Good and Bad Scenarios

[Larry Reese]

My thoughts on this (and unfortunately I've only had time to read the first few posts) are that, for me, the ideal scenario is one in which the units/terrain are as historical as possible (with some tweaks for game playability of course) and the victory conditions properly reflect what one side or the other should be capable of. By this, I mean, if the attacker has overwhelming superiority and will obviously break through even if all he does is drive straight forward, he should be judged by how much better he did than that rote outcome. Did he encircle and destroy the entire enemy force with only minor losses while moving over half his own force off the board, exploiting a major victory? Did the defender lose all of his units, but cause incredible casualties amongst the attackers forces and sufficiently delay any possibility of a timely exploitation? The players performance in his role should be judged, not just whether or not a particular objective is taken, and it should be carefully balanced to reward either side for an exceptional performance. And this, for me, is the hardest thing to do with a scenario.

It is relatively easy to run up an OOB, an okay map, and then experiment with how many units from each side should be put on the map in a given manner in order to give a balanced outcome (saying those not deployed were "unavailable" for whatever reason). And these are generally fun to play. But they are not as satisfying to me as the scenario in which as much accuracy as possible is kept in the order of battle and it is the victory levels that have been finely tuned to accommodate and reward the possible results. Unfortunately, this scenario, at least in my experience, takes incredibly in-depth testing to get right. (The one previously described, again, in my experience, requires testing, but it can be truncated and some short cuts can be used - if someone has a system allowing the second type of scenario to be tested using a truncated or rapid testing program, please let me know!).

Also, a word on goals - lots of players like to have the goal specifically spelled out for them, "take X hill," "hold this position," etc..., and while that is fine for small scale scenarios, ones that try to capture larger actions do not really lend themselves to this simple formula in my opinion. Many of my scenarios offer both sides several paths to victory that the commander must choose between for themselves. Not everyone's cup of tea I know.

Anyway, just my thoughts,

LR