Why 'Dice or no Dice'?

Do you like to use lots of dice in your war-games or do you prefer to see them used sparingly or not at all?  

I confess to a fondness for the fistfuls of dice that are rolled for each firing of battleship batteries in games like Imperial Skies or for firing and melée in skirmish games like Sharpe Practice or Men Who Would Be Kings.  But when it comes to large scale games I have reservations about their use.  These can be grouped into three categories.  

First is overuse.   Some aspects of a battle don't need to be randomised.  A Napoleonic Corps Commander didn't face the problem of only being able to issue orders to a limited number of units because he had had a poor roll for PIPs.  His modern counterpart commanding miniature divisions shouldn't face this problem either.  His subordinates may not respond to the orders as swiftly or precisely as he would like, but a poor die roll should not prevent him from telling them to get stuck in.  The authors of the Volley and Bayonet rules have commented extensively on this - see the section on 'Chaos and Randomness' in their design notes, which can be found here.  I concur with this section and commend the other comments that they make on game design for anyone's consideration.

Some uncertainty in the sequence of activation is a nice feature of skirmish and small games.  The card or chit system used in Sharpe Practice seems a particularly elegant way of managing this, introducing a thrill with every draw, though the number of times in games I've had that a single sharpshooting unit has managed to wipe the field due to fortunate chit draws makes me think it is still a bit too much.

Activation chits for use with Sharpe Practice Rules in Boshin War era games

The second area of reservation with dice in large games is the disproportionate effect that good or bad rolls can have on the outcome of a game as compared with good generalship.  Leaving the wargame table with the thought that it was the dice that won it - or lost it - sucks enjoyment out of the game and is not a good spur to thinking more carefully about how you managed the battle and drawing lessons for next time.  The risk of this can be mitigated with good game design, but the risk remains, leaving me with sympathy for the approach of trying to do away with dice in almost all aspects of the game, as suggested in the blog linked here.

But sympathy only up to a point.  Chance has a place, both as suggested by Napoleon in his remark that he didn't care whether his generals were any good, what mattered was whether they were lucky, and from the contribution that it makes to the experience of wargaming as a social activity. 

Keeping dice in the game system leads to my third area of reservation with dice in big battles, which is the sheer number of dice rolls that need to be made and the effect this has on ability to get through a game in limited time if one wants to keep any of the granularity in events that most players like to see.  Games where each player has to manage up to a dozen units are ok, but go beyond this and keeping track of all the tests that need to be made and dealing with them efficiently becomes tricky.  

Doubtless in the great and expanding universe of wargame systems there are many good ways to address these reservations.  I would like to share how I am trying to do so through the use of apps.

The first iteration of an app to support ancient wargames

A purpose built app on a tablet or mobile phone offers the possibility of supporting players through each aspect of a game from assembling and deploying an army to firing, meléeing and managing morale.  It can download data from a campaign system and upload results to that system on completion of a game.  Purchasing and maintaining a developer licence for a good relational database on a desktop machine that allows you to integrate all the different aspects of a game and supports good graphics is a not insignificant cost, but it usually costs nothing to install the mobile version on anyone's tablet or phone.  For each test that a unit or officer has to perform, the app can tell you how many dice to roll and what the result is when you have rolled them.  I have an option - particularly useful in solo games - for the app to roll the dice for you 🤖!

So far I have tried the app out for a few games

First trial - a relatively small fight between a Greek rearguard and pursuing Persians.

Greeks facing Greeks, each with app support, before final deployment

The largest trial yet, the closing stages on one flank of a massive
Achaemenid Persian vs revolting Satraps game

Lessons that I have drawn from the experience so far are:

A)  Think very carefully about the design of the database at the earliest stages, to allow sufficient flexibility for modifications to rules and layout displays during subsequent development;

B) The form factor is important.  Not only are phones much easier to lay down on the table top than tablets - and will cause less inadvertent damage to figures if dropped - but the discipline of designing layouts that work intuitively on the smaller screen is a great aid to clear thinking, elegance and user friendliness in the finished product.  The larger screen space on a tablet is a great temptation to add frills and features that end up over-complicating the experience; and

C) It always takes longer than you expect to develop and debug an app, detracting both from figure painting time and gaming time - but I have become as addicted to the idea of producing the perfect app as I am to the perfect set of wargaming figures and the perfect stratagem, so there is no hope for me.