Designing Historical Scenarios

What follows is an article I originally wrote for Lard Magazine. In the end I didn't submit it because I decided I'd be preaching to the already converted with that audience. At least here I can tweak my thoughts over time and link back to this piece when people ask about my approach...

At Steel Lard last year, Lee Storey mentioned that games of Sharp Practice at his local club degenerated into stand-up fights between one side lining a fence and the other lining a wall. Eventually the side behind the wall would win. Having played in Ken Welsh’s and Matt Slade’s excellent ACW games, Lee had now had something of an epiphany about how Sharp Practice scenarios should be designed. I’d like to add my two penn’orth on the subject, expanding to cover historical scenarios in general.

Troops in an entrenchment might be a recipe for a static,
firepower-dominated game. Good scenario design is needed
to avoid things bogging down.

Why Design Your Own Scenarios?

I can understand how, given the pressure to get a game on for the weekly club meet, it might be easy to just say, “OK, you bring your Germans, I’ll bring my Paras and we’ll do generic scenario 2 next week”. And sure, a decent set of rules can easily give you a really enjoyable game that way. Often a fun story will emerge from the adventures of our miniature troops even if we don’t take the time to build a background to the game. However, I prefer to produce something a little more bespoke and firmly rooted in history. 

I believe that our historical scenarios should give us:

1. A simulation - reflecting history and perhaps giving us a new insight into the historical period covered, 
2. A narrative - telling a tale that is engaging, entertaining, and redolent of the stories we read in history books, and
3. A game - an enjoyable, challenging contest that tests players’ skill and that plays to the strengths of the rules in use.

So how can we set about producing scenarios that do all that? In this article I’ll suggest that there are a number of steps we can follow to get us moving in the right direction. I propose that it can be useful to:

• Identify the constraints on our game,
• Decide on a theme,
• Understand the narrative flavour of our setting, and
• Understand how the rules can help make all of the above work together.

You can follow these steps in any order you like or even skip some of them altogether but for now let’s look at them in that order. We’ll then go on to look at some broad principles of scenario design that might help you putting together your first forays in this direction.

Although this article is focussed on historical scenarios
there's no reason the principles can't be applied to
alternative histories or even fantasy or sci-fi.

Game Constraints

For me, a blank page is the enemy of creativity. I find it a lot easier to start with some limits that will provide the landscape within which I’m to work. So for a given game, typical constraints might be:

• What figures/models do I have?  
• What do I have in the way of terrain and/or table space?
• How many players am I accommodating? 
• Which rules do I want to use?

You can answer these questions in any order you like. Then, having looked at the constraints as a limit, try flipping them around and seeing them as inspiration. By way of example, let’s suppose your current focus is, “I really want to play some Infamy Infamy and I need a scenario for four guys at the club next week.” 

So let’s consider the constraints in terms of figures. What do we have enough of to do a four player Infamy Infamy game next week? 

Let’s imagine that there are plenty of early Imperial Romans but for opposition we only have one-player's-worth of Gauls and a few Parthians. That being the case, a historical two-Romans-versus-two-barbarians game is probably not on (unless you’re prepared to diverge a long way from historical reality). Maybe we should focus our thinking on a Roman civil war? Shall we say the Crisis of 69CE - the so-called Year of the Four Emperors?

So, we find that we have ten groups of Legionaries, three of auxiliary cavalry, an ox-drawn carriage, and a small vignette depicting a Roman matron and her body slave? OK, it sounds like one of the players will get the cart, the lady and the task of getting them off-table by a particular road to avoid their capture by the usurper’s men. Let’s put her on one side of the table in whatever suitable building we have. Obviously we’ll need her to cross the table to escape. And let’s give her a single unit of auxiliary cavalry as an escort.

Civilians, their vehicles, and personality figures are
great for inspiring scenario ideas

What’s that? The only in-period building we have depicts a half-constructed temple of Jupiter? OK, we’ll not worry about that; we can come up with a narrative reason. Maybe her family are paying for the temple’s devotional wall paintings and she wants to instruct the artists?

Carrying on, maybe you don’t have enough Leader figures to turn out four players-worth of forces? So maybe the cavalry officer who was sent to collect the lady has been taken ill and is currently dying on a couch in the temple. The player controlling the cavalry escort will have to use Signum cards after the Tempus Fugit card to activate them.  At least until…

…maybe one of the other players represents another centurion sent to find out what happened to the first guy. His objective now becomes somehow to get to the temple and get the leaderless men and the lady moving at a more reasonable pace.

I wrote the above with no pre-planning, just about ten minutes’ worth of successively imposing constraints on my thinking (it’s Infamy Infamy, it’s four player, we only have enough Romans… etc. etc.) and then turning those restrictions into inspiration.

On further reflection I suspect the player controlling the lady and her escort may not have enough to do in the game so we’d probably need to revisit this later to see if we could add an additional feature to the plot. Remember you don't necessarily have to come up with the whole scenario in one sitting; leave time for inspiration to strike!

Whatever the constraints of your game are, I trust you can see that by mentally flipping them around you can, if you know the period well enough, use them to push you into creating a background for your game. To be honest you could stop there but let’s look at some other strategies.

Scenario Theme

Having a specific theme in mind is a way of answering the question “Why am I running this game?” This can help to focus your design. There are potentially several levels here. Our theme might be location-based, it might be to explore a particular tactical (or strategic) situation, or it might be to explore a particular aspect of the rules. Let’s look at some examples.

A location-based theme might be as simple as “I want to tell a story from the Hundred Days Campaign”. But how precisely are we defining our location? Are we saying “It’s 17th June 1815 just north of Quatre Bras” or are we happier using the old Hollywood cop-out of “Somewhere in Belgium, 1815”? A very precise setting might require that you deploy very specific terrain or particular units but it might also suggest some scenario aspect that wouldn’t otherwise occur to you. We’ll cover this in more detail below when we start to consider Narrative Snippeting.

A situational theme might be “Finding the best route through enemy lines to escape encirclement” or perhaps “How can Bf-109s effectively escort Stukas tasked with bombing RAF radar stations?”

I’m sure we can all think of situational themes that might get the creative juices flowing. For example if we’re playing a large skirmish game like Sharp Practice or Infamy Infamy we might want to use our game to explore:

• scouting ahead of the main army prior to a major encounter,
• fighting in a peculiarly hostile environment, perhaps to gain access to shelter as a fierce winter storm approaches,
• foraging for supplies, or
• struggling to form fleeing forces into a viable rearguard to the main army.

If we’re operating on a larger scale we might be:

• launching a strategic raid into the enemy’s rear,
• combining a flank march with an effective pinning attack elsewhere, or perhaps
• making an opposed river crossing.

A rules-focussed theme would imply that you’re setting up the scenario to test the rules’ handling of some particular situation. Personally I’ve run games to test how Chain of Command would work in flat desert with very little cover and also to see just how lethal Sharp Practice cavalry can be against infantry if overly dense terrain doesn’t get in the way.

When looking at a rules-focussed theme, of course location-specific considerations come in too. We might want to think about the way actions were fought in our particular setting. For example, if we want to use a cavalry force in an American Civil War game, we should take account of the way cavalry was employed at the time. These are not the days of the Napoleonic heavy cavalry division sweeping all before them on the field of battle. Cavalry is now used to reconnoitre ahead of the main army, to pursue fleeing enemies after a battle, or on sweeping strategic rides-around-the-enemy aimed at disrupting his logistics.

Flavour and Narrative Snippeting

Although there’s nothing wrong with saying, “This week we’re going to do a Peninsular War foraging mission”, I think you’ll get better player engagement with “This is Captain Wilson’s column trying to gather fodder for the artillery’s draft horses outside besieged Ciudad Rodrigo”.

However, if this is to work properly, we need to reflect the distinctive features of those particular situations in our game.  What makes our game specifically American Civil War rather than generic horse and musket. Even more precisely, what makes our World War 2 game recognisably the early hours of Operation Nordwind rather than just any other German attack against snow-bound Americans?

In discussing rules development, Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies has spoken of “tactical snippeting”. This is his process of identifying the tactical considerations that need to be reflected in a new set of rules given the level of command involved.  I’m proposing the term “narrative snippeting” to describe a similar process but with a focus on the story of our battle or campaign. 

It’s become my habit to capture brief notes on events as I read, or listen to podcasts, about any campaign I might end up gaming. I keep notes on scraps of paper but eventually transfer them to a word-processor document for each setting. Thus my file “ACW Narrative Snippets” is focussed on American Civil War Sharp Practice games and includes subheadings for specific subjects. These might focus on a short period of action (“Retreat from First Manassas”), on a particular unit (“Mississippi Marine Brigade”), or they might be just about the overall narrative flavour of the war (“General”). You can see some of my American Civil War narrative snippets here:

Scattered throughout my Narrative Snippets are bracketed comments in a different font suggesting how I might reflect that particular snippet using the rules. For example in the “Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga” section we find:

Attacking Union troops were from Thomas’s corps that had stood like a rock at Chickamauga. A chant of “Chickamauga, Chickamauga” encouraged the men onwards as they advanced under Confederate artillery fire. (Treat as Holy Man?)

The Game and the Rules

Having gathered these “flavour enhancers”, how do we apply them in designing the scenario? Which specific aspects of the rules can we use to reflect the features of the scenario we found though narrative snippeting?

One method is to use scenario-specific Random Events tables. 

By way of example, I learned from a lecture (available on Youtube) that a unit of Federal cavalry at Chickamauga were somewhat inconvenienced when they accidentally disturbed a hornet’s nest. Horses and riders were stung by the enraged insects. We might add a Movement Random Event - “Yellowjackets!” - to the Sharp Practice Movement Random Events table inflicting a point of shock on a unit so unfortunate as to roll double sixes.

My Harpers Ferry game had a complete Random Events table. As you can see it’s a mix of the suitable existing random events from What A Cowboy and others that reflect the specific events of 1859. 

If you look back at the original What A Cowboy Random Events Table you’ll also see that I’ve selectively removed those events (for example those involving Injuns and dynamite) that don’t fit with the Harper’s Ferry setting.

We might also want our scenario to allow for significant one-off events such as the arrival of reinforcements. Rules mechanisms that trigger random events do so, in general, infrequently. As such they can provide an timescale for the triggering of significant but rare developments in the scenario. “Check every time a Random Event occurs…” might be more appropriate to the rhythm of your scenario than “Check at the start of every turn…”. You might do this in addition to or instead of actually rolling on a random events table. 

An alternative way to trigger infrequent events is by making them “expensive” purchases, perhaps by spending one or two completed Chain of Command Dice or Bonanza tokens or by using four Command Flags in Sharp Practice or Infamy Infamy.

For example, if I may diverge from “proper history” for a moment, my Doctor Who-themed What A Cyberman game pits the silver robot types against Torchwood cannon fodder. The Doctor makes an appearance in the game but moves around the board under neither player’s control pursuing his own mission. I used the triggering event for random events (three sixes rolled on Action Dice) to determine when the Doctor would move to a new location. Having play-tested the game a few times, however, I decided this wasn’t occurring frequently enough but that once-a-turn was too frequent and too predictable. I therefore added the option for players to spend two Bonanza Tokens to move the Doctor. He would still only move in a predetermined fashion but his doing so would be more frequent and would make for interesting tactical choices for the players.

A similar technique was used by Al Seward in his excellent Arnhem game at a recent Ebor Lard. Al gave the German players the alternative of spending one or two complete Chain of Command dice to roll on a couple of reinforcement tables. This made for interesting tactical choices. Do I spend one die now and risk getting an insignificant addition to the force or do I wait for a second Chain of Command die so I’m guaranteed something more useful? This was more interesting than “reinforcements arrive on game turn 10”.

Remember that our Narrative Snippets can also be used here to identify interesting and historically relevant tactical decisions for the players.

When designing a scenario, I often provide for the possibility of infrequent but historically appropriate events by giving players scenario-specific tactical cards. These can be made quite easily using a home printer and some 200gsm card or with paper if you have a laminator or some of those plastic deck-protectors the collectible card game fans use.

An example of such a tactical card can be found in my latest Sharp Practice scenario - The Siege of Puebla 1863. In this, one of the players will receive a card called “The General Arrives”. This will allow them to place a figure on the appropriate table edge to represent a visiting senior officer. When activated the General can be used to rally Shock but every time he does so a die is rolled to see if his aides persuade him that discretion is the better part of valour and that he should withdraw. This provides for a couple of interesting tactical dilemmas for the player. Firstly “When do I play the card?” and secondly “Who arrives where?”.  The card can be used to summon a friendly General to help manage Shock on my force or an enemy general (on the far baseline) who I might be able to take out with sharpshooters thus reducing my opponent’s Force Morale!

It’s important, though, to make sure who-has-the-best-cards doesn’t dominate the game. I recommend that you make any tactical cards you create (a) one-use, (b) relatively minor in effect, and (c) a positive for the side playing them rather than a negative for the other side. Examples might be “A Stirring Speech” - you may reroll a die on the “Bad Things Happen Table” or perhaps “Skill and Drills” - you may reroll a hand of movement dice if you are changing formation.

Some General Principles

We may be inspired by narrative considerations to adjust the ratings of troops in our scenario. 

American accounts of the first German attacks of Operation Nordwind (in the early hours of 1st January 1945) speak of the SS troops shouting obscenities as they charged across the snowy fields of Alsace. We know from the German side that the men of 17th SS Division had been awake for 24 hours getting into position, they were hopped-up on stimulants to keep them awake, and they had had no opportunity to reconnoitre the ground before what was hoped to be a surprise attack. For this reason, my scenario rates them as Green troops in Chain of Command, this means they will be easier targets for the dug-in American pickets.

However, I’d advise caution here. You don’t want to predetermine the outcome of the game by overly weakening troops just because their historical equivalents performed badly on the day. Okay, so the 17th Foot and Mouth turned tail and ran from the French in the actual battle. That doesn’t mean we necessarily have to give them a poor morale rating. Remember that the rules already allow for a variety of outcomes from a given tactical situation. That rout remains a possible result; maybe they just threw snake eyes on the day?  

Then again if we can identify that the cause of their failure was the death of their beloved Colonel, we can certainly plan to, for example, roll twice and pick the worse result if the main leader becomes a casualty in our game.

Setting objectives for both sides is key to ensuring that we have an engaging scenario that also reflects the historical situation. 

In the Nordwind case we need to avoid allowing the Germans to sit behind a hedge and engage in a static firefight with the Americans. That wouldn’t make for a fun game and it wouldn’t capture the true historical flavour. Their orders were to penetrate the American front line. I would therefore set the victory conditions such that the Germans had to get two units off the American table edge.

Time pressure is probably relevant in this case too.  Perhaps by allowing the Americans to end the game by spending two complete Chain of Command dice we can encourage the German player to act in a way that’s consistent with the historical situation. If the Germans don’t achieve their aim by the time the Americans gain that second completed die, the battle is lost. 

As a general rule, though, I like to link the passage of time to particular action on the table itself. Let’s say that Major Brewster’s Confederate cavalry have been ordered to burn the stranded Union steam ram Princess of the West.  Captain Ellett’s Union infantry have taken up positions to oppose this intention while the ram’s crew complete the task of refloating the stricken vessel.

This immediately puts Brewster under time pressure as the crew are building towards a dice total that will eventually see his objective floating off down river.

As another general rule, I think it’s desirable, especially in a multi-player game, to have action happening at both ends of the table rather than have all attention converge on a single point. In the this case, we could have two Union players; one running Ellett’s covering force and the other in charge of the ram crew and their immediate guards. 

Of course we’ll want to give the sailor player more to do than just making Task rolls. To add a little more jeopardy I’d suggest adding some Confederate guerrillas firing on the crew from the trees lining the river. This immediately gives us a role for a second Confederate player who can potentially buy more time by slowing the work.

This leads into another principle. Try to give each player more than one thing to worry about. Perhaps the Union encampment, near the stranded vessel, contains the valuable cargo they’ve had to off-load. Along with the cargo is a member of Congress who was travelling on the boat to observe the conduct of the war in the western theatre. He’s no use in a command role but getting him killed would be career-threatening and, what’s more, the guy insists on trying to “help”. Meanwhile the guerrillas are accompanied by President Davis’s beautiful grand-niece, a crack shot with a carbine but equally valuable as a political asset.

Finally, and this brings us back to Lee’s original dissatisfaction with static Sharp Practice games, I would insist that a final and perhaps most important design consideration would be manoeuvre should win the day. A static firefight is boring and ultimately comes down to an exercise in statistical probability - as Lee says, the guys behind the wall win eventually. Give me, any day, a game in which victory is achieved by a skilled flanking march or by the perfectly timed commitment of a carefully hoarded reserve. 

Setting your scenario at night-time, as with this game in the 
burned-out suburbs of Riga in 1812, can lead to more
manoeuvre as firepower is less likely to dominate.

Major factors in producing a battle of manoeuvre are the terrain and the placement of objectives. One of my worst gaming experiences was in an encounter battle where the only significant defensible terrain was a built up area in the centre of the table. My opponent got there first and the game was effectively over before it had begun. The fact that my neighbour’s air support blundered and knocked out my long-range anti-tank assets before I’d got moving was merely icing on the cake!

A key skill for any military leader is the ability to identify hidden avenues of approach. A key aspect of scenario design is to provide at least the possibility of getting attacking troops into a key location without being shot to pieces on the way. We don’t have to make things easy for the attacker, though. Perhaps the safe way is slower and events elsewhere require a quick win? 

And that brings us to what’s perhaps the most general advice I can give here. Anything that forces the player to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of competing options is A Good Thing when it comes to scenario design.