karmad
Posts: 14
Joined: 10/11/2015 Status: offline
|
Yes I'm aware of the historical evidence. In fact I'd argue that once Germany attacked they had zero chance of winning (outside Harry Turtledove time traveling back with a nuke). But neither position makes a particular fun or engaging game. ... Because that’s the ultimate expression of what wargaming is all about. After you’ve immersed yourself in historical minutiae, and played through all sorts of plausible historical courses in games, you start wanting to push the envelope. If Col. Albert Seaton says that the German could have secured a line 150 miles east of Moscow if they had really wanted to, what if they had not spent the winter in Russia at all? Wargames are, like all games, ultimately about our imaginations. The ahistorical outcomes in most wargames arise from avoiding known historical mistakes. But creating rules to restrict these outcomes eventually leads to games which do nothing but pantomime history, which limits the extent of imagination. A good wargame lets players play, and in order to do that it has to be somewhat elastic. When gamers stretch that elastic, weird things can happen. But that’s the difference between, for example, a historical wargame and a historical sports replay game. The latter is set up to have a predetermined outcome. The closer it comes to this outcome, the better a game it is. A wargame with a predetermined outcome is a re-enactment, not a game. -Bruce Geryk and his excellent game diary on WiTE. [dot]wargamespace[dot][com]/2014/05/05/reckoning-in-the-east/
|