Matt Thrower: Once More, With Feeling

This week I had the pleasure of trying out the introductory “Nuts!” scenario from Fast Action Battles: The Bulge. For those who are interested the scenario gets its name from the one-word response the US commander gave to a German request for surrender early in the Battle of the Bulge during the latter stages of WW2. I enjoyed the game and was very impressed with the system although I wouldn’t hesitate to say that it is in no way suitable as an introductory or light wargame, in spite of the apparent user-friendliness of the rules. It’s far too procedure-heavy and (ironically, given its name) slow for learner Grognards. But this isn’t a column about the game - it’s not something I’d have presumed to be of great interest to the BGN user base. Rather, I was struck by the fact that the scenario details the events which are depicted in the TV series Band of Brothers which is, for my money, one of the best things that’s been on the box in the last decade, and by the disconnect between my experiences of playing the game and watching the program.

There are two episodes in the series which deal with the Battle of the Bulge. One of them, Breaking Point ranks as probably the most intense and thrilling part of a series which is chock-full of intense and thrilling moments. There is heroism and cowardice, action and silent reflection, triumph and tragedy - everything you could ask for in a military drama - all packed in to a meagre sixty minutes of television. The acting, direction and cinematography are pretty sharp and all. It’s such a great episode that images of it remained burned into my memory for years afterward without my seeing any repeats. It was, finally, repeated on the TV (I’m tight when it comes to buying DVDs - they only usually get watched once) when we had a baby in the house and I can vividly recall treating myself once a week to staying up late with a glass of whiskey and enjoying the re-runs and hang how tired I’d be the next day. It’s no co-incidence that I can trace my burgeoning interest in wargames back to this period, and the point of this little jaunt down memory lane is the fact that watching the TV series made me want to play games that reflected the events portrayed on the screen. Why? Because I wanted to get those same feelings of heroism and cowardice, action and silent reflection, triumph and tragedy from playing a game, and a good game should be guaranteed to stay fresh for longer than repeat viewing of a TV series.

One of the first World War 2 wargames that I tried was Target: Arnhem. The events of the Battle of Arnhem are also depcited in the TV series and I very much enjoyed playing this game and recalling what I’d seen. I was particularly thrilled by the fact that the regiment which forms the basis of the TV series, the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, has its own counter in the game and its own job to do. I could put that little cardboard counter down, send it on missions, roll the dice and exalt in its success and commiserate with its failures while all the time imagining that (then) Captain Winters and all his men were right there on the map, trying to do all the things I’d seen and read about them doing, and all the intricate individual stories which that entailed. So in spite of the relatively brief shelf-life of that game (there’s a very limited number of potential strategies to explore on either side) it was certainly a success in giving me what I wanted from a wargame.

Time passed. I played a variety of other wargame titles, some of which were World War 2 and some were not. Of those that were I played none which directly touched on the events of Band of Brothers not least because I prefer fairly simple wargames and fairly simple wargames are usually operational or strategic level games which don’t bother with units as small as regiments, let alone platoons and squads. Until, that is, I came to FAB: The Bulge and got suckered in by its initially appealing-looking rulebook. And although I’m very glad I took the time to read and digest the rules and play the game for the strategic and historical interest that it offered, when it came to compare it to my beloved Band of Brothers, or indeed to Target: Arnhem for that matter, I found the game felt comparatively flat and lifeless. On reflection the reason for this was readily apparent - the weight of rules that the designer had put into the game were all very well in terms of strategy and simulation but they got in the way of appreciating the game on a more visceral, emotional and imaginative level. In other worsd my brain was so engaged by application of the rules and the decisions offered in the game that it had no space left to look at it on other, more simplistic levels.

This desire to have games which “feel” right - which are, in other words, emotionally satisfying - isn’t something I dwell on a lot and, I suspect, isn’t something which designers dwell on a lot either. Most of the time I manage to scratch this particular itch through the ups and downs of memorable sessions of multi-player conflict games. The sort of session where you’ll remember the “oohs” and “aahs” as the balance of power fluctuates round the game board according to the skill and luck of the other players. But it’s never as good as when you become emotionally involved in a game because your imagination has connected it with something else - something outside the realm of games that holds real meaning and interest for you - and since it’s something outside the realm of games, getting it across in a game requires a certain amount of theme. Those moments are rare, not least I suspect because the sorts of things that help a game to appear genuinely thematic actually interfere with the process of emotional attachment. Theme requires chrome. Chrome requires rules. Rules require study and, all too frequently, learning sessions of a game. And every time you have to stop a game to check something in a rulebook your suspension of disbelief is shattered and with it your emotional involvement in the game. No matter how thematic a game might be, the minute you have to look up or argue a rule it has become nothing more than a mechanical, procedural exercise.

For me this is a particularly acute problem in wargames. Although I am interested in the historical angle of wargames, often what I’m really looking for is some kind of emotional connection with the subject matter. I can remember being viscerally appalled by the grisly subject matter of Antony Beevor’s history of the Battle of Stalingrad and then carrying that through to a game of A Victory Lost and being bitterly disappointed as the German player that I was unable to defeat the Russians and save some of the prisoners of the aforementioned battle. It’s one sided-history, obviously but the connection with the subject matter was there and the rules of the game were just about intuitive enough for that connection to survive. In FAB this wasn’t quite the case. At the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got the most stripped down Eurogames and they don’t offer any kind of emotional hook because there’s no theme there at all to hang on to - there’s nothing but the intellectual challenge offered by the rules. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that I view my beloved Ameritrash games as coming somewhere in the middle, giving me enough theme to generate some feeling and enough of a light touch to engage with the game rather than directly with the rules. But in truth the themes offered - fantasy and science fiction - are often simply not emotionally engaging enough as subject matter to satisfy in this regard.

The more I’ve thought about this the more it seems to me that when people talk about “theme” in games, what they actually mean is “feeling”. All games - even heavy-duty military simulation - are essentially abstractions. No boardgame can really offer an accurate representation of anything in the real world, or even in your imagination. Indeed, it’s doubtful that you’d want it to. Do all the Agricola fans really harbour a deep fascination with farming? Do all players of consims really want to experience the appalling horrors of front line warfare? Do all players of fantasy adventure games secretly want to be facing near-certain death in the form of a dragon before them? No - games are and always will be abstractions. How effectively implemented a theme is is almost entirely dependent on how actively the game engages the imaginations and feelings of the players.

Most of my favourite games get to be my favourite games because they offer me a balance of the things I look for in a game - some strategic challenge, some serious interaction and, of course, some sort of emotional investment in terms of theme or history. I suspect many gamers look for the same sort of balance instead of fixating on a particular aspect of game design and sticking with it in implementation after implementation. But of all the things I go looking for it’s this emotional quality that is hardest to find. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps it’s a hard thing to design for. Perhaps in the ongoing discourse of game discussion and design feeling has become too dominated by a more mechanical approach to theme. Whatever the reason it seems pretty clear to me that it’s not something many designers are angling for when they put a game together, and that’s a shame. Emotions are what make us human: is it too much to ask to have some more games that cater for our humanity?

Comments:

< Back Home