So the rubble was still settling in the aftermath of some hard-fought actions in the streets of Stalingrad when my adolescent self, lo these many years ago, turned to the fine print at the back of the original Squad Leader rules booklet and read the following in the Designer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Notes: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Any knowledgeable wargamer will see at a glance that the terrain of SQUAD LEADER has been abstracted to better capture the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfeel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of infantry combat. . . . The Dzerhezinsky Tractor Works alone was an immense complex that could not be accurately portrayed by 8 of our city mapboards! Indeed the Germans didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t succeed in breaking into the Tractor Works until . . . 200! German tanks had assaulted the outer defenses.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Though I had been playing hex and counter wargames for several years and probably instinctively understood that realism was a problematic word applied to dice and cardboard and CRTs, this was the first time I had seen the concept of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153abstraction\u00e2\u20ac\u009d so unabashedly articulated. Suddenly my team of crack assault engineers storming into the Tractor Works under cover of smoke and HMG fire didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem like such an achievement\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153factory\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was only a piddling little cluster of hexes. I played SL and the rest of the series happily for many years afterwards, but that discrepancy always nagged at me. Maybe, I thought, I could get 8 or 10 more city boards and 200 tank counters and make it right?<\/p>\n

Of course Red Barricades<\/em>, the first module in the historical ASL (HASL) series proceeded to do exactly that not too many years later. Historical ASL\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven the name is telling\u00e2\u20ac\u201dexposes some interesting tensions in the game system. Most ASL scenarios are played on generic or so-called geomorphic map boards, whose layouts depict a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153typical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d village, forest, piece of a city, etc. Despite the fact that the historical basis of the geomorphic scenarios was usually carefully established, the geomorphic map boards themselves\u00e2\u20ac\u201dliterally the foundation of play\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwere always a conspicuous abstraction. HASL was, in effect, the game system\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearest acknowledgement of this phenomenon, substituting depictions of actual terrain (the Red Barricades<\/em> maps were derived from aerial reconnaissance photographs taken by the Luftwaffle).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Urban terrain depicted with an ASL geomorphic board (left), <\/em>Red Barricades (center), and actual aerial photograph of Stalingrad during the fighting.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the more brutal and bitter fights that occurred during the combat in Stalingrad in late 1942 concerned a Soviet stronghold that had come to be known as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the commissar\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The ASL system features two scenarios that recreate this particular action, one using the geomorphic boards and one played on the Red Barricades<\/em> map. Both are ultimately abstractions\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153historical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d map includes stone walls whose 60-degree angles follow the outlines of the hex-grid, for example. But some interesting observations can still follow. In particular, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m interested in whether wargame scenario design can be fruitfully mated with an area of analytical philosophy known as possible worlds theory. Possible worlds theory has in turn spawned applications in domains like narratology. Surely it is relevant to the design of interactive simulations, electronic or otherwise. In particular, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m interested in thinking about possible worlds theory in relation to immersion or suspension of disbelief. When we play a geomorphic ASL scenario called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Counterstroke at Stonne,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we know that board 3 isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t meant to be the small French village of Stonne, not exactly . . . but it could have been, and at a certain point we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re willing to suspend disbelief. Using a desert board, by contrast, would certainly be enough to break the illusion as would a major geographical feature like a river. But what about the chateau that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s depicted on one of the geomorphic boards used in the scenario, which, the story goes, is there because the designer read about a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chateau d\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 eau\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201da water tower. Whoops. A glitch, but one that has no real impact on the integrity of the scenario\u00e2\u20ac\u201dafter all, there could<\/em> have been a chateau just outside the rural French village of Stonne, right? Had the false chateau appeared in a treatment of the battle based on actually terrain (like Red Barricades<\/em> did for Stalingrad) it would have been regarded as a far more serious matter. But given that all such maps are still ultimately abstractions, how then can we account for the difference? Can possible worlds theory help here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the rubble was still settling in the aftermath of some hard-fought actions in the streets of Stalingrad when my adolescent self, lo these many years ago, turned to the fine print at the back of the original Squad Leader rules booklet and read the following in the Designer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Notes: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Any knowledgeable wargamer will see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,4,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoi.wordherders.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}