Kandahar, Afghanistan!

How about Korea?

ER.... what used to be Korea.....

Hello.
We ran a Korean War II scenario about a year ago up here as a club game.

We used Command Decision, had a division plus of NKPA and about a regiment of ROK. The NKPA managed to forge a hole in the ROK line after shooting several of the Korean variant of M-1 Abrams from the rear by helicopter. The NKPA ADA types managed to shoot down an Apache, which made the ROK more circumspect than perhaps they should have been.

The game was well received, especially by a couple of players who really don't like to play anything before World War II.

Bob Bailey

I would suggest that you not have players be the bad guys, or if you can't run the bad guys and GM, then get one player to do it, and have all of the actions of the bad guys planned out in advance. 

Peter Rice and I have done this many times with games at several levels.  What it does is actually simplify the GM's problems.  When you have the enemy actions completely planned out, you have no worries about the enemy actions changing in a way that would be implausible or completely out of character because of the opponents actions.  When you have side vs. side, (as opposed to side vs. GM) you have the problems of the God'e eye view, which allows players to act on things that the little lead minis would never be able to see or react to.  Also you have the problem of one side shooting at Americans, which would be fine for say an ACW game,  where no one has been in Confederate or Union uniform for 150ish years, but maybe not so good for now as you suggested in your initial post.

Don't get me wrong I think that modern (80's to Now) is a perfectly reasonable set of thousands of "what if" scenarios.  But I think, particularly for modern stuff, Side(players) vs. GM is the way to go.  If as in Bob's post you were doing a Korean Peninsula thing, its much easier to make the OPFOR behave like the OPFOR if the GM plays them, and plays them to doctrine and plans out their actions (of course there has to be some 'if-then' in the OPFOR plan); than if you have players operating say Russians like Americans or Taliban like Americans.

Just my two or three cents.

Tim

Hello.
We've had players play the bad guys all the way back to the old Fulda Gap stuff in the 70's and nobody had cattle over it. Even had folks play the VC and NVA in Viet Nam games and campaigns. The players tend to play both sides like the US (not unlike in the various Arab-Israeli games), but it's a good time.

Prior to Desert Storm, we played a Command Decision II (actually the modern variant) game of the pending invasion of Iraq, with the US in brigade strength attacking a division of regular Iraqis dug in at the border with all the fixins and a Republican Guard brigade arriving in support. We thought the US would have huge casualties getting through and would probably be stopped.

The US walked through with almost no casualties. The Iraqis found that their main defense against Apache helicopters was to wait for them to run out of ammo (now THAT's air defense!), and that the M1s were practically invulnerable. Iraqi casualties were huge and the remains could not get away, so they would end up POWs.

We thought that that was way out of whack and that we must have worked with wrong information somewhere. Much to our surprise, it worked almost exactly as we gamed it.

That made us rethink our scoffing during the Cold War that the Soviets feared an invasion by NATO forces. If they had gamed it like we had, they may well have had a well-founded concern.

Bob Bailey

Gotta go with Tim on this one, except I would say GM and an assistant rather than a player run bad guys.  Just simplifies everything, having a nice bad guy mission/even sequence list makes everything run pretty smoothly.  This method can really help to keep the game from getting bogged down with fire and movement too.  Also gives the GM much more flexibility to punish stupidity and reward brilliance and by that I mean what I have heard called "giving the monsters an even break". That said, if you have time and willing accomplises (sp?) then test it both ways and see which way you and the players liked best. 

Hello.
I have done both recently for Viet Nam. In the first game, I was the VC and I tried (key term) to do what they did and cause as many US casualties as I could while getting away if possible at the end. That is a lot harder than it sounds, especially without radios.

In the second game, Steven Jonason ran the Main Force VC and I ran the locals. I got my timepiece laundered by the advancing US company (-), losing 2/3 of my force. Steven commented afterward that "Everything was going fine until the US artillery showed up." I'm sure a lot of VC and NVA survivors could echo that sentiment. Rick Watson's US platoon hunkered down in a rice paddy was badly chewed by Steven before Rick got the artillery going.

I think that part of the deal is what sort of game you're doing, on what scale. The Korean War II scenario simply couldn't have been done any other way than having two sides like most games, because the NKPA was too large for one or two players to play. The Viet Nam scenarios had a couple of short VC platoons, which were much better suited to having everybody else come after.

Bob Bailey

Yup - gotta agree with Tim and Shawn, though Bob has some valid points as well. Having done it both ways, I'd say that it depends on what you want to achieve at game's end . . .
For large complicated games, having one side played by GM and assistant is the way to go. It means that the "bad guys" are already set up with their game objectives AND plan so that none of the "bird's eye view" can interfere. Also - an assistant or GM can afford to be patient while the players figure out what to do and how to execute - which means that ALL the players were engaged MOST of the time. Nobody likes to come to a game and twiddle their thumbs waiting for their turn!
I'm reminded of a WWII game we played - it was Gold Beach and the players were pitted against the GM (Peter) and assistant (myself). My job was to set the deployment of the Germans and then give them umbrella orders subject to the parameters that Peter devised. Pete's job was to adjudicate. Since the Germans were going to act and react based on pre-defined orders we were both free to help the players "figure it out." The scenario was quite complicated for the Brits as they had to decide how and by what means they would land their units and establish a beach-head as well as conduct the attack once they got there. With all that the Brits had to do it would have been far too chaotic and time consuming to have players on both sides. As it was, it took (I think) 3 game sessions to complete as well as the whole day prior to the game that it took me to set up the Germans. If you've got a table like ours you can cover it and come back to it each week - but most people don't have that luxury. AND if you're running a convention game of this magnitude time constraints are definitely an issue. It also means that the bad guys (GM and assistant) can play the game with relatively accurate actions and NOT get bogged down in the "competition" of the game. Just an example, but you get the idea . . . By the by - it was wildly successful and we played it twice. Just wish that I'd had the chance to play on the Brit side! A great challenge.
On the flip side - you could have players on both sides, but it would mean that many of the planning decisions would have already been made by the GM according to history (one hopes). Depending on what you like this could be a good thing or NOT. Personally I like the "think and sweat" type games. Too many times I've heard players say "what wit got us in this position?" Players have a tendency to want to make their own plans. With time constraints being what they are, this scenario would have to be dumbed down to a point that more sophisticated gamers would object to. So, as stated above - I guess it depends on what you want to achieve . . .

If the Taliban must react like Taliban, then the game master has to run the Taliban. If the Taliban are supposed to react like Americans, with AK 47s, then it doesn't matter. If you want the Americans to have the "experience" of fighting the Taliban then the Taliban must react like Taliban. That means that the GM must know exactly what he's getting into. Consider the situation where you have three war veterans playing the Americans. They have their knowledge, experience, and prejudices brought to the table. You must provide them with some semblance of reality - THEIR REALITY.

Andy

All,

Great points! I agree that I should play the insurgent forces. Most (if not all) are "invisible" until they make their presence known by either firing on US troops OR discovered by a US stand searching for them.

Christopher

Hello.
If you're going to run a fairly large game and have the GM(s) run the "bad guys", do two things:

a. Require the lower-level commanders to sit at the table, not stand. That makes them see the terrain more like they actually would.

b. Put upper-level commanders somewhere else, working from a map. Make them responsible for artillery coordinates and such (especially if you do the old school thing of calling the fire by distance right/distance up from the lower left corner of the board).

That will make for a more realistic game for the players.

Bob Bailey

Hello.
Another consideration came to my alleged mind today.

We have a gamer in our group who is a graduate of Annapolis. He never plays modern naval scenarios because he knows too much about how these things are fought by the USN (and perhaps by the Red Navy as well). Has anyone run into similar things?

I have had Viet Nam vets play Viet Nam games with little difficulty, although the ability of one of them to know where an ambush was before he hit it (the ambushers were not on the board) was a bit disconcerting....

Bob Bailey

Instincts never die!

Hello.
Another consideration came to my alleged mind today.
We have a gamer in our group who is a graduate of Annapolis. He never plays modern naval scenarios because he knows too much about how these things are fought by the USN (and perhaps by the Red Navy as well). Has anyone run into similar things?
I have had Viet Nam vets play Viet Nam games with little difficulty, although the ability of one of them to know where an ambush was before he hit it (the ambushers were not on the board) was a bit disconcerting....
Bob Bailey

-omemin

Bob - I've tried to get Pete to run or play a Viet Nam game but he won't - says it's still too close.

Andy

Andy,

   Same reason I won't play modern naval stuff, or Afghanistan/Iraq. My son's over in Afghanistan and it's just a might too close to home.