Simulating the Fog of War
Over at his blog, Ex-Teenage Rebel, Chris Pramas wrote a little about Blitzkrieg Commander, a WWII miniatures game. I don't know anything about that game past what he wrote, or much about WWII miniatures in general, but one of the things he wrote was this:
The heart of the game . . . is the command system. This clever set of rules is designed to reflect the fog of war and the difficulty of command and control. A problem that endless miniatures and board games have had is that players have a god-like view of the battlefield and complete control over the units under their command.He goes on to talk about how, in Blitzkrieg Commander, you have to make command rolls in order to get your units to do things. But the ideas "fog of war" and "god-like view of the battlefield" sent my mind in a slightly different direction. What if you had a miniatures game where the positions of the units on the tabletop may or may not actually be accurate?
Say you're an army commander, and on the board, you've got some units camped out in a stand of woods. Let's say you want them to advance. When you issue the order, you make some kind of roll. If it goes well, you proceed as planned, and move the units. If it goes poorly, it turns out that the units aren't exactly where you thought they were. Their actual location turns out to be somewhere inside some kind of Heisenberg cloud, the size and density of which is based on their training, morale, how long it's been since you issued them an order, and other factors. So, at that point, you go on to (attempt) to determine where they actually are, and what they do — if anything — in response to your new orders.
It's a half-formed idea, and there are obviously lots of complexities I haven't thought about, but it sounds like a cool approach to me. Anyone know if any other tabletop games have done anything like this?
Comments
It sounds vaugely familiar but I can't put a title to it. Bob would know if anyone would. I know that some miniature game GMs have done the whole "fog of war" thing by doing roughly what you're describing. You give your orders and your troops move; meanwhile the GM secretly makes note of how well they follow their orders and where they actually are now.
The sort of thing you mention would likely be best handled in a computer game where the true position and expected position of units could be tracked accurately.
What I think would really rock would be to cross the high school science experience of sending a message to Mars with minis gaming. That is, the "general" on a side would have a big strategic map showing what is known about the situation. Each of his subordinate commanders would have tactical maps representing smaller chunks of that picture. Then there would be squad level groups with their own command that have a ground-level view of their particular situation. Each level of command only gets to see its map and can only communicate with written orders (or for specific periods of time). That would be a hoot!
I can't say as I've seen this approach before. The closest I've come to Simulating 'Fog Of War' is infusing a Dice based drinking game into WARMACHINE. I like the idea though, maybe making it part of a Failed Command check chart and using scatter dice for actual location. It would certainly add an interesting dimension to the game (and cut down on the hangovers)
I'm pretty sure that the old-school Avalon Hill game "Gettysburg" has rules for secret moves; that is, you can move troops that your enemy can't see.
Not quite the same thing, I realize, but it's one of the closest mechanisms I can think of.
I wonder if you could achieve the same effect by having a one, two, or three turn delay (depending upon your choice of random number generating system) in your orders being effectuated without the option of recalling one's orders. My inspiration for this? Adrian Goldsworthy's magnificent summary of The Punic Wars, of course. Unfortunately, it would make for slow gaming. Maybe not so good.
The thing about secret moves (and yes, a computer is definitely well-suited to doing the work of that), whether the moves are commanded or accidental, is that you've got to do all the work on an ongoing basis. Basically, it takes a GM. The thing that I think would be cool about my idea as presented (other than not needing a GM) is that you don't have to figure anything out until you want to use the relevant unit.
I like the "Mars" idea, Peter.
Camper, your idea is also a little bit like Nuclear War, where you launch your missiles, then have to wait for them to land. That's cool.
Memoir 44 (and the other Commands & Colors games) use a limited hand of command cards to restrict the player to only activate certain units, or units on a particular section of the board. But I'm not really familiar enough with the game to say you could get stuck in a situation where you had no possible way to activate a particular group of units.
There are a variety of "hidden unit" mechanics out there, but going full "double blind" is a pretty rare hardcore mechanic that would have to be pretty far into "optional rules" territory.
I did run a double-blind Battletech game once, and although it was fun and extremely interesting, the logistics of running it was also a pain in the ass. All the players would be out of the room (standing around bored), I'd set up the board, bring one in to do their move, reset the board for the next player, bring him in, etc., then do the whole thing again for firing.
If you were going to do the same thing with a tabletop wargame (40K or whatever), that would be awesome but tedious... a 4-hour game could quickly (ok, maybe not so quickly) turn into a 12-hour Wife-oshima.
For a computer game, it would be 180 degrees and so far removed from EVERYTHING that computer games are doing right now... it would be so thoroughly insane you'd never get anyone to work on it (except maybe Costikyan... yeah, that's his kind of crazy, maybe one of his Manifesto contacts could toss together a prototype?).
* No "God's Eye View" of the battlefield, at best the entire game might look like your first turn of Civ, where you can see one city and the rest of the board is black.
* Micromanagement would be minimal. No clicking on your units to swap out weapons/spells, tweak their orders just before they get into range.
* You don't see your troops, so no jaw-dropping 3D animations when your SplatMage summons a Dracomoogle.
Interesting idea, though. You're taking god-like control away from the player, taking away micromanagement, maximizing imprecision, forcing the player to view the battlefield through a very narrow window. Done right, it could be an extremely tense, visceral "pit of the stomach" game.
Memoir '44 — great game, by the way — works pretty much like you've described. Yes, it's possible to wind up without a way to command certain of your units at some times. There's no fog of war going on, though.
Yeah, I think that most of the current crop of computer gamers would hate it. They do love them some omniscience and tasty animations.
In thinking more about the feel of Peter's "Mars" game, that would actually be a lot like the couple of play-by-mail game I joined some time in high school. You really knew very little about the world outside your faction's direct control, and the only way to get that information was to issue your dudes orders to go out and find out. (Though, as I recall, your dudes were pretty reliable about following your orders.)
I think the fun of a fog of war game might be in the intrigue it could allow between different commanders on the same side. Sure, you're all trying to win together, but there would have to be relative levels of advantage among winners, to encourage infighting, at least on the political level. Imagine injecting fog or war, Junta, and two or three levels of commanders into your average high-level wargame. And, probably, make it a play-by-mail or play-by-email, to give plenty of time for politcking and backstabbing.
Avalon Hill's Bismarck--assuming I'm remembering the game title correctly--let each player set up separate boards to track their pieces, then had a board in common for units of known location. Imagine Battleship but with one non-hidden board.