic" to get crippled limbs.

But if I had to track the difference between crippled limb and casualty on a 40k model? No thanks. Again, Hollywood style. Is the hero able to keep going with a bullet in his leg and major head trauma? Yes? OK! Keep it going, John McClane!

Good ways to achieve that level of realism is simple. If I was watching a movie, would I believe it in the movie's setting? I don't believe in the real world, that a human being would run and jump from rooftop to rooftop chasing their quarry, riding a motorcycle for half of that chase. But I believe that James Bond would, so I'm cool with it.

40k has some issues for me, in that regard. I don't believe a Bolter would ever stop a proper tank, even if it shot that tank in the exhaust pipe 10 times. But that's me. If I saw that happen in a movie, I wouldn't believe it, regardless of the fluff behind it.

So we come back to the whole simulation v. game design. In a properly designed simulation, the results, based on the inputs provided, should track some real process. A game should be fun. In the context of wargames, at best, there are very rough, limited simulations. And there are some fun games. Sometimes the two intersect. Realism would only properly be attributable to accurate simulations (and doesn't always match the expected result). What most game players are actually interested in is believability, that is what is immersive within the setting laid out by the game.

greatbigtree's example is a good one: he doesn't believe a bolter would ever be effective against heavy armor. Now, in real life, a heavy machine gun can cripple an MBT by striking external storage of fuel or munitions that can in turn detonate catastrophically, leak into the engine, etc. but is highly unlikely. Now, is accounting for such minor chances a good design?

Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to simulate some of the dangers faced by tank operators in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would probably not be unreasonable to add from a simulationist view. Additionally, if it is a balancing factor in a game to ensure that infantry can remain viable against armor, it may be a proper game balance decision, but may hinder believability in a superfuturistic game.

I disagree that chess is highly realistic in any sense. Chess is pretty much the definition of an abstract game. But it is a well designed game that has survived longer than most and demonstrates that realism is not always necessary or desirable. Chess, go, backgammon, etc. are other examples.

On the flip side, numerous wargames, rpgs, etc. have pushed countless charts, variables, and other tedious minutiae without being very good simulation nor fun games. From the point of game design, one big mistakes wargames in general make is not having a clear goal or focus in design. Adding in charts, special rules, exceptions, and the like is a kludgey, generally poor approach to game design. The base rules should elegantly reflect the goals as clearly as possible, with the focus being on meaningful player interaction and decision making.

 jmurph wrote:
Realism would only properly be attributable to accurate simulations (and doesn't always match the expected result). What most game players are actually interested in is believability, that is what is immersive within the setting laid out by the game.

If you delve deep enough into things like high energy particles intersecting regular matter or hyper-velocity impacts of long rod penetrators versus advanced armor materials you eventually start noticing caveats such as ''based on [x] model, we believe [y] to occur, because [z]'', which means simulations are themselves attempting to model a concept of modeling that may not be all that well understood within the body of current scientific knowledge relevant to the game.

 jmurph wrote:
greatbigtree's example is a good one: he doesn't believe a bolter would ever be effective against heavy armor. Now, in real life, a heavy machine gun can cripple an MBT by striking external storage of fuel or munitions that can in turn detonate catastrophically, leak into the engine, etc. but is highly unlikely. Now, is accounting for such minor chances a good design?
Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to simulate some of the dangers faced by tank operators in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would probably not be unreasonable to add from a simulationist view.

This would be something for games where vehicles are quite few in number and infantry probably played at 1:1 scale, because the majority of the time vehicles will never be that festooned with things that go boom.
It's kind of the point of bothering with armored vehicles in the first place, unless a byproduct of utter lack of training, and does highlight a definite realism-believability-gameplay conundrum.

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 jmurph wrote:
I disagree that chess is highly realistic in any sense.

IMO, you need to look deeper into the background of Chess, and what it attempts to simulate.

Realism is highly important, realism does not mean simulation though, realism means the system feels real or that it is believable.

Realism is important if you want to maintain the magic circle and have the players immersed in the game, the biggest problems with realism are rules that go against what is perceived as real (which may not be real after all), rules that go against the games background and rules that do not follow the worlds internal logic.

Simulation on the other hand tries to recreate reality.

Both can be abstracted up to a really big degree depending on the game design and goal, a division level simulation game abstracts much of the combat realism in order to simulate the situation someone commanding a division would face for example, or for a realistic game an anti tank weapon blowing up a light armoured vehicle is enouph, it does not need to go into every step for that result to happen.

To add to what's above, I think the level of detail should match the scope of the game. If you were playing a "Dogfight Game" of one plane vs another, extreme detail can be fun, because you're trying to edge that one extra "inch" of success over your opponent. Multiple levels of detail allow that strategic / tactical interaction, and that would be fun.

On the other hand, if you had to run a squadron of planes, each one with it's own distinct pitch and yaw and... other aviation technical terms... getting bogged down in the details wouldn't be fun. For me, at least.

Same deal if we were playing a Gladiator-style game, with 2-6 combatants, say. At that point, limb damage and individual weapon / armour quality would matter. But at the scale of unit vs unit combat, that's not really worth keeping track of.

Plus, I want a game that takes no longer than 2 hours to play, at a decent size. For example, if a buddy and I get together, talk a bit, set up terrain, play the game, and clean up, I want that to take no more than 2 hours at 1500 points, say. Yeah, we can do it faster, but it's our fun social time too, so we tend to take a couple hours to play a game. So for me, the detail level should let me play a game in a time frame that's reasonable and fun.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Plus, I want a game that takes no longer than 2 hours to play, at a decent size.

I think that's where most gaming is now.

Well, yeah, I'm just saying. The level of detail shouldn't be such that you need more than two hours to play a game. I've only ever played one game of Axis and Allies, and it was a fun game, but two days later? The fun was gone.

 greatbigtree wrote:
To add to what's above, I think the level of detail should match the scope of the game. If you were playing a "Dogfight Game" of one plane vs another, extreme detail can be fun, because you're trying to edge that one extra "inch" of success over your opponent. Multiple levels of detail allow that strategic / tactical interaction, and that would be fun.

On the other hand, if you had to run a squadron of planes, each one with it's own distinct pitch and yaw and... other aviation technical terms... getting bogged down in the details wouldn't be fun. For me, at least.
...
...

That difference is illustrated by SPI's Air War, ultra-detailed and complex, where you control a single aircraft, and Avalon Hill's Flight Leader, where you command two to eight aircraft.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1629/air-war-modern-tactical-air-combat

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3711/flight-leader

Or Necromunda, in which you control a dozen individuals

versus 40k2, in which you control 2 dozen individuals.

Wait, what...

Time and space are the two major problems faced with modern game design in my opinion, one and a half hour is the sweet-spot Space I am not sure 4x4 seem to get a preference but I also see some attempts at 3x3, 3x2 and 2x2 that bring the game into a more common table space.

The same goes with boardgames the huge games that take up a lot of time and space are less and less favorable.

Kitchen table gaming on a space up to 36" deep is a lot easier than requiring a dedicated 4' x 6' gaming table.

The problem is that scale realism kind of requires larger tabletops. WW2 really wants to be played left to right across the board, on an 8' wide board, using 1/285 scale miniatures. Which then wants a ridiculous amount of scenery.

Hence the newest games like Infinity, Warmachine, Malifaux, Tanks!, etc. shrinking scale down to small skirmishes down to handful of models on a roughly 3' square. At least they can appear semi-realistic.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


IMO, you need to look deeper into the background of Chess, and what it attempts to simulate.

I'll bite.

Background such as its early origins in India as Chaturanga? Or its theoretical inspiration from xiangqi? Or perhaps you are referring to its modern form developing from about the 10th century but not really being finalized until the 19th. (Interestingly, even if the 1500s when it was primarily associated with noble culture in Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier there is a caution about spending too much time on it as it is merely a game.) Again, realism is a practice of reflecting things directly. Chess is abstract- the bishop doesn't literally represent a religious figure moving along alternately colored tiles to capture a peon, for example. Indeed, the bishop originally may have been an elephant! All the pieces are symbolic and highly abstracted (it's also why it's easy to swap out the pieces as other things without making the game seem odd). This is not the same as complexity or, as I argued, believability (something can be unrealistic and still believable within its own parameters- fantasy for example). Nor does it mean it may not have simulationist elements.

Anything can be realistic when sufficiently abstracted to be a game.

Chess is abstract now, but that is because we have gotten so far away from its roots. If you were at the early development of the game, it would be a highly realistic simulation limited by design concepts available at the time.

What role does internally consistent outcomes occur on the realism scale?

Internal world consistency is really important for realism it helps ease the mind in and keep the magic circle intact, it does not matter if it really is not real as long as everything obeys the same rules it feels consistent and realistic.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Both can be abstracted up to a really big degree depending on the game design and goal, a division level simulation game abstracts much of the combat realism in order to simulate the situation someone commanding a division would face for example, or for a realistic game an anti tank weapon blowing up a light armoured vehicle is enouph, it does not need to go into every step for that result to happen.

Yeah, the lightbulb went on for me years ago while I was slugging through a game of Advanced Squad Leader. My opponent and I were sitting there micro-managing each unit to figure out exactly how they should attack. We spent hours discussing various mods and combat results, and whether something like that would ‘really’ happen. But all of a sudden it occurred to me that it didn’t matter how refined the rules were made, because the playing experience we had was like nothing any individual in that war would experience. Commanders simply didn’t micromanage troops in the way that game assumed.

I don’t always need realism in a game but when I do it’s that kind of realism that I’m chasing – when the decision space of the player is realistic and appropriate to the role he has. Anything which is beyond the detail I need to know to make decision at my level of command should be abstracted. This means if I’m a single soldier, it can good to have individual wound results and ammo counts, but as I command larger and larger forces more and more should be abstracted.

Up Front, "the Squad Leader card game" seems surprisingly realistic in the way it lets you experience the uncertainty, fog of war and sheer luck of WW2 small infantry unit combat. It's also essentially an abstract game.

That said, none of us ever fought in WW2, so we can only compare the game experience with vicarious experience gained from reading novels and histories.

Accounts by actual soldiers often contradict each other or common sense, so these may not be a reliable guide to what was really happening.

Internal consistency is important for three reasons:
1. Suspension of disbelief. If Side A has a huge grudge against Side B, they won't suddenly swap sides for no reason.
2. Players find it easier to play if the rules are consistent. The world needs to have rules that consistent and understandable.
3. Historical games need to be consistent with the general understanding of history.

Fantasy and SF games of course are usually based on mediaeval or modern combat. They don't have to be realistic in the same way, but they still need internal consistency. If your force seems like it's composed of telepathic heroes, perhaps it actually is compared of telepathic heroes within the game world.

In Star Soldier (SPI, 1977) the Rame aliens are telepathic and can glob together to combine their combat factors for various attack and defence purposes. Human forces, not being telepathic, cannot combine their strength the same way. It's internally consistent.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Up Front, "the Squad Leader card game" seems surprisingly realistic in the way it lets you experience the uncertainty, fog of war and sheer luck of WW2 small infantry unit combat. It's also essentially an abstract game.

That said, none of us ever fought in WW2, so we can only compare the game experience with vicarious experience gained from reading novels and histories.

Accounts by actual soldiers often contradict each other or common sense, so these may not be a reliable guide to what was really happening.

My point is not whether the various mods and variables in ASL were realistic or thematic, my point is that even if it was perfectly applied, the game wouldn’t feel real because it was applying more decision making detail to the player than they would really have at their level of command. A company commander isn’t telling individual squads to make sure stick to the hedgerows as they advance, or telling a tank to maintain a certain speed to increase the chance of hitting a target. Those might be accurate details, but they're of concern to individual soldiers, sergeants and maybe lieutenants. An captain in control of 200 guys simply can't micromanage to that level, so maybe that micro part of the game produces something which is inherently unrealistic.

Internal consistency is important for three reasons:

Sure, internal consistency is an important concept, it’s basically taking the old term ‘realism’, and giving it an expanded and more thorough meaning. Giving it a way to meaningfully apply to the issue at is applies to sci-fi and fantasy games. And perhaps more importantly making it

But it’s not what I’m talking about in the above. Someone might produce an armour penetration table that is both historically accurate and agreed to by all relevant historians, and is internally consistent with a mediaeval fighting game. But if that produces gameplay where a general commanding thousands of men ends up micro-managing small units or even individual troops so he gets the best match ups with all his attacks, then the end result isn’t realistic at all.

That’s the point I’m trying to make, which isn’t contrast to your own, but actually sits besides it – make sure that the level of detail is appropriate to the scale of the game. Otherwise the end result will be unrealistic no matter how accurate any individual piece of detail might be.

I totally agree with you.

Up Front puts the player in the boots of a small infantry patrol with maybe a dozen men and a light machine-gun. The decisions you have to take are things like; shall I try to get us into that gully/wood/cornfield, and risk moving over the open ground that is in between? Can I develop enough of a base of fire to suppress the enemy so I can then assault them without serious loss?

When players ask for 'realism' in games, they tend to mean the game play meets expectations, and gives proportional intuitive results.
Well that's my experience anyway.

As mentioned above, its not the level of detail in the simulation , but more to do with internal constants in the rules structure, and the level of abstraction meeting the game play requirement of the players.

A lot of that "realism" depends on the player's experience, along with the time / model / ground scale of the game.

For example, if you were trained as an artilleryman or tanker, and you sat down to play 40k, what would your assessment be? What if you were a veteran playing Bolt Action? Would you suspend disbelief for the ranges, mechanics and tactics involved?

Or, if you've only played 40k and never hunted, would you then say Bolt Action is somehow "realistic", given that it's warmed over 40k?

I've never played Bolt Action, but surely no-one could ever believe 40K is realistic. It's too divergent from what we all know about real physics and weapons. It can't be explained by internal consistency. It's too obviously a stylised game construct.

Bolt Action is 28mm WW2, 40k with WW2 models.

I will never play it.

When I talk about realism or look at realism in the game, for me it is anything that breaks me out of my suspension of disbelief. It doesn't necessarily mean that a bullet needs to deal the same damage to a person as it would in real life. Or that armor needs to protect in the same way. Realistically most people don't really have hitpoints, almost all hits are considered fatal. A leader/veteran doesn't have more hit points and thus can take more damage, they do tend to have more experience which translates into survivability and that is why they tend to have more hit points... but not because they are stronger or more resilient to lethal wounds.

For example in Zombicide there is a Zombie turn which Zombies take action. It uses a simple AI to determine what the actions of those Zombies are. Zombies move, attack, meanwhile players can't respond or react they just take damage if attacked. It is like when you watch a horror movie and you're wondering why they aren't running, they just stand there and get mutilated. In essence that is what happens. Although not realistic in this situation it can't be helped given what the goal and mechanics of the game is meant to do.

Could they make it more realistic? Absolutely. Would it slow the game down and bog things down in mechanics? Maybe.

With miniatures games that have a classic you go, I go type of game play. If that game means the opposing player moves, attacks and I am essentially rolling saves... those games break the "suspension of disbelief" for me. The mechanics created an unrealistic resolution of where it looks like my units sit there and do nothing, while being killed. This is why I prefer games that tend to have an action/reaction or at least overwatch. That way if I overextend then it is more believable that my troops charged into that fire, vs using less actions, being careful and going into overwatch.

 Dark Severance wrote:
When I talk about realism or look at realism in the game, for me it is anything that breaks me out of my suspension of disbelief.

It doesn't necessarily mean that a bullet needs to deal the same damage to a person as it would in real life. Or that armor needs to protect in the same way. Realistically most people don't really have hitpoints, almost all hits are considered fatal.

I agree with this. The thing is that people have varying experiences of what they will believe, or have been accustomed to believe.

For all hits to be fatal, those hits need to be good ones. If it's a snub-nosed 9mm vs full frame 45 hit, I am inclined to distinguish them based on the US experience with the Moro in the Philippines.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I totally agree with you.

Up Front puts the player in the boots of a small infantry patrol with maybe a dozen men and a light machine-gun. The decisions you have to take are things like; shall I try to get us into that gully/wood/cornfield, and risk moving over the open ground that is in between? Can I develop enough of a base of fire to suppress the enemy so I can then assault them without serious loss?

Cool. Up Front sounds really good, I'm going to look in to it.