Very Large Scale Games

Background

Back around 1990 I got involved with very large wargames at MIT. These games were invariably based in WWII, 20mm scale and attended by 20 to 30 people. The rules we used were Command Decision II by GDW. There wasn't much about those rules that lent them to such large games excepts for the fact that one player could command a battalion easily.

Here is where we played a majority of the games: The Walker Memorial Building at MIT on Memorial Drive in Cambridge Massachusetts.



The second floor has an open area that can accomodate a 20' x 20' game pretty easily. And that is about the size of our largest games at the time. This allowed us to actually do a North Africa game without distorting the gun tables. Those extreme range shots made possible only due to large calibur weapons with excellent optics and trained crews. The frustration of seeing your enemy and knowing you'll be dead before closing into an acceptable range with him was all to real.

The games were rarely attractive - with such a large space we laid down tape for roads, clumps of trees as needed (excepts North Africa of course!) and that was about it. The most attractive game we did in that space was Omaha Beach. This a magnificent set up with sculpted beach, breaks and hills with bunkers. The Higgins landing craft would sail up and then it was the heart pounding race to find cover in the shingle. It was magnificent. We later ran that game at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA. I had the great privilage of running the 116th RCT up Dog Green into Vierville. It was a privilage because one of the spectators was a veteran Ranger who served at that battle. Another spectator who also had been speaking at the Museum that day was a Naval officer who showed us a section of the "map" that was used for planning before the battle and control afterwards. It was molded foam rubber, to scale, and had more detail than even our miniatures layout. In fact it had detail down to where fences were. I was shocked that they had that much information but they had done a number of photo recon flights and military intelligence did a great job of putting it all together. Both gentleman were interested in the way we simulated the battle and could appreciate the level of abstraction we had to take it.

Operation Market Garden

By far the largest game I'd ever been in was Operation Market Garden by Martin Baber and Sam Scott. This was a monster recreation of the battle. It literally had the entire Highway to Hell for XXX Corps to push up while all 11 bridges were air assaulted by the combined British and American forces. For 2 years these men labored to build the terrain and pull it all together. They tested sections of the game. My first exposure to it was fighting Nijmegan at an after-hours game at "Fall In" in 2002. This was just the city setup and it was gorgeous. Sam introduced his special, simplified rules for the game. It was a blast to play. We learned the style Sam was going for in running the game. The objective was for all potential game masters to learn how they intended the rules to work and then implement them that way when the whole thing was run. 6 months later we did 17 feet of the game at Havoc and we got to try acting as judges who pushed the Allies while all the players pushed the Germans. This allowed for drop in/drop out play as the German's had no "real" overall plan - just piecemeal attacks to try to slow down XXX Corps and retake any of the vital bridges. Finally at Fall In, 2003 we ran all 60-70 feet of game. Over 100 people participated and it was spectated on by pretty much everyone over the course of two days.

I made a film of it but the original files are lost (I have the hard drive from the dead machine so it is possible in the future I'll be able to get them back.) Here is a trailer made for the film:



Here is a picture from the game (photo edited of course!):

From HMGS-MidSouth

Running your own large scale game

The key to running a large game is making sure everyone is actively participating. Secondary to this is making sure you have distributed the load of Referree to enough skilled people who understand your vision. Optionally making the game visually appealing so that the whole spectacle really stands out.

Active Participation

Active participation is paramount. It is hard enough gathering a few gamers together. Gathering a large number is like herding cats. Keeping them active keeps them around. Nothing is worse than a game falling apart after so much set up and a couple of hours of play because people have become bored and walked off. One way of doing this is setting up the turns so that player interaction is constantly needed. Another way is having the GM's play one side and manage the players. In any event, the busier the players are the more engaged they will be in playing the game.

Referee Load

If a referee is overloaded he may be having fun but he isn't giving all the players that need his attention the full measure they need. Keep the game system simple enough so that people don't have to ask a lot of questions.

Good terrain and models

Large games benefit from good terrain and models. Large games have depth that smaller ones don't so they photograph better. The better the terrain and models are the better the game looks. You can also do things with larger games that you have trouble doing with smaller ones. In Operation Market Garden Martin and Sam created vignets of various things - like surprise scenarios. For example they modeled a crashed ME-109e and the pilot. This was randomly dropped into the game and suddenly it didn't matter what was the overall objective - everyone wanted to capture the pilot. It was randomness like this that really gave the game a feeling of authenticity - of being part of a story instead of a simple tactical situation.

Conclusion

Large games can be beautiful and can be fun. A lot of work up front is needed and you need to stick to the advice above to keep the game flowing. You may need to do a bit of work in fine tuning rules to get the mega game to work or you may find commerical sets work fine for this scale of a game. Be prepared to be flexible - no simulation works perfectly and some things can't be forseen before game day so keep your mind sharp and be ready to implement fixes if anything gets out of hand. Just remember - it's a game and it is meant to be fun!