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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 9894869" data-attributes="member: 1645">I think many of us on this hobby have gone through phases of studying rules and wanting more detailed rules for more elements of the game and then swinging the pendulum back the other way as we found the rules largely got on the way of playing the game and getting reasonable results. This is not a new phenomenon.Paddy Griffith wrote about this <a href="https://kriegsspielorg.wordpress.com/articles-2/map-kriegsspiel/" target="_blank">in another context</a>: The nineteenth-century Prussian game started life with a rigid structure and copious formal rules. The two sides were each placed in a separate room with a model of the terrain or a map. The umpires moved from one room to another collecting orders from the players, and then retired to a third room to consult the rules and find the results of combat. A great deal of their time was consumed in leafing through voluminous sets of rules, consulting tables and giving rulings on fine legal points. By about 1870, however, this rigid system was starting to be thought rather clumsy and time-consuming. Quite apart from the many defects and loopholes in the rules themselves, it reduced the umpires, who were often very senior officers, to the role of mere clerks and office boys. clearly, such a state of affairs was intolerable. It was General von verdy du Vernois who finally broke with this system, and abolished the rule book altogether. His approach to the wargame was the free kriegspiel, in which the umpire had a totally free hand to decide the result of moves and combats. He did not do this according to any set of written rules, but just on his own military knowledge and experience. He would collect the players’ moves in exactly the same way as before; but he would then simply give a considered professional opinion on the outcome. This speeded up the game a very great deal, and ensured that there was always a well thought-out reason for everything that happened. This was a great help in the debrief after the game, and it allowed players to learn by their mistakes very quickly. The free kriegspiel using maps can offer many advantages for modern wargamers provided that the umpire has a reasonable background in wargaming, and a bit of common sense. If this condition is met, the game immediately becomes faster and less pedantic than if it had been tied down to a set of rules. The umpire can always think of more factors to incorporate in his decisions than could ever be true in a formal or rigid game. He can therefore spread a greater atmosphere of realism about the game.</blockquote>

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