Re: Simple is good

Tom Sullivan wrote:

> As a friend of mine once put it: "When I am gaming, I want to be
> spending my time thinking about the game, not about the rules."  I
> think
> that this sums my way of thinking up pretty well.  It should be noted,
>
> as well, that "simple" does not neccessarily mean "easy" or "stupid",
> or
> "childish" --when you get right down to it, Chess is a really
> simplified
> set of wargaming rules.
>
> It's simplicity is, I think, one of the primary virtues of the Full
> Thrust rules.  Its adaptability runs a close second.

I guess I'm the only one here that plays ASL.... <g>

I like simplicity too, (And at a con, you're pretty much limited to that
route) but I don't like rules that disallow basic things you would do in
real lfe. Once abstraction gets in the way of that then the rules are
too simple for me and we might as well just distill the whole game down
to a single die roll to determine winner and loser.

One thing that IS nice hwoever is the use of a well designed Game
Assiatance program. I play napoleanics also and there is this ruleset
called carnage and Glory. WHat an excellent set. All the cmlexity goes
into the front end building of your OB and campaign. But when it's time
to play it's pretty much "Unit A firing at Unit B, 250 meters), the
system does all the morale chacking, combat resolution, reporting, etc
with lots of charming details. There is NO dice rolling. The player has
his little reference card that tells how far you can move in what
terrain in what formation and the range of weapons. That's all you need
to know. Here you really are concentrating on fighting the battle but
not giving up on all the little things that can happen in a battle that
makes the game interesting. (check out my review and AAR at:
http://www.concentric.net/~Los/CGC/carnage/carnage.htm

I would like to see something liike this for GZG games. You get all the
fun of designing your forces, naming and organizing them etc. Then
during the battle, you don't have to consult tables screw with chits etc
etc. Would be nice.

The downside to most GAPS is that when you have a battle with a lot of
players, it can bog down as everything funnels through the one data
entry person. Still to give you an idea, in carnage and Glory, two or
four of us will fight a medium sized battle, representing about 20-25
manuever units per side (bns, squadrons, regts, batteries). The turns
are supposed to represent 15 minutes and it takes a bout 15 minutes
realtime to complete a turn with this sized battle. SO sort of real
time.

Los