Review of Paddy Griffith's Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun. by Pierre Corbeil:
Simulation and Gaming Review Editor for Simulation and Gaming Journal
Paddy Griffith's Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun. London: Lulu.com. (2008), 171 pages, (paperback). £12.95 from johncurryevents.co.uk
Passed Inspection: A classic of tabletop and outside gaming, re-published to the satisfaction of historical gamers. A return to the roots of the field, providing insight for designers, and a counterweight to programmed games.
Failed Basic: The use of Napoleonic restricts somewhat the historical variables, and the approach is resolutely Anglo-centric.
Book or game ? Paddy Griffith's Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun (PGNWF) is definitely a book – an object of several pages covered with writing bound together – but its principal content is a set of rules for war games with miniatures, or cardboard pieces.
PGNWF is a re-edition, not just a reprint, of a work originally published in 1980 (London, Ward Lock). It is one of several books re-edited by John Curry as part of his History of Wargaming Project. The chapters deal with some basic concepts of gaming, and then progress in complexity from the Skirmish game, through the brigade, division, and army. The scale of movement, armament, supply and command control is paced with the learning curve of the apprentice war gamer, an elegant and effective approach to encouraging effort and progressing through the learning stages of discovery, experiment, mastery, and theoretical formulation. Since Paddy Griffith is a professional historian, and taught for several years at the Royal Military Academy (Sandhurst), it is not surprising that his book should be constructed as a learning environment, although it is not just that.
PGNWF enriches its toolkit for game design with guides for a Map Kriegspiel, an open format in which the participants command from actual maps and an Umpire evaluates results, and a Tactical Exercise Without Troops (TEWT) played on an actual terrain, outside in the fresh air. The TEWT was used to train officers, and combines the main advantage of a simulation, imaginary damage, with on site training. The TEWT rules entice us to leave temporarily our armchairs, or give us the opportunity, when we shall be old and feeble, to be Wheelchair Generals.
Why a re-edition of a book published in 1980, and why review that book ? Historical gamers are naturally satisfied that such a classic should again be available. But the interest of the book is deeper than that. Originally, the book is a reaction against «the obsession with minor details and mental arithmetic» which plagued game rules at the time. Paddy Griffith set out to create games that were both playable and realistic. The philosophy of games that animates his design, or designs, is that game rules must never be dogmatic, and the author expresses his mistrust of lawyers who play a game by hunting for loopholes in the rules (like W.C. Fields in the Bible).
A read of PGNWF serves as a return to the roots of gaming. All development in a field is the result of roads taken and not taken, and by returning to the roots of a field, it is possible to re-examine the possible roads, and to both understand the origin of the choice and discover interesting paths that could be taken. In design, the past is the future, and a discussion of past issues is a source of experimentation for the present. The model game proposed by Griffith is an open game, in which the participants are partly designers as they work together to inject possible modes and actions into the specific situation. The three variables of the miniature war game are aesthetics, tactics, and command and control. Are they not the basic variables in all games ? A hopeful designer can work through the models and guides in PGNWF and find an approach to his own problem.
The open game concept can also illuminate the present discussion on the limits and usefulness of computer games. These are anything but open, being perforce a series of programme elements, which limit the player to the choices included in the programme. Much of the effort in modern computer game design has gone into detailed reconstruction of the game environment, called graphics, and less on the problem of providing tools for introducing variants into the game. Griffith's open and non-dogmatic games propose a countervailing model to the heavily programmed computer games, a reminder that games are essentially social events, and a philosophy supporting the efforts of modders, who are the principal force behind the creation of enlightening variants of computer games.
Games have certain basic elements, and the game rules that PGNWF proposes are straightforward definitions of those elements: movement, action, modifiers, and results. These game rules make the book a game-designing game, and a human operated game editor. Humans are the actors and the users of games, and games only work if they start from humans and their creative capacities. Already in 1980, Paddy Griffith warns of the sterility of mathematical models, and so his book can act as rudder and a brake for research game structures: he calls gamesmanship the «disease of wargamers who try to exploit the rules at the expense of historical realism and common decency», which definition should be pondered by all those who search for the perfect model.
The only flaw of the book, paradoxically, lies in its historical perspective. The term Napoleonic for the wars of the Republic and Empire (1792-1815) tends to restrict examples to the post-1803 wars. In terms of military history, the first years of the wars, before general Bonaparte played a major role, or roughly 1793 to 1795, were the time of true innovation, and thus the source of instructive variants. The wars in their duration involved the attempt to crush popular sovereignty as a constitutional principle, the attempt to maintain oligarchical governments, and the final chapter in the conflict for naval domination between France and England. The book is also squarely Anglo-centric. That proposed readings should be from English, or English-speaking, writers is reasonable in an English book, but the rare use of French sources is surprising, especially from a bona fide military historian who has published on that period. There is no shortage of books in French on the guerres de la République et de l'Empire. Consequently, the perspective is sometimes curious. Why propose imaginary French landings in England, as a source of possible scenarios, instead of some actual English landings that were a regular aspect of the past Franco-English wars?
The flaw illustrates perhaps the robustness of the work as a technical source, since the design rules make quite possible the creation of scenarios from the early period, or of defense against English landings. PGNWF draws strength also from its affiliation with the History of Wargaming Project, under the guidance of John Curry, who edits the volumes. It is this project that makes available the re-discovery of the classical material and the return to the branches in time from which our gaming world has been created. More material is available from johncurryevents.co.uk and gamers, especially new game designers, will find a rich starting point for their creations or mods, whether they are historical or not. But then, no subject can really be understood or mastered unless its history is known.