I was recently reminded by a friend that wargames rules are essentially time and motion studies in practice. That thought has crossed my mind from time to time in the past but I never really gave it serious thought before. Many years ago I studied some of the social aspects of industrial working methods. This brought up the rise of time and motion studies and their use to create more profitable work flows by increasing the speed at which things are done or reducing the number of people who are required to carry out a process. Having been on the receiving end of time and motion reviews I'm not a huge fan as it usually results in everyone having to do more for the same pay or someone losing their job. However, the rise of time and motion analysis also seems to coincide with the rise of wargaming as a hobby for people outside of a military context. Which leads me to wonder if there is a link? After all wargames rules are a measure of how much violence a set number of of people can do to another in a defined period of time, how far they can move in that same period and what factors exist to vary the outcomes. We add other imponderables like command and control which still part of the same time and motion equation really and morale, which isn't.
It's always the morale rules that cause me trouble as it isn't easy to create valid statistical models. I suppose that is because we are dealing with the psychology of an emotion. Primarily fear in our case coupled with the impact of the herd instinct on group behaviour.
So what do we think, when we are gaming are we avatars of heroic warriors or canny commanders, or are we really channelling a bloke in a long brown coat clutching a clipboard and stopwatch?
We'll this is interesting, my late father was a Work Study man by profession, but he didn't 'get' my childhood wargaming thing, I think he was disappointed I didn't go for model railways! Now I'm returning to this stuff, it's sadly too late to talk about it with him. As to morale rules, well I think 'Bonus Schemes' figured largely in his job..
ReplyDelete