Creating Friction

A couple of posts ago I asked where the sweet spot in creating friction in a game lies.  I ended up considering two main areas:

• Causes of movement friction
• Causes of command and control friction

To me these overlap as one reason for movement friction is a failure of command to order troops to move at the right time.  So in terms of game design I would consider the first to be terrain created movement friction.  Everything else I'm interested in comes down to personalities.  I should also make it clear that I'm interested in mass battles in the pre-industrial age.  

So lets start by looking at terrain friction.  I'm sure everyone reading this is used to terrain effects in wargames, usually there is a system where terrain is rough or difficult or slowing or some other description of its effect.  The issue for me is that all terrain of the same type has the same effect every time but the real world isn't like that.  In the real world I drive on the M1 quite a lot (as, it appears, does most of Britain. Often all at the same time from what I can tell!).  In game terms its a 'road' and most rule sets will allow additional movement for being on a road.  On average that may be true.  For the same conditions and volume of traffic I can go faster on the M1 then on a two lane A road.  Here's the thing though it isn't a constant speed, I don't always move at the same speed,  I don't always get the same percentage move increase for being on a 'road', sometimes I don't move at all.  It varies depending on external factors.  Volume of traffic, road conditions, road works, breakdowns, accidents there are a huge number of variables which conspire to make my journey slower than I would like.  

The same should hold good in our rules.  Not everywhere and not all the time of course we don't want the friction to make the game unplayable but there should be some uncertainty about whether Grouchy or Blucher arrive at Waterloo in time to change the outcome.  For us the question is not just how to create friction but how much to create.

Friction, or the lack of it is important

In terms of playability there has to be a clear boundary to the area we are going to have a variable effect within.  Otherwise we can't easily tell where we have to make the check.  It shouldn't vary once established both to make game play easy to manage and because we are really only dealing with short periods of time where ground conditions will not have much time to change.  

I'm going to go with whats easy so sticking with linear features and area features.  In other words the drop terrain placed onto a game table or mat.  Streams, ditches, hedges fields, roads. tracks woods, marshes,built up areas and similar.  These will all have an standard movement effect which should be the default effect.  Some but not all of these will have random movement effects, or in a campaign setting a variable impacted upon by weather conditions.  To keep the time cost of the rule down I would only apply variable terrain to a few distinct areas or features.  Not all of them though sometimes that smooth green field is exactly that, but sometimes it's riddled with rocks or rabbit holes.

Lets look at a river as an example to see how this works.  The usual type of rule will say something like 'a shallow river can be forded at half movement' so that rule slows troops but the player knows for certain the effect and can plan for it. To create less certainty and some friction I might divide the river up into sections of 100 paces in length and test each each of those sections when the first unit reaches it.  We can create a table based upon throwing 2D6 so that we get a nice bell curve of possible outcomes.  This lets us produce extreme outcomes but with a low chance of them coming up by allocating them to the low probability ends of the curve.  I might even give a reason for the effect for game report purposes or I might just describe the effect.  That would give something like this table:

2 - Impossible to cross for any units

3 - No crossing for wheeled vehicles or foot, horse may cross at quarter speed and are disrupted

4 - Impossible to cross for wheeled transport.  Foot and horse may cross at quarter speed and are disrupted

5 - Can be crossed with care all units throw 1D6 on a 6 double the move penalty otherwise normal penalties apply
6 - Normal penalties apply

7 - Normal penalties apply

8 - Normal penalties apply

9 - Easy crossing point for all units throw 1D6 on a 6 halve the crossing penalty

10-  Horse and foot cross at normal penalty Wheeled transport at quarter move penalty

11- Horse and foot can cross at only half normal move penalty wheeled transport normal penalty

12- All units may cross without movement penalty

Another useful effect is to restrict the number of troops who can pass through a choke point such as  gates into fields, bridges, narrow roads passing through villages and similar points which the unit can't go around.  A choke point has a value for the number of men or horse it can allow past in a turn.  I found a formula on Google that calculated this based upon the width of the gap and the number of men or horses etc who can pass by side by side per minute.   The length of the constricted passage should be taken into account but I simplified and assumed a single gate effect rather than a long narrow passage, the math was simpler!

Or for minimum overhead (as suggested by Extra Crispy) you could just add or subtract a dice roll to or from the normal move distance each turn. Its your game after all use what ever works for you.