War Games: Mechanics to motivate players

You really should look at Struggle of Empires for a lovely example of how at least some of the issues you raise can be addressed without forcing players to act outside of their own personal desires. Through the Alliance system, whereby all the players are in one of two alliances, players have the chance to pursue their own interests but may still have to act if circumstances arise in which they are forced to do so. What I like the most is that the game system also manages to impose enough constraints such that players don't have a totally free hand, and yet they don't feel like constraints during play (at least not until the crucial moment when all your plans fall apart ;-))

This is definitely an interesting question, and I'm wrestling with some similar concerns in a game I'm starting on about the 30 Years War.

First, at the outset, let me say that if you want a combative game, the game's victory conditions must encourage players to attack one another. There's simply no way around that; it's always better to encourage players to want to fight because it's a viable route to victory than to force them to attack one another simply because the rules say they have to.

In terms of players being natural enemies without the rules explicitly telling you which "side" you're on, one thing I'm going to try in my game is to have players restricted as to who they CANNOT attack. In my game, the rules will give each player one or two alignments, either Protestant or Catholic, and either Pro- or Anti-Hapsburg, and you will be forbidden from directly attacking a player who shares your alignment. This means that France can't directly attack Spain (because they're both Catholic), but they can fund Protestant armies who are willing to attack them. It's slightly ahistorical, but it's sufficiently historically motivated to be reasonable, and it should do an adequate job nudging players to attack the "right" opponents.

To further nudge this, I expect to give players individual goals, and it's here that I hope to incorporate historic effects as well. For example, a factor in the 30 years war was the Spanish war with the Netherlands, and the desire to use the Rhine to transport troops from Italy to the Netherlands. How can I encourage the Spain player to want to do this? Well, one way would be to make the Netherlands valuable resource-wise (which it was), but the problem with that is that it might encourage other players (France, especially) to try to take the Netherlands for themselves, which didn't happen. So what I may do instead is to make control of the Netherlands part of Spain's victory condition (or at least something that confers victory points, or whatever).

I think this latter could be helpful to you -- simply make certain territories part and parcel of victory, and put those key territories behind enemy lines, and players will have no choice but to attack each other. (And of course, it doesn't have to be territories that are the flashpoint for hostility).

But the first point I made is the key; the game will only work if players feel that combat is a tool to achieve a specific goal, and not just something that is done because it's a war game.

-Jeff

There's a very simple way to make a player care about the fate of, say, Alsace-Lorraine, and that is to make its liberation a victory condition. Or at least, very profitable.

At the start of the game, players might draw an identity with specific victory conditions. Fulfill all of these, and win. Or you might draw secret missions from a large pile. Fulfilling a secret mission gives you money, power, or simply counts toward a larger "victory quota".

Although the concept of secret missions in a war game sounds very good in theory, I've yet to see it done well. Maybe someone on this board will be the first?

One thing that may help is the design of the game board. In Geopolitical "contests", factors that impact the psychology of the participants play a large part. While the historic feeling of injustice won't be present in your players, other psychology can come into play.

For example, if the board shows areas of your country are somewhat isolated geographically, surrounded by a hostile border, or otherwise vulnerable, the player will feel the need to strengthen those areas, and this may be seen by the other player as a threatening move, or a massing of forces, or even just a slipping away of advantage. All of these usrge the other player to action.

Another consideration is size. Being Korea, and having the looming masses of both Russia and China filling the rest of the board will be intimidating. Having Japan across the way won't make me feel any safer, but if the board is designed to show a lot of these other countries, I'll feel intimidated from the get-go. This defensiveness may make me more militant, to try to discourage aggression by my neighbors.

I've been thinking about it a bit more, and, along the lines I was mentioning before, using normal psycological factors as motivating forces, here are a few others:

1. Cranking up the thermostat in the room.
2. Each of the players must destroy something irreplacable of personal significance to one of the others before the game begins.
3. Cities and civilian centers are assigned "values", such as "car", "saving account", "credit record", "all your clothing except what you're wearing", "house", and so on. When a city is lost, that players actual item of value is destroyed.
4. Players are hooked up to car batteries, and the loss of units is accompanied by appropriate shocks.
5. The player's circulatory systems are connected by open-ended transfusion gear to a large metal tub beneath the table. Resources spent during the game incur a cost in cc's of actual blood loss.

These are just some of the ideas I think will really make that next wargame stand out in your memory. After all, with proper motivation, even the shallowest wargame can become a contest of epic proportions.

(hello all...been away for a long while for any that remember me)

Anyways....
Sounds to me like you are basically wrestling with the exact same issues that any RvR(realm vs. realm) MMORPG developer runs smack into.

True, you are working on a board game so your interested are definitively different, though fundamentally the same.

As for references to other board games, considering what you have stated as your desires, I would take a good look at DIPLOMACY, as it can be "saved" and continued into the next week fairly easily due to the nature of it's lengthy political and strategic turns.

Further, I believe you are mistaken in stating that you are looking for a mechanic free motivation for political rivalry and then comparing that to an RPG and it's characters.

PnP RPG, maybe...but that's a different ball game completely.

Online RPG's...now, they wrestle with player motivation for nearly everything in any of the games.
The only one's that have lacked motivational mechanics, are the same one's that are either outdated by now, or failed attempts.

As I always point out when working with folks on RvR mechanics (as is part of my occupation as of late) I simply state to go look at the game of RISK and find out if you can make players want to fight each other without providing a mechanic for them to want to.

For instance, in RISK, it's resource gain...Land.
Simply Land. Your goal is to take all the Land that you can.

That's it.

In RvR MMORPG's we want players to do the same thing. We want them to take Land. We want them to take as much of it as they can get a hold of, and we want them to fight each other wildly for it.

True, we don't want to put a yellow marker on some land and reward them with 5,000 XP when they reach the land and own it...no.

We want them to want the Land for it's resource return.

Just as in RISK, each piece of Land tallied up to your returning amount of troop supply, so Land in an RvR MMORPG returns appropriated resources relevant to the system's other aspects.

For instance, you may be after a new piece of Land for your "faction"/country because this new land has several rich mines on them where your present land has none.

Further, you might also want the land so that you can better get to another piece of land near the piece you are after at the time.

Point is, you are looking at a board game that sounds very similar to what developers look at when looking at RvR MMORPG's.

You seem to be attempting to slap it into a board game and remove the layer of the game where individual characters exist, and then to turn around and treat the country as the characters instead.
This is like cutting off an RvR MMORPG at the Leadership level and removing all other players from the game.

What drives those players?
Typically, as stated, Land and it's resources, Money, and further...one thing that you have forgotten...fun of fighting.

Make the combat really, really interesting between two countries, and really, really fun so that after all the politicking, economizing, alliance making/breaking, what players look forward to is some straight out elbow banging....

Often time when playing DIPLOMACY, which is HEAVY in political talk, alliance deals, and back stabbing, I felt like I just wanted to roll some dice and get messy and dirty with some good old RISK or AXIS & ALLIES mechanics.

So...while looking at your mechanical free dream of warfare motivation...keep in mind to make the warfare FUN. That may be enough motivation in itself. ;)