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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 9023642" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Are you sure the Army wargames you describe are descended from free Kriegspiel and not classic Kriegsspiel? Obviously I wasn't alive in the 1800s, so I'll borrow from The Elusive Shift's characterization:In the pioneering Reiswitz system developed in the 1820s, players no longer moved pieces on a board but instead wrote orders just as they would to subordinates in wartime, and the referee—in consultation with the rules and sometimes dice—would determine the outcome. Reiswitz intended his game as a teaching tool that would instruct officers in the science of command, especially in drafting written orders, and so the authority of a referee in his game resembled the authority of a teacher over a classroom. By having his referee respond to player orders with only the limited intelligence that wartime commanders would receive, Reiswitz hoped his game would instill in a player “the same sort of uncertainty over results as he would have in the field.”8 Later Kriegsspiel authors such as Julius von Verdy du Vernois had learned from experience that prescriptive rules could make the game dull, overcomplicated, and unrealistic, so they granted referees total discretion in determining the outcome of game events, a movement then called “free” Kriegsspiel.9 This broad referee discretion in deciding events unlocked a corresponding principle codified by Charles Totten’s wargame Strategos in the 1880s: “anything can be attempted.” Players can propose that their forces attempt anything that people in that situation could realistically do.10 This idea was unearthed and reinvigorated by Twin Cities wargamers in the late 1960s, from whence it then exerted a crucial influence on D&D.If 99.999% of your wargames were not subject to referee discretion that sounds quite a lot like the attitude Vernois was pushing back against by creating FK. Why do you believe your wargames were FK-descended?Edited for tone. I'm sincerely asking, not arguing.</blockquote>

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