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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3479624" data-attributes="member: 4937">Excuse me?  Can you explain that again???  What do you mean by 'this'? I'm well aware of the exercise in question, and I don't see how it is relevant much less a reasonable responce to what I said - if you are indeed responding to me.  I can only conclude from your comments that you neither understand what I've been saying nor do you understand the excercise in question.  In the latter case, that's hardly surprising, since the Slate article gets several key elements of the excercise wrong.  For example, Van Riper's 'red' forces didn't represent Iraq - the represented Israel.  And Van Riper's tactic for destroying the blue fleet didn't (mainly) involve suicide bombers (he's playing for Israel), but massed cruise missiles.To be brief:What was different about Van Riper's role in the game and a DM's role in the game?Did the referee agree that Van Riper's tactics worked?  How is that different than the referee acting as a player?What is the difference between using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, and ruling that those motorcycle messengers could fly at 6000 mph?    What is the difference between Van Riper using plausible resources at hand like motorcycles, and inventing some new resource out of whole cloth like say mobile laser cannons in order to obtain the result desired?Again, it is one thing to do things within the rules of the simulation (which in the real world are the 'laws of physics' ) that the enemy doesn't expect and isn't prepared for, and quite another to within the simulation to have different rules apply to different sides.  Different tactics imply assymetrical warfare, but different sets of rules imply something else altogether.</blockquote>

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