"It’s Like A Huge Miniature Golf Course"

[YorkNecromancer]

Welcome to my article for June. As always, it's massive, so if you just want to, skip to the end.

I love this picture. It’s called ‘The Treachery of Images’, and the name tells you everything you need to know about it. In case you can’t read French, the line underneath says ‘This is not a pipe’.

Great, isn’t it?

The reason I’m starting with this picture, is because I think it summarises ninety percent of the problems the community has when it comes to the issues of what people like to think of as ‘realistic’ rules in wargaming.

Meta vs. Realistic

Before I do anything else, I just want to define a couple of terms I’m going to bandy around throughout this piece. When wargaming was first invented, it was kind of assumed – fairly, I think we can all agree - that the rules were going to accurately represent real-life. However, as HG Wells’ little idea has slowly blossomed into the vibrant hobby we all know and love, rules designers have realised that some compromises have to be made; that some rules need to be introduced to make the game either more playable, more fun, or more competitive. These ‘compromise’ rules are therefore, by nature, arguably unrealistic, and often draw the kind of unpopular attention that’s normally reserved for drug dealers at a rehab clinic. However, these rules are often necessary, because they improve the game’s flow.

For the purposes of this piece, I shall be referring to the first kind of ‘realistic’ rule as ‘simulationist’ and the second kind of ‘compromise’ rule as ‘meta’. There’s probably a fair degree of overlap between the two, but I think there is a necessary distinction to be made, because – for reasons that often go unquestioned – the community will often place higher value on simulationist rules over meta ones… And that misplacement of value? Is what this article is all about.

Why Can’t They Throw Ten Grenades?
[url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/05/40k-realistic-rules-part-1.html]Pimpcron[/url] recently wrote a series of extremely enjoyable articles looking at the idea of a more realistic ruleset; if you haven’t read them yet, you really should. These articles argue for a number of changes to be made to the game, changes that – in Pimpcron’s estimation at least – would more accurately convey the realities of warfare in a completely invented, utterly insane, borderline ridiculous universe where posthuman soldiers dressed in mobile tanks fight one another with chainsaws and never once experience even a moment’s sexual frustration at five centuries of enforced celibacy.

Now, that last sentence may make it sound like I’m being a trifle facetious about the setting… And, okay, yes, I kind of am, largely because 40K is so stupid I cannot take it seriously.


Pictured: Realism

However, this article is going to take 40K at face value, and assume that, fine, okay: everything that could feasibly happen as described in the fluff is capable of happening in real life, and can therefore be realistically simulated through rules. The reason I’m going to do this is because SHUT UP 40K IS F**KAWESOME. Yes, we’re well aware that if you take a step back, 40K makes as much sense as a diesel powered banana daiquiri with optional waxing kit and kick stand, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that there’s a whole bunch of ideas there, and I want to play games where these concepts can interact with one another. The rules are what allows that to happen.

In [url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/05/40k-deep-thought-realistic-rules-part-2.html]part 2[/url] of his articles, Pimcron asked a simple question about grenades, and I’m going to use a single counterpoint to illustrate what I hope is a more important principle: that games require abstraction, and that difficulties only arise when we disagree on where that level falls.

So: grenades. As of 7th edition (and after multiple editions where you couldn’t throw grenades at all), GW threw those plucky Imperial Guard a bone. Finally, that squad under attack from the sexually-enraged Carnifex could try to survive. On seeing it rush towards them waving a four-foot murderboner, they would be able to give it a pineapple surprise and hopefully make it stop dead in its tracks, leaving both them and their virtue intact. Where before all they had to defend themselves were the same lasguns they’d been warming their soup with not an hour ago, now - once the beast is in range - one member of a squad may throw a grenade.

But only one.

Now, as Pimpcron points out, they all have grenades. So what’s the deal?! What, was everyone but Bouncing Betty drinking paint during the grenade tutorial, and now they’re so full of stupid they just forget to press the right shoulder button? How come Betty is the only one who remembers she’s carrying little explosive pockets of joy?

Meta rules is why. Abstraction is why.

I think we can all agree that a squad which can throw ten grenades at a time suddenly becomes significantly more of a threat to almost everything. Given a choice between a lasgun and a grenade, you take the grenade every time – how are you supposed to warm your feet at night if the lasgun’s power pack is depleted?

And it’s not just an issue that the lowly guardsmen suddenly become far too dangerous. There’s also the players of the game to consider: life is just too short to roll for scatter ten times… Or fifty if you’re mad enough to use a whole Guard platoon. I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to finish a game of 40K before I collect whatever parts of my pension haven’t been stolen from my by our benevolent masters.

So, we can see that the reason only one guy gets to throw a grenade isn’t due to any desire to be simulationist. It’s a meta restriction, a meta rule. And we can see why the design team came to this decision: looking at the option of multiple grenade throws per squad, there is one pro (the rule is more accurate to real-life) but multiple cons (the squad becomes absurdly destructive – unrealistically so compared to the fluff; the actual process of template placement becomes more boring than hearing about that time your granddad travelled from Shelbyville to Ogdenville with an onion tied to his belt, as was the fashion at the time). The simulationist approach has more cons that pros. So, the designers take a look and decide one grenade throw is right.

And here’s where the need for abstraction comes in. Because not every gamer likes this ruling. Not every gamer can reconcile the need for meta rules with the desire for simulationist play. Which means those of you who don’t like this ruling are going ‘But they still all have grenades! Why is only one guy throwing them?”

Because this is not a pipe.

Your ‘battle’? Is not real. It is a collection of polystyrene, pewter and resin, painted with different shades of pigment suspended in water-based plastic polymers. Your men are not men. They are little pieces of long-dead dinosaur, reconstituted through complicated scientific processes and sculpted into three-dimensional metaphor. They have no capacity to interact with the world on their own; they are not characters in ‘Toy Story’ – when they move, it is because you are moving them around with your hands.

This is not a pipe.

So none of them have grenades.

None of them have grenades and no-one’s throwing anything.

Your imagination is where the battle is taking place. Those of you who feel every guardsman should be able to throw grenades only do so because you have imagined it. Yes, we all know this... But in the same way we ignore the puppeteers working the Muppets, we never really take a step back like this and admit as much. We imagine these battles. The question is, why? Why did you imagine it in the specific way you did? What are you basing that concept on? And, most importantly of all - why do do we as a community so often make the assumption that we all imagine the same things in the same way?

With the example above: why is the concept of ‘they should all be able to throw grenades’ more valid than ‘only one throws a grenade’?

Where do we get our ideas?

Well, the most obvious answer is personal experience, in this case, of grenades. Personally, I have never seen a grenade in real-life. I’ve never used one. I’ve seen films and played games, though. I’ve chatted with squaddie mates. I’ve got a rough idea how grenades work and how big their blasts are from all these things – though I ascribe more value to the words of people who’ve used them in real-life than anything else (although maybe I shouldn't. A friend in the Army Air Corp once admitted that during his basic training, the very first time they gave him a live grenade, threw it into the 'safehole' he was supposed to... Then looked over the edge because he wanted to watch it go off. One 'look out sir!' from his sergeant quite literally saved his head.) This ‘experience’ (or experience, if you’ve actually used them) gives you the expectation that ten men should be able to throw ten grenades, creating ten explosions.

The game’s wording seems to be the issue. There are a few key sentences written down: ‘All models have grenades’ and ‘One may make a shooting attack with grenades’. It’s not a huge leap to come to the conclusion that only one of them is throwing a grenade.

But that’s only one way to abstract this event.

Consider an alternative: the model making the attack isn’t actually throwing the grenade. She’s the one who is pointing out the target to the rest. The template doesn’t represent a single grenade; it represents a cluster of bombs thrown by the whole squad, none of them powerful enough to generate a blast template on their own, but more than enough when thrown together. And when I say ‘the whole squad’, what I mean is seven of the squad. Betty’s pointing, Sergeant Beatrice is receiving orders and as for Guardsman Baldrick?


’I am attempting to communicate with the Hive Mind, sir. I believe I can persuade that Carnifex that we are, in fact, a small brick wall.’

This explanation neatly resolves the cognitive dissonance caused by the meta rule (throw one grenade) and simulationist idea (they all have grenades). It also neatly illustrates my central idea: because the game is not real, we need to have a better understanding about abstraction to help move discussions forwards when people argue the rules are ‘too unrealistic’.

Epic Vs 40K

GW used to make a game called ‘Adeptus Titanicus’. It was awesome. Set during the Horus Heresy, you controlled not one Titan, but a Legion of the things. A Legion. I don’t care what anyone says, not even the biggest Apocalypse games can hold a candle to that.

“But how did they all fit on the table?" I hear those of you who never got to play this amazing game. “How did you get two full Titan Legions on the battlefield? Did you have to sell your firstborn son to Matt Ward?”

No, my friend. The nineties were a dark time, but they weren’t that dark.


Okay, I take it back, they were definitely pretty dark.

The reason you could get that many enormous models on a single table was because it wasn’t 40K scale. It was ‘Epic’ scale; a single Space Marine was 6mm tall. An Imperial Knight was the size of a 40K scale Space Marine; a Warlord Titan was roughly the size of a 40K scale Dreadnought. And it was awesome.

I was massively into Epic during the early nineties. The largest battle I ever fought had two full Titan Legions of six Warlords and an Imperator facing off against each other, supported by roughly four thousand infantry on each side, and literally hundreds of tanks. Literally. There were about two hundred and ten or so.

All this on a 6’x4’ table.

During this stupidly big battle, there was a point where one of my Imperial Guard infantry companies assaulted a Traitor Space Marine company. There were nearly a hundred bases in combat on each side. You’d think it would be awesome, right? Wrong. My opponent and I just groaned, because we knew that assault had to happen, but we also knew what it meant:


Roll sixteen pounds of dice over and over again. First one to get Wanker's Cramp loses.

So we looked at each other, said ‘f**k that’, and had a quick discussion. We agreed my men were outclassed, so I rolled three dice, he rolled six, and we removed whatever number of bases our opponent rolled. Technically that was against the rules, but we agreed it was fair. It was just another way of abstracting what was going on.

You see, ‘abstraction’ is just a clever way of saying ‘structuring your imagination’, and the ’best way’? Will always be the way where you and your partner/opponent have the most fun.

Now, the real reason for discussing Epic here, is that years later, reading the revised Epic rulebooks that came out after I had quit, I came across an interesting revision to the Assault rules. Basically, in Epic, you can Assault an enemy from 15cm away. On the surface, Assault functions a lot like Assault in 40K… Only it’s done over three times the distance. How does that make sense? On 40K scale, the Assault distance in Epic is nearly 24”!

It makes sense because an Assault in Epic is a level abstracted from 40K. It doesn’t represent a close-quarter melee fought with chainsword and pistol. It represents a 40K-scale battle, fought with small arms. So, if you were playing Epic, had units that entered Assault, you could – if you so wished – adjourn to an alternate table, play a 6’x4’ 40K battle, and then apply the results of that battle to the Epic-scale one in the other room.

Or, you could use the Epic Assault rules, which resolve the whole matter in a couple of minutes.

This whole idea of linking scale to levels of abstraction has recently resurfaced with FFG’s ‘Forbidden Stars’ game. In it, you vie for control of planetary systems… Yet it has models for Helbrutes and Battlewagons!


Pictured: William Hill are now offering odds of five-to-one on the Imperial Hab-unit.

How is it possible to play a game where I’m trying to control star systems, yet have models of Dreadnought-sized individuals?

Because that Helbrute doesn’t represent an individual. It’s an abstraction, representing a Slaughtercult, or an army of Chaos Marines supported by armour. The battlewagon could represent an entire Speed Freek warband, or maybe an infamous Big Mek. The possibilities are endless.

Why can’t I throw ten grenades? Because you already are throwing ten grenades; the blast template is an abstraction for all ten going off together.

Reality Is Unrealistic

My girlfriend recently passed me an article from her IET magazine about the dangers of assumed knowledge (it’s a problem that causes engineering companies no end of trouble). Put simply, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority]most of us assume we’re cleverer than we are.[/url] That we know more than we do. Because of this mistaken belief, we then make further assumptions, often based on little more than our imaginations. This problem is exacerbated when the thing in question is something we’re very used to.

An example the article gave was the humble toilet. We all know it, we all use it. We see it every day. So of course, we all know how it works…

Don’t we?

The article challenged you to put that assumption to the test. Go to your household toilet, and, without any instructions or reference to the internet, dismantle it, then put it back together again. Could you do it? I’m fairly sure I couldn’t.

We all assume we know how a toilet works, because we use it every day, and because we’ve seen inside. But I know that if I needed to completely dismantle a toilet, I’d be calling the plumber the next day and crying for help, begging not to have to go wee in the sink any more, not now that it smells like ammonia.


Pictured: wrongness.

This is only one example; there are a billion others. We all assume we know much, much more than we do… Especially about stuff we know a little about.

From my own life as a teacher, everyone thinks they know everything about my job. About what it involves: planning lessons, marking papers, long holidays, etc… They always tell me ‘Oh, I couldn’t do your job. The kids’d get right on my nerves.’ But I can tell you now, they don’t.

Case in point: working with teenagers is the best part of the job. Teenagers are great fun. Most of them are kind, thoughtful, decent people. And those of you going ‘not at my school’, let me tell you: I have worked in some f**king rough schools. I’ve worked in schools which have been burned down by lunatic ex-pupils, where pupils have attacked one another with weapons.

Doesn’t mean the other kids at those schools weren’t brilliant, compassionate, funny people.

Teaching is not what I expected it to be going in over a decade ago, and I imagine it’s true for every kind of career. None of us really know what it’s like to have certain careers. We can guess, and we can assume, and we can learn the generalities, but we can’t know, any more than a civilian child who’s never known war knows what it’s like to cover an squadmate from mortar fire, or what an untrained patient going under the knife knows about performing open heart surgery on themselves.

Reality is unrealistic. It often doesn’t work the way we expect. Want some examples? [url=http://io9.com/we-accidentally-turned-the-entire-statue-of-liberty-int-1702334758]The Statue of Liberty is a giant battery. She generates roughly one volt a year[/url]. [url=http://io9.com/5830664/this-is-bullet-proof-spider-silk-skin---made-from-goats-milk-yes-really]You can make human skin bulletproof by genetically crossing goats with spiders[/url]. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidocyte]Some species of jellyfish have diamond-tipped stingers. Well, not diamond exactly – pure carbon – but it’s functionally identical[/url].

We base so much of our understanding of the world, not on facts and empirical data, but instead on the art we take in. We base our understanding of guns on FPS games and films. We base our understanding of other countries on how they are portrayed in television and the media. We base our understanding of minorities on what the majority says about them. Needless to say, that art is never more intelligent than the people who created it, which means it’s often filled with errors, mistakes and sadly, propaganda.

Why does this matter when it comes to 40K?

Tina Belcher and The Danger of Unrecognised Small Reference Pools

So far, I’ve not mentioned the title of this article yet. It comes from “Bob’s Burgers”, which I love. There’s an episode where Tina:



is taken to a golf course, and her response is to compare it to what she knows. She’s been to miniature golf, so to her, it’s like that. Her reference pool isn’t actually large enough to make the leap that miniature golf might be based on something else. She assumes she knows what it is, based on something else she knows about, but she’s wrong.

And the reason I bring this up, is because any time we say a rule in 40K is unrealistic, we are Tina. None of us have ever lived in the 41st millennium. None of us have ever worn powered armour. None of us have ever carried a bolter, or had our ribcage fused into a single bone by a genetically-modified organ that also made us grow nine feet tall. None of us have ever used plasma weaponry to fight off psychic entities from beyond conventional spacetime.

We have no frame of experience in which we can accurately frame a single one of these, and many other – if not all – of the experiences of life in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Yes, we can make guesses, intimations, and assumptions. But we can never truly know.

Which is where the very concept of ‘simulationist’ rules breaks down. There is no way to accurately simulate these concepts; these are concepts that have no real-world equivalents. And for anyone who wants to argue otherwise, I have two words: ‘vortex grenade’.

Which means that the hate poured on unrealistic rules isn’t actually fair. What we mean when we say ‘unrealistic’ is ‘this rule does not feel accurate when I compare it to the vision of the game universe I have in my head’. But because we all share very different visions of what the game universe should be, you are never going to have a game that is fully and completely realistic. It’s impossible. Chasing realism in a completely fantastical setting is a broken road, and a broken road leads nowhere.

A few months ago, [url=http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/03/40k-deep-thought-dont-put-helmets.html]I wrote an article where I looked at how we, as a community, could better justify the fluff we don’t like[/url]. I suppose this article is the ‘crunchy’ version of that one. When you next see a rule that you don’t like because it strikes you as inherently ‘unrealistic’, consider why it might be there. Maybe it’s serving a purpose on a meta level, making the game more fun. Or more playable. Or faster.

Or maybe it’s simply more abstract than it seems, and the problem isn’t the rule, but our perceptions of it. Maybe that ‘one grenade’ is actually ten, being thrown in unison. Whatever else, always remember: you may be wrong, not because you’re wrong, but because you’re assuming you know more than you do.



Never forget: our own reference pools can be significantly smaller than we think they are... Even in areas where we think of ourselves as 'experts'.

[40kGamer]

Ah Yorkie... tugging the heartstrings with a reference to Adeptus Titanicus are we? Ah the good old days... when GW actually offered a wide breath of games, most of which were quite good.

You are spot on that abstraction is one of the most important concepts in game design. Think of everything going on in regards to the ground scale and time scale in 40k. Shooting ranges, movement, elapsed time, assaults and so on... without some level of abstraction games wouldn't even be playable. I do think their attempt to fold EPIC into 40k has created a fabulous disaster of a game system.

[YorkNecromancer]

tugging the heartstrings with a reference to Adeptus Titanicus are we? Ah the good old days...

[Houghten]

Maybe that one grenade is actually ten, but if it is, why's it have a Strength the same as the ten separate ones they can use in close combat?

[40kGamer]

Truly a thing of beauty! I also believe that 40k can't compare to the grandeur of an Epic table. Currently working on an 12 model Eldar Titan host for a trip down memory lane.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe that one grenade is actually ten, but if it is, why's it have a Strength the same as the ten separate ones they can use in close combat?

The abstraction could be as simple as the grenades tossed are mainly for shock and awe value and the 1 represents the actual chance of them doing any damage at all.

[YorkNecromancer]

if it is, why's it have a Strength the same as the ten separate ones they can use in close combat?

Why does twin-linked mean more accurate, not more shots?

In the example you quote, I would argue that the multiples of explosions do not increase the explosion's strength, but its radius. I know that falls apart when you've got like, one Guard throwing a grenade with the same blast size as ten, but still - the abstraction in this case is a size increase, rather than a strength increase.

I seem to recall the original Cyclone rules did much the same thing. A Cyclone had twelve Krak missiles, each with a 1/2" diameter explosion. You could only fire once per turn, but you could fire salvos. Each missile you added to the blast increased the explosion by a 1/2", so you could, if you wished, shoot off all twelve at once for a 6", Str 8 blast template that shredded everything underneath it.

Ah, the old days...

Currently working on an 12 model Eldar Titan host for a trip down memory lane.

Nice.

[Houghten]

Why does twin-linked mean more accurate, not more shots?

I have frequently complained about that one too.

[YorkNecromancer]

It's a perfect example of a simulationist justification for a meta rule. Twin-linking is a way to have reliable anti-tank firepower (which needs accuracy to be effective) without generating so many shots it can be used for anti-infantry work.

Consider the Land Raider - it carries four lascannon. If it could fire four shots, it could kill enough infantry to cause a ten-man squad to take a morale test and break - not the most 'realistic' use of what is intended to be an anti-tank weapon. Likewise, the heavy bolters. If the LR had 4 lascannon shots and 6 heavy bolter shots, it could obliterate a squad a turn at a not insignificant range. Not appropriate for a weapon that is clearly intended as a primarily defensive one, used to soften up infantry before the troopers inside pour out into assault. While removing twin-linking would mean the LR wasn't exactly game-breaking (and I would argue that it would actually make the LR a finally useful tank!), you can see where the designers are coming from. The LR is an infantry fighting vehicle, designed to provide troop support; its contents are supposed to be the things that kill the enemy.

Twin-linking is a pure meta rule - perhaps the most meta rule. We need to accept that it's there for gameplay balance, and is a necessary place where design philosophy trumps willing suspension of disbelief.

[Houghten]

I'd break and run if you were firing an anti-tank weapon at me, too.

[Kirsten]

I actually think the grenade issue is rather simpler. guardsmen don't carry an infinite number of grenades. they are not Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare with his bag of infinite dynamite. you wouldn't throw ten at once, because then what would you do for the rest of the battle? the guardsmen would not know the game was going to end after six turns, they might be expecting a full day of battle, maybe several. they don't know when they might be resupplied, you don't use all your special stuff on the first target you see. I haven't ever thrown a grenade either, but Sniper Elite tells me that grenades actually have a much bigger radius than most people think. if you go for the difficulty level where you set your own parameters, you have realistic grenade blast radius, and 'hollywood' blast radius, which is something like a third of the realistic size.

Alternatively, to quote Yahtzee "we have scenarios where you're sitting on a nuclear stockpile to shame North Korea and are throwing peas at a giant robot crab on the off-chance that there might be a bigger giant robot crab just around the corner"