"The birth of Risk dates back to the beginnings of time."
The Origin of Risk and its Evolution to Present Day, by Bepi Entertainment.
Wargames have existed for a very long time. If broadly defined, one might say
that they preceded warfare itself. The very first time a "battle plan" was
discussed, debated, and refined, a crude form of wargame took place. Still,
modern wargaming is a fairly recent invention. In earlier times, warfare was a
fairly formalistic exercise that did not seem to reward elaborate battle strategies
as much as administrative and political skills. Perhaps for this reasons, the use of
wargaming to formulate strategies was not developed during ancient times - or at
least if it was developed, it remained unrecorded.
Early Roots
Chaturanga, considered by most historians to be the predecessor of chess, was a
sort of wargame playing in India during the 7th century. Whereas previous games
developed in China and elsewhere had involved attempts to control territory by
means of game pieces, Chaturanga was the first of such games to explicitly
borrow extensively from the vocabulary of war. (Previous games, such as the
popular Roman Latrunculi, certainly had some military overtones). Chaturanga
pieces represented foot soldiers, elephants, and chariots, which moved about on a
playing board much like the modern chessboard. The game resembled modern
chess in many ways.
Subtle variations on the formula of chess occurred during the next 1000 years,
though there were few significant developments. Koenigspiel, invented in Ulm,
Germany by Christopher Weikhmann in 1664 - Weikhmann's game, which he
declared to be "a compendium of the most useful military and political
principles," involved thirty pieces and a larger board, but was still essentially
chess on a large scale. Dr. C.L. Helwig of Germany created an even more
elaborate variant of the Koenigspiel model in 1780. Helwig's game had a playing
board with 1666 squares and over 200 specialized pieces representing various
military units. Helwig's game eventually spread throughout Europe.
Between 1780 and 1824 wargaming experienced several developments. Most of
these developments appeared in a publication by a Prussian lieutenant von
Reisswitz in 1824. Von Reisswitz developed and modified a game system created
by his father, and published his games as Instructions for the Representation of
Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame. In German, wargame is
translated as "kriegspiel." The Kriegspiel games became at least somewhat
popular among the German military as a training exercise. Kriegsspiel offered a
considerable advance over chess-derived games by abandoning chessboard
squares and associated constraints on types of movement. Kriegsspiel also
attempted to introduce realistic resolution of combat based either on the
decisions of an impartial umpire or the use of calculations based on military
experience.
Professional Simulations and Hobby Games
By the 1850's, Kriegspiel had achieved wide popularity among the German
military and some interest in the militaries of other countries. With the advent of
this "professional" wargame, wargames as a genre immediately began to
encounter the problems inherent in their tripartite nature. War chess, despite the
boasts of some of its proponents, was created as, and understood as, a game
primarily. The “game” aspect predominated in issues of design and evaluation.
New units, rules, and terrain features were added in order to make the game
more enjoyable. Professional wargaming, in Kriegspiel, shifted this paradigm.
Since wargaming was seen now as a training tool, the accuracy of the simulation
became essential to the value of the game. Yet increasing the accuracy of the
“simulation” factor often decreased enjoyment of the “game” factor, making
participants less capable of immersing themselves in the game and therefore less
capable of deriving any utility from the exercise.
An example of this nascent conflict between “game” and “simulation” was the
creation of two camps of “rigid” and “free” Kriegspiel. Combat between opposing
forces is a central feature in most wargames. Rigid Kriegspiel created elaborate
charts and calculations to resolve the effects of combat. Free Kriegspiel resolved
combat through the judgment of an umpire or referee who determined the
outcome of encounters based on military experience. While it is possible that
some players believed free Kriegspiel produced more accurate results, it is clear
that many proponents of free Kriegspiel preferred not to be bothered by the
elaborate calculations imposed by rigid Kriegspiel. Later authors (notably H.G.
Wells) would argue that even free Kriegspiel was too rule-based.
After Kriegspiel, wargaming developed in fairly predictable ways. Kriegspiel
remained popular in the German military and spread quickly to other countries.
By the early twentieth century, almost every major military power used wargames
to some extent as an aid to officer training and strategic planning. World War II
was extensively gamed by all the major powers before and during the conflict.
Professional naval wargaming became especially popular, perhaps due to the fact
that naval combat is more suited to abstraction (due to spatially discrete ships
and fewer terrain effects).
Hobby gaming and professional gaming were largely inseparable during the early
days of wargaming, but by 1913, the year when H.G. Wells (an ardent pacifist)
published the rules for his game Little Wars, it was clear that two camps had
developed. Little Wars was (and is) a combat game played with miniature figures.
Wells spent the majority of his book detailing rules for combat, movement, and
capture. After observing that all the military officers who had played his game
found its simple rules too confusing to grasp, Wells remarked in his concluding
paragraph:
Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most
expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all
proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and
suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but—
the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is
the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you
to it as nothing else but Great War can do.
Wells’ books demonstrated that extensively detailed wargames of the Kriegspiel
model could be played, enjoyed, and popularized as games, rather than as
professional instruments. Wells protested in an appendix that his game was “not
a book upon Kriegspiel” and that it was “merely a game.”
Despite this stated “game” focus, even Little Wars could not divorce itself from
professional wargaming. In his appendix, Wells went on to relate that those
military officers with which he had corresponded had “pointed out the possibility
of developing Little Wars into a vivid and inspiring Kriegspiel” unlike the “dull
and unsatisfactory exercise, lacking in realism, in stir and the unexpected” that
characterized professional military Kriegspiel. Thus, Wells implied that Little
Wars was in many ways superior to the professional game than Kriegspiel at the
time, especially in “waking up the imagination.”
Although Wells, and many of those after him, have suggested that in some ways
“hobby” wargames are better wargames than “professional” wargames, it still
makes sense to trace their development as two separate genres. The dividing line
between the two genres, though, really has little to do with the structure of the
games, and more to do with the identities of the people who play, design, and
fund them.
Military “professional” wargames are played, designed, and funded by the
military and/or other government agencies. Civilian “hobby” wargames are
designed for the mass market, which includes civilians, and are generally
commercial ventures. Civilian “hobby” wargames are sometimes criticized for
being too “game-like” and not sufficiently based on military information and
experience. Military “professional” games, on the other hand, are often criticized
as being somewhat dull and governed by bureaucratic and political influences,
which determine their design.
Which came first, warfare or wargames? Given the lethal nature of actual warfare
and man's penchant for self-preservation, it is quite possible that some form of
wargame occurred before the first organized war. Whatever the case, wargames
have been around for a long time. Warfare may have gotten more attention, but
wargames are a lot safer.
Chess is one of the oldest surviving ancient wargames. Games similar to chess
go back thousands of years. Chess is also one of the more accurate wargames
for the period it covers (the pregunpowder period). Chess is a highly stylized
game. It is always set up the same way, the playing pieces and the playing board
are always the same. The board is quite simple. Each of the pieces has clearly
defined capabilities and starting positions, much like soldiers in ancient warfare.
Given that ancient armies were so unwieldy and communication so poor, it is
easy to see why each player in chess is allowed to move only one piece per turn.
Because the armies were so hard to control, the battles were generally fought on
relatively flat, featureless ground. Then, as now, the organization of the army
represented the contemporary social classes. Thus the simularity between chess
pieces and the composition of ancient armies.
As a minor point on the history of chess, the "queen" was, until quite recently,
called not the "queen" but the "general," "prime minister," or other similar titles to
represent the piece's true function, namely, the actual head of the army who had
under his personal command the most powerful troops. This is why the "queen"
piece is so powerful. Not only does it represent the single best body of troops,
but also the very leadership of the army. The king, on the other hand, is indeed
the king of the kingdom, without whose presence the army is lost. Thus, the king
is not necessarily a soldier of any particular talent. During the battle his main
function is to survive and to serve as a symbol, a rallying point for his army.
For thousands of years, chess and variants of chess were used by civilian and
military personnel alike for entertainment, education, for "simulation." As more
education, leisure time and technical sophistication became available, the games
themselves expanded in a similar fashion. In the 17th century, the first modern
wargames appeared and within 200 years, wargames surpassing the complexity
of most (but not all) of the games covered by this book came into existence.
These earliest wargames were simply elaborate variations on chess that
replaced the traditional components of chess with playing boards that
represented real terrain and playing pieces that accurately (to one degree or
another) simulated contemporary troops and their capabilities. Many of these
early efforts were prepared by civilians, as professional soldiers in that period
were chosen more for their courage and loyalty than for any desire to invent new
things. These civilian wargames were often lacking in crucial elements of reality,
as their authors often had minimal military experience.
By the early 19th century Prussians, civilians as well as members of the Prussian
Army, developed the first detailed and realistic wargames. These were used for
training, planning and testing military operations. The mechanics of the games
were developed after careful study of actual military maneuvers and battles. After
the wars of German unification concluded in 1871, the Germans made no secret
of their new technique, and most European armies quickly followed their lead.
However, no one took it as seriously as the Germans, and no one got as much
out of it as the Germans.
About the turn of the century, the famous science fiction writer H. G. Wells wrote
a book called Little Wars. This book described a somewhat simpler form of the
wargames than those used by the professionals. Wells' game used toy metal
soldiers to represent the military units, and is another of the direct antecedents of
contemporary wargames.
Up until World War II, the majority of the wargames available involved battles.
The planning for larger operations was not so much a game as it was a papershuffling exercise directed toward solving the puzzle of getting all the pieces
moving at the right place and time, much like planning a railroad schedule. But
during World War II, things began to change.
Much of the gaming used in World War II was of the conventional sort. But
equally, if not more important, was the introduction of more scientific techniques.
Much of the "gaming" that took place at the behest of the military after World War
II was more operations research (OR) and systems analysis than the study of
history. The study of past military operations, and history in general, which had
formed the basis of the earlier wargames, was very much neglected. This
situation has only been rectified to any degree in the last ten years. Meanwhile,
the primacy of OR in the military allowed civilian wargames to pull ahead of, and
in many cases replace, functions previously performed by OR based wargames.
The military only began to play catch-up and develop effective games for their
own requirements during the late 1970s and through the 1980s.
Civilian wargaming in the US began, in 1953, when a young gentleman from
Baltimore named Charles S. Roberts, developed a game called "Tactics." It
posited two hypothetical countries, with typical post-World War II armies, going to
war with each other. The game was professionally produced and distributed
through the Stackpole Company (which already had a reputation as a publisher
of books on military affairs). This was the first of the modern commercial
wargames (as we know them).
Charles Roberts was then working in the advertising business and was indulging
in the commercialization of his hobby as a sideline. But by 1958, he realized that
there were a lot of people who were interested in his type of game, and he
founded the Avalon Hill Company. For the next five years, Avalon Hill
experienced tremendous growth. But up until 1961, only six games were
published. However, during 1961, an additional six games were published, and
from 1962 to 1963 six more games were published. Of these 18, only nine were
wargames. They included Gettysburg, Tactics II, U-Boat, Chancellorsville, DDay, Civil War, Waterloo, Bismarck and Stalingrad. It was the wargames,
however, that accounted for most of the sales, and by 1962, Avalon Hill was
selling more than 200,000 games a year.
But then it all collapsed. There was a combination of problems. First of all, the
distribution system for games was changing in the early 1960s. Many distributors
were having a hard time and a number of them, who represented 25 percent of
Avalon Hill's volume, went bankrupt. Avalon Hill had borrowed heavily to finance
its expansion, and this really left it on the ropes. Charles Roberts turned the
company over to his two largest creditors and went on to a career in the printing
industry. Tom Shaw, who had joined Charlie a few years earlier (they had been
long-time friends), was the only member of the old Avalon Hill to stay on.
Business was pretty bad through the end of `63 into early `64, but then Avalon
Hill began publishing one or two games per year and also decided to publish a
long-planned wargaming periodical called The General. This was a critical move,
as it provided a forum for gamers to discuss subjects of common interest, and
more importantly, to be aware that they were all part of a large group.
Eric Dott, the president of Monarch Printing, the largest creditor of the old Avalon
Hill, was now making most of the decisions. He made the key decisions to keep
the company going and showed how to keep it going. Dott eventually bought out
the other creditor/owner and became the sole owner of Avalon Hill. In later years,
Dott would step in as needed to keep things going and this enabled Avalon Hill to
continue as a presence in the wargaming market. Tom Shaw has also stayed
with it, being the day to day manager of the company, and was largely
responsible for dragging me into the business.
Military Wargaming
We now know that military wargames actually evolved from games played principally for fun. The first of
these was Wei-Hai ("encirclement"), a Chinese game which is usually now called Go. A later, similar game
was the Indian Chaturanga, the system from which chess in its various forms came about. Chess itself gave
birth to at least one game which more formally depicted armed combat. This was the 1644 design known as
The King's Game from one Christopher Weikmann. It included 30 pieces per side of 14 military types, each
with a different fixed rate of movement. Like its predecessors, it was played principally for pleasure but
differed by its emphasis on the strategic level of war.
The first game to break away from chess, however, was invented by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke
of Brunswick in 1780. This game included 1666 squares, each coded for a different rate of movement
depending on the terrain the square represented. Playing pieces now represented groups of men instead of a
single soldier, and each unit was rated for different movement (infantry moved 8 spaces, heavy cavalry 12,
for example). There were also special rules for such things as pontooneers and the like. In 1795, Georg
Vinturinus, a military writer from Schleswig, produced a more complex version of Helwig's game. He
modified it in 1798 by using a mapboard that depicted actual terrain on the border between France and
Belgium.
Nevertheless, such innovations did not move wargames out of the entertainment world into that of the
military until 1811 when a Prussian father-son team began to make their studies known. The father, Baron
von Reisswitz, was a civilian war counselor to the Prussian court at Breslau. During the dark days of
Prussian domination by the Napoleon, Reisswitz introduced a game that used a specific scale (1:2373) and
a sand table instead of a map grid. In 1811 the game was observed by two Prussian princes who then
showed it to the King. The game immediately became the rage at both the Prussian and Russian courts, but
professional soldiers saw little use for it. All that change in 1824. In that year Reisswitz' son, Leutnant
George Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz of the Prussian Guard Artillery, introduced his own version
of his father's game. The game was called Anleitung zur Darstelling militarische manuver mit dem apparat
des Kriegsspiels (Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame)
and included a number of new innovations, the most important of which were the use of actual
topographical maps to portray the battlefield and rigid rules which specifically quantified the effects of
combat.
The rules were published under the patronage of Prussian Prince Wilhem who became impressed with them
after an evening's play. The Prince then recommended the rules to the Chief of the Prussian General Staff,
General von Muffling, who finally granted von Reisswitz an audience. One of von Reisswitz' companions,
a young officer named Dannhauer, described the meeting which many believe to be the birth of the military
wargame:
On our arrival we found the General surrounded by the General Staff officers.
"Gentlemen," the General announced, "Herr von Reisswitz is going to show us something new."
Reisswitz was not abashed by the somewhat lukewarm introduction. He calmly set out his Kriegsspiel map.
With some surprise the General said, "You mean we are to play for an hour on a map! Very well. Show us
a division with the troops.
"May I ask your excellency," replied Reisswitz, " to provide us with general and special ideas for
manoeuver, and to choose two officers to be the commanders for both sides. Also it is important that we
only give each commander in the special idea the information he would have in reality."
The General seemed rather astonished at the whole thing, but began to write out the necessary idea.
We were allocated as troop leaders to both sides, and the game began. One can honestly say that the old
gentleman, so cool towards the idea at the beginning, became more and more interested as the game went
on, until he exclaimed, "This is not a game! This is training for war! I must recommend it to the whole
army."
Von Muffling made good on his promise and shortly thereafter every regiment had their own set, all of the
components of which neatly fit into a wooden box 10 inches long and 6 inches wide. Nevertheless, many
Prussian officers became jealous of Reisswitz' new fame while many others disputed the accuracy of his
system. It is sad to note that because of this the young lieutenant killed himself in 1827.
However, the impact of this first military wargame had been significant. Reisswitz' work particularly
impressed one Leutnant Helmuth von Moltke who, in 1828, founded a wargame club called the
Kriegspieler Verein which soon began to publish its own periodical. This kept interest in wargames alive
and when von Moltke became Chief of Staff in 1837, he officially pushed wargaming from the top. His
influence had the desired effect and by 1876 another set of German wargame rules was published, this time
by Colonel Julius Adrian Friedrich Wilhelm von Verdy du Vernois. Vernois' system was a "free"
Kriegsspiel as opposed to Reisswitz rigid variety. This meant that most calculations and die rolling was
eliminated in favor of an umpire who would determine results based on the situation and his own combat
experience. Whether "free" or "rigid," however, wargames had become a mainstay of German military
training.
Other countries around the world became interested in German wargaming as a result of the 1870-71
Franco-Prussian War. In this conflict, the militia and reserve based armies of Prussia decisively defeated
the totally professional army of France, then thought to have had the finest soldiers in the world. Many
believed that wargames in part were used to successfully compensate for Prussia's reliance on an army of
Reserven und Landwehren.
From that point on all countries began to build imitations of German systems as well as developing their
own. In the United States, Army Major William R. Livermore introduced his The American Kriegsspiel, A
Game for Practicing the Art of War on a Topographical Map in 1882. The game was complex and similar
to Reisswitz' system, but did attempt to cut down on the paperwork involved by the introduction of several
training aid type devices. At the same time Lieutenant Charles A. L. Totten introduced a game entitled
Strategos: A Series of American Games of War. Totten's game was as complex as Livermore's, but he
appealed to the amateur through the inclusion of a simplified, basic set of rules.
Neither was wargaming neglected by the US Navy, thanks to the efforts of William McCarty Little. In
1876, after an accident had forced his retirement from the Navy, Little made his home in Newport, Rhode
Island and assisted in the establishment of the Naval War College. At the same time he made the
acquaintance of Major Livermore who at that time was stationed across the bay at Fort Adams. Under
Livermore's influence, and with the help of some very open minded supervisors like President Captain
Henry Taylor, Little was able to make wargaming an integral part of the College's curriculum. His efforts
practically made the Naval War College into America's unofficial wargaming center. Little produced a
ship-on-ship game, a tactical game and a strategic game, all very accurate (they were able to predict that
smaller numbers of big guns on battleships were more effective than large numbers of mixed caliber
weapons) but also very complex. It was, in fact, complexity that encouraged resistance to wargaming
within the American army and elsewhere. Games like Vernois' were introduced to simplify things, but
many argued that such umpire driven systems only replaced arbitrary written rules with arbitrary unwritten
rules. Thus by the turn of the century there was an increased tendency all over the world to merge the free
Kriegsspiel with the rigid to produce a semi-rigid system. Even Livermore accepted this as the best solution
and often ignored his own tables as much as he consulted them.
The semi-rigid wargame thus became the standard for most military conflict simulations around the world
through the First World War. The games proved quite successful and history abounds with examples of
how commanders were defeated as a result of ignoring the result of a wargame. As an example, a Russian
wargame in 1914 predicted defeat if General Samsomov's 2d Army did not begin its advance three days
ahead of General Rennenkampf's 1st Army, "an action not contained in the plans. This change, so clearly
indicated in the war games, was never made in the plans or their execution." The result was the Russian
debacle of Tannenburg the same year.
The years between the world wars was notable for the lack of military wargaming activity, particularly in
Britain and the US. In general, most wanted to forget the carnage of the Great War while not a few noted
that the failure of Germany's vaunted Schlieffen Plan in 1914 showed that the wargame was far from
perfect. There were exceptions to this general rule of inactivity, of course. Germany still relied on the
wargame as a principal training tool, especially since the Treaty of Versailles denied that country the right
to field the necessary army appropriate for large scale training exercises. One must also look to the
contribution of F.W. Lanchester who introduced mathematical formula that predicted attrition rates
between two equivalent armies in combat.
In modified form, his two equations are still the basis of many wargames today. Finally, one must note that
the US, the Naval War College, in seeming defiance of the other branches of service, continued and
expanded its wargaming efforts. The College's labors were to bear great fruits during the upcoming war
against the Axis Powers.
Indeed history records many wargame successes during World War II, but perhaps none was more
impressive than America's naval victory over Japan . Our wartime Pacific commander, Fleet Admiral
Chester W. Nimitz explained to a Naval War College class in 1960 that, "the war with Japan had been
reenacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing happened
during the war that was a surprise - absolutely nothing except the kamikazis towards the end of the war."
From that point on military wargames followed advances in technology, resulting in the complex pilot
simulators or computerized strategic systems used around the world today wit most advanced countries¹
armed forces. Indeed, with the introduction of the US Army¹s Combat Training Centers, such as Ft Polk,
LA or the National Training Center at Ft Irwin, CA, the individual soldier has now become a playing piece.
Admittedly,events such as the Vietnam War have shown that wargames are not perfect, for they are only as
good as the data humans place into them. Nevertheless, the history of military wargames is such that most
failures seem to occur when the results of a wargame are ignored, not when they are taken seriously. This is
a solid record by any measure.
And with that being said, it now time to look at another type of wargaming, one whose original concept
was not to train for successful conflict, but to prevent such bloodshed from ever happing at all.
Commercial Hobby Wargaming
Most modern hobby wargamers place the birth of their avocation with the publication of a book entitled
Little Wars: A Game for Boys from Twelve Years to One Hundred and Fifty and for that More Intelligent
Sort of Girl Who Likes Games and Books. The book was written in 1913 by noted British science fiction
author H.G. Wells, an ardent pacifist, who evidently felt that his game would not only be entertaining, but
would offer an alternative outlet for the aggressive passions most professional soldiers possessed. He
wrote:
How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic
remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of
accumulating victory or disaster - and no smashed bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor
devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and
embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold,
sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war
know to be the reality of belligerence.
The game used miniature soldiers and toy cannon that shot small bullets to knock over the soldiers. The
idea was one hit, one kill. Wells simply believed that combat "should be by actual gun and rifle fire and not
by computation. Things should happen and not be decided."
While this revulsion of traditional military wargame technique indicates an interest by Wells in soldierly
applications for his design, the game remained primarily an entertainment medium. Wells' pacifist
personality would allow nothing more while it is hard to imagine stately British officers crawling around on
the floor popping off at each other with spring loaded cannon.
Nevertheless, Wells had an impact on wargaming far greater than his simplistic rules might suggest. His
rules, coupled with inexpensive, mass produced toy soldiers, made wargaming available to almost anyone,
not just the professional soldier or the rich.
It is for this reason that Wells is usually considered the father of modern hobby wargaming. Little wonder
that for many years contributions in that field were honored by "H.G. Wells Awards" while today's
miniature wargamers staunchly point to Wells as justification for their belief that they represent the senior
and most respected wing of the hobby.
Finely painted miniatures, in fact, represented the totality of hobby wargaming for the next 40 or so years.
Although most rules used were local amateur efforts, there were some designs that were quite notable. One
of these was a naval wargame developed by Fred T. Jane, the editor of the famous Jane's All the Worlds
Fighting Ships. Using toy ship models and the research he had done for his books, Jane produced a system
that, though crude by modern standards, gained a great deal of respect all over the world. Wrote one naval
officer, "The rules alone, apart from their bearing on the game, contains a mass of information . . . which
cannot be found in so compact a form elsewhere, whilst . . . the strategical game will show that a number of
things have to be thought of by those who command fleets in time of war."
Another naval miniatures game of note was produced in 1940 by American Fletcher Pratt. His Naval
Wargame used highly a complex mathematical formula to obtain results. Though Pratt admitted that much
of the research used to obtain his formula was highly arbitrary, he countered with the argument that despite
this shortcoming, his system worked. On at least one occasion Pratt was able to prove exactly that. In a
demonstration that made his game "part of the lore of both commercial and military wargaming," Pratt was
able to reproduce the 1939 destruction of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee with incredibly accurate
results.
There were also several German miniature games of note. One of the most famous was Schlachtenspiel, a
1920's design played in a manner similar to Chinese checkers but using terrain boards and model buildings
to hinder the movement of the toy soldiers. The game specifically reproduced battles from the 1813 and
1814 campaigns against Napoleon, though later editions added engagements from the "hyphenated wars"
(Franco-Prussian War, etc) and World War I.
In 1953, however, a revolution of sorts occurred in the commercial wargaming field. It was in that year that
a young man from Baltimore published the first cardboard and paper wargame. Charles Roberts developed
a game called Tactics. The game used a paper board with small cardboard pieces called "counters." The
counters were printed with military symbols indicating the type unit represented as well as with numbers
quantifying such things as movement and combat strength. The game depicted two mythical post World
War II powers and became immensely popular after its release by Stackpole Books. Roberts' creation
boasted a number of advantages over the miniatures community. His board game was cheaper than an
equivalent number of miniatures, and needed less time for setup as well as less room to play. Cardboard
wargames could also be played solo and could easily simulate echelons of war (operational or strategic)
above the tactical battlefield realm of the lead miniature. In fact, Roberts was so encouraged by the game's
success that he started his own company dedicated to publishing historical board wargames. From that
point on his Avalon Hill Company became the preeminent leader in such games, publishing over 200,000
units in 1962 alone. The company was also innovative and can be credited with establishing the hexagon
(admittedly borrowed from Rand Corporation) as the standard mapboard device for regulating movement.
Titles included such items as Gettysburg, D-Day and Stalingrad. The company went bust in 1964 for a
variety of reasons, not the least of which was a growing mistrust of anything military due to the problems
in Vietnam. Monarch Printing absorbed Avalon Hill, however, and the firm continued to publish wargames
until very recently.
In 1969 another significant event took place in the evolution of commercial hobby wargaming. This was
the publication of Strategy & Tactics Magazine (or S&T, as it is often called) by Christopher Wagner and
later James Dunnigan. The magazine was unique in that it included a paper and counter wargame as
supporting material for its main military history article. In this way the magazine was able to garner more
exposure for the commercial wargaming industry by offering a product that appealed to amateur historians
as well as true gamers. Like Avalon Hill, S&T had financial problems and ownership changed hands many
times. The magazine still exists, however, and has even spawned an imitation in the form of Command
Magazine by XTR Corporation.
The success of Avalon Hill and Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI, the publishers of S&T) was
good enough to give birth to a yearly national wargaming convention, Origins, which continues to this day
though admittedly with a distinctly fantasy-science fiction spin. Their success also encouraged a number of
new game companies to form. While many fell after a few months or years, many more have survived and
continue to do a thriving business. Total paper and counter wargame sales thus reached a high of some two
million copies in 1980, but by 1991 that number was down to about 450,000 units per year.
There were many reasons for this drop in sales, to include the popularity of fantasy role playing systems
such as Dungeons and Dragons. It was the introduction of the personal computer (PC) in 1980, however,
that hurt the paper wargame industry the most.
The PC could do a number of things better than board games and in some instances could perform
functions the cardboard counter was incapable of doing. In this latter category, PC software could allow a
player to become part of the actual combat depicted. Games like Dynamix's A-10 Tank Killer flight
simulator allowed the player to actually "pilot" the aircraft and fire its ordinance as opposed to pushing
around a small cardboard square and consulting a plethora of charts. Otherwise most computer wargames
were simply technological advancements of their paper cousins. Indeed, at first most were like Three Sixty
Pacific's Velikiye Luki 1942 (a Russian front battle from World War II) in that the software depicted a
colorful boardgame type map complete with hexagons while units looked like little video counters. It is
interesting to note that the most recent computer games of this genre, however, have turned to a miniatures
graphical format as the most attractive method of presentation. Talonsoft, Inc's Battleground Series, such as
Prelude to Waterloo or Gettysburg, are typical examples of such products.
Yet there were significant differences, differences generally attributable to the rapid advances in computer
technology. The PC provided a capable opponent that did not cheat, a substantial plus as most board
gamers were known to play solitaire. The PC also performed most of the tedious mathematics common to
wargames for the player, and did it very quickly. There was also the aspect of not having to find space to
set up a large board game or the time to take the project down. Finally there was the advantage of the PC
being able to simulate some of the more commercially mundane and unpopular aspects of war, such as
introductory intelligence collection and analysis (by using completely hidden movement), without unduly
burdening the player. It is for reasons like these many board game companies began to venture out into the
computer gaming world. Avalon Hill, for example, purchased Three Sixty Pacific's complete line of World
War II simulations and expanded upon it with designs of its own.
The result is that today there are about 10,000 active paper and counter wargamers active in North America
if a recent article out of Strategy & Tactics No. 200 by counter guru Jim Dunnigan is correct. Conversely,
there seem to be some 45,000 + miniature gamers, though this number is evidently lower than what exists
in Great Britain, interestingly enough. Computer gamers will probably number some one million (plus!)
over the next few years, but recent statistics quoted in publications such as PC Gamer imply that historical
wargame computer buffs may actually number less than the cardboard variety. Indeed, consider that last
year's PC Wargame of the year, Talonsoft's very well received The Operational Art of War, sold far less
than 2000 total copies. This stands in stark contrast to fantasy/Sci-Fi games such as Blizzard's Starcraft,
boasting sales in the millions. Such a situation does not bid well for PC based military simulations as it
would seem few can compete with either Zerglings or Space Orcs.
Thus trends seem to indicate a growing decline in board and microchip historical wargaming, with
miniaturists steadfastly holding their own and perhaps expanding a little. Indeed, recent years have seen
somewhat of a crash in the cardboard wargaming wing of the hobby. Many stalwart companies such as
Games Designers Workshop (GDW) have simply gone out of business while other respected companies,
such as GMT games, must actually request customer purchases up front prior to developing and producing
a game. Only companies which diversify, such as Pennsylvania's Clash of Arms Games (COA), seem to be
surviving and it is interesting to note that part of COA's diversification program is into the realm of
miniature rules (such as their Napoleonic set called From Valmy to Waterloo). Decision Games has
recently followed suit with its first set of miniature rules, Battle Stations, a game on World War II naval
warfare. Regardless, with the purchase of mighty Avalon Hill by the Hasbro Toy Company (along with the
immediate firing of Avalon Hill's entire staff and the informal notice that once current stocks of wargames
were gone, they would likely not be produced again) in August 1998, many feel the final nails have been
driven into the coffin of cardboard counter gaming. It is therefore little wonder that some board wargaming
authors are now calling for pure historical wargaming conventions jointly sponsored by the cardboard and
miniatures communities.
The reasons for low-tech toy soldiers still retaining their popularity are not hard to determine. The
establishment of professional publishing concerns devoted to the hobby (such as the Emperor's Press in
Chicago) undoubtedly helped. Another thing that helped was the fact that in many ways the miniature
hobby has more of a kinship with model railroading than it does the paper map or the computer. Thus
families can participate in the design of battlefields or the painting of troops, while material such as entire
armies are passed down from generation to generation. Miniature games tend to be more social, group
events than do other forms of commercial wargames which are often played solitaire. This is an important
factor because it points out that board and computer games are likely trying to access the same type of
customer, a more introverted individual perhaps, and in such a situation the microchip will likely win. Also,
many miniature gamers ply their trade for the research involved or for the pure joy of painting the
necessary figures. Finally, neither board nor computer can match the spectacle of an accurately depicted
miniature battle.
Another reason for the survivability of miniatures was the creation in 1986 of HMGS (the Historical
Miniatures Gaming Society, founded by the Chapter now known as HMGS East) which was formed to
officially promote that wing of wargaming as both a legitimate adult hobby and as an alternative method
for the study of military history. The Society also services the needs of the miniaturist in general with
databases that find opponents, hobby shop discounts and periodic newsletters. Chapters further provide
lecturers, issue monetary grants to historical or gaming concerns, buy books on miniature gaming for
school libraries and on request hold demonstration games for colleges and other organizations. A number
of historical miniature conventions are sponsored each year designed to specifically promote the hobby.
Many are deliberately held in inexpensive tourist locations so that families might also attend and become
interested in the hobby as well. An example of such a convention is the celebrated Historicon, held each
July in Lancaster, PA, the heart of Dutch Amish Country and called the "mother of all wargaming
conventions" by Amy Gammerman of the Wall Street Journal. If attendance at this convention - and it was
over 3700 in 1998 - is any indication, the miniatures wing of the hobby continues to grow at a rate of
between 8-12% a year. HMGS itself has expanded into 11 regional chapters with some 3600 members.
Clearly Wells would have been proud.
The following article, on the "History of Wargaming, " is in S&T for obvious reasons.
We are the only group in the field with the resources and imperative to publish such an
article. The people who read SETT would [we were quite certain] find such an article
ofconsiderable interest, Having gotten those matters out of the way we should now
attempt to clarify some of the ideas explicit or implicit in parts of this article. At times it
may appear that we are being a bit heavy in "blowing our own horn" [for want of a
better term]. But, let's face it, Simulations Publications HAS been responsible for many
of the innovations [not to mention most of the new games] produced in the past few
years. To attempt to ignore this factinthenameofjournalistic "fairness"[or "tradition" to be
more precise] would be inaccurate, misleading and downright confusing. We like to
tellpeople all we know. And if the "history" happens to be very close to home that's no
reason to change our policy. So here it is - warts and all. Although, fortunately, we're not
really old enough yet ot have many warts. We hope you won't sense any arrogance,
boastfulness or whatever where none was intended. Enjoy the article and send in your
feedback to let us know how you did feel about it. This article is divided into two parts.
The first is pretty much "straight" history - a survey of the development of wargames
from their first appearance thousands of years ago until the present The second part is
more journalism. This part of the article covers the develop- ment of the game-type you
see in Strategy & Tactics magazine from the 1950's to the present sense any arrogance,
boastfulness or whatever where none was intended. Enjoy the article and send in your
feedback to let us know how you did feel about it. This article is divided into two parts.
The first is pretty much "straight" history - a survey of the development of wargames
from their first appearance thousands of years ago until the present The second part is
more journalism. This part of the article covers the develop- ment of the game-type you
see in Strategy & Tactics magazine from the 1950's to the present
THE HISTORY OF WARGAMING from S&T Magazine #33, July 1972
By Martin Campion and Steven Patrick
An illustration from C.A.L. Totten's 19th Century American wargame Strategos,
demonstrating the use of wooden blocks to represent a defensive action agmnst a
considerably superior enemy.
Military wargames, (that is, those played by professional soldiers or policy makers while
on the job) can be dsitinguieshed from civilian wargames (that is, those published by
people like Avalon Hill and Simulations Publications), in several ways. The most
important distinction is purpose. While the civilian wargame is designed for
entertainment and for historical inerpretation, the military wargame is intended for
training and for predicting possible real futures. Sometimes, the tie to the future is very
explicit, with the soldies walking out from the games room to try to repeat the game
results in real battles. Other times, the purpose for playing a particular game is more
general. But al.ways, the purpose of the professional military game is to prepare for
future crises.
BACKGROUND
The roots of such wargames lie far in the past. Chess, Go, even Checkers, were once
probably thought of as suitable training for war, But if Chess had ever possessed any
value as a simulation, that value was long gone by the 18th Century in Europe. By then,
there had been too many developments since the days when battle was a collection of
single combats. However, 17th-Century and 18th- Century Europeans were possessed
by a desire to understand their environment scientifically and, for that reason, several
thoughtful people decided that the ancient game of Chess should be updated to make it
useful once more for understanding war. Indeed, as early as 1644, one Christopher
Weikhmann invented what he called "The King's Game," a 31-piece development of
Chess. There were many other games, with assorted pieces and rules, collectively called
"Military Chess" or "War Chess" games. However, the first game that went far beyond
its chess origin was a game invented in 1780 by Helwig, Master of the Pages for the
Duke of Brunswick. Helwig's game was played on a board of 1666 squares. The squares
were colored in different ways to represent different kinds of terrain and also contained
numbers which represented smaller terrain features. Each army defended a fortress and
the game was Won by capturing the enemy fortress. Helwig added something new by
providing that his pawns represent units of men rather than single individuals. Each side
was given 120 fighting units, including infantry, cavalry, and artillery as well as some
pontoons and 200 entrenchment counters. The rules provided for specialist pieces like
pontoniers. The moves were: infantry 8 spaces, heavy cavalry 12 spaces, and light
cavalry 16 spaces. Helwig's game became quite well known and was introduced
throughout Western Europe. A more complex type of game but on the same basic
principles was developed in 1795 by Georg Vinturinus, a military writer in Schleswig.
Then in 1798, Vinturinus adapted his game to a new board - one based on an actual
area, the border between France and Belgium, one of the most fought over areas in
Europe since the 17th Century. The board had 36M squares. In addition to the fighting
units, there were a large number of different military stores and devices to keep track of:
siege equipment, fortification, bridges, bread. In accordance with the 18th-Century idea
of the importance of lines of communication, armies were required -to maintain a line to
their bases. None of these early games had any particular value as aids to military
training. They were like the historical board wargame of present - useful to visualize
military concepts, excellent as entertainment for those with the time and patience to
understand their rules, but not much of a preparation for actual military experience. A
Prussian father and his son were the inventors of a series of games that won the respect
of some Prussian officials and started the wargame to its place as a mainstay of military
training in the 19th Century. The father, Herr von Reisswitz, was a civilian who first
developed his game in the dark years of Napoleonic domination in Germany after the
Prussian defeat at Jena. He moved toward greater realism by dispensing with a grid
pattern for movement and by using a sand table to represent terrain. Furthermore he
adopted a particular scale (1:2373) and attempted to bring everything into harmony with
that scale, including the sizes of the unit counters - blocks of wood with military symbols
pasted on. In 1811, Reisswitz's game was shown to two young Prussian princes who
arranged an interview with the King. For that occasion, Reisswitz made a deluxe version
with plaster terrain and procelain units. This game became a constant plaything at the
Prussian court and from there it spread to the Russian court. But it was not used by
soldiers until Reisswitz's son took an interest in it. THE RISE OF MILITARY
WARGAMES The younger Reisswitz was a first lieutenant in the Prussian Army in
1824, when he began to experiment with his father's game. First he transferred the
game to realistic military maps with a scale of I:BM. He published a set of rules in
1824 and supplements in 1825 and 1828, Meanwhile, he had impressed some of the
highest officers in the army with the usefulness of the game. In 1824, the game was
played for General von Muffling, then Chief of Staff. Muffling was quite skeptical but
consented to witness a demonstration and was thereby converted. "It is not a game at
all!" he exclaimed, "It's a training for war! I shall recommend it most emphatically to
the whole army." And he did. Each regiment was furnished with a set and officially
urged to practice on it. The game developed by the younger Reisswitz was more
realistic in several ways than earlier games. The terrain was represented on terrain
maps drawn exactly as real military maps would be drawn. The players on opposite
sides were not allowed to see the actual situation on the map. Instead, the services of
an umpire were required to keep track of the situation on his map and to tell the players
what they could see or what their patrols could discover. A time scale was accurately
maintained with each move equal to two minutes in real time. The tables furnished
with the game provided for movements in this time period. Each play of the game
could be different because it was made up by the umpire or someone else outside the
game. The opposing players were given the same information on the general situation
but were given different special tasks to accomplish and different forces to use. The
special information also included limited information on enemy forces and possible
missions. For each move, written orders were given to the umpire, who harmonized
them and'reported back the discoveries of troops on the move. However, the individual
players were represented on the map and discoveries were not reported to them until a
messenger had had time to reach them. Each side could be represented by a team
instead of a single player and then players on the same side could not communicate
directly with each other unless they were close on the map. When the two sides
clashed, the umpire determined losses by throwing dice and consulting an odds table.
Reisswitz's game was enthusiastically recom- mended by the Prussian Chief of Staff but
that did not make it popular among very many of the officers, nor did that make its
inventor popular. He was transferred to the boondocks by jealous senior officers and
harped at forinaccuracies in his game by most of those who played it. Consequently, he
became despon- dent and committed suicide in 1827. However, the game had its fans in
the Prussian army. One of them, as early as 1828, was Lieutenant Helmuth von Moitke,
future Chief of Staff and victor in two wars. Enthusiastic players combined to form a
wargames club, the Kriagsspialer Verein and to publish the first wargaming periodical.
All of the wargame's devoted players changed the game as they played it. Several
Prussian officers published their own sets of rules in attempts to make the game more
realistic. The general tendency was to loosen the rigidity of the rules and to increase the
responsibility of the umpire. Many changes were made, particularly in the computation of
losses, which was felt to be quite rigid and arbitrary in Reisswitz's original game. The
normal method came to be a standard and multiplier system. The casualties resulting
from some simple situation were figured out and became the "standard." Then the
percentage change resulting from different circumstances was used to vary the standard.
There would be a different multiplier for each circumstance that differed from the
standard circumstance. This system made the game more realistic but also more tedious
as many multiplications had to be made to figure losses. Still, the game was thought to be
both too detailed and too unrealistic by most officers. However, it became more popular
when Moitke pushed it from the top after becoming Chief of Staff in 1837. FREE
KRIEGSPIEL OPPOSES RIGID KRIEGSPIEL In 1876, Colonel von Verdy du
Vernois, leading military writer and instructor, expressed the dissatisfaction of many
officers by calling for the simplification of wargames. Basically Verdy advised that
most of the rules and th@ dice be thrown out but that the basic idea of the game be
retained under the direction of an umpire experienced in actual warfare. Of course, by
this time, Germany had been victorious in the Seven Weeks War and the FrancoPrussian War and had many exper- ienced officers. In effect, then, the umpire would
make up the rules and apply them as he went along and the players would have the
freedom to attempt things that might or might not be allowed by the umpire. Aside from
the new importance given the umpire, Verdy's game was played like the other kind. The
situation was variable, the players were separated and given only the information they
could legitimately posssess. A few standards were adopted as a basis for movement. For
example, a battalion in line formation occupied a front of 200 yards, and fresh infantry
could march on good roads at a speed of 117 yards per minute. But it was up to the
umpire to make any changes in these standards due to the exhaustion of the men
represented or the badness of the weather and roads. The suggestion of Verdy du
Vernois led to a division among wargamers among those favoring the changed game. called free Kriegsspiel - and those favoring
the traditional game - called rigid
Kriegsspiel. Both versions could be applied to any size game, but the complexity of the
calculations necessary for the rigid game usually limited it to the representation of
companies and battalions. In both forms it became a mainstay of training not only in the
German army but in most armies of the world.
The Germans impressed the whole military world in 1870, with their victory over the
French, previously considered to be the best soldiers in the w6rld.@ As a sign of
German ascendancy, many armies, including the American, abandoned their French-
style headgear, the k§pi, the cap worn by Union soldiers in the Civil War, and adopted
the Prussian-style spiked helmet. More impor- tantly, they investigated and adopted
German staff procedures, German organization and German training methods. Along
with every- thing else came the German Kriegsspiel. Apparently, foreign soldiers gave
wargaming more credit for the German victories than it actually deserved. But with the
availability of Free Kriegsspiel and with the period of tense peacefulness between 1871
and 1914, all armies including the German made wargaming a more important part of
their training program. In England, for example, wargames were introduced with the
publication, by the War Office, of a game called Aldershot, a rigid Reisswitz-type game.
In 1883, the commander in chief, the Duke of Cambridge, issued official orders
recommending wargaming and in 18%, a set of rules were published in a service
journal. In England, wargames were often played on military maps of England and
arranged so that the climax of the encounter would be in an area near the post where the
game was being played. The Italian army favored rigid Kriegsspiel and made its play an
important part of the course at the War College. Forty evenings were spent learning the
game and various versions were played over a two year period. It was intended mainly
to instruct in logistics and other staff work. In the French army - the defeated army in
1870 - there was some interest in wargaming, but the French were much slower in
adopting this device than other soldiers and it was not widespread until after 1900. The
Russian and the Japanese armies both used wargaming but it was accepted less
enthusiastically by the Russians who tended to feel that it was not worth the bother.
When the Japanese defeated the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, the
Japanese gave much of the credit for their victory to their play of wargames, while the
Russians turned to them with a new interest. Rigid Kriegsspiel was introduced into the
American army in 1867 through the translation of a German work. It spread slowly but
inspired two American officers who independently devised their own games by the
1880's. Majo William R. Livermore published The American Kriegsspiel, A Game for
Practicing the Art of War Upon a Topographical Map in 1882. Livermore's major
contribution was to recommend a series of devices to cut down on the paper work
involved in playing a rigid Kriegsspiel. The unit counters were marked on four sides
with stripes and dots to represent strength. Other blocks, called "counters." were
provided to be placed in front of troop units to show fatigue. Other blocks, called
"checks," were used to show disorganization following a battle. Assorted pointers, called
"indices" were to be placed on the map to show firing and movement. Computations of
the effects of fire were supposedly simplified by a "Firing Board," a pegboard used to
keep track of time and to help the figuring of casualties by the movement of pegs in the
holes. At about the same time, Lieutenant Charles A.L. Totten was working on his game,
published as Strategos.- A Series of American Games of War in 1880. Totten's game is
distinguished by his attempt to appeal to the amateur as well as the professional. He
provided a highly complex game like Livermore's but he also provided a basic game,
called "The Battle Game," which used a square grid map to simplify movement.
Because of the difficulty and inconvenience of Livermore's and Totten's games, they met
the same resistance in the American army that other rigid Kriegsspiel rules had
overseas. Livermore attempted to disarm some criticism by recommending that the
umpire disregard the charts and estimate movement and fire effect whenever possible.
Free Kriegsspiel, based on the work of Verdy du Vernois, was also introduced into the
United States but was itself criticized. Several officers argued that free Kriegsspiel
replaced arbitrary written rules with even more arbitrary unwritten rules and that few
men had the authortiry to be an umpire under such a system. By the end of the century,
there seemed to be a tendency for the two systems to coalesce into one, becoming semirigid (or semi-free) Kriegsspiel. Officers who advocated free Kriegsspiel were found on
occasion to be consulting charts and rules, while Livermore, identified with the rigid
game, was reported to disregard his own tables and charts as often as he consulted them.
After 1900, discussion and invention of wargames continued in the armies of the world.
Generally, since there were few new experiences (and since experiences like the RussoJapanese War were generally misun- derstood), there were few changes in wargaming.
Books published by German Captain Frederick Immanuel in 1907 and by American
Major Farrand Sayre in 1908 were among the best contributions to the discussion.
Immanuel was in the free Kriegsspiel tradition. He vigorously preached the doctrine of
flexibility and all power to the umpire. Nevertheless, with the problems of the beginning
umpire in mind, he did give some recommended dist ances for movement, based on a
move interval of 21/2 minutes. Infantry, on roads, would move 1,000 meters in 12
minutes. Cavalry and, Field Artillery would walk 1,000 meters in 10 minutes but gallop
the same distance in only 21/2 minutes. He also provided a table for deployment. An
infantry battalion would deploy in 5 minutes, a regiment in 15, and a brigade in 30.
Immanuel recommended several ways for making the game faster, more interesting and,
therefore, more instructive. Unimportant skirmishes could be ignored, preliminary
maneuvering could be eliminated, or extra information could be given out in order to
bring the opposing forces together faster. Sayre's game was more in the rigid Kriegsspiel
tradition but he too advocated flexibility. Thus the major difference between his book
and Immanuel's was that Sayre supplied a table for calculating fire results as well as a
table of march distances. Under good conditions and over long distances, infantry
moved at 81 yards per minute and to 110 yards per minute. Several factors could L-ssen
the possible speed. Sayre made a good provision for easing the figuring of casualties in
fire fights. By using multiples of approximate logarithms, the painful process of
multiple multiplications could be changed to the faster process of addition. For rifle fire,
the table took account of the following variables: in regard to the troops firing,
effectiveness could be changed by twopossible rates of fire, three positions of firing,
three degrees of skill, freshness or fatigue, three levels of morale, and according to the
amount of fire being received; and in regard to the target troops, the variables were four
angles of front, five amounts of motion, ten formations, and seven positions. These
variables are numerous but fewer than those provided by Livermore or Totten and more
easily if less accurately handled. STRATEGIC WARGAMES The late 19th Century
also saw the growth of strategic wargaming among all the world's armies. Generals
were having to plan for more and more men armed with more and more sophisticated
weapons and travelling by railroad., The French disaster in 1870 showed the necessity
of a smooth-working plan for mobilization and movement, and the situation grew in
complexity every year after 1870. The generals would have preferred plans that had
proved their usefulness, but this could never be done in the real world except through
war, and by then it would be too late. So the generals turned to games to prove their
designs. Since the matter was so complex, these always were based on the free
Kriegsspiel approach rather than the rigid. The Germans, as usual, were in the lead. One
of the most avid wargamers in the world at the time was the Chief of the German
General Staff from 1892 to 1906, Alfred Graf von Schlieffen. Schlieffen relied on the
results of extensive wargaming to develop and revise his plan - essentially the same
plan with which the Germans entered World War 1. How- ever the games used to test
the Schlieffen plan were no better than the ideas which went into them and were not
able to point out its faults. The whole design assumed that the Belgians would not fight
seriously, that the British would not land in force, and that the Fench would be
incapable of transfering men from the right flank to the left. The games then also
showed these things. Nevertheless, in the actual campaign in 1914, all of these
unplanned things happened and the opening campaign ended in a stalemate instead of
the absolute decision that the German generals had hoped for. The Russian wargames
were never as systematic as the German, but they did get a potentially valuable piece
of information from one. In April 1914, they played a wargame on their invasion of
East Prussia, an action they had promised the French to perform soon after the
declaration of war. In the game the Russian armies were commanded by the two men
who would command them in case of war, Rennenkampf and Samsonov. The game
showed that the two Russian armies were separated because of the terrain, and were
subject to defeat in detail. This was a valuable lesson but it was not applied. Later that
year, when the actual campaign was attempted, the original plans were used, the two
armies were still separated, and were defeated in detail at the Battles of Tannenberg
and the Masurian Lakes. In contrast, the British were able to learn from a game they
played in 1905. They played a German invasion of Belgium opposed by the Belgians
and by a British Expeditionary Force. The game demonstrated an important lack in
British preparations for such a war: there would not be enough transport available on
the outbreak of the war to move the British army fast enough to help the Belgians. The
game led to the increase of transportation preparations and also led the British army to
begin unofficial staff talks with the French army, a trend that helped to bring Britain into
the war and to makes its entry effective in 1914. After World War 1, strategic
wargames continued to be relied on by the general staffs. The German army added
something important to the wargaming tradition in 1929. This was during the period of
the 100,000 man German army and Germany had to depend more on moral force than
physical force for defense. So, following a suggestion from Manstein, the game began
with a period of tension between Germany and Poland - Poland was the aggressor and included the reactions of Britain, France, and the League of Nations, as well as
military operations, first against Polish irregular forces and then against the invading
Polish army. Another game that had no issue in reality was played in 1938. As a part of
an effort to prevent .Hitler from starting a war between Germany and Czechoslovakia,
General Beck, the army Chief of Staff, conducted a wargame. The game demonstrated
that the German army could only win over Czechoslovakia at pro- hibitive cost and
with disastrous long term results. Thanks to the Munich agreement, there was never
any reality to compare with the results of the game. Most of the German wargames of
the Hitler period were strictly military and generally proved trustworthy in the narrow
military sphere. All of the German army's better prepared attacks were thoroughly
wargamed before the fact. During the so-called "phony war," the Germans carried out a
particularly important game that showed that the march through the Ardennes could be
made fast enough to surprise the French. In the event, the march was finished in even
less time than had been planned. Later in the year, games on Operation Sea Lion
showed the many difficulties in the way of the proposed invasion of Great Britain and
contributed to the reluctance of the Germans to actually carry it out. Then Operation
Barbarossa, the plan for the invasion of Russia, was the subject of and the result of
extensive wargaming, which contributed greatly to the speed and success of the first
few weeks' battles. One of the most remarkable German warga@nes began on
November 2, 1944. The staff of the 5th Panzer Army defending Germany against the
Western Allies antici- pated an expected American attack on their front by wargaming
it. Part way through the game, the Americans actually launched the assault. Army
group commander Model ordered that the game be continued. Information from the
front lines was fed into the game and the defensive orders for the game were sent to the
front for application in the real battle. WAR GAMES SINCE WORLD WAR II Since
IW, every kind of traditional wargame has been played by the armies, navies, and civilian
military planners of the world. Furthermore, there has been a revolution in wargaming
that Gan only be sketched here. As in previous periods, there has been a rapid
technological revolution in military hardware since World War 11. Furthermore, one
large class of weapons - nuclear missile weapons - has never been tested in any
trustworthy fashion. But even with more conventional weapons, the wars that have
been fought have given very lopsided experience with the use and combination of
weapons. So military men have continued to play games in an attempt to ponder the
imponderable. Naturally, the wargaming world itself has participated in the
technological revolution. Because of the new technology, there has been a definite
reversal of the trend toward free Kriegsspiel, which was predomninant from 1900 to
1945. High-level wargamers have large funds at their disposal and use a wide variety
of calculators, computers, and sophisticated electronic communications equipment in
their business. One of the more traditional games is that played in the Marine Corps,
called the Landing Force Game. It can be played with any number of situations or
scenarios. It is a rigid game with a set of rules that fills two thick volumes. Although
it uses an electronic random number generator instead of a pair of dice, it is still very
close tothelate-19thCenturyrigidKriegsspiel and it takes about four months of real time
to play 30 hours of game time. Other contemporary games are only a short step
away from the traditional since men still make the decisions although computers are
used to calculate movement and the effects of com- bat. These games proceed much
more rapidly than the rigid non-computer games but oper- ate on the same principals.
However, some games now are played entirely by computer. The all-computer game is
extremely rigid since rules for every possibility have to be fed into the computer before
a game can begin. The advantage of the all-computer game is that it can be played
many times in succession, w;th minor variations. Thus the designers of these games,
or models, can try to use them to discriminate between competing strategies or weapons
systems. The United States has become the center of wargaming and the U.S. defense
establish- ment has witnessed the playing of games on every possible defense subject
with its varied arsenal of gaming techniques. Foreign policy crises have been gamed
in attempts to guess how the armed forces might become involved. More
straightforward military actions are also gamed, but these too might have non-military
complications. One of the most active areas of gaming is that of nuclear exchanges.
Generally, games are used for research in areas that cannot easily be penetrated by
other methods and for the training of people in crisis thinking, both political and
military. The subjects of such games range from the immediate future to the possible
worlds of 1984, There is a vigorous debate in and out of the defense structure about
whether all this wargaming is worth the cost and effort put into it. The more
traditional wargame has probably proved its usefulness in its limited sphere but there
may be some danger in the extension of the game idea to matters of general foreign
and military policy. Frequently the only reason that planners continue to play games
is not that they trust games to give them legitimate answers to their problems, but that
they cannot think of any way to get such answers. Maybe, they hope, next year's games
will be better. BIBLIOGRAPHY The basic work on the history of land wargames is
John P. Young, "A Survey of Historical Developments in War Games" (Johns Hopkins
University Operations Re- search Office Paper, 1960). There are several good articles,
mainly on contemporary wargames, in "Second War Gaming Sympo- sium
Proceedings" (Washington Operations Research Council, 1964), edited by Murray
Greyson. Andrew Wilson's The Computer and the Bomb: Wargaming from Ancient
Chinese Mapboard to Atomic Computer (New York: Delacorte Press, 1968) contains a
sketchy history of wargaming and a thorough and critical treatment of contemporary
wargaming. The two American wargames of the rigid Kriegsspiel era are contained in
William R. Livermore, The American Kriegsspiel (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882)
and Charles A.L. Totten, Strategos (Now York: D. Appleton, 18W). There are a large
number of other books and articles on wargaming. I am indebted to the library of the,
United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
for the free use of the unclassified part of their collection.
- Martin Campion
The companion article to this relates the development of wargames as a training device
for the military such as map exercises and as a mind-sharpening concept, such as in
Chess or Go. These games are the forerunners of the ones seen in S&T. The growth of
published games, such as Monopoly, did not see a comparative effort to create
wargames for general consumption. Parker Brothers did publish Camelot but without
any effect as far as opening up the wargame field. There seemed to be an idea, lasting
into the post-World War 11 Period, that an intelligent wargame was strictly the
prerogative of military minds. Despite the fact that World War 11 had held the interest
of everyone down to children, no serious effort was made to exploit this interest by
putting out a serious wargame. Modern wargaming on boards, as a hobby, can be traced
to one man and one game. I n 1953, Charles S. Roberts, a young man in his early
twenties, combined an interest in the military and in history to produce a game, which he
designed in his spare time, called Tactics. It dealt with two hypothetical countries, each
of which had an army of the post-World War 11 type. The game was printed
commercially, although not done on oil cloth as myth would have it. It was distributed
through the Stackpole Company of Pennsylvania, a company better known as the
publisher of books on military science. This was only a part-time pursuit for Roberts at
this point, as he was still working in the advertising and marketing field for a living. On
the other hand, Roberts had put considerable time and effort into the design of the game,
as well as its sale and distribution. He had concluded that there would be a market for
such games. As a result, he had an idea of what lay ahead. Between 1953 and 1958 he
sold about 2,000 copies of Tactics and, in his own words, "came within about $30.00 of
breaking even." Having produced and marketed this first game with some success,
Roberts concluded that there was a market for a broad range of adult games. He expected
to appeal to one segment of this range with Tactics. He also thought that other games
could be sold which could be financially successful without appealing to a broad
audience in the manner of Monopoly. By 1958 Roberts was convinced that a living could
be earned in the game design and sales field. At the same time, he found himself kneedeep in games at his home, where he had stored them. His wife objected most strongly
and that, together with the success, caused him to consider designing and selling games
on a more formal basis. In the spring of 1958 he took the first steps toward organizing a
publishing company for the games he wanted to produce. By the fall of 1958, The Avalon
Hill Company had been formed with Charles S. Roberts at its head. AVALON HILL:
YEARS OF GROWRH 1958-1962 The Avalon Hill Company was not founded for the
primary purpose of producing wargames. This point is often ignored by those in the
hobby who have come to look to Avalon Hill as a source of games. Its true purpose was,
and remains, to produce the broad spectrum of adult games for which Roberts felt there
would be a market. Roberts felt that the big game publishers, ParkeT Brothers, Milton
Bradley and the like, had ignored the adult game field and he was determined to take
advantage of their indifference. From the outset Roberts made little effort to enter the
popular game field of Parker Brothers and the rest. He priced his games at $5.00 when
other companies were selling theirs for $2.00. This brought resistance from both
wholesalers and retailers who thought that such a price would be too high. Roberts had
the opinion that if people were interested in a game, "they would pay $5.00 for it; if they
weren't interested, they wouldn't pay fifty cents forit." This set the basic selling strategy
for Avalon Hill and events proved him correct as sales began to grow rapidly. In order to
sell games at $5.00 a copy, Roberts was forced to develop innovative marketing
techniques, including a very heavy promotion program and high retail prices to support
the program. His initial distribution was in Baltimore but soon Avalon Hill began to sell
nationwide as his idea proved successful. Although the first two games, Gettysburg and
Tactics // were wargarnes, the next game, Verdict, was not. In fact, during the Roberts
era, Avalon Hill published (in addition to Gettysburg, Tactics //, and Verdict) U-Boat,
Management, Chancellorsville, D-Day, IVieu Chess, Verdict //, Air Empire, La Mans,
Civil War, Baseball Strategy, Football Strategy, Waterloo, Bismarck and Stalingrad, Plus
Word Power. Of these eighteen titles, nine are non-battle titles representing such diverse
fields as law, commerce and sports. All of this reflects Roberts' desire to have a broad
spectrum of games. Though one could not say a hobby had been born, it became clear
that the most constant result could be obtained from the sale of battle titles. The rationale
behind a game such as Gettysburg is rather simple. Tactics was already out, under
Roberts' own name, and the Civil War Centennial was coming. Roberts wanted to take
advantage of the rise in interest in the Civil War. Gettysburg had a square grid system,
just as Tactics had, though the square was soon abandoned for the hexagonal system as
used in other Avalon Hill games. It is interesting to note that an attempt to reissue
Gettysburg with a hexagonal grid system was unsuccessful and the version now sold is
the square grid. Tactics //, which followed, was a reworking of Tactics. It also provided
the advantage of a fully designed and tested game ready for production. Not long after
Avalon Hill got under way, Roberts saw that it was too much of a strain to handle on a
part-time basis. He quit his advertising job and devoted his full efforts to making
Avalon Hill grow. Before long, he turned to his former place of employment and
recruited Bernard C. Schramm to fill a critical need at Avalon Hill. Schramm was
experienced in the printing field and his knowledge enabled Avalon Hill to avoid the
trial and error method of obtaining the printing results they wanted. Schramm had
virtually nothing to do with game design and devoted his attention to management and
production. Despite the addition of Schramm, Roberts found he could not manage the
company and - still devote full time to game design. Again he turned to the advertising
firm where he had worked and this time persuaded Thomas N. Shaw to- work for
Avalon Hill as a game designer. Shaw had previously designed two games which had
been privately printed in the Baltimore area. Roberts saw them and liked them. The two
Shaw-designed games were released by Avalon Hill as Football and Baseba# Strategy.
Shaw arrived as Roberts was in the midst of expanding the line. Until his appearance,
there were only six games in the line, The toy fair of Spring 1961 was Roberts' target
date for. doubling the size of the line. Shaw's first game was Air Empire, a game he
designed based on Robert's earlier Management. In addition, Shaw worked on Verdict
//, helping to develop some of the cases used in the game. During the period, Roberts
took the lead in determining what games would be produced. No wargame produced by
Avalon Hill during this period lacked his influence. Therefore many of the credits for
game designs must be reconsidered. Gettysburg and Tactics // were Roberts'design from
start to finish. Dispatcher was likewise wholly Roberts' design. Verdict was designed by
two attorneys and therefore the first outside design. Management, Chancellorsville, DDay and Nieu Chess were all designed by Roberts. Verdict // was, again, designed by
attorneys, with more direct influence by Avalon Hill in the form of cases being worked
up by Shaw and the degree of difficulty being controlled by Roberts. Verdict // was a
simplified version of Verdict, which it replaced. Air Empire was designed by both
Roberts and Shaw. Roberts conceived the idea and influenced Shaw's work in putting the
mechanics of the game together. Le Mans was another outside design, but Civil War was
Roberts'. This was one of the few ventures Avalon Hill made into the popular game
field. It was priced lower than the rest of the line and was to compete directly with
Parker Brothers and the rest. Though not up to the standards of the regular wargames, it
was a success and made a profit. Waterloo was the first wargame in which Roberts
didn't have a major hand. It was designed by Shaw and one of his principal assistants,
Lindsley Schutz. On Bismarck there is some difficulty in establishing who deserves
primary credit. Roberts says Shaw and Schutz did the majority of the work: Shaw says
Roberts sketched out the design and they just finished it off. The answer to the question
of who designed Stalingrad turns on who defines the word "design." The idea was one
that Roberts had for a long time. The mechanics were, by then, "standard" Avalon Hill
rules. Roberts had previously roughed out the game on several different occasions and
he turned it over to Shaw for final development. It was Lindsley Schutz who put all of
the pieces together by. getting the background infor- mation. In terms of work done, the
game is Schutz's but in terms of original idea and having the final decision on which way
the game went 'the game is really Roberts'. Physically Avalon Hill was not selfcontained. Although the design was done in the "plant," the final art-work, printing and
other elements necessary for production were done outside. The two major outside
companies were James Smith Box Company, which did the boxes and parts, and
Monarch Services,which did the rest of the printing. Monarch now controls Avalon Hill
as a result of the financial difficulties Avalon Hill later experienced. The playtesting of
the games, particularly at the outset, suffered from too few playtesters. As a result, rules
additions and corrections were a norm. In part,'the problem was solved by making use of
outside testers. These people were drawn from the audience which had built up rapidly
around the games. They wrote letters, often incisively, and weren't afraid to express their
opinions. Avalon Hill would duplicate a quantity of "dummies" of the games and send
them, with commentary sheets, to the more lucid of these co- respondents who were
asked to point out any weaknesses they might find. As Roberts notes, this served two
purposes. First, it cut down on the mail these people sent in about game mistakes since
they had a chance to find the mistakes themselves before the games were printed. The
second, and more important, purpose was that it gave Avalon Hill a handy'semicontrolled body of people who could "de-bug" the games. Among the playtesters of this
period was Louis Zocchi, who later went on to design such games as Battle of Britain and
Luftwaffe. Avalon Hill also explored the non-commerical wargame field. Roberts
particularly tried to expand the educational value of the games, especially the wargames.
He designed a game called Gametrain which he tried to sell to the U.S. Army Infantry
School at Fort Benning, Georgia. The game was to be used for training an infantry
platoon and was on a board measuring in excess of twenty feet to a side! When
Gametrain was demonstrated to the Infantry School, it was accepted by the military men
but rejected by the civilians, who had the final say. Gametrain never reached fruition. In
the non-wargame field, Avalon Hill worked with the American Management Association
to develop management training techniques, an ideal field in light of the simulation
aspect of the games. Roberts has remarked, somewhat ruefully, that he would have been a
lot richer had he not spent so much time in these ventures. Yet, despite these side efforts,
by 1962 Avalon Hill was doing a million dollars per year in slaes. There were other
projects. When a new buyer sent in the registration card found in each game box, he
would receive a flyer asking whether he would be interested in a game costing $25.00 a
copy. This game was only a general idea of Roberts. It was to be called Conflict and
involve three hypothetical countries. Although Blitzkrieg was not an off-shoot of this, the
idea is not unlike a super-Blitzkrieg. Conflict never got beyond this stage because the
response was never great enough to warrant full development. In any event, at the end of
1962, Avalon Hill had virtually cornered the adult game field. AH: DISASTER AND
REBIRTH 1963-1964 In 1962, Avalon Hill experienced the first signs of potential
problems. The most prominent of these was the growth of the discount houses which
rivaled the retailer in many fields. Avalon Hill had distributed exclusively through the
retailer system and relied on the salesman to promote their sales. The discount house
didn't have the salesman-at-the-elbow idea. This meant that a different style of
promotion was necessary. Avalon Hill considered making the change in promotion as
early as 1962 but ultimately decided to wait until 1964. This proved to be a mistake. A
second problem arose out of trying to hold the line on prices. The discount house was
undercutting the retail prices and games couldn't be "fair traded" as they once were. This
insistence on maintaining the sales price also hurt Avalon Hill. Thirdly, Avalon Hill had
expanded rapidly by drawing heavily on credit. This permitted no serious cash-flow
bind. But when, as happened in 1963, dealers representing some 25% of Avalon Hill's
sales in 1962 went bankrupt, the cut in the cash flow, plus promotional problems, plus
the cut in sales due to holding the prices all combined to cripple Avalon Hill. It could no
longer meet its debts. Roberts had two choices. He could proceed under the Bankruptcy
Act, either by way of formal bankruptcy or reorganization, or he could turn the company
over to its creditors. A bankruptcy proceeding might salvage the company but would.
certainly hurt the c.reditors, who would be forced to accept pennies on the dollar for
Avalon Hill's debts. Roberts decided that it would be more honorable to give the
creditors a chance to salvage something by keeping the company running. He therefore
turned the company over to Monarch Services, one of the two largest creditors. He had
paid off the majority of the small creditors and took this course in hopes of giving the
remaining creditors a chance to recoup their losses. Roberts then had the option of
staying on under Monarch or leaving. He chose to leave, as did Schramm. Shaw chose
to stay, and has remained with Avalon Hill since. In retrospect, Roberts attributes
Avalon Hill's problems to two errors he
could have prevented. He could have
shifted the- promotion system from the "shotgun" approach, selling the whole line, to
the."rifie" approach of selling one product and letting it carry the line. This "rifle"
technique is the more successful when dealing in the discount system. The failure to
make this change when he first saw the need coming was one mistake. The second error
was in failing to diversify. Roberts' feels that if Avalon Hill had had a second field of
operations, such as printing, it would have acted as an "anchor to.windward" and
actually carried the company over the difficult period in the games. At this point, then,
Avalon Hill was dead. This is not to say that its products weren't being sold. Rather,
games were no longer being designed, letters were going unanswered, orders remained
unfilled. There were still some projects under way which were to have been completed
in 1964. There were some games virtually completed and the idea of an Avalon Hill
newsletter had been considered in 1963 but postponed to 1964 due to growing financial
problems. Therefore, while Avalon Hill seemed to be still going quietly along to
outsiders, insiders knew that it was dead. When Monarch took over Avalon Hill, A. Eric
Dott (president of Monarch) inspected the assets to see what could be done with it. Dott
and Shaw proceeded to go through what was left and Dott concluded that Avalon Hill
could be salvaged. He put Shaw in charge, since Shaw was the senior man left over from
the Roberts era. Shaw had never done anything outside of the design field under Roberts
and had no knowledge of marketing and promotion. As a consequence, Shaw was forced
to undergo the same trial and error system that Roberts had encountered six years earlier.
His first problem was getting a game ready for the spring toy shows. Afrika Korps had
been the game Roberts was to produce in the spring but it was incomplete due to a play
problem: the British were able to stop the German advance by putting sacrificial units in.
the German's path. Having no choice but to go with Afrika Korps, Shaw was forced to
solve the problem. He did so by coming up with the over-run rule and in the space of a
few weeks had put the game together. The over-run rule may be Shaw's greatest
contribution to wargaming. The failure to solve that problem had held up production of
the game for over a year. Moreover, Shaw had to piece out the game from notes left by
Schutz when he left. From these notes and with the over-run rule, Shaw started in late
December, 1963, when the decision to reactivate Avalon Hill was made, and had the
game ready for the toy show in February, 1964. As Shaw points out, things were so
hectic in those first few months of 1964 that inventory wasn't taken until July of that
year. The second major move made by Shaw in 1964 was to publish The GeneraL
Again, Shaw delivered under pressure. The first issue came out in the spring of 1964, in
the midst of all of the other tasks necessary to start Avalon Hill running again. The
General was, and still is, written mainly by hard-core wargamers. In reality its major
purpose was as a house organ to promote Avalon Hill games, a purpose which has never
really changed. When it first came out, however, there was no similar magazine in the
field, nor any rival wargame publisher. Therefore, The General covered all the major
wargames then available. Editorial work was done by Shaw. He continued to perform
this function until fairly recently when he turned it over to Randy Read and Interest
Group Baltimore. The latest change is to bring the editing of The General back "in
house" with Donald Greenwood, lfounder of Panzer- faust) as editor. As far as Avalon
Hill was concerned, The Generalwas a stroke of genius. It gave Avalon Hill a ready
audience for advance promotion of games. In effect, subscribers paid for the privilege of
seeing Avalon Hill advertising. Its second, and more important aspect, was the
Opponents Wanted column. For the first time there was a nationally circulated
publication which gave wargamers a chance to find out who else was out there. The
dividing line between the time when something is an item of interest to many separate
individuals and when it becomes mutually enjoyed as a hobby is usually crossed without
anyone knowing it at the time. Roberts has noted that while he then recognized that both
a repeat sales market and a vociferous audience existed for wargames, he never
considered a wargame hobby to exist. As far as he was concerned, at that time, Avalon
Hill was an adult games publishing company. Publishing wargames was only a facet of
the whole line of games. This is actually a realistic appraisal if viewed from the
perspective of 1963. A year later The General had arrived and that could not be said any
longer. A hobby was clearly being formed. Despite the clear evidence presented by The
General's avid readership, Avalon Hill con- tinued to consider itself an adult game
publisher. More importantly, it refused to shift emphasis to wargames in order to exploit
the hobby. Avalon Hill still remains an adult game publisher. Roberts never intended to
create a hobby and, prior to his leaving Avalon Hill, had no idea he had done so. Second
only to the creation of Avalon Hill and the publication of their wargames, The
Generalwas the most important factor in forming the hobby as it stands today. Despite the
venturesome quality of Avalon Hill's actions in 1964, in terms of publishing The General
and reviving Avalon Hill as a company, the attitude of Avalon Hill became more
conservative. The consequences of this were not immediately apparent and are still the
subject of debate. Avalon Hill abandoned the full time design staff. Shaw filled both that
job and a number of others by himself. Thereafter Avalon Hill turned to part-time
designers. During the next two years (19f>4-65), the design work was done during the
summer vacation, largely by Lindsley Schutz and Lawrence Pinsky. Between them they
designed Midway for the fall of 1964, Battle of the Bulge for the spring of 1965 (done
almost entirely by Pinsky, at home), Blitzkrieg for that fall and Guadalcanal for the
following spring. Second, they limited the number of battle titles to two a year: one in the
spring and one in the fall. Actually, this works hand in glove with elimination of the
design staff. A larger load would be impossible to carry with a limited staff and a large
staff would not justify limiting production to two games. The immediate effect was a cost
saving of approximately $25,000 for each game
not designed (that was the amount
tied up in the production of each game). However, aside from the monetary
considerations, Avalon Hill believed that the market would not tolerate more than two
games a year. They felt that the hobby would become saturated or unable to afford all the
games coming out. This, then, was the basis for Avalon Hill's approach to the following
years. The consequences of this policy will be discussed further, below. THE HOBBY IS
BORN 1965-1969 Before the creation of The General there was no hobby. Until then the
history of boardgaming could be neatly compartmen- talized and discussed. After The
General the hobby crystalized with a speed few would have predicted. It then grew and
diversified at a rapid pace. Avalon Hill never chose to maintain a dominant position in
the hobby, as such. The obvious reason for this is that Avalon Hill is in the business of
selling games, -not creating hobbies. Further, Avalon Hill had no pressure to take the
lead. Nobody else put out high quality wargarnes. If any innovations were to be found,
they came from Avalon Hil. There was no incentive for Avalon Hill to be an active
leader. Yet, in retrospect, it did not require a great amount of foresight to realize where
the hobby would go and what would happen to the hobby if it lacked an active leader.
Avalon Hill's benign neglect has been as important as if it had been an active leader. At
Avalon Hill, the conservative program previously mentioned resulted in their turning to
outsiders for their games. By 1964, Schutz was an outsider in the sense that he was no
longer working full-time for Avalon Hill. Pinsky had never been a full time employee.
These two were the principal designers during the period 1964-65. Shaw, moreover, had
never taken the lead in designing wargames. He had been involved in the design of
Blitzkrieg, Afrika Korps, Stalingrad and Midway more in a supervisory capacity than true
design (although his work on Afrika Korps was more than merely in,passing). It was the
wargame Bismarck on which Shaw did the most work. Ground combat was not his field
and so others did the design, under his supervision. Playtesting was done during the
summer but there was even less control of the quality of the playtesters than under
Roberts. As a result, it is hard to say how much time was wasted by "testers" who were
really only around to play the games for fun. After Schutz and Pinsky, Avalon Hill
turned to James F. Dunnigan. Dunnigan had come to Avalon Hill's attention by writing
a detailed critique of Battle of the Bulge, as well as some detailed monographs on
various phases of World War II. He had never designed a game. Why Avalon Hill
assumed that he could design one, based on his writings alone, is unclear. It probably
falls into the same category as the decision to publish The General - intelligent
guesswork. Prior to the contracting of Dunnigan, all of the Avalon Hill ground combat
games had been a variation of the 1953 Tactics and naval games showed little more
difference between themselves. Dunnigan believed that different situations require
different systems to depict them in a game. Thus, his first two efforts, Jutland and 1914
were unlike anything Avalon Hill had put out. They were both innovative and proved
again that there is more than one way to approach a problem. More important to Avalon
Hill was the fact that Dunnigan did his work in New York, not Baltimore. The game
was designed, in effect, beyond direct control by Avalon Hill. Being dissatisfied with
Dunnigan's first two games, Avalon Hill turned to Dave Williams, who designed Anzio.
Williams was as unafraid as Dunnigan in breaking with Avalon Hill tradition and he,
too, did the design at home rather than in Baltimore. The saga of ' would fill a book
itself. The "beyond direct control" system encountered real difficulties and Avalon Hill
found it had a tiger by the tail: the game design wasn't going the way it wanted to go and
Avalon Hill could do nothing about it short of scrapping the game. The decision to
eliminate a permanent design staff and to keep the games at two a year forced Avalon
Hill to seek outside designers. However, in order to avoid chaos in its game design,
Avalon Hill then became controlled by its designers since it had to take them where it
found them or forego their work. If Dunnigan didn't want to move to Balitmore, they
either put up with him working in New York or lost his services. Another example of
decentralization was the answering of letters. Initially, Roberts took pride in a formal
written response to each letter. When outside designers became the practice, they were
obligates to answer all inquires on game play for a certain period. Someone else was
given the job of responding to the letters on the older games. This person might be as far
away from Baltimore as Albany, New York. At that distance, Avalon Hill had no real
control over what was said to the writers. Interest Group Baltimore acquired the job in
recent years, bringing it back "home." During this time, however, it was quite beyond
Avalon Hill's practical control. As mentioned above, the growth of the hobby became
less and less orderly as time went on. Several changes happened at once. While Avalon
Hill was decentralizing, another facet of the hobby was forming: the clubs. The majority
of the hobbyists are not club members, but the clubs - being the most organized - made
the most noise and had an influence far beyond their size. Oddly, the low profile Avalon
Hill took prevented the clubs from having the impact they might have had. Avalon Hill
simply could not react to the clubs with any real flexibility. A third element, growing at
the same time everything else went on, was the hobby- produced magazine. Few were
started with any intent to rival The General. Most were spirit-master or mimeographed.
The term 11 zine" has often been applied to them. That term, in turn, is taken from the
world of science-fiction fandom and anyone who is familiar with a "fanzine" knows
why the term applies. There were fewpretensions to quality at first. Often as not, they
were club organs or publications with very small circulation (a few hundred subscribers,
at most).They usually did nothing more than give the editor/publisher/ sole author a
chance to voice his opinions. Further, they came and went with frightening speed,
usually taking with them any subscription payments which hadn't already been spent.
'Zines, like the clubs, were the creation of The General. This is not in the sense of
mimicry but because The General gave free advertising and gave the 'zines a purpose there is no need for a newsletter if everyone lives in the same town, but statewide or
national circulation is another matter. At this point it is fitting to note the arrival of
Strategy & Tactics. Christopher R. Wagner, then a Staff Sergeant stationed with the U.S.
Air Force in Japan (and environs) had decided that something more could be done with a
wargame journal than The General was doing. First, he saw no real signs of "edited"
articles in The General: as long as they weren't libelous they were published. Second he
saw no cohesive editorial concept holding the magazine on one course or another. Third,
the quality of the articles was very uneven. The few good writers were counterbalanced
by the mediocrities. At the same time, he didn't want to put out another 'zine, with poor
reproduction and the reliability of mist. As a consequence in 1966 he and Lyle E.
Smethers, another fellow stationed with him in Japan, decided to put out their own effort.
He wanted an alternative to The General. Wagner decided to add areas excluded from
The General, such as miniatures and, as they appeared, non-Avalon Hill wargames. He
contacted Shaw who was helpful but mildly discouraging. In this instance, Wagner
agrees that the discouragement was not that given to a potential rival but sound advice.
Wagner calculated that he could achieve fifty percent of The General's circulation. Shaw
had indicated that The General had a circulation of 5,000. If he had 2,5W circulation,
S&T would be successful. Thus, he started off with a printed magazine on glossy paper.
His calculation proved correct. S&T did achieve fifty percent of The General's
circulation, but the paid circulation of The General was only around 2,500. With a
circulation of 1,200, S&T was doomed to be economically unsuccessful. Wagner got the
magazine off the ground by soliciting articles through the mail. Since he was in Japan,
he got Henry Bodenstedt, a toy shop owner in Adelphia, New Jersey, who was
interested in miniatures, to write articles about miniatures and distribute the magazine. In
exchange for this, Bodenstedt got free advertising and thus advertised items which were,
curiously enough, ideally suited for use in the games he was writing about in S&T.
Wagner ran the magazine from Japan, getting articles from the United States, negotiating
with the Japanese printers, sending the finished copies to Bodenstedt and starting the
cycle again. His initial band of contributors came from three areas. The first group were
his friends in the Air Force such as Smethers and Scott Berschig. Second he used some
of the people who had written for The General, such as Donald Greenwood, Louis
Zocchi and John Dotson. Third, there were those such as Dunnigan who came to
Wagner's attention through published monographs. The parting of the ways between
Bodenstedt and Wagner is more fully detailed in S&T's reprint of issues I to 6, now
available as Book /. Suffice it to say that Wagner subsequently used his mother to
distribute the magazine. At the same time, he decided to leave the Air Force and return
to the United States. Issues 1 through 10, constituting the first year's publications, were
all printed in Japan. Thereafter they were printed in the United States.
DuringthefirstyearSEtTcontinued to grow in quality and quantity. Illustrations became
better and a glossy cover was first used for issue 7. In addition, paid advertising
appeared in the magazine. The increased quality was not coupled with a serious effort
to promote new readers, however, and the overhead began to grow. Returning to the
United States, Wagner found the cost of printing the magazine to be much greater
than in Japan. During this period, the
editorial staff underwent some upheavals.
Many of the original writers lost interest. However, some regulars, such as Rodney
Walker, began to appear. In the middle of the second year, Wagner secured the
services of Redmond A. Simonsen, under whose artistic hand the over-all appearance
of the magazine took a major jump. By the second year, the story of S&T, from the
inside, was a quest for money. Wagner had @)eerttrying to makea living from S&Tand
had even paid some money to contributors. The -end'of the first year, however, saw a
renewal rate far below the 100% he had expected (closer to 70% in fact). Without a
comparable lot of new subscribers, the circulation began to decline. Wagner had
exhausted the sources of subscribers available to him which meant that S&T's
circulation slowly spiraled down. He tried to sell games through S&T in hopes of
helping the magazine with the profits from the sales. Notable among the lines carred
was Gamescience from Philip Orbanes. But this leveled off so that by the time issue 12
came out, Wagner took a part-time job and began to borrow money to keep the
magazine afloat. His problems were further compounded by printer delays. On one
occasion he personally collated the magazine late at night in the printer's shop. He
changed printers twice in the last two issues under his administration but to no avail.
Despite financial problems, he did not let the quality slip. In fact, the first two-color
issue was the last under Wagner - Volume 3, number 1 (issue 17). But, as Wagner
acknowledges, reality has a way of catching up. By the time issue 16 was on the presses,
he knew he could either print number 17 and leave the printers with uncollectable debts
or stop at 16 and leave the subscribers-hanging. He printed number 17. At the same
time, he put out feelers to see if anyone would take over the magazine. The two major
wargaming clubs, Spartan International and International Federation of Wargamers,
were both approached. Things reached the stage with IFW that some materials were
actually shipped before the deal fell through. S&T had reached the end of its tether. No
one wanted it. Wagner couldn't afford it and Simonsen, S&T's premier artist, was
disillusioned to the point of having no further interest in it. Still another facet of the
hobby growing during this period was the non-Avalon Hill, non-major company, game.
The first efforts were poor to say the least. They vvere often spirit mastered with sheets
that never matched up and counters that disintegrated on touch. It was apparent, before
long, that this type of game would only have marginal success. The question was
whether a well done game could have any success outside of Avalon Hill. At this point,
Philip Orbanes becomes the focus of attention. Orbanes had ventured into the game
design field with a spirit-duplicated game called Operation Gigentus in 1964, while still
a high school student. The game was a cross between Diplomacy and an Avalon Hill
game. Although this met with only moderate success, Orbanes decided to go further. He
formed Gamescience, a corporation, in 1965 and published a game called Viet Nam.
This was a high quality gar-ne with a regular, mounted game board, plastic pieces and a
white box with a label. This was sold by arrangement with Avalon Hill in that Avalon
Hill operated as a funnel for sales by accepting orders which they would then forward to
Orbanes to be filled.
- In 1967 Orbanes produced Confrontation, a game printed on
heavy cardboard in three sections and mailed in a large tube. The map was an
overprinted Rand-McNally world map which formed a gameboard sixty by thirty
inches. This system of packaging was so successful Orbanes re-worked Viet Nam along
the same lines. This game was distributed the same way as Vi6st Nam. Orbane's real
breakthough came as the result of Avalon Hill rejecting Louis Zocchi's game Battle of
Britain. Wagner was aware of Zocchi's game and believed that the title was a good one.
Wagner suggested that Zocchi and Orbanes get together with the result that Battle of
Britain was a major success. It proved so succesful that Avalon Hill stopped helping
Orbanes' sales and treated Gamescience as a rival. It wasn't a rival at that point. Whether
it might have been is a moot question. Orbanes decided to invest a major amount of
money in the game and sell it at the February toy show in Chicago. In the interim, he
upgraded Viet Nam and Confrontation by printing the maps on Textoprint (something
like oilcoth, only better), with die cut counters and printed rules. Battle of Britain, on the
other hand, was in the then standard Avalon Hill format of a long, flat box. At the toy
show, Orbanes was approached by a representative of Renwal, the model manufacturer.
They wanted to expand their line into other toy fields and felt Battle of Britain to be the
game. As a result, they persuaded Orbanes to sell all of his assets to them in exchange
for royalties. He kept the company's liabilities (which were rather large by then, due to
promotion expenses) but expected to pay them off soon from royalties. In fact, royalties
never came in any large amount. Renwal sold only a fraction of the amount Orbanes
was selling earlier and thus ended the first rival to Avalon Hill. What Gamescience
brought to the field was the concept of different systems for different situations. This
was the same idea Dunnigan had explored in 1914 and Jutland. Moreover, the success of
Battle of Britain, after it had been rejected by Avalon Hill, gave dramatic proof that
Avalon Hill could be wrong. Actually, Gamescience didn't disappear. The the name was
taken over by Renwal, the corporate shell (and debts) remained. Orbanes and Dunnigan
decided to use the corporate shell and form Operation Design Corporation which, in
turn, became a subsidiary of Infinity Quest. The function of ODC was to provide a
corporate shelter for Du6nigan's winsome creation, Poultron Press which, in turn, was
the new publisher of Strategy & Tactics. The story of the salvaging of S&T forms a
suitable end to this period, as well as marking the start of the current phase of
development. As mentioned, Wagner had been casting about for someone to take over
S&T. Dunnigan had been approached but saw it as too big a job. However, Dunnigan
had been working with the idea of producing a large number of games. Obviously he
couldn't sell them through The General since Avalon Hill wasn't likely to cut its own
throat. S&T was the only other magazine with any circulation worth talking about. The
net result was that Dunnigan decided to take over S&T. He had a group of friends in the
New York area interested in the games and he grabbed the most visible of them and told
them that they were going into the publishing business. He also contacted Simonsen to
do the art work. Simonsen, in essence, told Dunnigan that he had had enough of S&T
after the work done on issue 17. As a result, Dunnigan set about creating issue 18 out of
whole cloth. A few articles from the regular writers were available but the great body of
issue 18 was writte;i and pasted-up by Dunnigan. When Simonsen saw that issue 18 was
going to come out, he agreed to do a quick cover and some incidental graphics and
thereby began to re-involve himself with S&T. With that melodramatic turn of events,
issue 18 was printed and in sodoing S&T was salvaged. More importantly, Dunnigan
introduced several games in issue 18 which were to be the core of the Test Series Games,
including Tactical Game #3, the model for PanzerBlitz. THE SECOND GENERATION:
1969-THE PRESENT The period since 1969 has seen the birth of the second generation
of virtually all aspects of the hobby. The warring clubs of the previous period were
replaced by the more mature clubs, such as Spartan International and IFW. Even the zines
took on a better quality. Club newsletters and the like lost their parochial approach and
turned toward general interest. At the same time, spirit master and mimeograph were
replaced by offset for the zines in more and more instances. These zines have also
produced a body of writers whose works appear with regularity in the better quality zines.
At the same time, there still remains some of the old zines around. Even the best of the
zines frequently suffer from wordiness and lack of critical analysis. However,
considering that the zines are produced by people working at it part time and on limited
budgets, it seems fair to say that they have reached their real level of quality. Few will get
better without becoming true commerical ventures and many mediocre ones will still be
seen. At this point it becomes difficult not to blow ones own horn. The fact is that
during the past three years S&T has had an ever-increasing influence on the hobby.
Whereas, prior to 1969, zines emphasized perfect plans and variants, there are now a
growing number of articles on military history and the like. Articles are compatible, not
subordinate to the games. Even games were published in the zines. All of this has been
since S&T adopted that very format. Dunnigan changed the emphasis from his first
issue. The subtitle "A Journal of American Wargar-ning" was abandoned with issue 18.
The historical article appeared immediately, followed by the military analysis article.
This style shift may have been pre-mature in terms of the carry-over readership. A
number simply didn't like the new format and dropped out. There was a period when
SETT was like Carroll's Red Queen, running as fast as it could just to stay in the same
place in its circulation. A second change wrought by S&T is in the games themselves.
First there was the volume produced both in the magazine and in the Test Series
Games. Almost at a stroke the number of games it took Avalon Hill eleven years to put
out was doubled. Second, the idea of a pat formula was rejected. While some concepts
naturally generate a series of games, such as the Kursk - Battle of Stalingrad - France
'40 - Moscow Campaign series or the Tac 14 - Centurion - Phalanx - Dark Ages series,
the basic idea remains that different systems are used for different situations. The fact
that history does repeat itself allows several games to be designed on the same system.
This second change had a direct impact on the hobby. Terms created for SEtT's games
became accepted in general usage (with a few exceptions, such as the persistence of
"square" to describe a hexagon). In part this was furthered by Avalon Hill still turning to
outside designers and fixing on Simulations Publications Inc., to do a series of these
games. Actually, Avalon Hill tried to break its own mold. Kriegspiel, a critical failure
among wargames, was this attempt. The primary purpose behind Kriegspiel was a
venture into the bookcase type of game and to see whether a wargame could succeed in
that format. In fact, it proved that point even if the hobbyists didn't particularly like it.
Kriegspiel was the only wargame designed completely by Shaw. This is ironical since he
did have a hand in a number of the important successes of Avalon Hill and deserves more
credit than Kriegspiel brings him among wargamers. He took the matrix system he had
developed for Football and Baseball Strate_qy and adapted it to resolve combat. This
concept presented a major change from anything that had been used before, since it
required no die. It is curious to note, in passing, that nothing has been done to develop
this concept further since it does add the very realistic element of a choice on both sides
contributing to the outcome of combat. When Krieqspiel failed to be a success among
wargamers, Avalon Hill found itself in a bind of its own creation. Krieqspiel was not a
hard game to design, as such games go. Avalon Hill did not have the manpower or
facilities to design a large, more complex game. In essence, they could no longer enjoy
the option of doing their own game design when they wanted to - they had to farm it out.
The more complex game requires more man hours in its design. For one man to do it
takes a long time. A team can cut the time to a fraction. The result is that the next games
in their series, PanzerBlitz, Luftwaffe, Origins of World War// and France '40 all not only
came from an outside designer, but specifically from the S&T/SSG/SPI complex.
Luftwaffe had been designed by Louis Zocchi but was already published as one of the
Test Series Games. As a result its problems were known as it had been "playtested" by
the buyers. PanzerBlitz and Origins are both Dunnigan's creations somewhat reworked
and France '40 is an improved version of the game which appeared in S&T. Thus, while
Avalon Hill might deny it, the fact remains that Avalon Hill is in the thrall of SPI. The
shape of the second generation is clear. It is a period in which the_hobby will now grow
toward maturity, moving out of being purely a a juvenile pastime into something with
more prestige. Moreover, it is a time when wargamers can honestly look forward to
games being reasonable duplicates of historical situations such that the player cannot
merely make use of his twentieth century knowledge but must vie with the same
conditions that hampered Marlborough or some other general. Obviously,
prognostication is difficult. The second generation has not peaked and it is not possible
to state whether there will be a third generation. SPI's current growth rate indicates that
the top is not in sight. Where the future lies depends on how big the hobby can be. If it
is big enough, we may see the giants, such as Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley, getting
into serious wargame design. That would change the whole picture. Perhaps the most
interesting question to be answered is the one posed by Spartan International. That club
has the avowed goal of making wargarning an acceptable hobby on a level of popularity
and profit equal to golf (they prefer to call wargaming a sport, rather than a hobby,though
thedifference is not that great in this case). Before dismissing that as a foolish notion, one
need only know that bridge, in the twenties, was nothing but idle sport for bright young
college students. Then along came contract bridge and now men pay for the privilege of
playing with the bridge master. Thus, whether this hobby can gain enough acceptance to
leave the field of "children's games" where it is too often put, remains the most
provocative question to be answered. Perhaps the best summary of how things look from
the present to the future is: stick around, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
1998 Winter Simulation Conference
ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES FOR MILITARY MODELING &
SIMULATION
Roger D. Smith
STAC Inc.
Orlando, Florida 32765
rsmith@stacinc.com
ABSTRACT
This tutorial will identify and explore the essential techniques necessary for
modern military training simulations. It will provide a brief historical introduction
followed by discussions of system architecture; simulation interoperability; event
and time management; distributed simulation; and verification, validation, and
accreditation. This will be followed by fundamental principles in modeling and
specific military modeling domains.
The growth in government sponsored simulation programs has drawn engineers
and scientists from other fields. These practitioners bring valuable skills, but lack
an appreciation for the historical and technical foundations of simulation. The
tutorial will familiarize the audience with important areas and give them an
appreciation for the complexity of developing large simulations. We suggest that
a need exists for academic and commercial courses that focus on this topic. This
tutorial may serve as a template for one such course.
1 MILITARY DOMAIN
The military has a long and rich history of using models and simulation. The US
military alone spends hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring, designing,
fielding, and operating simulation systems. These systems have been
categorized by the Department of Defense into training, analysis, and acquisition
applications. A wide variety of training is conducted through the use of virtual,
constructive, and live simulations (Davis 1995). Virtual training simulations are
those in which the trainee is immersed in a virtual world where physical actions
such as driving a vehicle or firing a weapon have a direct visible on the synthetic
world they are in. Constructive simulations are widely known as wargames.
Tactical and strategic decisions are reflected in the movement of military icons on
a map, testing the commander and staff’s ability to use their forces effectively.
Live simulations are the application of real equipment in mock combat scenarios
or firing ranges. These allow pilots, tank drivers, and other soldiers to practice the
physical activities of war with their real equipment.
Analytical simulations are used to study problems like force composition,
weapons effectiveness, and logistics issues. This community is strongly
influenced by the science of operations research and may produce simulations
very similar to those used for constructive level training. Analytical simulations
usually differ in that they do not focus on interactive exchanges with people
during a simulation run. This allows them to execute much faster or slower than
real time without adversely impacting a human operator (Law 1991).
The military acquisition community uses models to identify shortfalls in its ability
to perform specific missions or meet certain threats. These models identify
weaknesses in our military forces without the necessity of testing them in war.
This community also uses detailed engineering level models to conduct studies
of the design of weapons under acquisition.
1.1 History
Military simulations have arrived at their current state of sophistication and
application through a long history of experimentation and evolution. We can
identify the existence of models of warfare as far back as 5000 years ago as
discussed in Perla 1990. Historical records indicate that the Chinese developed a
wargame called Wei-Hai around 3000BC. No diagrams or artifacts of this game
have survived, but descriptions lead us to believe that it was similar to the
modern game of Go. Players used colored stones on a grid system to control as
much space on the board as possible. The modern game of Go emerged around
2200BC.
Chaturanga emerged in India around 500AD accommodating two or four players
on a checkered board. Each was equipped with four pawns, a king, elephant,
horse, and chariot. The objective of this game was to capture the enemy’s pieces
rather than to control area. The modern game of Chess evolved from Chaturanga
around 1400AD in Southern Europe.
Examples of the use of sand tables and miniature replicas can be found among
the Roman legions around 30AD. This form of training can be seen right up to
the present with the use of these items to train soldiers in the military academies
and schools. Only the advent of computer simulations has begun to replace
these apparatus.
The modern era of wargames began in 1664 with the development of
Koenigspiel (the "King’s Game") by the German Christopher Weikhmann. This
game consisted of a checkered board with 30 pieces representing military ranks
that included the King, Marshall, Colonel, and others down to Private. Additional
developments followed through the 17th and 18th centuries, these included War
Chess, and Kriegsspiels. Each added detail and more intricate techniques for
operations of the game. Kriegsspiels, developed by Baron von Reisswitz in 1811,
used contoured terrain, porcelain soldiers, and the new concept of a starting
scenario with a stated military objective.
During the twentieth century we have experienced the evolution of wargaming
into a scientific application of techniques from operations research, analytical
game theory, Monte Carlo techniques, the Lagrange-Multiplier Method,
mathematical programming, and systems analysis. These games and computer
systems incorporate more reasoned mathematic techniques than were feasible
under manual operation (Davis 1995).
1.2 Interoperability
Simulations have traditionally been independent, stand-alone systems that
address specific problems and adhere to a unique architecture established by the
designer. This approach has persisted from the earliest games through the most
modern computer simulations. Around 1988 the military began to explore the
possibility of linking multiple interactive training simulations to allow them to
interoperate with one another during execution.
In 1988 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a
program called Simulator Networking (SIMNET) to create multiple tank
simulators that could be joined over a network such that each could detect,
engage, and destroy the others (Miller 1995). This program resulted in the
establishment of important principles for simulation interaction and the creation of
a network messaging protocol to exchange essential data. SIMNET was the
forerunner of the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) protocols. DIS
attempted to generalize the SIMNET technology so that it could be applied to a
wider variety of combat vehicle simulators such as trucks, helicopters, fighters,
ships, and soldiers.
At the same time, members of the constructive training community were
developing methods for linking simulations for higher level combat events. The
Distributed Wargaming System fielded at the German ACE-89 exercise
demonstrated the feasibility of tracking military units in other simulations and
engaging them effectively and accurately. This experiment lead to the
development of the Aggregate Level Simulation Protocol (ALSP) to demonstrate
interoperable training at the staff level. ALSP linked seven existing simulations
from each military service by providing both the network messages and software
services for insuring consistency and causality between the simulations (Wilson
1994).
The Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO) is developing the High
Level Architecture (HLA) to replace both DIS and ALSP (DMSO 1997). Those
methods have proven to be very system specific and do not provide a general
interoperability solution that can support future simulation systems and missions.
The HLA defines: 1) rules for simulation interaction and for the behavior of a
family of simulations; 2) Object Model Templates for expressing the military
systems and activities that are represented in any simulation system; and 3) an
interface specification to support interoperability between multiple simulations.
The Runtime Infrastructure (RTI) is a software package that manages the
interactions between distributed simulations according to that interface
specification.
1.3 Verification, Validation, & Accreditation.
Simulations are creations from the minds of human designers. Though every
effort is made to insure accuracy, compromises are always made and mistakes
are inevitable. It is essential that all simulations be tested to establish their
accuracy and appropriateness for specific problems. This process is known as
verification, validation, and accreditation. These are applied to a simulation
development cycle that assumes that the real world system to be replicated is
identified and a conceptual model of it is defined. This conceptual model is then
encoded as computer software. These three items form the points of a triangle
where VV&A is used to insure that the transformation from one point to the next
is accurately done (Figure 1) (Sargent 1987).
Figure 1. Verification and Validation of Simulation
Validation is the process of determining the extent to which a conceptual model
is an accurate representation of that portion of the real world that is important to
the model sponsors. Essential aspects of the real world must be captured in the
conceptual model that represents the problem to be addressed. In paraphrase,
validation is often described as answering the question, "Are we building the right
product?"
Verification is the process of determining that the software product is an accurate
implementation of the conceptual model as it was designed. This process insures
that the software performs the operations as they were described in the
conceptual model. Practitioners also attempt to identify the degree of control that
the developing agency has over changes to the software. The intent is to verify
that the current software is correct, but also to provide a level of assurance that it
will remain correct in the future. Verification is often described as answering the
question, "Are we building the product right?"
Finally, accreditation is an official determination that the simulation is acceptable
for some specified purpose. No simulation is a universal solution to all problems
in a domain. Each addresses a specific class of problems and may only be valid
under the conditions found in those problems. Accreditation defines the set of
problems for which a simulation is a good and useful model.
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
Within each simulation there is an infrastructure that supports the operation of
the system, but is itself largely domain independent. An infrastructure can
support many different simulations and is a potential source of software reuse.
2.1 System Architectures
When every simulation was custom crafted for a specific application there was no
need, nor opportunity, for emphasis on an underlying architecture to support the
extension of the system to future problems. Neither was any thought given to the
reuse of the architecture by other simulation developers. As simulation science
and simulation products matured, it became common to design a simulation such
that certain operations could be encapsulated as libraries and used by many
different customers. These libraries contained routines for generating random
numbers, formatting specific reports, performing complex mathematical and
statistical operations, and managing simulation execution. The evolution of
commercial vendors to sell these libraries encouraged developers to design their
simulations to take advantage of these products. This was the beginning of a
widespread reusable architecture for simulations (Law 1991).
Within some military simulation projects a common structure began to emerge
and repeat itself (Figure 2). (Smith 1995) This "architecture" was focused on the
functional nature of the missions to which the simulation was put. This centered
on a simulation engine that performs both execution management and modeling
functions. Simulation input data is created by a Scenario Generator. Simulation
output data is analyzed by an After Action Review system. A Controller Interface
is used to manage the starting, execution, and stopping of the simulation. A
Training Interface supports interactive participation by users. Finally, a Network
Interface allows communication between simulations operating on different
computers. This allows interoperability between heterogeneous simulations and
the distributed execution of a single simulation system.
Figure 2. Functional Components of Military Simulations
Recently, object oriented architectures that provide greater interoperability and
efficiency of execution have begun to emerge. These architectures promise an
infrastructure for simulations that may be reused by multiple projects. If
successful, this approach will allow developers to create a complete working
simulation system simply by adding detailed models to the provided
infrastructure. This can potentially eliminate as much as 90% of the time and cost
of creating a simulation system.
The most ambitious and widely watched architecture of this new form is the Joint
Simulation System (JSIMS). This project is attempting to unify the next
generation of staff training simulations for the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine
Corps, and Tactical and National Intelligence Communities. JSIMS will provide a
layered architecture with object oriented software frameworks supporting model
specification (Figure 3) (Powell 1996). The architecture also provides a platform
independent software product by creating a System Abstraction Layer between
the simulation software and the operating system of the computer. The Object
Services layer allows the infrastructure to efficiently distribute simulation objects,
manage the progression of time, and store historical data through mechanisms
invisible to the developers of the models. The Support Services provide objectoriented frameworks that are foundation classes for each type of object that can
be represented. These also define the interactions that can take place between
simulated objects. The framework object classes are extended to create specific
models for each unique piece of equipment. This extension specializes both the
characteristics of the object and the interactions it can have with other objects.
This layer includes translation mechanisms that allow a simulation to exchange
data with a wide variety of external systems - primarily simulations and military
command and control computers. Specific models and tools form the Application
layer atop the architecture.
Figure 3. JSIMS Architecture
The JSIMS architecture is the most advanced available in the military simulation
community. It is currently under development and details on the value it can
provide are not yet available.
2.2 Event Management
Simulations are dynamic representations of systems. The execution of events
that allow the simulation to portray the state of the real system at many points in
time differentiates a simulation from a static model. These events are scheduled
upon instantiation of the scenario and throughout the execution of the simulation.
Since events are such an integral part of the simulation, it is important that they
be managed accurately and efficiently. Events are usually organized into some
form of list and stored through a variety of computer structures. Storage may be
in the form of an ordered array, linked list, tree, or other structure. Whatever the
form, each event contains information about the operation to be performed, the
trigger for its execution, and the identity of the objects that it will operate upon.
A simulation may be structured such that events are handled by executive
software which has the ability to contact each object and apply the event to it.
The structure may also allow the event to belong directly to an object. Executive
management simplifies the application of events that require multiple object
interactions. Direct object management of events allows greater selfcontainment, independence, and reusability of each object. However, it also
requires more inter-object communication to correctly apply complex events.
2.3 Time Management.
Since simulations represent the real world, they usually contain some
representation of time. In most cases, time is the variable that orders and
separates the execution of all events. When a functional simulation operates on a
single computer system, the management of time is relatively simple. The
simulation may choose to move forward in defined discrete time steps, or
according to the times of events being executed. A "time stepped" simulation
usually contains a mechanism for both time progression and event management
that allows the simulation to set the time and execute any event prior to that time.
New events are caused at determined points in the future. An "event stepped"
simulation does not contain mechanisms for generating regular time steps.
Instead, it chooses to represent only those instances in time at which events
actually occur. The time of the simulation jumps from one event time to the next.
All activity between these times is represented as a duration over which the
object state changes.
With the advent of networked and parallel computer equipment, simulations were
developed to take advantage of this hardware. As a result, it became necessary
to synchronize time across multiple software applications. This synchronization
insures that events happen in an order that preserves their causal relationships.
Because of delays in network message delivery it is possible for events to arrive
at an object in the wrong order. Since the object can not determine whether
event messages are enroute, it does not know whether the most current event in
queue is the next in the execution sequence. To address this problem,
techniques for both conservative and optimistic synchronization of time across
processors were developed.
Conservative synchronization provides a mechanism in which all objects are held
in strict lock-step progression into the future (Fujimoto 1990). This is
accomplished through queues that hold the latest messages from each
simulation on the network. Each simulation must consult these queues to
determine the time within other simulations. Each simulation is allowed to
process all events up to a time at which all events prior to it have been calculated
and distributed. The synchronization software determines this time and has the
assurance of each simulation that no events will be applied in the period prior to
this. Though a simulation may have no future events to inform the network about,
it is required to send a "null" message that identifies a time prior to which it will
generate no events. This promise prevents deadlock of simulations that are
waiting for others to provide an event message.
Optimistic synchronization seeks to maximize the use of computer assets
available to the simulation, and perhaps to finish execution faster than
conservative synchronization will allow (Fujimoto 1990). Under this time
management technique each simulation is allowed to process all events available
with no consideration for the time at which other simulations are operating.
However, the system is required to process all events in the correct order,
including those that arrive late or out of order. A simulation may race into the
future but subsequently receive an event message that happened in the past.
When this occurs, the simulation is required to "rollback" all events until it can
insert the new event in its proper place and re-execute all of them in order. This
synchronization mechanism creates a distributed system in which each computer
is racing independently into the future and is periodically interrupted by the
necessity to go back and redo some of its work. The premise of this approach is
that, in spite of rollbacks, the entire distributed simulation will complete its
mission faster than it would have under conservative synchronization. Since
training simulations can not require humans to follow this same repetitive
experience of time, they can progress with Global Virtual Time (GVT). All events
prior to this time are guaranteed to be in the past of all simulations on the
network and none of these events are subject to rollback. This provides a
foundation for the interactive user to experience a harmonic simulation time in
spite of the rollbacks happening in front of GVT.
2.4 Issues in Parallel and Distributed Simulation
Both parallel and distributed simulations free the system from the limits of a
single computer system and the necessities for co-location of all participants and
sub-systems. This also creates a unique variety of problems that must be
addressed to ensure causality, efficiency, and accuracy. Some of these, such as
the time management problem, have already been addressed in this tutorial. But
there are many others, only a few of which will be described here.
In the interoperability section we discussed the search for a common protocol
that can support multiple models of the real world. Since each simulation
represents the real world in a slightly different manner it is very difficult to create
a standard protocol that is useful for joining all of them into a common execution.
One of the strengths of the High Level Architecture is that it recognizes this fact
and attempts to provide services that are useful for many different protocols.
Within military simulation circles the concept of a "reference federation" is
evolving. This attempts to categorize simulations into groups for which a common
protocol is feasible, but also identifies boundaries across which no single protocol
is likely to suffice.
All simulations are subject to the efficiencies of the computers and networks
upon which they reside. Networks currently provide sufficient bandwidth for
simulation messages in small scenarios. They do not appear to be able to deliver
all of the messages necessary for large scenarios involving tens or hundreds of
thousands of objects. This requires that the simulation itself be designed within
the current limitations of the hardware. Though this solution is very realistic, it
creates a system that shows its age as computers evolve. Older simulations
appear to be inadequate for current problems, when in truth they were the best
solution possible at the time they were built.
3 MODELING
Though a military simulation is a complete system fitted for use in a larger world,
the core of the system are the models which represent the existence and
activities of the real world. This core is an area in which a great deal of
experience and creativity is required to develop good representations. It is very
difficult to arrive at a set of models for both the existence and activities of many
objects that are appropriately balanced to address a particular problem.
Decisions in every part of model design may effect the representations and
operations of other models. Experienced modelers are very familiar with this
effect and approach the design and development of a new model with a broad
perspective. It is important to see conflicts as soon as possible to allow time,
money, and man-power to correct them. Many problems survive the development
and fielding of a simulation because they are either undetected, or detected too
late to be remedied.
3.1 Fundamental Principles of Modeling
Even though every simulation is unique there are some principles which seem to
apply universally to the activity of creating a model of the real world. The
principles described here were derived from the experiences of several
practitioners and certainly can not be the sum total of principles that exist.
The golden rule of modeling is that no model, no matter how accurate, has any
inherent value of its own. The value of every model is based entirely upon the
degree to which it solves someone’s real world problem. Accuracy and fidelity
are driven by the problem that the model is supposed to solve. A beautiful,
elegant, exact model of a problem has no value if it is a model of the wrong
problem (Smith 1998).
All of the intricacies and details involved in building a model often conspire to
lead the modeler away from the intended problem and toward an adjacent or
related problem. Though experience is probably the best defense against this
habit, really understanding the problem from the user’s perspective is essential. If
the user or modeler has an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the
problem it is unlikely that the resulting model will address that problem correctly.
We have reached a period in which many models exist for the systems we are
representing. Modelers should learn from the past by studying these models and
determining the good points that apply to the new problem. Older models and
modelers may not have solved problems of the complexity of the current system,
but have valuable lessons to teach. The adage "those who are ignorant of history
are doomed to repeat it" applies here. At the very least, the old models can be
instructive in what not to do on new models.
Complex systems often require more detail than can be pictured mentally or
uncovered through the design process. It is always valuable to build a model of
the model – a prototype. These uncover subtle problems and provide a tool for
experimenting with new ideas. A prototype can be an invaluable tool for
communicating with the users of the system as well as clarifying areas that are
vaguely understood.
Credibility or validation is not a totally objective determination. Each user or
problem owner expects to see certain characteristics of the problem in the model.
It is important that the model address these "hot buttons" in a clear and
communicable manner. If the model falls short on these subjective criteria it will
be very difficult for the user to accept the validity of more complex
representations within it.
All models require some set of data upon which to operate. Data about all
aspects of real systems is not currently, nor likely ever to be, available.
Consideration must be given when designing the model to the availability of data
to drive it. Even the data that is available is often incomplete, duplicitive, and
conflicting. In this situation it is important to approach the modeling process fully
prepared for these facts, but willing to accept a model under these limitations.
Finally, constructing a model is an activity subject to the universal constraints of
time, money, and quality. The model will be finished when one of these
resources is expended.
3.2 Physical Modeling
The military mission is usually focused on very physical operations and
accomplishments. Therefore, most military simulations prominently feature the
existence and interactions of physical objects. These objects include vehicles,
people, and machinery involved in the activities of moving, perceiving other
objects, and interacting with them (often quite violently). Military models have
often been described as representing the process of "move-look-shoot" (JPL
1991). This basic sequence of events is reflected in the architectures of
functional models that explicitly focus on these activities. More recent military
models include intelligence dissemination and processing, logistics operations,
communications, command and control, and other supporting activities.
Movement is governed by the need to accurately position units and vehicles
through time. The basic equation RATE*TIME = DISTANCE is the beginning of
many models. This is modified by information about the terrain, the enemy
presence it is experiencing, and the level of damage previously done to the
vehicles. Movement can also be effected by the need to maintain some formation
among multiple vehicles and the urgency of the mission at hand. It is up to the
modeler to determine which factors are necessary for each model.
"Looking", or sensor detection, includes characteristics of the sensor, the target,
and the environment through which the detection is performed. A sensor usually
has some effective range and field of regard. Within the area defined by these
variables, some algorithm must be used to determine the level of detection
achieved. The sensor may indicate the presence of an object, its location to
some degree of accuracy, classification of the object, recognition of the type of
object, or clear determination of the true identification of the object. Physical
objects must include details that allow them to perform their primary function, but
must also describe the object such that it can serve as a target for sensor
systems. Information like the radar cross section, presented area, infrared
signature, and physical dimensions may be necessary to support sensor
modeling.
Engagement and attrition models represent the military penchant for violent
interaction with opposing objects. These algorithms capture the effects of
weapons on other objects. The application of these algorithms again requires
that each object be viewed as a target for other systems, both sensors and
weapons. The simplest, and most prominent, engagement modeling involves a
set of tables that define the effectiveness of each weapon against each target.
These tables may contain a scoring system for degrading the target or
probabilities that a specific type of kill has occurred. Field tests have indicated
that the most common types of "kills" are mobility, firepower, and catastrophic
(M-Kill, F-Kill, and K-Kill respectively). These categories are often adhered to in
engagement models. When attrition must be determined at a higher level of
abstraction than individual weapon on target it is common to use some form of
differential equation to apply the force effectiveness of each side to the other.
The famous Lanchester equations are one instance of this method, as are
Epstein equations.
Algorithms must be developed for a much larger set of objects and interactions
than those provided here. The potential number and variety are almost
uncountable. The descriptions of movement, detection, and engagement are
provided because of their nearly universal presence in military modeling.
3.3 Behavioral Modeling
Because of its complexity, behavioral modeling has traditionally been very basic.
The goal has been to provide military vehicles and units with the ability to react to
basic events in the absence of human intervention. These models allowed
aircraft on patrol to "decide" to return to base when getting low on fuel, rather
than continuing until the aircraft falls to the ground. Ground units respond to
enemy attacks by focusing firepower on the aggressor rather than blindly
continuing their preprogrammed mission. Algorithms like these have been the
extent of behavioral modeling for many years. However, more recent models
have attempted to provide more reasoning capabilities to simulated objects. Most
notable among these systems have been the Semi-Automated Forces (SAF) or
Computer Generated Forces (CGF) systems that are used to stimulate virtual
training audiences. These allow one operator to play the part of many vehicles or
several platoons with the aid of embedded behavioral models.
The approach taken by most of these models is to replicate the product of human
decision making, rather than the process. Since we do not completely
understand the inner workings of the human mind, it is much more feasible to
gather information about human reaction to certain situations than it is to
represent the process of thinking about that information. However, research in
the area of intelligent agents is leading to models of independent, emergent
behavior derived from the interactions of multiple stimuli on an object.
Current systems make use of the following technologies from the artificial
intelligence field to model human decision making: finite state machines, meansends analysis, constraint satisfaction, expert systems, knowledge based
systems, and traditional planning. Evaluations have been done on the
applicability of Petri nets, Markov chains, case based reasoning, fuzzy logic,
neural networks, genetic algorithms, and adaptive behavior. Each of these
techniques has strengths and weaknesses for military decision making.
Researchers familiar with both the simulation and AI fields are developing
techniques specifically designed for this problem.
3.4 Environmental Modeling
The environment in which objects exist and operate has important impacts upon
the outcomes of every operation. Some models represent the environment
explicitly, others integrate its effects into the object models and interactions. In
either case, it is necessary to understand the effects of this medium on the
objects represented in the simulation. Though simulations exist in which the
environment is the sole objective of the model, we treat it as a medium
supporting other activities.
When environmental effects are included within the physical models described
above it is often because the data describing those interactions was collected
under specific conditions. Therefore, the model already accounts for one form of
environment. Rather than extracting these effects from the collected data, the
modeler may choose to match the simulated environment with one of the
conditions under which the data was collected.
When the environment is represented independently and explicitly it is necessary
to collect and manage a large volume of data. This data may include
characteristics of the terrain surface, natural and cultural features, atmosphere,
sea surface, sub-surface, and ocean floor. The representation of radio and
acoustic energy, chemical and biological agents, and nuclear effects are also
considered part of the environment since these create a medium within which the
objects must operate. Characteristics in each of these categories must be
collected or synthesized. This data may be very voluminous given the large
areas over which military activity can take place.
3.5 Multi-Resolution Modeling
All models pose a multi-resolution problem. Each object is portrayed at a level
appropriate for its interaction in the simulation. There is no universal set of levels
that allow objects to interact without some degree of discontinuity. As the military
has developed distributed, interoperable simulations this problem has grown in
importance. Since different simulations do not represent objects and interactions
in the same manner, achieving interoperability between them requires solving
some form of multi-resolution problem. Some models represent a missile as a
force that can be applied over some range and have a defined effect. Other
models represent that same missile as a complex system in which the thrust
motors, fuel volume, sensor seeker, warhead, and flight surfaces all play a part.
Achieving interoperability requires supplementing the lower resolution model with
more detail, eliminating detail from the higher resolution model, or performing
some combination of both operations.
The classic constructive-virtual integration problem is one form of multi-resolution
modeling. A virtual simulation may place each vehicle at a unique location with a
specific orientation. A constructive simulation may aggregate information about
dozens or hundreds of vehicles and place a single icon marker on the battlefield.
If these two models are to interact in any meaningful way it will be necessary to
generate data from one that can operate within the world view of the other, or to
establish some middle ground that can support both views.
Different techniques and experiments have evolved to address these problems
but none have been able to provide a general solution. Each solution appears to
be specifically tailored for a known set of simulations. The success of multiresolution modeling has many of the characteristics of the interoperability
problem. It may be possible to create techniques that apply to a specific class of
models that use similar representations of the world, but it is not likely that any
one technique will suffice for all varieties of multi-resolution modeling that will be
attempted. Standardization within each class of simulation would be a great aid
in applying multi-resolution techniques to simulation systems (Smith 1998).
4 CONCLUSION
This tutorial has attempted to describe the techniques and knowledge base that
are important for those who develop military simulations. There is currently no
formally defined curriculum for learning the simulation art and science. Increased
government funding for simulation projects and their growing presence in the
commercial market makes the need for such a curriculum more evident each
year. Practitioners in this field are currently crafted from the raw material
provided by Engineering Schools, Colleges of Arts & Science, Business
Colleges, and Military Institutions. This practice results in a very uneven
education among practitioners and necessitates a great deal of on-the-jobtraining. Academic and commercial education could improve this situation
through the organization of material into formal degree programs as well as a
series of professional education courses.
This tutorial may outline the format for some part of such an education program.
It is our hope that this will stimulate thought, conversation, and action toward the
production of well-prepared simulation scientists.
REFERENCES
Davis, Paul K. 1995. Distributed Interactive Simulation in the Evolution of DoD
Warfare Modeling and Simulation. Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol 83, No 8.
Defense Modeling and Simulation Office. 1997. Department of Defense
High Level Architecture for Modeling and Simulation. DMSO. Alexandria,
VA.
Fujimoto, Richard M. 1990. Parallel Discrete Event Simulation.
Communications of the ACM. Association of Computing Machinery. New
York, NY.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1991. Corps Battle Simulation - Analysts Guide
(3 volumes). California Institute of Technology. Pasadena, California.
Law, Averill M. and Kelton, W. David. 1991. Simulation Modeling and
Analysis. McGraw-Hill. New York, NY.
Miller, Duncan C. 1995. SIMNET: The Advent of Simulator Networking.
Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol 83, No 8.
Perla, Peter P. 1990. The Art of Wargaming. Naval Institute Press.
Annapolis, Maryland.
Powell, Edward T. 1996. "The JSIMS Architecture". Summary Report on
the 15th Workshop on Interoperability of Simulation Interactive
Simulations. Institute for Simulation and Training.
Sargent, R.G. 1987. "An Overview of Verification and Validation of
Simulation Models". Proceedings of the 1987 Winter Simulation
Conference. Society for Computer Simulation.
Smith, Roger D. 1995. "Military Training via Wargaming Simulations",
IEEE Potentials, October/November.
Smith, Roger D. 1996. Proceedings of the Electronic Conference on
Interoperability in Training Simulation.
http://www.scs.org/confernc/elecsim/elecsim.html.
Smith, Roger D. 1998. Military Simulation Techniques & Technologies.
Distributed Simulation Technology.
Wilson, Annette L. and Weatherly, Richard M. 1994. The Aggregate Level
Simulation Protocol: An Evolving System. Proceedings of the 1994 Winter
Simulation Conference. Orlando, Florida.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
ROGER D. SMITH is the Technical Director for STAC Inc. and an Adjunct
Professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. He is actively involved in
designing, developing, and fielding constructive and virtual simulations. He is the
Chairman for the ACM Special Interest Group on Simulation and a member of
the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation .
October 2, 1998
EARLY WAR-GAMING
The first use of war-gaming is credited to Sun Tzu. He created the game known
as "Wei Hai" about 1000 B.C. Wei Hai used a specially designed abstract playing
surface upon which each of the contestants maneuvered armies of colored
stones. Victory went not to the player who could destroy his opponent head-on,
but to the first player who could outflank his enemy. (14, pg 17)
During this period, war-gaming systems were also appearing and becoming
popular in other parts of the world. In India, a four-sided board game known as
"Chaturanga" developed in which the outcome of "Maneuvers" was determined
by rolling dice. The beginning of modern-day chess is also attributed to this
period. Chess-like games require the players to focus on a well-defined objective
and to evaluate the abilities of their own and their opponent's force. They must
analyze the strengths and weaknesses of various dispositions, and devise
strategies and tactics to overcome the enemy's strength and compensate for
their own weaknesses.
In the mid-17th century, the recognition that these types of games were too
abstract to be useful as a tool for teaching the finer points of the art of war led to
variations and complications of the basic chess model to add more and more
military detail. The first new game was the "Kings Game" or "Koenigspiel,"
invented in Germany in 1664. (14, page 17) These games introduced some of
the basic underlying principles and characteristics of modern M&S (Table 1).

Aggregation using a single player/piece to represent units or collections of
soldiers/forces
 Terrain representation (multicolor/grid-based)
 Rules for movements and conflict resolution
 War described in terms of basic concepts and rules
MORE SOPHISTICATED WAR-GAMES OF THE EARLY 1800S
Early in the 1800s, Prussian war counselor Baron Von Reisswitz replaced the
game board of war chess with a sand table in which actual terrain could be
modeled in relief. The playing pieces were made of wood cut to scale to
represent military units. Symbols representing the different units were pasted to
the blocks. (14, pg 23) Von Reisswitz's rules dealt only with movement of the
forces; results of engagements were worked out through discussion and debate
among the various players and observers.
In 1824, von Reisswitz's son upgraded the game, replacing the sand table with
detailed topographic maps drawn to 1:8000 scale. He quantified the effects of
combat so that results of engagements were calculated rather than discussed.
This implemented a detailed set of rules covering virtually every contingency of
operations of units up to the size of divisions and corps. These rules were finally
published in 1824 as "Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers
under the Guise of a Wargame" (Table 2). (14, pg 25)


Scaled icons/blocks representing units and force frontages
 Time/distance considerations during moves
 Calculated effects of combat/engagements
 Rules for a wider range of contingencies/scenarios
Codifying military experience and effects of combat verification, validation,
and accreditation
 The need to balance between realism and playability
W.R. Livermore is credited with introducing German-style war-gaming to the United States by publi
"The American Kriegspiel" in 1879. Livermore's system was a derivative of rigid Kriegspiel. The blo
representing combat units were made of porcelain, metal, or wood. They were red and blue, but va
other colors were used to distinguish different types of combat arms and specialized units. The play
pieces were cut to scale and could be used to represent a regiment of infantry, a company, or
skirmishes depending on the scale of the map.
The U.S. version included more sophisticated unit/force symbols, tracking of
consumables (logistics), the setting of player-piece indices for direction and
speed of movement, volume of fire, and an initial attempt to account for human
attrition factors, (time and fatigue). The overhead (time and cost) of setting up
and running war games increased as the complexity continued to increase. The
U.S. Naval War College codified U.S. Kriegspiel in 1884 and in 1887 fully
integrated war-gaming into the curriculum for all attending officers.
Origins of
the Kriegsspiel
by Bill Leeson
Reisswitz the Elder
The Kriegsspiel, or war-game was invented in the first years of the 19th century by Baron von Reisswitz, a civil
administrator of some kind with an interest in military history. There were a lot of attempts to produce a war-game at this
time but they were all based on either chess or cards. In fact chess had a mesmerising effect on war-game design which it
is difficult for us to appreciate today, so that there was chess with more squares, chess with more pieces, chess with
squares of many colours and chess with more players, pieces, squares and colours. Then Reisswitz came along and
decided that what was needed was a return to first principles.
Every aspect of the game was to be looked at anew, starting with the playing area. He decided that this should be an
actual model of realistic looking terrain. No flat squares and triangles. Hills should look like hills, rivers should twist and
turn like rivers, forests should be allowed to spread out in irregular shapes. Similarly the pieces that represent troops
should fit into the landscape somehow, and most importantly, they should only take up the amount of space on the model
that they would do in reality. This probably caused Reisswitz a few headaches, but he finally decided on flat blocks that
would have the correct frontage, which of course implies a definite scale for troops and terrain. The scale used in the first
version was 1:2373, which works out as about 3cm = 100 paces.
the pace being a military measurement
approximately equal to 2ft 6 inches.
Having landscape and troops to fit to a common ground scale meant that a whole lot of things could now be neatly fitted in
to the game without any problem. Time could be fitted in as well because it takes troops a certain amount of time to travel
a certain distance. The time taken for troops to advance under fire, for instance, can be calculated from the distance they
have to travel and the speed they are going. The ranges for artillery can be measured out according to normal artillery
reckoning – small canister shot for 6pdr cannon = 400 paces, for instance. Also, although a nominal move in the game
was to represent two minutes there was no reason why an action that was begun in one move should not be continued
into the next, or for however many moves it would take.
Now that he had a framework that tied in space and time other problems could be addressed. For instance, do troops
receive their instructions via some kind of mental telepathy or do they have to receive instructions from the commander?
Does one side wait patiently under fire until it is their turn to move or can they be allowed to move at the same time as the
enemy? Does the commander have a godlike all-seeing view of the action or can his view of events be restricted to what
he might actually be able to see from his position?
The answer to all these problems was to have a third party involved in the game, who would be a confidant to both sides,
a person who was trusted by both sides to act fairly. This eventually became translated by the British as an "umpire". With
an umpire at the centre of the game so much became possible. Both sides could write their orders down at the start of the
game and pass them over to him. He could implement them at the correct time, and since the orders had been already
given he could advance the game move by move for both sides, so that they were in effect moving simultaneously. He
could give reports back to the players, and receive fresh instructions in the light of these reports, which the other side
would not be privy to.
There were still a few problems due to the use of modelled terrain, but it was a very impressive achievement
nevertheless. The rules only covered troop movements at this stage and did not give results of conflicts or approximations
of losses. These had to be worked out by the umpire during the game – an idea that was later revived by Verdy du
Vernois incidentally.
I have gone on at some length about the design of the game because it is one of those things which seem so right and so
obvious when someone else has done it, but which before hand had seemed quite impossible. Reisswitz had managed to
produce a very good working model of a battle situation. He got some friends to take part in it and develop it, and no
doubt his young son took an interest in it as well. We might never have heard anymore about it however, but – and here it
starts to sound like a fairy story - the King got to hear about it!
The King was Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. His young sons, Friedrich and Wilhelm were cadets at the Berlin Military
Academy. In 1811 von Reiche, who was Captain of Cadets happened to mention during a lecture on the art of fortification
that a civilian, a certain Herr von Reisswitz, had invented a war game. The princes were interested and wanted to see it
and they asked their governor, Oberst von Pirch II, to invite von Reisswitz to the White Salon at the Berlin Castle to give a
demonstration.
Reisswitz duly appeared on the appointed day. Those present, apart from the two princes, were von Reiche, von Pirch
and 2nd Lt. Von Wussow who had been chosen to assist. The princes were fascinated by the game and wanted to play
again. They also asked their governor for permission to write to their father and tell him about it. The King was interested,
and after getting some details from von Pirch he said he would like to see it for himself.
Reisswitz, of course, was honoured and delighted by the invitation to present the game to the King himself, but he
doubted whether his sand box would make the journey to Potsdam in one piece and he probably felt that a royal
command performance required something rather special, so he informed the palace that he would start work on
something more permanent which he would present to the King as soon as possible.
About a year passed, and meanwhile the King had forgotten about the whole thing, until one day in 1812 von Reisswitz
arrived at the SansSouci Palace with quite a substantial piece of furniture.
The game was now in the shape of a six feet square table open at the top and filled with 4 inch square terrain pieces
made in plaster and carefully painted to show roads, rivers, villages etc, and interchangeable to give a variety of terrain.
The troop pieces were made in porcelain. There were dividers for measuring distances, rulers, small boxes for placing
over hidden troops (they were allowed to make surprise attacks) and a set of written rules.
The King was spending quite a lot of time at Potsdam in those days, due to the international situation, and he could see
that the autumn and winter evenings would give him plenty of opportunity to learn how the game was played. He gave
orders for the game to be set up in the Queen Louise Salon, next to the Great Assembly & TeaRoom. It became a
favourite pastime of the King’s in the next few years keeping the family up till after midnight sometimes.
After a short General Idea had been given the King would usually command one side and Prince von Mecklenburg would
command the other. Oberst von Gaudy and Oberst von Pirch would act as subordinate commanders. Prince Wilhelm
would be adjutant to the King and Prince Friedrich would assist the other side. Wilhelm also took on the running of the
game – moving troops, measuring distances, calculating times and distances, and deciding on surprise attacks and
envelopements. There would naturally be plenty of discussion at the end of a game, and the King would usually give a
critique of the dispositions of both sides. In later life the King claimed that the games played at Potsdam often gave him
ideas for the army manoeuvres which took place there.
The King’s interest in the game became well known, and it was as a direct result that the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia
made visits in 1816 and 1817 and became a devotee himself. This lead to a visit to Moscow by Wilhelm in October 1817
during which time they improvised a game on a large scale by chalking out terrain on a number of green topped card
tables which were put together.
Between 1818 and 1822 the King would now and again make up a party for a game at Potsdam, but as he only stayed
there for two or three days at a time in this period there was not the opportunity to organise long running games. Interest
was revived however in 1824 when Wilhelm discovered that von Reisswitz’ son, who was now a young officer in the
artillery, had continued to develop his father’s ideas and had formed a small Kriegsspiel group among officers of the Berlin
Garrison.
Reisswitz the Younger
The son, Georg Heinrich Leopold Freiherrn von Reisswitz, was born at Thorn in 1795. He enlisted as a volunteer in the
artillery when he was about 15, which would have been around the time when his father demonstrated the game to the
two princes. In 1813 he took part in the investing of Glogau under General von Blumenstein. He was promoted to
2nd lieutenant and awarded the iron cross 2nd class at this time. In 1815 he was posted to Erfuhrt as unit adjutant. After the
reformation of the artillery in 1816 he was sent to the II Artillery Brigade at Stettin. In 1819 he was called to take part in the
Artillery Commission and promoted to 1st Lieutenant in the Guard Artillery Brigade at Berlin.
It was while at Berlin that he seems to have taken up his father’s Kriegsspiel ideas seriously enough to form a small
group. We know who were in that first group from Dannhauer’s account. 2 nd Lt. Dannhauer, 2nd Lt von Herwarth, Lt von
Vinke, all from the Guard Artillery, and Lt von Griesham 2nd Foot Guards. Others joined in from time to time, but this was
the core of the group, which usually met once, sometimes twice, a week testing and improving the developments
Reisswitz was making to the game.
The scale was changed to 1:8000, which is roughly 8 inches to a mile. This was a better scale for actions up to Brigade
level, giving more room for manoeuvre. Also the game took place on a map. Apart from making it more portable this also
meant that you could make copies of it fairly easily so that both sides could have their own version. They had to invent
their own method of showing relief. Contour lines, as far as I know, had not been invented yet, and their method was to
draw radiating lines from the high points of the terrain, which gave a rough idea of the lie of the land. Each side having
their own map meant that the umpire could show only the enemy troops their side knew of on their own map, while
displaying the full information on the umpire’s map. The small wooden boxes were no longer necessary for hidden
movement.
The other areas of improvement were in codifying rules for surprise attacks, the influence of a second line, attacks on
strong holds etc. and devising tables for calculating the effects of fire power, losses from hand-to-hand fighting and a table
of odds for and against success.
By the time Prince Wilhelm got to hear about it the group had managed to work out all the basic problems, and the game
had reached the fully formed stage we find it in Reisswitz’ book. The prince was commander of the 3rd Army Corps, and
the 2nd Guards Division at the time. Remembering the war games played at the SansSouci Palace a few years earlier he
was naturally interested and asked Reisswitz for a demonstration of his version. Reisswitz asked for permission to bring
his regular group along with him, as they were familiar with how it worked, and so one winter’s evening in January or
February of 1824 the group set out for the prince’s quarters in the Berlin castle.
The prince took one side and Dannhauer commanded the other. We have no record of the actual game, but the prince
was so impressed that he said he would recommend it to the King and the General Staff.
Within a few days Reisswitz found himself summoned to present himself, with game, to von Muffling, Chief of the Prussian
General Staff. The group found themselves in the presence of the entire General Staff, and von Muffling introduced them
with the words, "Gentlemen, Herr Lieutenant von Reisswitz is going to show us something new". Dannhauer felt that there
was a distinct lack of enthusiasm on the part of von Muffling but Reisswitz did not let it put him off. He laid out his map and
asked the general if he would provide them with a general idea for a manoeuvre and appoint two officers to be
commanders for both sides. Two of Reisswitz’ group acted as subordinate commanders. One group had to leave the
room while the other was briefed, and Reisswitz was careful to point out that each side was only to be given the
information about the enemy that they might have in reality.
As the game began to unfold Von Muffling became more and more interested until finally he exclaimed, "This is not a
game, this is a war exercise! I must recommend it to the whole army!"
Von Muffling was as good as his word and the next issue of the Militair Wochenblatt (no.402, 1824) contained a
recommendation in which he says, "Anyone who understands those things which have a bearing on leadership in battle
can take part immediately in the game as a commander, even if he has no previous knowledge of the game or has never
even seen it before".
Meanwhile the King gave instructions that a copy of the game should be supplied to every regiment in the army.
Things began to move fast for Reisswitz now. He was put in charge of setting up a small workshop with tin-founders,
painters and carpenters to produce the troop blocks. The rules had to be gone through again and prepared for publication
and a new set of maps were prepared for printing. While he was still in the process of doing all this there was a sudden
interruption.
Prince Wilhelm had written to the Grand Duke Nicholas about the new version of the game, and Nicholas was anxious to
know more. He sent instructions to Oberst von Essen, who was the Russian Military Attaché in Berlin at the time, to get
hold of one of the Kriegsspiel sets somehow and forward it to St. Petersburg. He was also to familiarise himself with it so
that he could give a full explanation of it on his next visit.
Von Essen had, as it happens, taken part in the game on several occasions, but he felt that the best plan would be to take
Reisswitz with him to Russia. So it came about that one evening Reisswitz had a visit from von Essen who proposed that
they set out together for St Petersburg the next day. Reisswitz was ready as long as the necessary permission could be
obtained in time. Von Essen applied to Prince Wilhelm and the permission was given. Reisswitz hurriedly briefed his
group on what was still to be done, and within a few hours he was seated in the coach with von Essen, bound for St
Petersburg.
Reisswitz stayed at the palace of the Grand Duke as an honoured guest. He stayed there the whole summer, returning to
Berlin with Nicholas in the autumn. During that autumn a large-scale game was planned at Wilhelm’s quarters. Von
Muffling gave the general idea, which was to be a full-scale campaign to take place between the Oder and the Elbe,
culminating around Bautzen.
An advantage of being a prince or a duke was that you had no trouble finding extra players as they became needed.
Major Witzleben of the Kaiser Franz Grenadiers and Oberst Lt. Von Barber of the Guards Dragoon Regiment were two of
the high ranking officers who took part in the game, and Reisswitz’ group were delighted to find themselves brought in to
help as well.
The game took place once a week, with everything left in place for the next session. Sometimes the King himself looked
in, as did the Princes Albrecht and Adalbert and many other foreign princes.
Naturally enough all this royal interest was very good for the game. Kriegsspiel clubs were formed within the Guard
Artillery and the 2nd Foot Guards Regiment (von Griesham’s regiment). Officers from other regiments took part in them,
and so the interest spread.
Dannhauer tells us that one of the new enthusiasts was Ferdinand von Witzleben who later became a member of the
General Staff. In 1828 von Moltke became a keen player, and later as Chief of Staff of the IV Army Corps at Magdeburg
used the game as a training exercise for young officers. I would add here that it is evident from the book "Moltke’s Tactical
Problems", edited by the Prussian General Staff in 1894, that he used the Kriegsspiel format when setting out the
problems.
Reisswitz received the Order of St. John from the King in recognition of his invention.
Unfortunately for Reisswitz, after all the excitement and hob-nobbing with royalty and high ranking officers the story ended
in tragedy.
For reasons which we can only guess at, Reisswitz became disappointed over his career prospects in the army. He was
promoted to captain, it is true, but not within the Guard Artillery where the Company Chief position was vacant, but to the
III Artillery Brigade at Torgau. This transfer upset him.
He saw it as banishment. Dannhauer says he only saw him once more, during a short leave in Berlin, and he found him
transformed. His former good humour and cheerfulness had gone and he seemed dissatisfied with himself and the world.
In the summer of 1827 his friends heard a rumour that he had shot himself whilst home on leave at Breslau.
Epilogue
When rumours of the death of Reisswitz first reached Berlin some of his friends and followers simply could not believe it.
Von Troschke was one of those who had recently become interested in the game. He was convinced at first that Reisswitz
had been seconded to the service of Nicholas (now Tsar of Russia) to give advice on the conduct of Russian forces
during the Russo-Turkish war which had just broken out. But the rumours were soon confirmed. His friends and followers
wondered where this left the Kriegsspiel, and where it left them. They were aware that an anti-Kriegsspiel feeling arisen in
some quarters. Some of the older generals were of the opinion that the game would give young officers an inflated idea of
their abilities to manage Brigades and Divisions and leave them dissatisfied with ordinary regimental service. There may
have been something in that, and it may have been why Reisswitz had been shunted off to Torgau instead of getting his
promotion in Berlin.
Personally I believe, from some things Dannhauer tells, that Reisswitz could easily have trodden on some important toes
without even being aware of it. In fact although Reisswitz may not have been aware of it his sudden rise to prominence
had put him in a delicate position. Some people were bound to resent what they would see as a young upstart
pronouncing with authority on the tactical decisions of his superiors. We are told that he was the kind of person who,
without being presumptuous, maintained an air of self-confidence to those above him as well as to those below. More
damagingly Dannhauer also says that, "Unfortunately he did manage to provide these opponents of his invention with a
certain amount of ammunition through many witty remarks, which harmless as they were in intention could have been
misinterpreted if they came to the ears of those they should not have reached".
But whatever the reasons for his suicide the Berlin wargamers found themselves in a dilemma. To whom would they look
now for leadership? How serious was the opposition, and was it directed at the game in general or Reisswitz in particular?
Writing many years later von Troschke says, very circumspectly, "Looking back over the years we can point out with
satisfaction the extraordinary tact shown by all officers concerned, and the spirit which ran through all the army, which
guarded us against any excess of behaviour which might have given offence".
We can see some of this tact in the 1828 amendments to the rules, which manage somehow not to mention Reisswitz’
name once. Referring instead to "the existing rules" throughout.
The strategy paid off as far as the Kriegsspiel was concerned. It never became universally popular in the army, but it
gained in strength and reputation, and could count such people as von Moltke and Verdy du Vernois among its friends.
As far as Reisswitz’ contribution is concerned, however, it reached a point where fifty years after the first publication
nobody seemed to have ever heard of him. Dannhauer was looking through a magazine one day in 1873, when he came
across an article by Hauptmann Schmidt, which explained how the game worked. It was intended for a civilian audience,
and chose to illustrate a game by giving a move by move account of it. What struck Dannhauer was the author’s
assurance that the Kriegsspiel’s origins had been lost in the mists of time. That it had arisen amongst the officer corps of
the artillery and had been handed down verbally, without appearing in print until 1846.
Dannhauer decide that it was high time someone put the record straight and he wrote his article for the Militair
Wochenblatt for the fiftieth anniversary of the game’s publication. It was followed a few weeks later by another article –
this time anonymously written – which explained how the earlier version of the game had come to the attention of the King
and the royal household. The second one was almost certainly written, I would say, by Wilhelm himself, who was now
Kaiser Wilhelm, as he was the only person, apart from his brother Friedrich, who was present at all the events described.
http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~davids/courses/igt/war1.doc