I'm looking for views on this old 1982 skirmish wargame, anyone familiar with it?

I own it and in fact I ran a game of it a couple weeks ago. There's some brief mention in my livejournal.

I can write more later; I have some business I need to take care of.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI own it and in fact I ran a game of it a couple weeks ago. There's some brief mention in my livejournal.

I can write more later; I have some business I need to take care of.

I've never seen the game, but the title seems to be derived from the famous SLA Marshall book Men Against Fire.  I'd like to hear more about it.  Do the mechanics of the game reflect Marshall's thesis that a majority of people in combat don't actually effectively participate other than as psychological support to the small number who do fire their weapons?


TGA

I had it in my copy of 'A Book of Sandhurst Wargames.'

Of all the games in there I enjoyed it the least. The fact that as a commander you seemed to have little control over allocating roles and equipment to your most effective fighters was very frustrating, especially as the Japanese were not operating under the same conditions in the game.

It was produced before the controversy really erupted over SLA Marshall's reserach though.

That's partly true. The rules do state however that the GM is supposed to decide, as part of prep, if each Japanese character is "the fighting type or not". And furthermore it's up to the GM to assign weapons and "personal aims" to each of the American players, so he can apply some common sense here and give more aggressive personal aims to the soldiers with heavy equipment. (Aside from the assumption that commanders would quickly notice and remove a .30 caliber machinegunner who didn't lay down covering fire, I've read that soldiers are generally more likely to use weapons that they perceive as powerful.)

Anyway, I've written most of my review, so I'll go ahead and post it instead of keeping Balbinus waiting for the actual play summary.

Okay, it's part of A Book of Sandhurst Wargames, which has a listing over at BoardGameGeek. Check out the images, several of them are from MaF.

As TGA guesses, the game has a lot to do with Marshall's ideas. In fact it comes with a few pages of background on Marshall and on island fighting in the Pacific. Back when the game was published, Marshall had more credibility than he does now; if  you do some web searching, you'll find some pretty convincing debunking of Marshall's methodology, which necessarily calls his numbers into question. But I can still believe that, particularly in WWII, a lot of soldiers barely participated in combat. (One of my friends who played in the game highly recommends Jones's The Thin Red Line on this topic...so I guess I gotta read that for more insight.)

The game works rather like an RPG scenario, with a number of twists.

The GM sets up the battlefield (various bits of terrain and Japanese soldiers) on a table and the players sit facing away from the table. Of course you could use a GM screen if you wish, although the illustration in the rules implies the players should be radiating "outward" from the table, not even looking at each other. Based on one play, I do think at least that the players should refrain from trying to draw diagrams or otherwise create a shared visual model of proceedings. For one thing it seems against the spirit of the game (in game terms you may be within eyesight and earshot of your comerades but probably not close enough to draw maps). For another, I think it actually confuses the players more when they try to integrate information this way, for a reason I'll get to in a minute.

The players each take one American soldier, with a name and a weapon. It's also possible to have tanks (with the commander as a player). The group is given an overall goal like "defend this area during the night" or "clear out the area ahead of you, which has a bunker with unknown number of defenders". But the first major twist is this: the PCs each have their own victory conditions, which are secret. At the beginning of the game, each player is assigned a card which gives his "reputation", character type (fighter or non-fighter) and victory conditions. Only the reputation ("undoubted heroism", "possible heroism", etc.) is public knowledge. Your victory condition, which is kept secret along with your character type, might say something like "You win if you fight for the group aim and survive unhurt, provided that you do not refuse aid to a wounded comerade who asks for it." Or it might say "You win if you survive (wounded or not) regardless of all else, provided that you do not damage the enemy in any way." Note that, by the rules of the game, the group aim only matters to the player to the extent that it's invoked in his victory conditions.

The rules say that player cards should be assigned by the GM as part of overall scenario construction, since the balance of a scenario is strongly influenced by the combination of character goals. Another issue is that "fighters" and "non-fighters" are affected differently by certain combat situations, so the GM really needs to know who is what. I overlooked this and used a slightly randomized approach, hiding the players' goals even from myself, which consequently caused a minor problem when I had to ask someone to show me his card. If you want to have real uncertainty on the Japanese side, I suppose you could add another neutral player or come up with some kind of mechanic, but I think this probably makes the game even harder for a pretty harried GM. The spirit of the rules is that the GM shouldn't be strategizing during the game; instead, he should basically have a simple plan for the Japanese side and not try to engage in a lot of fancy maneuvers.

The actual mechanics of the game are very simple. A scale is used to show crawling, walking, and running distances, which are also used for weapon ranges and visibilty. E.g., a prone man in daylight can be seen at running distance, which is also the range of a submachinegun or pistol. Rifles and machineguns have infinite range, which is also the visibility of a standing man in daylight. Firing is handled by different tables depending on whether it's aimed or unaimed; the latter only has a chance to pin people in the area targeted. Results are determined by cross indexing the general weapon type (from light to very heavy) with the target's posture (upright, prone, or in a bunker/trench) and "character type" and rolling a die. A hit will kill the target 1/6 of the time; otherwise he's wounded, can't move or fight, and must receive medical attention before the end of the game (or die). Fire can also cause a target to be pinned (greater chance for non-fighters), which makes him go to ground and be unable to fight, observe the battlefield, or talk to other players (!) until the GM rolls a 6 for him at the start of a turn. (Everything in the game is done with a single d6.)

Where things become complicated is the need for the GM to carefully note what each PC and NPC can see (generally within a 180 degree arc of his facing), as well the position and orientation of all characters. Of utmost importance is the fact that all reports by the GM, and all instructions from the players, must be given in terms of the character's perspective. The GM is supposed to say "You see a Japanese soldier front left, who fires a rifle at you and misses." A player must say, "I crawl to the left." In other words, no compass directions. The rules aren't specific but I would assume that movement in any direction other than straight ahead implies a change to facing, and players should understand this. If you crawl left and then left again, you will be facing away from your original orientation.

The reason for all this trouble is the second major twist: characters can become disoriented. Whenever you run, get into hand-to-hand combat, give care to a wounded character, lie low, or are pinned, there's a good chance you'll be reoriented 45 degrees without your knowledge--the only thing that might clue you in is what you can see. And this is also why players should be wary of making a map or using figures to reconstruct the battlefield, or at least putting too much faith in those methods: they may have entirely different frames of reference without realizing it.

The game is supposed to be played either until the group aim has been achieved, or the situation is beyond hope. At that point the players who have fulfilled their victory conditions are declared winners.

Problems with the game

There are number of minor ambiguities in the rules, some functional difficulty, and one major problem. Among the ambiguities: soldiers are "assumed to be carrying hand grenades" in addition to their regular weapons, but how many? I'd say just one or two, because otherwise there'd be no reason for soldiers armed with pistols or submachineguns to use their firearms, both of which have the same range as a grenade and are less lethal. (There's no colorful rule for "grenade scatter" or anything like that.) Another ambiguity: the rules say that tank commanders can become disoriented on each turn they keep their head inside the tank. But do you reorient the commander or the tank when this happens? The former seems silly; the commander could just look at the tank to reorient himself. I think the the tank should be reoriented on the assumption that the driver is frequently making course corrections under the commander's orders.

The functional difficulty is the burden on the GM, especially with too many (more than 6) or too few players. In the former case the rules recommend drafting an assistant. In the latter case, the problem is that an attacking American force won't have much of a chance unless it's supplement by a few NPC Americans, which amounts to even more people that the GM has to keep track of their observations and decide their actions. On reflection one way to avoid this would be to simply opt for a situation where the Americans are on the defensive.

The real problem with the game comes from the rules on motivation, i.e., victory conditions. An example implies that the players should hide their character motivation by dissembling:

"...Burt has been trying to persuade Pete and Wilbur to attack the enemy under cover of the BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle] fire, but they have replied that they 'think they see a good way to work round the flank'--i.e. they are stalling.'

But I don't find this credible: Burt may or may not be able to see Pete and Wilbur, but he's heard the GM's reports to them and knows exactly what they see. Without making the game too unwieldy by passing notes or putting players in different rooms, I think we just have to assume this aspect of the game will depend on some combination of firewalling, play-acting for pure color, and simply not paying too much attention when the GM is talking to other players.

Another problem is that there's no real advantage to hiding your motive. Where in real life I'm sure most soldiers don't want to be seen as cowards, the tension between shame and lack of nerve just isn't supported mechanically. As the rules stand I'd suggest that players be briefed to understand that, to some extent, they're all responsible for acting their part credibly in the eyes of their fellows--especially the non-fighters, who might almost see themselves as "co-GMs".

But even if you don't want to make your goal too obvious, you still want to win the game, right? Well, how do you handle a victory condition that says you win only if you survive and don't use your weapons? How much internal tension does that create? Winning is really straightforward: avoid the enemy and don't shoot, even if threatened. Because if you shoot, you lose; if you don't shoot, you might still live.

Moreover, what if you just decide "The heck with it, I'm going to shoot"? Can you choose to lose the game? Why would or wouldn't you? What about if you somehow are forced into losing involuntarily (e.g. if you accidentally get into close combat and win, when your victory conditions require you not to harm the enemy)? Once that happens, you no longer have any guidance or in-game motivation.

Finally, some of the victory conditions are so boring that even someone who just gets off on characterization will have no interest, because they require total or near-total passivity. ("You win if you do nothing at all as soon as the firing has started.") It would take real dedication to the exercise for someone to play one of these roles; otherwise I think they're best left for NPCs.

To sum up this issue, I really think the PCs should be given active roles, even if they aren't all "natural fighters" who have a mandate to use their weapons. More, I think the game could be improved by breaking the victory conditions down into distinct objectives, each with a point value, so that you could evaluate partial success. And while fighter-types generally have interesting tensions to deal with already (such as balancing goals of self-preservation and hurting the enemy, or even simply working out a tactical plan), I'd really like to extend this to the non-fighters by coming up with a mechanic that would create greater tension between motivations, including "shame" and "getting your nerve up".

Otherwise I think the victory conditions of the game need to be seen more as guidelines for play that everyone should endeavor to follow in good faith, with the overall enjoyment coming from watching the situation develop instead of "trying to win".

Next (in progress)--Actual Play review.

Good review Elliot. I was about 13 when I last played it so my memory isn't what it should be. I suspect we probably didn't play it exactly as intended either.

I much preferred the Hundred Years War and Craonne games. I've still got the book, just not the maps or counters these days.

The counters, although precut, were printed on relatively thin paperstock and will be very difficult to use, and easy to lose, unless you mount them on some cardboard. I used a spray adhesive to do this with the MaF counters, with decent results. In my experience the best cardboard to use is the stuff that's used in packaged shirts and as stiffeners for bagged comic books. The glue plus the layer of paper on which the counters are printed gives you almost exactly the thickness and stiffness of "standard" wargame counters.

The images at BGG might help reconstruct Aquitaine and Fjord if you're die-hard enough. For that matter I should scan or photograph the Craonne countersheet and send it in to BGG and/or isimulacrum.

I remember when I'd lost the packet of Craonne pieces. I actually hand-drew counters based on the picture on the back of the book. Not sure whether I'll give it another go as my time's already limited now, but thanks for the heads up.

I do recall having fun using the MAF pieces along with plastic minis to make my own games up.