Corporate convergence run amok

Alexa won’t do what you tell it to do if she doesn’t like your tone.

When people buy a product, they probably don’t want it to police their behavior. Unless it’s bought for that specific purpose, they want the product to work with them, not against them. This isn’t rocket science.

However, Amazon’s Alexa software has now changed its response to a certain stimulus — namely, calling it sexist names — from “thanks for the feedback” to “I’m not going to respond to that.” Further, the device will also respond to the question of whether it’s a feminist with: “I am a feminist. As is anyone who believes in bridging the inequality between men and women in society.”

How very like a woman! And speaking of corporate convergence getting out of hand, Blizzard has decided that it wants to reduce its player base. It hasn’t actually gotten rid of the pretty girls yet – although it has declared that they don’t like men – but let’s face it, that’s only a matter of time.


Appendix N in audio

Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the various works of science fiction and fantasy that game designer Gary Gygax declared to be the primary influences on his seminal role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. It is a deep intellectual dive into the literature of SF/F’s past that will fascinate any serious role-playing gamer or fan of classic science fiction and fantasy.


Author Jeffro Johnson, an expert role-playing gamer, accomplished dungeon master, and three-time Hugo Award finalist, critically reviews all 43 works and authors listed by Gygax in the famous appendix. In doing so, he draws a series of intelligent conclusions about the literary gap between past and present that is surprisingly relevant to current events, not only in the fantastic world of role-playing, but the real world in which the players live.

Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is narrated by Brandon Porter and is 10 hours and 22 minutes long. This is a deep and fascinating dive into the fantasy and science fiction literature behind the landmark role-playing game.

Upon further review

Last night I made two comments that drew an amount of attention. Well, three, actually. Allow me to explain:

First, as a result of Marvel badly misplaying its hand in an attempt to bypass the two major comics distributors and go direct-to-dealer in the late 90s, Diamond managed to establish a near-monopoly over the comics distribution business. Like all monopolies, their customer service has gone downhill as their prices have risen. If you combine their own reports on total retail sales with Hoover’s report on their annual revenue, Diamond takes 22 percent of the total retail dollar that goes through the comics stores. That amounts to a 37 percent markup, 17 points and 85 percent more than is normal for a distribution business.

It’s good to be the monopolist. The additional markup amounts to $55.8 million annually, or $31,885 in lost profit to each of the 1,750+ brick-and-mortar comics stores in the USA. It’s no wonder these stores are struggling or that long-established retail establishments are closing down everywhere from Arizona to Iowa and Sacramento. Diamond isn’t evil or even particularly rapacious, they are simply failing to recognize that they have been devouring their own seed corn. The rise of digital delivery systems combined with the shrinking physical channel is going to place Diamond in an increasingly difficult position; I would expect them to buy some of the independent publishers and get into content production themselves as time goes on, since from what I hear they are pretty smart.

Second, we have found it difficult to establish Alpenwolf even though we have completed one DevGame game and have several others in various stages of development because the major free game sites, Addicting Games and Kongregate, have kept changing their strategies in ways that make it difficult to work for them. Since we already built a complete virtual goods and virtual currency infrastructure, there is no reason why we shouldn’t simply launch our own free-to-play site. It’s going to be very small by gaming standards, and will probably launch with 3-5 games, but at least we’ll have a vehicle for getting our games out there to the gamers. From there, its simply a matter of building traffic and that’s not a challenge that frightens us. Frankly, it’s probably preferable to be able to grow slowly and steadily int his regard. Look for announcements asking for volunteers concerning forum moderation and writing trivia questions for everything from the NFL and NCAA football to comics and television shows in the next few months.

Third, if you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman.

When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road. That being said, of the various comics I have read, Sandman is head-and-shoulders above the rest.

As for my own writing, you might contemplate this: How many other authors flow as easily across as broad a range of genres as I do? How many authors have historically done so? Perhaps my inability to focus precludes achieving greatness in any one genre, but I think that sort of unusual breadth at least merits consideration.

UPDATE: this guy has a skeptical, but reasonable perspective on the situation.

To say Arkhaven has been controversial is an understatement. From the moment the company’s flagship title, Alt-Hero, was announced the internet was debating whether a right wing perspective would “save” comics, or further damage an already fractured industry. But as I said before, what’s lacking is a shared notion of what “saving comics” really means. That said, there is a general consensus that Mark Waid’s head on pike would be a good start. Which brings us back to Vox Day and Arkhaven. Most criticism directed toward Vox can be boiled down to: “The last thing comics needs is another goddamn writer with an agenda.”

A self-described libertarian nationalist and member of the Alt-Right, Vox Day has never been shy about his politics. Likewise, his yet to be release Alt-Hero series looks to be something of a satire of today’s overly politicized comics. The project is still months away from completion, so for now we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, Arkhaven has two titles digitally available on Amazon—Quantum Mortis and Right Ho, Jeeves. Both are selling well. Neither are political in nature. And there’s the rub—Alt-Hero could be a political screed. Then again, maybe not. But so far Arkhaven’s catalog hasn’t shown itself to be a mouthpiece for anybody’s politics. If only we could say the same for Marvel.

Does this signal a new dawn for comics? Well, if bringing content to an ignored demographic is Arkhaven’s end goal, it’s not a bad start. And drawing new readers to the medium is a net gain for everyone. But as Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver has been quick to point out, the company currently has no presence in Diamond’s monthly Previews catalog, which is a prerequisite for getting books stocked in comic book stores. And in Sciver’s eyes, if a company isn’t moving product through brick-and-mortar shops, it’s contributing absolutely nothing to the overall health of the industry.

I’ll be blunt, if Arkhaven can eventually become successful enough to provide comics shops with enough monthly product to pay the rent, Vox will not only save the industry, he’ll be the motherfucking Batman.

Better yet, the Shade.


The Gay Wizards and the Magic Bear

Ian Miles Cheong busts Wizards of the Coast for trying to silence a whistleblower on Dangerous.

Magic: The Gathering is mired in a controversy surrounding allegations that some of its high-level tournament “judges” are pedophiles who were not given background checks by Wizards of the Coast, allowing them to mingle with children who play the game.

Jeremy Hambly, better known as the host of The Quartering and Unsleeved Media on YouTube outed several high-profile judges for their pasts, who are serving time for convictions on child pornography charges. Hambly is currently embroiled in what some refer to as the “next GamerGate” for taking the Hasbro-owned Wizards of the Coast and its surrounding entities to task for failing the gaming community…. Instead of refusing to publicly acknowledge Hambly’s investigations, the company chose instead to address it through one of its vice presidents on Twitter instead of releasing an official statement.

Elaine Chase, the VP of Global Brand Strategy & Marketing for Magic: The Gathering for the Hasbro-owned company, described the investigation as “misinformation circulated on social media regarding Wizards’ policies, event staffing, and Magic Judges.”

“Safety at Magic events is our top priority. We have a zero-tolerance policy for sex offenders. Our standard and long-standing practice is to suspend offenders from the DCI and/or remove stores from the WPN,” she wrote.

“Magic Judges, a fan-run community and separate from WotC, regularly posts anniversary blogs which sometimes include erroneous anniversaries for former judges not currently certified, either because of lapsing certification or active de-certification due to conduct,” she added. “Retailers and TOs are responsible for staffing events they run and are required to comply with all laws. We will continue to work with retailers and TOs to ensure safe and inclusive communities.”

Chase directed users who wished to report judge and retailer or player misconduct to official emails.

The company is now accused of being lax in its failure to conduct background checks on volunteer judges—even those in the United States—who participate in Wizards-sanctioned events.

Hambly, who outed the judges, tells DANGEROUS that he had his The Quartering channel flagged and removed by YouTube within 45 minutes of uploading a video condemning Chase’s statement and defending his investigation. 


Magic: The Convergence

James Delingpole observes convergence at work at Wizards of the Coast

This is the story of Magicgate. Yes, another scandal, but one that for a change doesn’t involve any actual rape or sexual harassment… only game players who like pretending to be witches and wizards.
Like Gamergate, it concerns ordinary people who just want to be left alone to enjoy their hobby.

Ranged against these ingenus is an orcish horde of bullying, preening, self-righteous Social Justice Warriors who believe that everything — even an innocent collectible card game like Magic: The Gathering — should be played and policed according to their viciously intolerant politically correct rulebook.

Even if, like me, you’re not among the 20 million people who play Magic: The Gathering, what I hope you’ll appreciate is that this is a story that should concern us all.

By the end, I hope, you’ll feel as angered as I am by this ugly, scary power grab by the regressive left. And I hope you’ll want to join me in making your voice heard by hitting the people responsible where it hurts most: in their bank balance.

That means the companies which own and profit by Magic: the Gathering. That means you, Hasbro toys. And you, Wizards of the Coast.

I want you to realize that playing games is not a left-wing thing or a right-wing thing but an everybody thing.

I want you to realize that it is not the business of games manufacturers to discriminate against or punish players for their political opinions.

I want you to realize that your miserable sordid scheme to bully everyone who plays your games into sharing your SJW values is not remotely liberal but authoritarian and fascistic.

I also want you to realize that we have got your number: you try to claim the moral high ground, yet your entire business model is based on the kind of predator capitalism I’m sure you’d be the first to condemn if you weren’t getting so rich off of it.

Great. Now we’re going to have to get into collectible card games…. Although, more seriously, if there are any hardcore – and I mean hardcore – Traveller fans who are interested in providing assistance to an RPG-related project that is not Alt★Hero-related, please email me with LBB in the subject.

Anyhow, to return to the subject, I’m pleased that the two books in The Laws of Social Justice series are helping people understand these actions by SJW-converged corporations and put them in the proper context. Because these actions are not mere happenstance and they are all connected by the same twisted vision of reality and civilization.

Really, it’s about that extremely creepy, insidious and dangerous phenomenon which Vox Day anatomizes in his latest book SJWs Always Double Down: the thing he calls “Convergence.”

Convergence, essentially, is the SJW equivalent of those parasitic wasps which lay their eggs inside other insects. The eggs then hatch and the hapless host body is devoured from within.

Obvious victims of this include organizations like Facebook, Apple, and Google, which increasingly put the values of “social justice” before more conventional free market goals like customer service and the bottom line. And, indeed, before more traditional values like freedom of speech or individual rights.

But almost no institution is immune.

Indeed, every institution and organization is vulnerable. Be sure to SJW-proof yours.


You need no other weapons

In case you’re interested what we’ve been up to at DevGame, we expect to have this little arcade game out soon.

We’ve now got two DevGame teams making steady progress on their projects and we anticipate doing our first game-related Freestartr sometime next summer. It’s going to be a remodel-and-update of one of my favorite strategy games of all time and will be set in the world of Minaria. Due to time constraints, Voxiversity, and personal interests, I’ve decided to stop blogging at Alpha Game and start doing more at DevGame.

That doesn’t mean Alpha Game is dead, as I’ll be turning over the blogging there to another astute observer of human socio-sexuality. But I think I’ve said all that I really wish to say on the subject, and I want to find more time to spend on my first and foremost area of interest, which is games.

We also have very good news on the Alt★Hero front. I don’t wish to go into any detail on the subject at this point, but I can say that we are definitely going to be able to hit the price point I felt would be necessary in order to seriously disrupt the comics industry.


Game theory and civic nationalism

Tipsy explains how logic dictates that civic nationalism is intrinsically doomed to failure in any multicultural society.

Civic Nationalism is doomed to fail in a multicultural society because it represents an unstable pareto-optimal equilibrium of the game of resource optimization through democratic politics. The non-cooperative Nash equilibrium, i.e., everyone out for their own group, becomes more stable when a democratic political system is overwhelmed by disparate ethnic groups.

For those inclined to read further about the distinction between these two equilibria, here’s an example of game that admits both types of equilibria. Suppose we have two players, A and B, who are playing a croquet game on a level field. Both players have a croquet mallet that can hit a ball exactly one foot in any direction and they get to hit it exactly once per round of the game. For each round, Player A is rewarded $1 for each foot the ball goes North and player B is rewarded $1 for each foot the ball goes West.

They both start the game willing to cooperate, and thus they decide to employ the Pareto-optimal solution, so they both hit the ball to the Northwest. They ball will go 2 feet Northwest and both player A and B will both get $1.41 (i.e., round(100*sqrt(2))/100).

Now, suppose in the next round, player A hits the ball to the Northwest as agreed upon, but player B decides to no longer cooperate. After player A hits the ball, player B hits it due West. Player A ends up with $0.71 and Player B gets $1.71 for the round.

Player A then gets pissed, and decides not to cooperate. So, the next round he uses a Nash strategy and hits the ball North and the still uncooperative Player B hits it West. They both end up with $1 for the round.

Note that the Pareto-optimal (cooperative) equilibrium yields the most money for both, but it is leaves each of the players vulnerable to the other cheating. The Nash-optimal (non-cooperative) equilibrium leaves both with less money, but structures the game in such a way that minimizes the consequences of the other cheating.

The Left has been using a Nash strategy for years, and “Conservatives” have been duped or shamed into using a Pareto strategy. The alt-Right is finally saying “Ok, you want to play that way, we will too.” This pisses the Left off, because they liked the marginal advantage that cheating in a cooperative game gave them. The alt-Right doesn’t care, goes full on Nash, because it understands the “game” is fundamentally non-cooperative now.

The scary thing is that the situation is even worse than he explains it. There have actually been THREE players, a Pareto player, a Nash player, and an anti-Pareto player. The anti-Pareto player has been playing to either a) hurt the Pareto player or b) help the Nash player, as he has no interest in money, but simply wants the psychic reward of achieving either (a) or (b).

What has changed is that a new Nash player has entered the field. This modeling is probably too complicated to bother with, especially since any numbers assigned would be arbitrary to the point of complete fiction, but regardless, both Tipsy’s original description as well as the more complicated version suffice to demonstrate that civic nationalism could never survive once sufficient Nash players were on the field.

There is nothing cooperative about US politics now. This is both an observable reality as well as a logically dictated consequence. Civic nationalism is now every bit as discredited and thoroughly disproven as communism, and any intellectually honest man will have to admit as much. Ironically, most of those still attempting to disprove it will achieve little more than revealing that they are actually Nash players hiding under a false Pareto front.

To sum up the discussion from last night in the other thread, it is observably better for a nation to be atomic-bombed, militarily defeated, and occupied by a foreign power than for it to adopt civic nationalism and mass immigration.


A home for Alt★Hero

Thanks to the enthusiasm of the Alt★Hero backers, we’ve just passed Stretch Goal #9 at 540 percent of the original objective, thereby committing us to providing a site dedicated to the series. This is a very positive sign as we enter the final stretch. There is strong interest in the role-playing game, so I’m confident that we’ll hit #10 without too much trouble. I suspect #11 is likely to prove a little ambitious, which is absolutely fine with me as we already have a considerable amount of work in front of us.

Fortunately, we have already brought two more experienced lead illustrators onto the team. As you can see, we’re now working with Timothy Lim, and although we lost Jinjerzilla as a lead illustrator, since he did not have sufficient time to take on the responsibility of illustrating full volumes, we were fortunate in being able to replace him with a longtime veteran of two major comics publishers who will be announced in the near future.

If you’re at all interested in role-playing games, I would strongly encourage you to back the RPG rulebook, as I think there is a very good chance that the system we are designing is not only going to be the best one for superheroes yet created, but will provide mechanics that translate effectively to science fiction, fantasy, and even military role-playing. What we’re doing here is more than creating a comics line, as we are building a strong foundation from which future offensives in the cultural war in comics, SF/F, and gaming can be launched.


No crime too small

This is why SJWADD was hard to finish writing. There are new SJW-related outrages occurring literally every single day! SJW convergence has gotten so out of hand in the game industry conferences that even women are now losing their jobs for the crime of inadvertently bumping up against the Narrative.

One of the largest video game industry conferences currently taking place in Poland has become subject to a controversy after its social media manager—and game developer—made a gaffe on Twitter. Her crime? Using the word “pretty” to describe other women.

Announcing a dialog between female game developers, Eve Poznan wrote: “Women in games is about to start! Gamedev ladies, join us and meet the pretty side of #gamedev” with a link to the event.

Her innocuous tweet was met with immediate fury from transgender game developers like No Man’s Sky’s Innes McKendrick, who assumed Poznan’s gender, and demanded that she “shut the hell up and listens to them.”

Other feminists in game development soon piled on, stating that Poznan’s use of the word “pretty” diminished their professional accomplishments.

Following the outrage, the conference organizer Jakub Marszałkowski‏ apologized for the incident, stating that “actions were taken for it not to happen ever again. GIC cares for inclusiveness” along a much longer explanation, which revealed the company’s decision to fire Poznan for her tweet.

Dear All, 

As the head of the Game Industry Conference (GIC) I am humbly asking you to accept my deepest apologies for what we all agree was unacceptable, disrespectful and sexist tweet and replies by our Twitter trainee. Her opinions are her own and are not representative of GIV or those of female developers, who attended the conference. 

I feel responsible for the conduct of all members of our team and I will do my best to make sure that a similar incident never happens again. To start with, the person who posted the sexist tweet will no longer be a part of the GIC organizational team. 

Please let me assure you that GIC is a respectful environment and we have zero tolerance for such remarks. I am sure that our guests can confirm that is truly the case. The inclusiveness programs that we have already put in place are also a testament to this. You can read more about them on our website. We will continuously work on making GIC more inclusive. And not because of this incident, but rather because this has been our goal for many years. 

With best regards,
Jakub

This is one reason why I no longer bother attending game industry conferences. What is the point? They are no longer about games or game development anymore, they are primarily concerned with diversity, equality, and inclusivity.


Jerry Pournelle Week IV

This is an excellent article on wargame design, “Simulating the Art of War”, that Jerry Pournelle originally published in The General, and which he graciously permitted us to reprint four decades later in Riding the Red Horse. It is perhaps worth noting that Castalia House will be publishing the book mentioned below, The Strategy of Technology, in a new hardcover edition this winter.

SIMULATING THE ART OF WAR
by Jerry Pournelle

The title of this article is a misnomer. Although I have had some experience simulating the art of war, nothing would be duller for a game; so far as I can tell, the closer the simulation, the less playable the result. The best simulation of land warfare I have ever seen takes place at Research Analysis Corporation (RAC). an Army-related think tank in Virginia. At RAC, they have three enormous war-rooms, each equipped with a wargames table some twenty feet square, each table having elaborate terrain features at a scale of about one inch to the kilometer. ln the Blue room, only Blue units and the Red units located by reconaissance are shown; in the Red room, the opposite, while the only complete record of all units in the game is in the Control room.

Each team consists of an array of talent including logistics and supply officers. intelligence officers, subordinate unit commanders, etc. Orders are given to a computer, which then sends the orders to the actual units, while members of the Control team move them rather than the players Both teams send in orders simultaneously, so that the computer is needed to find which units actually get to move and which are interfered with. The last time I was involved with a RAC game, as a consultant to feed in data about how to simulate strategic and tactical air strikes, it took six months playing time to finish a forty-eight hour simulation—and that was with about ten players on each side, a staff of twenty referees, and a large computer to help. The game, incidentally was one which eventually resulted in the US Army’s evolving the Air Assault Divisions, now known as Air Cav.

The point is that although an accurate simulation—it had to be. since procurement and real-world organization decisions were based in part on the results—the “war game” at RAC was unplayable, and, one suspects, even the most fanatical wargames buff would have found it dull after working at it full time for months.

Yet. What makes a wargame different from some other form of combat game like chess? What is there about the wargame that can generate such enthusiasm? Obviously, it is the similarity to war; the element of simulation which is lacking from other games. Consequently, the game designer must know something about simulation. and must make realism his second goal in design.

There are two ways of making a wargame realistic. The first, which by and large has been exploited well, is “face-realism”. That is, the game designer attempts to employ terrain features similar to a real world battle or war; designates units that either really were in a battle, or might have been; calls the playing pieces “armor” and “infantry”, or “CCA”, or “42nd Infantry Regiment” and the like. He tries, in other words, to give the appearance of reality. He may also, as is often done, make the rules complex, usually by adding optional rules to bring in such factors as “air power” or “supply”, or “weather”

The second way of making a wargame realistic is much more difficult, and has seldom been tried. This method is as follows: the designer abstracts the principles of war as we know them, and designs a game in which only the correct application of those principles brings success. There are, as I said, few of those games. I am tempted to say none, but this would be incorrect; many Avalon Hill games partially meet this goal.

The second kind of simulation is admittedly far more difficult. To some extent it may even interfere with the “realism” of the first kind, in that some rather unusual moves may be required. In this and succeeding articles I shall attempt to analyze the principles of war which should be simulated, and the rules which may introduce “functional simulation” to the art of wargaming.

Tactics or Strategy?

The first decision is a key one: do we simulate tactics or strategy? This is compounded by the problem that no really satisfactory definitions of strategy and tactics exist, and neither is very well understood in the United States. For example, there is nowhere in this country a good work on modern tactics, and the study of tactics has largely been neglected for the study of something which we call strategy, but which is often not that either. This is a large subject, and not one to be settled in a single essay; the interested reader might refer to The Strategy of Technology, by S. T. Possony and J. E. Pournelle, University Press of Cambridge, Mass. for a fuller exposition on what I mean by that statement.

The average game of strategy, in any event, would be too complex, and simulation is extremely difficult because strategy operates against the will of the opponent rather than his means. Because there is no more penalty to a wargamer for losing utterly than there is for losing at all, it is difficult to make him surrender until his means of combat have been eliminated. I suppose rules could be devised in which a point system is employed, with a penalty to be paid for the number of points lost by the loser less those which he has gained against the winner, but then another difficulty arises: in the real world there are usually factors operating which make the victor anxious to accept the surrender of his enemy, in war games there is almost none, and consequently a player who is winning would be most reluctant to allow the loser to stop the war until the maximum number of points had been extracted. It is all a very difficult matter. and one which deserves more thought than we have time for in this article.

Consequently, we will discuss tactics more than grand tactics, and grand tactics more than strategy. The subject is, I think, large enough for our purposes.

Which Principles of War?

The next problem is, which principles of war do we wish to emphasize? For that matter, which list of principles will we accept? Every serious student has his own set of “the” principles of war, and few lists are alike. Again, for our purposes, we will have to be satisifed with an arbitrary set of principles which seem appropriate for gaming, leaving the question of which are the correct principles of war to another discussion.

It seems to me that the most important principle of war neglected in popular games is the Principle of Surprise. Surprise has probably won more battles than all the other factors combined. Certainly it has provided most clear wins by a side which should reasonably be expected to lose. Consequently, let us examine the characteristics of surprise as it operates in real battles, and how it might be simulated in games.

Surprise consists of doing what the opponent is certain you will not or cannot do. Classical examples are: night marches, attacks by inferior forces, the use of equipment, troops, or weapons in totally unexpected ways, attacks through “impassable” terrain, and “secret weapons” which quite often have not been secret in the sense of being unknown, but secret in the sense of a capability previously unexpected, such as when infantry has been trained to make forced marches at speeds not thought possible.

Many of these kinds of surprise are impossible in gaming. There is no way, at least none known to me, in which we can unexpectedly increase the striking radius of the gaming pieces, or change the terrain rules in the middle of the game, or combine forces in such a way that together they have a higher combat factor than they do separately. Certainly we could do any of these things, possibly by some kind of card drawing or random number system; but the resultant would not be the mind-numbing shock of the totally unexpected, because the opponent would know from the rules that such things were possible. The true effect of surprise goes beyond the immediate effect to a paralysis of the opponent’s will; if he could do that, then what else might he be able to do? Wars have been won by exploiting that kind of surprise.

We can, however, introduce surprise by imperfect intelligence; allow a player to do, if not the totally unexpected, then at least something which the opponent has dismissed as highly unlikely. The best way to achieve this at the game board, in my judgment, is through the matchbox system. In this system, each player has a certain number of headquarters-type pieces, and for each such piece a matchbox or envelope. At any time a player may move a certain number of combat pieces up to the headquarters and take them off the board to be placed in the corresponding matchbox. The HQ then moves on the board, and the combat pieces are considered to be stacked on top of it, or, in non-stacking games, in the squares through which the headquarters has last moved. Obviously, by judicious moving of the headquarters units together and then apart, a player can create confusion as to just what units are in any given formation containing headquarters pieces, so much so that what appears to be a minor raid might well be a full armored army, while what seems to be a major attack might be a reconaissance in force. The matchboxes are used to keep the players honest; only those pieces in the matchbox can be claimed to be with the on-board HQ.

This rule alone can produce a major effect on wargames; I have seen the emergence of an army in a totally unexpected place bring about a paralysis of will that brought defeat to an otherwise winning player. I have also seen the fear of surprise attack stop an advance even though there was in fact no real strength opposing it. In my judgment the rule should become a standard rule in all board-type wargames.

The second most neglected factor in wargaming is the principle of Economy of Forces, the judicious combination of units of different types to bring about a force sufficient for the objective set. Again, the really great exploitations of this principle are denied the gamer. We cannot change the rules in the middle of the game, or discover a new use for infantry-cavalry combinations unknown to the opponent. We can, however, provide a rich variety of really different units, each with a special capability. This was discussed at great length in my previous article on “The Decisive Arm” and cannot be repeated here. Therefore, we will only examine some possibilities open to the wargamer.

First, it seems to me, we will need complexity, and complexity is generally the enemy of playability. ln this case there is no help for it and what we must do is strive to make our complexities such that we do not lose ourselves in them. What we need is a variety of kinds of units which have some really fundamental differences between them, not merely differences in strength and mobility.

For example: in Waterloo, the artillery should be allowed to stack without limit. This means that a player who has husbanded his artillery can bring an enormous concentration of force against a single point-much as Napoleon was able to do. The P-A-A player, on the other hand, should be prevented from stacking dissimilar units, and in particular forbidden to place Prussians with Allies. Adding this rule and the matchbox rule produces a game of Waterloo entirely different from the standard game, and one which I think is more interesting. It automatically provides a role for cavalry as well—reconnaissance becomes absolutely necessary, with cavalry making sweeps to locate the enemy artillery prior to setting up a defensive position or mounting a major attack. Without such knowledge, the player is nearly blinded and can be surprised. In modern games, armor can have unique stacking capabilities, as infantry, or infantry-armor combinations, can stack.

The last principle we shall examine in this article is the Principle of Uncertainty: No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. It is the first maxim that the aspiring commander must learn.
This was, to some extent, brilliantly incorporated into the original Avalon Hill combat results tables. It has been less and less so as time went on, and I fear the results when the new non-random combat results rules become universal as they seem destined to do.

In simulation, you can never eliminate uncertainties. There is always a chance that a small unit, ordered to die to a man, will in fact repulse a much larger unit ordered to attack without quarter. The chance may be small, but it is there, and the really great generals have been those who understood this and made contingency plans for unlikely events. If we are to keep realism in our wargames, we must have uncertainty.

At the same time, there is no question but that the old, rigid combat tables were wrong. The defense should have the option of bugging out to save his forces, and the attacker should have the option of making feints rather than full-scale attacks. On the other hand, the uncertainties need to be preserved. A withdrawal in the face of a cavalry attack, for example, can be very difficult and might even result in greater losses than an attempt to hold the position. The possibilities are easy to speculate on. harder to simulate.

Still, simulation is not impossible. Better combat tables could be devised by spending a lot more time analyzing what happens in particular situations and adjusting the probabilities accordingly. Other future articles will analyse the Principle of Pursuit, the Principle of the Objective, the Principle of Unity of Command, Logistics and Supply, and the Center of Gravity, a European concept almost totally neglected in U.S. military analyses.