Chance and Wargames

One of the features of Bonaparte at Marengo that has excited the most comment is the chance-
free method of resolving combat. Although it is not the first game to resolve combat without
dice, cards or other randomizers, it is certainly one of a very small group of wargames to do so,
which is why this aspect of the game has attracted so much attention.
It is not the point of this essay to defend the game against accusations that it doesnt work: there
is in fact a general consensus among players of the game that it does work, rendering such a
defense redundant. It is also not the point of this essay to attack other games that use chance
elements; although some games that use chance may not work well, so many do (and some work
very well indeed) that a general attack on the practice would have to be considered absurd.
Rather than make a general attack or defense of the use of chance in wargames, the intent of this
essay is to explore its role where it is used, the class of problems it is invoked to handle, and
specifically, since wargames are simulations as well as games, what it is called upon to simulate.
Chance and Combat Resolution
The prototypical use of chance in wargames is as the final arbiter for resolving combat between
opposing forces, and so it is here that the consideration of the problem will begin. There are two
common types of combat methods used in wargames: the first is the gang-bang method,
whereby multiple attacking pieces can combine their strengths against one or more defending
pieces, with the relative strengths expressed as a ratio. In this method, the results of combat
generally affect both sides. The second is the roll-to-hit method, whereby pieces make their
attacks individually against (usually) a single defending piece and the results only affect the
defending piece (in order to inflict losses on the attacker, the defender becomes the attacker in
turn and carries out his own roll-to-hit attacks). As the summary of both would suggest, roll-to-
hit is prone to substantially more die rolls to resolve a fight between some set of attacking and
defending pieces than the gang-bang method. Interestingly, the fact that more die rolls are used
represents not a greater role of chance in the design but a lesser role the more statistically
independent random events are generated, the more likely they are to average out (in statistics,
this phenomenon is known as the regression to the mean). For this reason, it is a perverse truth
that a game with a huge number of random events to resolve any particular question would be
almost identical to a game with none at all.
The fact that all other things being equal, the amount of chance in wargames varies with the
number of die rolls (the smaller the number of die rolls, the more probable that the result will
differ from the statistical average) is itself interesting, particularly when considering that because
larger scale games tend to have more pieces and more die rolls, they have less chance in them
than smaller scale games with fewer pieces and fewer die rolls. The difficulty smaller games
have with regard to their play balance being affected by a few lucky die rolls has long been noted
(Avalon Hills old Africa Corps was infamous for the entire game tending to come down to a
single die roll on a 2:1 attack on Tobruk), but the question about chance in combat being raised
is not from a game balance but from a simulation perspective: just what is it that chance in
combat resolution is simulating?
Chance and Simulation
It is singularly unhelpful to say that chance is used to simulate chance. While chance is
currently recognized as part of modern physics at the level of quantum mechanics, it is probable
that none of the wargames that have ever used chance have done so to simulate phenomena at
that level. Above that level chance in wargames doesnt simulate chance in the real world at
all, but something else that is obscured rather than revealed by calling it chance.
To understand better what sort of answer is sought, let us imagine a game in which an attack
represents a single shot fired by one man from one weapon against a defense consisting of a
specific targeted location. In such a game, chance might be called on to represent to represent the
state of the specific weapon (clean or dirty, close or far from the manufacturers specs, hot or
cold, etc.), or the state of mind of the man firing the weapon, or wind conditions, or visibility.
One interesting point is that all of the things on the above list might be simulated by chance in
the game, but they might also be simulated by actual game mechanics: the game might have
rules covering the state of the individual weapon, or the state of mind of the man firing the
weapon, or wind, or visibility. In short chance can be seen as often nothing more than a catch-all
for things that the game does not otherwise simulate: chance in the game represents not
chance in some sense in the real world, but instead marks the limits of the simulation: the
presence of chance may thus be a sign-post in the game that says Simulation Stops Here.
With this realization, it may seem that the search for what chance simulates is at a dead-end.
Game designers have great freedom as to what they do and do not simulate, which seems to
leave the question of what chance simulates as something that can only be reasonably considered
on a game-by-game basis. Whats more, there is an even more profound reason for thinking that
this might be the final answer: in representing the limits of what the designer chooses to
simulate, it may also represent the limits of the designers knowledge; that it is a double-dead-
end in that it represents not just what the designer knew about but chose to leave out, but what he
didnt even know about in the first place, and if the designer himself didnt know what he (so to
speak) left to chance, what hope do we have of figuring it out?
Both of these concerns, however, seem to be overly pessimistic. Game designers may have great
freedom, but they are often attempting to do very similar things, under very similar constraints,
and are often heavily influenced by what each other has done. The fact that we can make so
many generalities about wargames that, if not completely true of all wargames, are nevertheless
true for large numbers of them, speaks to this point. Further, even if the designers themselves are
unaware of exactly what they are leaving out, that doesnt mean that we necessarily have to give
up hope of finding it, certainly in a generic if not specific sense. With these encouraging thoughts
in mind, let us proceed to seek such insights as we can find while acknowledging in advance they
will not be perfect. Having asserted that chance represents the limits of simulation, for example,
we can proceed by consideration of what different types of limits may exist: the classification of
different types of limits can also serve as a classification of different types of the use of chance.
Chance and Limits of Scale
We can observe that one limit that all wargames have in common is one of scale: each game
represents both an analysis and a synthesis of its subject. As an analytic tool, it breaks it subject
down into a number of smaller elements (converting an army into multiple pieces is an analysis
of that army, for example), but it does not keep breaking down forever: eventually it stops
breaking its subject down and by virtue of halting its analysis it instead performs acts of
synthesis (for example, converting many individuals and items of equipment into a single piece).
Thus, a game that can be said to analyze an army into regiment-level pieces can also be said to
synthesize men into regiment-level pieces. With this in mind, we can see that chance can be used
to represent a synthesis of elements below the games level of analysis in terms of scale. For
example, in simulating an an artillery bombardment, a game may analyze that bombardment
down to 15-minute blocks of time that an individual artillery battery spends firing, and use
chance as part of simulating the synthesis of all the variations affecting individual guns firing
individual rounds. From this, it can be seen that the previous conclusion that chance represents
the limit of simulation is not true from the perspective of the designer: the categories of events
which the designer assigns to chance and the possible outcomes and their probabilities are in fact
a form of simulation, but they are synthetic rather than analytic simulation. The prior conclusion,
however, remains true from the perspective of the player: he only participates in a simulation
where it is analytic; in a synthetic simulation he is reduced to the level of observer.
Chance and Limits of Scope
Wargames, however, are not only limited in scale. Another important limit is one of scope. In
one sense, the limit of scope is inverse of the limit of scale: the problem being the treatment of
things that are above, as distinct from below, the games scale. For example, a game may
simulate a battle analytically, but the battle has limits in terms of space, time, forces involved,
and objectives. Many things are left unsimulated not because they are too small for the game but
because they are too big: the world does not really stop at the edge of the battlefield. In some
games, scope issues may directly affect the outcome even at the level of resolving individual
attacks (air support may or may not show up, off-board artillery may or may not fire, etc.), but
this is not the only (or even most common) way chance can be used to reflect limits of scope.
One common use of chance as a scope limit is with regard to the natural world, particularly
weather (weather can be simulated deterministically as well, but the advantages and
disadvantages of such an approach is an interesting question that will be taken up later, in a
different context). Another possible use of chance is with regard to force availability: what forces
the players have available, both initially and during the game, may depend on chance as part of
the games simulation of decisions and events outside the limits of the game (for example, an
off-map battle may affect what reinforcements players receive and when they receive them). Still
another possible use of chance is in terms of objectives: what the players are trying to achieve
may depend on decision-makers above the players level or by events beyond the battlefield.
Chance and Limits of Control
Not all limits in wargames are limits of scale and scope. Another more subtle limit is the
replacement of a multitude of decision makers in the real world (all with different goals, abilities,
and knowledge) with a single decision maker in the game (the player). Below the game scale
limit, simulation of this tends to fall into the general synthesis of individual attacks. Above the
game scope, it can be represented by the methods described above. This problem, however, also
exists within the games scale and scope limits. In the real world, the actions represented by fifty
game pieces might be controlled by fifty different decision makers (even setting aside the even
more numerous lower-level decision makers represented in the game by synthesis). Many games
of course simply do not simulate this (particularly simple games) others simulate it through
various restrictions but do not use chance methods, and still others include chance as part of the
simulation. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that, the larger and more realistic a game
is, the more grave this problem becomes: the game with 1000 pieces has replaced 1000 decision-
makers with 1, whereas the game with 20 pieces has replaced only 20 decision-makers with 1.)
The general effect of command-and-control rules (as rules dealing with this problem are known)
is to reduce the control players have over their own pieces. The role of chance, where it is used,
is part of this general reduction of control (for example, forcing a player to roll a die before he
can carry out some action).
Chance and Limits of Knowledge
Still another simulation limit is the limit of knowledge. Interestingly, here the problem for
simulations is that they do too much rather than too little: the problem isnt the simulation of
knowledge per se, but the simulation of the limits of knowledge. The most obvious form of this
limit is knowledge of the opposing forces (the problem of limited intelligence), but the problem
domain also embraces limits on knowledge of future events and even friendly forces. Limits on
knowledge of friendly forces have only occasionally been implemented (typically through green
unit rules where the strength of a piece is unknown to the player controlling it), but limits on
knowledge of future events are implemented pervasively: explicitly in cases such as weather,
where the goal is not to simulate historical weather, but to simulate the real-world lack of
foreknowledge of weather, and implicitly in areas like combat, where chance (whatever synthetic
simulation purpose it may also serve) keeps players from knowing in advance how attacks will
come out. There is an interesting tension in historical games between the goal of simulating
uncertainty and the goal of simulating history: in the area of weather, for example, some games
will deterministically reproduce the historical weather while others have random weather; both
are trying to be good simulations, but they are each forced to be a bad simulation of one thing in
order to be a good simulation of the other.
An interesting aspect of the simulation of the limits of knowledge pertains to the choices
available to achieve it. Regardless of the type of knowledge being limited, the simulation choices
are the same: complexity (where knowledge is limited by the ability to understand), secrecy
(where one player has knowledge that the other does not), and chance (where neither player has
knowledge). Complexity as a factor in limiting knowledge is not the same as complexity in terms
of rules but in terms of how easy it is to understand a situation and to know the consequences
that an action might entail. However complex wargames may be in terms of their rules, they
usually are not very complex in terms of the situations they present (it is generally much easier to
understand the consequences of a move in a typical wargame than in a game like Chess or Go).
Because of this, wargames have a surprisingly difficult time simulating limited knowledge
through complexity alone, which leads to the next choice, secrecy. Secrecy is minimally present
in all wargames in that each player has no knowledge of what the other player is thinking,
although often that is the only way it is present. Use of secrecy in the game mechanics
themselves is atypical, even though a substantial minority of wargames have used secrecy for
decades (there are many reasons for this, but one common to wargames is the need to have
different rules for different kinds of pieces, and those rules cause trust issues if the relevant
information about the pieces is secret). Finally, we come to chance. While chance is sometimes
used for no other purpose than to impose limits on knowledge, it more often is used for that
purpose in combination with other purposes: for example, chance can be used in combat not only
as part of the simulation of limits of scale but also for limits of knowledge is well: it is important
that not only the chance results simulate the range of outcomes that a given event could produce,
but that neither player knows those outcomes in advance.
Chance and Replay Value
Before concluding, it is well worth noting that there is another reason why chance is used in
wargames that has nothing to do with simulation per se, and that is to increase the replay value of
a game by using chance as an engine for increasing the variability of game play. In one sense,
increasing the variability of game play is an end itself towards increasing the entertainment value
of a game: the greater the variety of situations a game can present players, the more fresh
challenges it can present to their skill. Beyond this, games face an additional special challenge as
a form of entertainment: that of not being solvable, that is, of not devolving into puzzles which
the players solve and then discard. It is interesting to note that the term players use for a game
which has been solved is that it has been broken, a term which no doubt owes something to
code-breaking but also reflects what has happened to the game as a game. A game is broken
when players discover a single plan for one side that the other side cannot prevent from being
executed (even with foreknowledge of it) that will result in one side almost always winning the
game. Chance has always been an aid in avoiding this, although the number of perfect plans
and broken games in the history of wargaming attests to its