Tuesday 5 December 2023

Game Design #101: Overload - Pushing the Rules Past Breaking Point

Wargamers like to add more toys. But the rules don't always support that many on the table at the same time. They are trying to do too much with the rules. The rules start limp along, as they get overburdened.

However some rules are designed overloaded, out of the gate. Born with a limp, so to speak.

How do we know when the rules are overloaded? 

....Does your game drag on? Do you often forget to activate units (or can't remember what is supposed to occur next). Do you find yourself wandering off while someone is taking their turn? Are there big pauses while actions/moves are resolved?  ....Obviously, some of these could be attributed to middle age....

How do we avoid overloading/bogging a game - and what design elements need to be considered?

Now you can't stop players from using more miniatures than intended. That's unsolvable.

But what we can consider is if the game is overloaded for what we intend to use it for: i.e. you can make a game that is already overloaded at a "normal" size game: by choosing the wrong mechanics and mechanisms.

How can we avoid designing a game that is overloaded by default?

Although I haven't kept up with 40K, my original copy was a quasi-RPG (Rogue Trader) which slowly evolved into a platoon+ game. The original game was at Warmachine scale - heck it had more in common with Necromunda than modern 40K. However as the game added more and more toys, it retained many mechanics which did not fit its new role/mini count. There were various attempts to streamline it, but it really needed a more significant revision (Starship Troopers points to what it could have been). Warmachine worked well at around original box set level but the mechanics bogged as they increased the game size.

Sometimes a game is already overloaded, at it intended "troop level." It's already bogged down.

There are a few linked concepts - level of control (what should you the player directly micromanage) and abstraction (what to detail, what to ignore).

If you are controlling a tabletop platoon (3-4 squads, + vehicles) you are the platoon commander. You should be moving/activating squads and fire teams, not individual soldiers. Grouping minis in some sort of forced coherency (the classic "everyone in the squad must be 2" from each other etc) in fire teams or squads is logical AND keeps play moving along (not need to track if Fred from Delta squad has activated - he moves with his squad). The level of control is only 1-2 steps down. If you are a platoon commander, you should be able to command squads; or at best, fire teams/specialist squads. Not micromanaging each and every individual soldier.

If you are playing a skirmish game with ~4-8 soldiers, it is likely you may individually direct soldiers. Maneuvering each mini independently makes sense. Moving them as a single unit would restrict maneuver. Think about real life soldiers and the level of control - how many elements (be it squads, fire teams, or even battalions) is a leader expected to control?

There's a few PC games that suffer from this. Men at War: Assault Squad has you playing as a platoon commander, yet you can (and should) set the stance for each soldier, throw individual grenades... basically you can directly control ~30+ individual guys, as they scatter around like lemmings. If the total men was capped at 8-12, it would work fine. As it is, it is micromanagement hell. 

The Total War series caps your army at ~12-16 or so units at a time. As they have a predictable and mostly static front line, in reality you are only micro-ing 4-6 units, and your attention is only in 1-2 places at a time - most of which you can see on your screen. This works. In contrast, WW2 epic Steel Division could have 30, 40, 50 units scattered all over the map. It's much easier to forget you have that tank in the corner of the map....

So the level of command/amount of units has a historical aspect (i.e. if you are a company commander, you will not be directing the exact location of each and every grunt under your command) and a practical aspect (how many units can you the gamer effectively control) which should roughly align anyway...

It should be obvious when, for example you need to move/activate models as a squad, and when to move them individually.

Likewise, the level of abstraction should be evident: if you are a platoon commander, you don't need to track if Private Parts had his morning coffee so is +1 to his individual "to hit" roll. Instead you might simultaneously roll a handful of firepower dice for the whole squad, adding or removing dice at various ranges. If you are playing a quasi RPG game with 4 elite operators, then individual modifiers probably should be significant.  I'd say it's possible to abstract to oversimplification - say a fire team level skirmish game where everyone succeeds at everything on a 3+ (hero), 4+ (regular), 5+ (newb), with no measuring or no modifiers...  and lose too much tactical choice/naunce. It's taking platoon+ level abstraction, simplifying/abstracting it even more - and applying it to a RPG...

The problem for a game designer is what mechanics handle miniatures best at that scale - and how it aligns with the level of control.

The dreaded IGOUGO technically handles large groups of units better than alternate activation. You can just activate your units left to right until you've done 'em all. With alternate activation, with too many units you may forget who has already activated as you go back and forth taking turns activating dozens of units. However - too many units in IGOUGO can lead to boredom - as the non-active player will sit for ages, passively awaiting their turn. 

Obviously, tracking/recording can cap units. If each soldier has 10 hit points - then where do all the unit cards go to record these? Could you have 30 models, each with its own card?  

Detailed/unique rules can cap units. If each model has its own special rules, there will be a lot of flicking through rule books - slowing the game to a crawl. 

Many modifiers can cap a game. If you have to remember 101 modifiers of +/-1 every time a model (or group of models) shoots or melees or whatever, it can slow things down. 

Gaslands has lots of "steps" in a turn. This slows a game which is supposed to be about frantic car combat and limits the amount of cars/players/special gear (rules) you can use. My solution is to have only 3-4 players, with very simple cars. 8 players, even with one vehicle each, is already 'overloaded'.  There's a lot going on.

Gaslands actually prompted this post, as players said it was "fun, but just a bit much" and naturally I want to question "OK, why? What is it exactly that is the issue?" 

Even physically moving lots of models can slow things - which is why mass battle games tend to base many minis on a single base - you might have 6-12 minis which only need to be picked up/activated/attack once. Rolling lots of dice (lots of "steps" to mechanics) can slow things - roll to hit, roll to beat armour, roll to wound, roll for cover save - all this slows things down.  We could call all of this "action resolution" - once you the gamer make a decision - how long does it take (moving models, chugging dice) to carry it out/determine the results.  Even how you roll matters - take Warmachine - roll 2d6, add the together, then compare to a defence factor and note the difference - a bit clunky, a few steps - yeah fine for a RPG or small skirmish game but not so cool if you have lots of big 10-men squads against each other.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of all factors, but gives you an idea of what you need to consider when 'scaling' a set of rules to the amount of minis intended to play it.

In short, you need to choose game activation/mechanics appropriate to the scale and amount of units you are intending the rules to handle.

The Hard Cap. Infinity is a pretty detailed skirmish game. It has many special rules (100+), and complex reactions where one or more minis can react to (interrupt) an active mini. It is a game that has all the traits to swiftly bog down and is hard capped at 15 miniatures - which is already probably too many. Unfortunately.... each mini brings a valuable "order" (activation) so more minis is better - a bit of a problem. Given the complexity, the game should be played with far smaller forces; and indeed the designers have made a simplified version (Code One) in recognition of this and seem to be slowly trimming rules bloat).  War Cry also has a 15-mini hard cap. It has hitpoints (boo) to track, but compensates by a much, much simpler ruleset and less special rules - so should play much easier with less "load". Hard caps on max units show the designer recognizes when the rules "break down." I haven't played the new Kill Team, but given it ALSO uses hitpoints AND has more special rules AND a large hard cap (20) I am confident it is a much slower, gluggier game than War Cry - probably already overloaded "out of the gate" and would probably take ~double the time to play.

This begs the question: How long should a game last? 

This is akin to asking how long is a ball of string. I will note - I think we are seeing a shift towards shorter (45-60 minute) wargames over the traditional "all afternoon" affairs.  Some games lend themselves to short format - its wise if a campaign skirmish game lasts only 45-60min so you can squeeze in multiple games in an evening - as campaigns are notorious for petering out after only a few meet-ups.  I think this depends on the genre of game you are aiming for, but it's a question you should ask yourself.

Middle Earth: SBG - Example

MESBG (the best rules GW has ever made) as it seems to break a key concept.  Models move and fire individually yet the game handles ~30-40 comfortably (and only starts to overload at ~50+ which is mostly due to physically positioning all those models - and positioning matters).

So why does it work this way?

The melee centric nature of the rules, and how models touching each other's base can give bonuses in fights. This tends to create natural "shieldwalls" - lines of minis moving together.  Each army has several heroes who act as "leaders" allowing models in range of them bonuses/activation benefits which again tends to create unofficial, organic "squads." 

Activation sequence is simple and somewhat interactive - Side A moves, Side B moves all, Side A shoots all, Side B shoots all, Both Melee. This gives the management benefit of IGOUGO with less waiting around and more interaction.

Mechanics are very simple. Shooting is 3+, 4+ or 5+ to hit (depending on who is shooting) with no modifiers. Just a "cover save" of 4+ if needed. Melee is highest dice wins, with better Fight stats breaking ties (and extra dice from each ally supporting). A potential slow down is the Wound chart (compare Strength vs Defence on a chart) but it tends to be swiftly memorized and not needed in-game. Special rules are minor or rare. The only hitpoints are 2-3 wounds owned by a few heroes or monsters each side; so there is little tracking. Most special rules or recording is thus restricted to 3-4 heroes - not the other 30 regular guys.

So you can see although having 30-40 models moving individually seems a lot (and wrong - it's a platoon level game acting like a skirmish game) due to ticking most of the boxes for simplicity/smooth play, it is physically placing each model which is causing the most major slow down. If you placed the models on trays and moved them en-masse, you could probably handle even more (actually there is a OOP spin-off, War of the Ring, which does just that, and simplifies things even more).

TL:DR

Gamers often "overload" rules by using far more minis than the game was designed for. Unavoidable.

However, some games use the wrong mechanics, and are "overloaded" even using their intended forces.

Historical level of command can help give you an idea of what to abstract/how to activate/group miniatures - the right level of simplification/abstraction.

Choosing the right game mechanics is important - activation, grouping of minis, resolution time/complexity of movement/attacks, amount of special rules/modifiers - all need to match the scale and intended play time/speed.

Can you think of some rules that are 'overloaded?' for the size they are intended to be played at?

What element/s of the game is causing the overload?

17 comments:

  1. This post has a lot to unpack. However, I will say that the # of controlled units is key. No matter what "scale" of the game I try to keep it at 3-12 units. That could be individual models, squads, or even larger organizational levels like Army Corps. The game then models interactions at those levels. Therefore, army scale games do not have to be drastically different than model-vs-model at an abstract level. Of course, the details will matter here.

    You also touch on abstraction to the point where there is no tactical play anymore. This is a BIG issue I have with a lot of model-vs-model skirmish games. When you can see 360, move however you like, activate twice, fire freely, etc. There are very few choices to make. If you can shoot every turn you will shoot every turn. If you can move to cover every turn you will move to cover. Most of the choices in many skirmish wargames simply come down to who to shoot at and with how many of your models. They end up boring, yahtzee like, and same-y. They hang too much of the game on post-game campaign systems instead of giving you any actual tactical choices in game because you can basically do it all. This leads to interchangeable games that are boring and with no real depth in gameplay.

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    1. Qué gran comentario. Mis respetos.
      MM

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    2. Your big problem can easily be solved by treating actions (and special abilities) as a limited resource that needs to be managed and forces players to make real choices at a cost. But I think a lot of miniature gamers do not like this idea in skirmish games because they see it as somehow unrealistic. In a game where 1O combatants act as individuals there's no reason why some of them should not get to do stuff every turn, and if the turn is supposed to represent a sizeable chunk of time, there's plenty they can do.

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    3. "Your big problem can easily be solved by treating actions (and special abilities) as a limited resource that needs to be managed and forces players to make real choices at a cost."

      Agreed.

      But doing nothing at all with a mini you lovingly painted is kinda lame. It's like "Skip a Turn" in Uno.

      In my homebrew rules I often use an 1 action+ theory; every unit gets one action, but a second action is possible but not guaranteed - perhaps doled out as a rare "command point" resource.

      -eM

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    4. There's a game design post by eM on the topic of the "right" number of units to control in a game. I think his conclusion was that 8 units is the sweet spot.

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    5. I like to use Action+ as well. Everyone gets 1 action of either move, shoot, fight, or some other non-combat action. This forces a choice BUT everyone still can do something.

      Trying to do more is a risk, where you could fail that leads to pinning, losing initiative, failing the task, etc. I tend to use Activate until you fail a test, so a push your luck system. Alternatively, a fatigue mechanic to go beyond 1 action can also work well.

      I also tie this with limited facings and even limited turning. Walking or going cautiously you can move as you wish. Running is straight line only, again making moving fast a choice with a trade-off.

      Sure you can move how you want cautiously, but how you end indicates what you can "see". That limits what you can influence. Now you could get flanked or someone could "sneak up" on you or avoid you. Plus, getting attacked from out of your arc can cause modifiers for you or other drawbacks/benefits for them.

      I also like to lock "special rules" behind some sort of resource that has to be used to use the Special Rules. I mean if you can always fire full-auto why wouldn't you? This makes it a choice. Do I spend my resource on this special effect or that one?

      Modifiers can also be used to "encourage" certain ways to play the game. For instance, being in a group gives you more morale or better combat. Therefore encouraging you to mob up. Maybe giving bonus dice when you are behind or in an unseen flank, encouraging ambush. Cover is another example. Mods are a great way to encourage styles of play and tactics.

      Finally, I like to use an "Ammo Roll" style mechanic so "fishing for crits" on an unlikely attack can cost you. There is a risk to fish for Crits, making it a decision point instead of an always do it.

      Enough ranting. You can see that adding tactical play does not require a lot of extra rules writing. These are all fairly simple methods to adding a lot of tactical depth into a model-vs-model games.

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    6. so it's square bases for you then? With the facing & flanking? Makes sense, except round bases look so much nicer.

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    7. I don't think you'd need a square base (which look crap imo).

      Just a mark on the side of the base to delineate the front 180d and back 180d; it could a faction-themed colour - and very subtle: even black permanent marker kinda shows up on a base at the right angle.

      Example rules:
      a) You cannot attack anything that is not in the front 180d
      b) Any attack to the rear 180 could be a "flank attack" and get +2 bonus or whatever

      This would make the facing of your models quite important, without adding a lot of complication. You'd care if enemies got behind you, rather than 180d noscoping them. You'd have to decide which is the biggest threat to face, etc...


      Even a squad (group of minis, even in a 40K style random clump) can have a facing; just use the base of a 'leader' mini for precision reference if needed and spread the rest out artistically to point in roughly the right direction. You'd probably make it possible to attack behind you (as a squad will have guys covering the rear) but maybe halve the amount of dice, etc - so outflanking is still important.

      -eM

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    8. I do not care about basing at all. All my games are scale and model agnostic. Rank and Flank is not always relevant, especially in model vs model skirmish games.

      I usually say 180 degrees from the direction the model's face is looking/pointing. No base needed as it is pretty easy to see 180, 90 or even 45 degree angles from a model's face.

      I also do not design the type of games where I want players to pull out a protractor to measure angles. Eyeball and opponent agreement is good enough. If they can not agree, the benefit of the doubt leans towards action. (I.e Can you shoot or not? Yes, you can shoot). If your opponent is still a tool, then that is a different issue.

      As for squad's, I do typically use a Leader Model/Focal Point for a lot of things like LOS, facing, movement, etc. If they are single or multi-based it can be the center of the lead element. The exact details of what a flank or rear attack means varies by game.

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  2. BattleTech comes to mind. Quickly "overloaded" if you use more that a Lance/Star (4-5 minis). This tended to happen quite a bit once play groups moved from the hex-based map boards to a full blown miniatures game.
    Luckily the Alpha Strike rules solve this and make it much easier to handle larger battles.

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  3. Almost every big brand game comes to mind in the way they tweak special abilities to make them unique to each unit or character. You end up with a lot of minor variations that work just this little bit differently but still have to be memorized or looked up. It's a consequence of wanting to use rules as a marketing tool to sell miniatures. Unfortunately, players hooked on the accompanying fluff often seem to love this.

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  4. Pretty much every big game is excessively "overloaded", be it 40k, Infinity, whatever. Players conflate complexity and rules volume / page count with "depth", and designers are happy to oblige, as bloat allows them to "kitchen sink" things without worry about hard choices that remove stuff.

    It's more interesting to look at games that aren't so bloated. Battlefleet Gothic, was obviously and deliberately designed to play fast and smooth, starting from a relatively streamlined game engine.

    Or, look at "reset" editions that come out after things have gotten so bad, the designers know they have to start over. 40k 3E started out well, and plays great from the rulebook, but it's been all downhill afterward. WFB 6E was similarly good when playing only Ravening Hordes.

    - GG

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    1. This is so true! But does streamlined play automatically lead to a tactically interesting game?

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    2. Have you ever played 40k3, WFB6, or BFG? I found them more tactical, less gimmicky. YMMV, but the fact that you asked suggests that you might need a certain minimum amount of unnecessary chrome to enjoy a game.

      - GG

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    3. "This is so true! But does streamlined play automatically lead to a tactically interesting game?"

      ---

      Streamlined play does not 'automatically' make a game better or more interesting.

      It does make it easier to push toys around/field more toys which kind relates to the OP.

      I dislike special rules and recording (my intro to wargaming was SFB, WRG historicals and Battletech!) so I view streamlining and simplification as a worthy goal.

      However - I do think games can be stripped of too much in pursuit of simplification - Eric in the first reply in comments has explained it well.

      -eM

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    4. @GG No I haven't played the games you mentioned, and it's not that I need tonnes of shiny chrome. My remark is more inspired by the current trend for very simple, back-to-basics games like Forbidden Psalm or One Page Rules, which while streamlined, are also not particularly tactical.

      I know know lean games can work, Crossfire is a nice example, but in itself it doesn't seem enough.

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    5. Lean games are great for a certain segment of players. They are fun and easy to learn and play. You can throw down a game and get it done in a short amount of time. You can easily teach a non-wargamer how to push the buttons of gameplay. You can go long stretches without playing the game and pick it up again really quick. The barrier for entry is typically low. These are all great benefits!

      On the other side, they can lack a certain amount of replay ability. For a Lean game to work long term, it MUST have strong scenarios (and complications) and a strong campaign system to lean on for depth. It also helps for the world to be evocative to make the player want to explore the "world" of the game by playing more games.

      The question as a designer is if the benefits of the Lean game outweigh the negatives, or if you can create the scenarios, campaign, and evocative world to go with it. Honestly, I find writing the basic rules much easier than getting these other elements right! :)

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