TacOps IRC CPX Umpiring FAQ ver 1.0. Created: August 27, 1996; last modified November 3, 1997. Creators/maintainers: James Sterrett, james@sterrett.demon.co.uk Chimera (John Jones), chimera@feist.net Special thanks to: I. L. Holdridge (a.k.a. "Major H.") for making TacOps and for a great deal of dedicated support of the CPX project. Also to John McKinney (Riki Tikki) and Chimera for numerous suggestions. Also to everybody who has played in them; and you'll get your name in here if you help get this FAQ into shape. When we next update it. Legal stuff: ** This FAQ is copyrighted by James Sterrett, 1996; James Sterrett and John Jones, 1997. You are free to distribute it to anyone, through any medium, provided you distribute it for free, acknowledge us as the author, and the contents are unchanged. It is accurate to the best of our knowledge. We are not liable for anything you might choose to do with it. If you use it to predict the stock market and lose millions of dollars, you lose millions of dollars and we are not responsible. If you print it out and your child feeds it to a goldfish, which then dies, your goldfish is dead, your child is heartbroken, and we are not responsible. If you read it, and you lose in the next TacOps CPX you play in, you lost and can try again next game; we are not responsible. Equally, if you make millions using it to predict the stock market, or it nurtures your goldfish into a gold-medallist in the piscine Olympics, or you win the next TacOps CPX you play in, it's your money, your fish, or your glory and we have no claim on them. TacOps is a trademark of I. L. Holdridge. The computer game TacOps is the copyright of I. L. Holdridge. Tacops is now published by Avalon Hill (formerly it was published by Arsenal Publishing). If you are pirating TacOps you are robbing Major H. and Avalon Hill: you are scum. We hereby expressly grant unlimited use of this document to I. L. Holdridge and those he appoints to be co-maintainers of the TacOps name and product. Please send any corrections, questions, additions, or constructive criticism to: James Sterrett [james@sterrett.demon.co.uk] or Chimera (John Jones) [chimera@feist.net]. (Flames to /dev/null .) ---------- 1.0 What is the purpose of this FAQ? 2.0 I want to umpire a TacOps CPX. What do I need to do? 2.1 What do I need beyond that needed to play in a CPX? 2.2 What do I need to do before the game? 2.2.1 Checklist: Before announcing scenario. 2.2.2 Checklist: After announcing the scenario, before the game. 3.0 Basic Mechanics of Umpiring 3.1 Overview of "how it works" 3.2 Checklist: Reporting to the players each turn 3.3 Detailed version of checklist - sample set of reports 4.0 "Issues" 4.1 Player Micromanagement and its prevention 4.2 Your mistakes and what to do about them 4.3 Pitfalls for Umpires - Watch out! 4.4 Tips on managing the workload N.0 Scenario design tips. ---------- 1.0 What is the purpose of this FAQ? This FAQ is intended to explain to prospective IRC CPX Umpires what they're thinking about diving into. It is intended to ease the learning process and help them be better umpires. Hopefully it will succeed. Send suggestions to James Sterrett [james@sterrett.demon.co.uk] or Chimera (John Jones) [chimera@feist.net]. If the nature of an IRC CPX is unclear to you, please refer to the TacOps IRC CPX FAQ, which can be found at [http://www.sterrett.demon.co.uk/] and [http://www.feist.com/~chimera/]. 2.0 I want to umpire a TacOps CPX. What do I need to do? Quite a bit. You should be under no illusions: umpiring a CPX is a lot of work. It is also a lot of fun! However, don't underestimate the amount of time and effort you will need to expend to get a CPX run. Plan on a minimum of a two-week commitment to a given CPX. During the first week you will prepare the scenario and announce it to get players; during the second week you deal with the players getting organized; at the end of the second week you get to run the game. Then you get to write up an AAR (After-Action Report) to let everybody know what happened and point up any lessons learned. It is not necessary to have first played in a CPX but it is highly recommended. 2.1 What do I need beyond what I need to play in a CPX? You must have a copy of TacOps. For the most part you should have the CPX version of TacOps (this will be standard with TacOps-98 once it comes out.) The CPX version of TacOps is available only from Major H. He will provide it to you only if he thinks you have a good reason to have it. A good reason tends to translate to "I'm planning to run a CPX on day X and just announced it over the TacOps list." You need to be able to print out the marked-up maps players send you. You can help in this by telling the players what format of map you can handle! Expect to see .bmp and .gif files at a minimum. Conversion programs can be found at [http://www.shareware.com/]. You need to be comfortable with TacOps and able to enter orders into it with speed. You must be comfortable with the 6-digit UTM coordinate system. See Section 8.0 of the IRC CPX FAQ for more on this. You need to be able to use IRC and be comfortable using it. (See the IRC CPX FAQ for more on IRC.) You need to have figured out how to use DCC file sends, and must be comfortable with switching between channels on IRC. 2.2 What do I need to do before the game? Lots of organization! 2.2.1 Checklist: Before announcing scenario. - Prepare the scenario. (See XX, Scenario-Writing Tips, for more on this.) - Figure out a minimum and maximum number of players per side. The minimum is almost always 1 player per side. The Maximum is more flexible. As a rule of thumb, assume that each player can command 4 "things" and that any group of players can have a Side Commander as well. "Things" vary by the scale of the scenario, but typically players command a battalion of roughly 4 companies. - Write up a detailed set of orders for each side. While you may want to leave out some information, the players need to know what their forces are at the start of the game, and what their mission is. - Figure out when you can run the scenario. Typical start times are around 16:00-18:00 GMT on a Saturday with the expectation that the game will run at least 6 hours. The umpire should expect to be online 30 minutes to an hour before the game begins and often will be online for up to 9 hours solid. -Set up the Tacops scenario. Simply deploy the troops into "parade formations" - big blocks laid out with no relation to terrain but close attention to a lay-out that corresponds to their organization. This is to ensure that you can find the relevant units when it comes time to deploy them properly. *Be sure to check that all the Preferences are set the way you want! * Set up the game as "Two Players: One Computer". Become adept at flipping back and forth between the Green and Red sides with keypresses. (On a PC: "ALT, O, Return" to get into and leave US orders; "ALT, O, O" to enter and leave Opfor orders. You have to leave one side explicitly before going into the other. Announce the game! Normally done over the Tacops list though postings to Internet groups isn't a bad idea. You need to tell people: -When the game will be held -What map will be used -What IRC channel it will be on (usually #tacops, you need to note the server) -Give a loose idea of the nature of the scenario. More players will be interested if you give more information; you must balance this against your attempts to hide the nature of the enemy from the opposing sides. -Give a loose idea of the size if possible - how many players per side would work best? -Set a deadline for getting orders back to you from the side commanders. -Remind players to tell you what side they want to be on and to tell you if they would like to be the overall commander of the side 2.2.2 Checklist: After announcing the scenario, before the game. -Wait for players to sign up..... In theory they will let you know what side they want to play on. -Pick one of them to be the commander for each side; hopefully someone volunteered. I often dragoon the first player who signed up. -Send the orders for each side to the respective side commanders or to every player on that side. -Answer player questions as they come up. -If the players on a side hold an IRC planning conference, find out if they want you in attendance to answer questions. -As player orders come in, deploy forces for the beginning of the game. Get game-start Sitreps generated and either send them to the players or be ready to send them when the game begins. -(Optional) 2 hours before the beginning of the game, prepare and eat a large meal. Or arrange for someone to have you fed during the game. ["A helpful peasant woman with a beautiful face brought me a basket of food from Wendy's." - Norm Lunde, during a CPX, Fall 1996] -One hour before the game starts, get online and begin answering last-minute questions and sorting out last minute crises. -(Optional) Ensure a high caffeine/blood ratio by gamestart-1 hours and arrange to maintain it through end of CPX. [See helpful peasant woman. Arrange to reward her.] 3.0 Basic Mechanics of Umpiring 3.1 Overview of "how it works" As the umpire, your job is to make the game happen. You take the player's orders and put them into the TacOps game. You run the turns, and then tell them what happened. You get new orders and put those into the TacOps game, run more turns, tell the players what happened..... In a sense, you wear two hats as umpire from the player's perspective: God and Subordinate. You are God in that you mandate their entire contact with the game reality. Everything they want to do passes through your hands and is mostly in your control. You set up the situation, you defined the missions, you tell them if they won. You are impartial and don't care if one side or the other wins. (Sacrifices won't change your judgement one iota, but they will be greatly appreciated nonetheless. ) You are their Subordinate in that you are taking their orders for their forces. You are all of their soldiers. When they give an order to a company, you wind up as the company commander executing the order. Very temporarily, you have to forget vast amounts of information and act within the limits of what that company commander knows and has been ordered to do. 3.2 Checklist: Reporting to the players each turn This is a checklist of a way to report to players after you have run a set of Tacops turns. It assumes that you have saved a Sitrep file for each side (to send via DCC) and have either saved a spotrep file for each side or will zip back to Tacops to cut and paste the contents of the Spotrep. (Spotreps are often quite short, so if your system can cut and paste them into the IRC channel that is often quite convenient.) The checklist assumes you have sides A and B; it is more or less what I do. You run several TacOps turns, save sitreps and spotreps, and go back to IRC. You.... -Give a timestamp to A (tell them the time TacOps currently reports in the lower left-hand corner of the screen) -Give a timestamp to B -Type in initial reports to A (brief typed report of highlights of "what happened" - a summary of the action since the last report) -Begin sending sitreps/spotreps to A via DCC and/or cut-and-paste -Type in initial reports to B (while A digests its sitreps/spotreps) -Begin sending sitreps/spotreps to B (while A digests its sitreps/spotreps a wee bit more) -Get orders from A (while B digests its sitreps/spotreps) -Get orders from B (I flip back and forth between A and B for orders - the one that gets orders fired off soonest gets attention first.) After things have proceeded long enough I tell them "orders out" and start running more turns. This is rather situational. Things to consider: -How much time should the players have? They don't deserve to have all day, and if they are confused then they are confused.... time marches on. -On the other hand, sometimes players want to get a large movement underway all at once. I tend to do one of two things here: -If they get the thing set up carefully then I'll put it all in - for example, if they give orders to move everybody to starting positions over a number of turns, explaining to me that a big attack is coming up after these movments, wait for the preparatory movement to finish, and then give the orders to launch the attack, I'll probably decide that they could have discussed things enough with their subordinates to get the thing coordinated and punch all the orders in. -If, however, they try to give me all the preparatory movement orders and attack orders all at once I'm likely to chop them off somewhere and things will get disjointed on the theory that coordination takes time. In any event players almost always want more time. If they are feeling rushed and under pressure, but able to respond, then the timing is about right. This is a fine balance, between risking their becoming bored, and frustrating them by cutting them off from any direction of events. An additional reporting technique I sometimes use is to give "Flash Reports". In these, I tell players something has happened, but don't let them give orders. This is useful if something big happens, but it's something they wouldn't be able to react to right away. 3.3 Detailed version of Checklist - sample set of reports. What you wind up typing might look something like this: [enter NATO orders channel] 0715 [enter Opfor orders channel] 0715 [The point of doing this is that it 1) lets the players know what time it is and 2) puts them on notice that they are about the get reports.] [enter NATO orders channel] Charlie exchanges fire with Coy+ T-80s vic 123456 losses both sides (Meaning: Charlie Company has been fighting with a company or two of T-80s - the leading edge of an Opfor Battalion, but NATO doesn't know that. The T-80s are roughly at map grid 123456. Both sides are taking losses.) MLRS lands, numerous secondaries (Meaning: their MLRS shot landed (presumably they know where it was to be fired). Some (utterly unidentified) number of enemy vehicles exploded or were damaged.) Bravo reports at Paisley (Meaning: Bravo Company has arrived at a place on the map that the players have designated by the code-name Paisley. They asked to have its arrival reported.) Sitrep/spotrep OTW (Meaning: I'm about to send you a sitrep (almost always via DCC) and a spotrep (often cut-and-paste). OTW means On The Way.) [Send the sitrep and spotrep.] Orders? (Meaning: I'm done giving you reports. Start sending orders and asking me questions.) [Umpire switches to Opfor orders channel.] 3rd BN engages enemy M-1s ~coy vic 234567 losses both sides (This is the flip side of the other engagement report. Opfor's 3rd Tank Battalion is engaging Charlie Company. Not all of 3rd Battalion is actually in the fight, and they don't know how big the M-1 force is but think it is about a company in size. Both sides are taking losses.) MLRS lands on rear of 2nd Battalion col, moderate losses (The MLRS shot tagged the tail of the 2nd battalion column. The tail of the column has been worked over and the players can get the gory details from the sitrep soon to come their way.) Scouts: M-2 company spotted vic 654321; stopping. (Bravo Company doesn't know it, but Opfor has scouts up ahead and Bravo has been spotted. The scouts are not under fire, so they can give out an immediately accurate report of what they see.) Sitrep/spotrep OTW [Send sitrep and spotrep.] Orders? [Umpire checks back into the NATO orders channel. NATO is mostly still chewing over the situation, but has organized itself well on its planning channel so the players do not overload the umpire's IRC screen.] NATO CO: Batteries 1 and 2 FFE T-80s vic 123456; ICM, FFE now (The first and second batteries in NATO's off-map support list are to fire ICM on the T-80s. The umpire is left to act as FOO (Forward Observation Officer) and pick the exact target locations. The FFE now means the player does not want the batteries to wait and build up accuracy before Firing For Effect.) Umpire: 1&2 ICM FFE 123456 check (The umpire repeats back to the player all of the key bits of the information. This is for several reasons: 1) it double-checks the information 2) typing this in tells the player that the umpire has seen the order and is entering it into TacOps 3) therefore the NATO side can get new orders typed in) [the umpire sets up the artillery fires and returns to the NATO orders channel] [there is a pause because NATO doesn't know what to do yet. The umpire switches to look at the Opfor orders channel. Opfor wants to do 30 things all at once and has not managed to organize who is speaking when. A lot of text scrolls off the umpire's Opfor orders channel window and is never seen by the umpire.] Opfor player #3: ...then after 20 minutes swing 5th Battalion right by companies and defend the east edge of Kiev. Umpire: Explain please? Missed most of that. One at a time? Back in a sec. [The umpire flips back to the NATO channel. NATO has got its act together.] NATO player #2: Bravo dismounts in place. (Bravo company (M-2s) has all its infantry get out. Players and umpire both assume that troops will seek cover when they stop, so this is left unsaid.) Umpire: Bravo dismounts. (Confirms the order has been seen.) [The umpire ducks into TacOps and unloads the infantry from Bravo company, then goes back to the Nato orders channel.] NATO player #1: Move XRAY along Route Green to BP Flashlight. (XRAY is some largeish battlegroup designated in the player's orders before the game. Route Green and BP (Battle Position) Flashlight are part of the operations graphic (sets of named places, routes, line, etc, drawn onto the map over which the battle will be fought) that the NATO players drew up before the game - codenames for a march route and a location. Their use makes the order easy to give. Since the umpire has printed out the operations graphic and has it sitting in easy view, it is also a very easy order to understand. Except that Green doesn't actually *go* to Flashlight.... Purple does. The umpire asks what is going on....) Umpire: You mean Route Purple? NATO player #1: (pause) Er, yes, Purple, sorry. Umpire: XRAY to Flash via Purple check [the umpire puts in this order and comes back to see....] NATO CO: Orders out! (NATO has given all the orders they want to.) Umpire: Orders out, off to Opfor. (Confirms orders out and lets them know that Opfor has orders to be dealt with before starting the next turn.) [The umpire goes back to Opfor. They have gotten themselves straightened out.] Opfor CO: Batteries 1, 2, 3 fire on M-2 coy, ICM. (Oops, there have been M-2s spotted elsewhere prior to this round... Which ones?) Umpire: 1, 2, 3 ICM on which M-2s? Opfor CO: 654321. Umpire: ICM 645312 ok Opfor CO: 654321 check your figures Umpire: oops 654321 ok [The umpire sets this up.] [Opfor player #2: has orders... then #3.... then #1.... the umpire decides Opfor has given enough orders....] Umpire: 1st Battalion halts. Orders out. [The umpire goes and puts 1st Battalion's order in.] Opfor en masse: Drat! OK, waiting for next time. Umpire: Onwards. (This is optional, but can be useful. You're telling the players that you are done taking orders from both sides and are about to start running new TacOps turns.) [the umpire flips to the NATO orders channel] Umpire: Onwards. [The umpire switches to TacOps and starts running turns.....] In theory, all of that takes no more than 15 or 20 minutes.... the umpire just ran 5 Tacops turns, gets orders for 15-20 minutes, and is able to keep the game running at about a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of real time:game time. It takes a fair amount of practice to get that kind of speed when things are busy. 4.0 "Issues" This is a category of miscellaneous tips not mentioned earlier. 4.1 Player Micromanagement and its prevention You will find players who like nothing better than to control the placement of every unit in their force. They order units to move 100 yards at a time. In a game of divisional scale they give orders to their regiment by platoon. They thereby slow the game to a crawl and you become prematurely and violently bald. There are a couple of ways of dealing with this problem; they work best in combination. One of them - probably the most elegant - is to let the players do it.... but impose a time limit on their side. The players are free to decide what is important to their strategy... and if they want to spent an entire orders cycle moving one company, well, so be it.... You just won't give them any extra time to give orders to the rest of their brigade. The commoner method is to tell players beforehand that orders below a certain level will not be taken. The usual threshhold is that players give orders to companies, but not to specific platoons. ("Move 1st Platoon Alpha Company" is not OK; "Move a platoon of Alpha company" would be, under the standard version.) The threshhold varies with the scale of the game: we have had scenarios where companies were not allowed to be split into platoons to save on umpire workload, and games where platoons were split because each side had very few forces. The main point of this method is to draw a line and stick to it - usually flexibly so that if a good case for breaking it come up, you break it. Scouts are the common exception to the "no platoons" rule. Typically scouts are permitted to break down further, and be micromanaged more, than other units. This is because they are active in a stage of the game where the bulk of the forces are doing very little, and by the time things get big the scouts are usually dead. Finally, player orders that are overly micromanaged can be ignored or modified to suit your desired level of management. This has to be used with extreme caution, but if you don't feel like coping with moving an infantry battalion by squads, you can always make the poor guys move by companies.... this can lead to some pretty annoyed players though. 4.2 Pitfalls for Umpires - Watch out! The biggest warning: Thou Shalt Not Play The Game For The Players. In essence, this means that the troops in the game ought to be operating under the player's direction and intent. There are several sections to this; this is probably one of the nastiest pitfalls for umpires. A) You should probably never intentionally alter up a player's orders. Screwing them up will happen without your conscious effort all too often; you ought to be trying to *prevent* this! A more subtle form of this is looking at an order and thinking "That's dumb! We'll have them do this instead...." The players do not know what you do, and have to fight their own battles. Otherwise, why have a CPX? However, especially when running multiple turns, you will probably have to take some tactical control from the players. Hopefully, they have provided enough intent for you to follow; if not, you need to make a judgment call on what is best for the troops to do, given the limits of what the troops know. You also may find that you wind up running both side's artillery, in response to player directives - they tell you "pound the enemy in this area with this many batteries" and you respond by arranging the details. The key is to leave as many decisions in the game as possible to the players. The limits of the possible are at your discretion, but when in doubt, ask the players. Having the players give you mission or intent-based orders helps a lot. B) Fixing the results of improbable combats. Occasionally strange and unbelievable things happen - in TacOps, and in real life. Let them. If you start resetting what happens, the game begins to lose its point. C) Fixing your mistakes. This is a huge can of worms. Weird thing happen, subordinates make mistakes, and in both real life and a TacOps CPX, one must plan around the possibility of this. For the umpire, the problem here is that fixing these mistakes takes time and can potentially get you into arguments where players claim anything that went wrong ought to be taken back because you obviously erred in some aspect of executing their orders. Mistakes in deployment should be fixed by making the poor troops countermarch to go wherever it was they were supposed to go. Mistakes which get troops killed, in TacOps CPXes, should produce a notional order of lilies, sent to the players. Apologize to the players, and do your best to avoid future mistakes! One easy way to fall into the above sins is to either root for one side, or to have a preset notion that the battle "ought" to work a certain way. Both of these can cause you to distort the way you execute orders for a given side, and you should do your best to avoid them. Remember: the Umpire is *neutral* and exists to process "reality", not to alter it. 4.3 Tips on managing the workload Play with full fog-of-war set. This means you only see units known to both sides during the combat phase, and only see what one side can see when giving orders. This makes your life much simpler because the computer deals with knowing what each side knows, and displays it neatly for you on the screen. Turning it off risks not knowing what a given side can see, and thus producing incorrect reports. Play with a copy of the map printed out where you can see it easily. I try to have a 200% size copy between my keyboard and monitor with 100% size printouts of the ops graphics from each side to the left and right, and often printouts of each side's text orders marked up for reference as well. The players are guaranteed to come up with the occasional order that makes no sense. Tell them you don't understand, and move on - don't waste time trying to understand something that is bollixed. You can come back later and find out what it meant. Try to find out what the players' overall plan is. It will make your life easier because how their troops move will depend on what they intend to do. You can more easily keep their troops acting in accordance with their plans, and more easily make sense of garbled orders. Experience in being a game-master for Role-Playing Games is very useful; the roles of umpire and GM are surprisingly similar. Experience umpiring any kind of double-blind wargame (Kriegspiel, Harpoon, etc.) is extremely useful as the roles are unsurprisingly similar. You should try to keep the game moving. This potentially gets priority over getting player's orders put in. If the players try to do something really complex, don't feel bad if it takes a couple of game minutes to get the troops moving while you get the orders punched in. Keeping the game moving also means that you have to move fast on everything you do.... keep your caffeine/blood ratio high. We have found that running multiple TacOps turns between every umpire report works extremely well. Run up to 5 turns in a row, only stopping if something of particular significance occurs. Speeds thing up *a lot*! The number of turns per report phase you can run depends in part on the scale of the units in the game. Companies can melt in minutes. So if the players are commanding a company or two each, try to insert an orders phase to give them a chance to rescue their (entire?) force. If they are commanding numerous companies each, then the loss of one between orders phases is less likely to be critical/heartbreaking. N.0 Scenario design tips: In designing scenarios, try to ensure that the players will have to make decisions during the game. An entirely pre-planned scenario is often somewhat dull - for example, a static defense. A rule of thumb I was given for designing traditional Kriegspiel scenarios was "Make sure each player will get to make 3 major decisions per game." Ensuring that exact number is impossible; however, it ought to prove possible to set up situations where a player will have a mobile reserve and have to decide how to commit it, or have to select between lines of advance, or how to deal with some new threat.... By their nature, meeting engagements make for exciting scenarios. Leaving the players in the dark (or misleading them) as to the enemy's goal can also produce interesting effects on the game - players tend to assume the enemy's goal is directly opposed to their own (My goal is to do X, your goal is to prevent it) and when forces collide pursuing unrelated goals the result is often much more fun because the enemy forces will act "unpredictably". The trick in this situation is to ensure that the two side's forces will still collide. The next bit describes how I tend to go about making a scenario for the TacOps CPX games. I tend to go through a series of stages in making the scenarios. 1) Get a "main idea" 2) flesh it out and mentally test it 3) write detailed orders for each side 1) This is potentially the toughest part to describe - it is, in essence, brainstorming. Optimally, you will be able to come up with a one-sentence description of the scenario (similar to the thesis sentence of an essay). I usually have a variety of half-formed scenario ideas bubbling about, and somewhere along the line something comes up to change it from half-formed to the seed of a proper scenario. Often this takes place when I tell Corinne (my wife) about the ideas and she bounces other bits of ideas off of me. Where can you get your ideas? Sources of scenarios can come from nearly anywhere: history abounds with situations you might like to try, the news brings up others, and your imagination is certainly not to be spurned as another source. There is nothing wrong with strange situations, or "unlikely" situations: history is *full* of very weird and unlikely situations! Some of them make very good scenarios! Something to keep in mind when designing scenarios is that the objectives of the two sides need not coincide. Just because Side A has to take objective X does not mean that side B needs to defend it! An example: In a Kriegspiel (19th Century umpired staff game) I played in, my forces were ordered to secure a given area for a river crossing. On meeting enemy forces, I assumed that these were there to prevent me from securing the crossing, and set about arranging a formal attack on their position to clear them out. While doing this, I was distracted by numerous maneuvers by the enemy - a small cavalry raid on my flank, a small sortie by enemy troops towards my lines, and so on - that conspired to prevent my making the attack before the enemy withdrew. The enemy (Corinne) had orders to conduct a recon in force. This caused them to make some aggressive moves, which, by playing into my assumptions about the size of their force, slowed me to the point where I did not achieve my objective until very late in the day. For another example of this, see the second CPX scenario, which involved a Canadian attack on an airfield while a Soviet force tried to escort a truck convoy through the same area. Each assumed the other had a *defensive* mission. Therefore each side continued to attack into what was, to an observer able to see both sides, a brutal and bloody slugfest. Had either side chosen to defend temporarily, the outcome would have been very lopsided. But given their orders and their assumptions, each side assumed that stopping their attacks would only lead to mission failure. The key when making a "different objectives" scenario is to ensure that both sides will somehow collide - either because their lines of march cross, or because each needs some terrain feature to complete their objectives. However, we're starting to slide into topic 2. In essence, by the end of the brainstorming process, you ought to have an idea for the scenario - "OPFOR is attacking with a reinforced BMP regiment while the US Marines defend with a reinforced mech battalion." 2) Fleshing it out At this point, I start to work on the OOB. If you are doing a historical scenario, this is where hitting the books really begins; in mine, I tend to start up TacOps, and begin to place forces on the map so I can keep track of my thinking. Usually, I have a fairly good idea of what I want one side to have; I put them out first, and then start playing with forces for the other side until it feels right. There's two ways to judge this; by gut feeling, and by math. The gut feeling method consists of putting yourself in the shoes of each side, and asking yourself if you think the scenario is winnable. If you get a queasy, uncertain feeling for both sides, all is well. One trick to ensure that quesy feeling is to deliberate set up the goals each side has to make them difficult to attain. Usually this works best if there is a clearly defined set of goals, some of which you know to be easily attainable, and some of which you know to be nearly impossible. Thus the players can achieve one of their goals easily, some of their goals with effort, and maybe win big if they are both very good and very lucky. As a result, both sides are kept pushing for a win and neither is likely to feel totally blown out. The maths way is also an approximation, and sometimes not much more of one because it involves a *lot* of assumptions - but you have to make the assumptions more explicitly, which sometimes helps. This method is a cheap and simple version of Lanchester's combat equations. The first thing to do is to figure out what kind of fight you expect. In TacOps, the anti-armor weapons are usually the most important for each side. Figure out the number of vehicles on each side, and compare it to the probable number of effective anti-armor shots the other side can produce. For example, you might feel that an M-1 will probably get off at least 3 or 4 shots before it dies, so each M-1 counts for 3.5, while a Javelin will count for 2.5. This will give you a rough idea of the abilities of each side to kill the other - keeping in mind that the defender will get at least one more kill per firing system than the attackers, because of the initial ambush most defenders pull in TacOps. In general, you want attackers to have about a 2.5x material superiority over the defenders, and in meeting engagements (except when one is trying to place a defense before the other pre-empts) the two sides ought to be approximately equal. Artillery assets ought to be roughly equal (but note that the OPFOR 122mm MRL BN is *NOT* as deadly as the US MLRS! MLRS can unbalance a game if the player handles it well. Use with caution.) Naturally, a difference in quality of equipment provided to each side will change this. (Second side note on MLRS: by turning on "allow fire support on own units" for all US units, you can give Opfor control of a US MLRS and thereby provide Opfor with an ICM-equipped rocket battalion.... BM-27, anyone?) The second part of fleshing out the scenario is to provide it with a context. Why is this battle taking place? Thinking about this carefully may provide some interesting twists on otherwise normal scenarios. An example: The "Crisis in Khuruchabja" scenario (in which a US Marine LAI Battalion tried to hold off an OPFOR regiment long enough to evacuate some UN observers) began life with my thinking about a delaying action by the US against an OPFOR regiment. We hadn't had a USMC scenario, so I figured to use them for the US force. Thinking "Marines" pushed my thinking into the third world, and from that came the notion of saving UN observers from locals unhappy with their presence. This, in turn, bred a complete short history and "CNN broadcasts", and a set of timings for events in the game (the arrival of the trucks to carry off the UN observers, the requirement for the US forces to withdraw after the UN people left, explanations for the lack of US air support....) After putting these things together, I tend to make a few, general, mental run-throughs of the scenario - postulating variants of plans on each side to see if the scenario can produce a blow- out given competent planning on both sides. If there is an unavoidable blow-out for one side, you want to catch it. If there's the possibility of blow-outs for *both* sides, leave things as they are. Most players will probably see the worst threats they face all too clearly, and the fear of massive defeat will concentrate their attentions. I do not tend to go very far with this. You really cannot predict what the players are going to do, and basing too much of your understanding of a scenario around assumptions of what they will do is not very safe. Remember Moltke telling us that "When faced by exactly three options, the enemy will invariably choose the fourth." 3) Write out the orders for each side. I have not always done this to the extent I ought, but I do find it quite helpful to follow the NATO and/or Soviet Operations Order format in preparing orders for the players (these formats can be found in the IRC CPX FAQ, available on the website. The glory of this is not that it is exciting or realistic (though it is arguably the latter), but that it forces you to "check the boxes". If you properly fill in all the blanks in the OPORD then your players are fairly certain to have all the information that they need. Filling those blanks in properly also makes you recheck all of your previous work on the scenario. This is also where the "chrome" for a scenario gets fleshed out - for example, this is when the pre-game CNN reporting gets written up. My wife usually helps with that. Which comes to the final point: if you can, bounce your idea off a friend. My wife is ex-Canadian Reserves (and a historian, and a gamer to boot!), and I usually bounce the scenario ideas off her a couple of times while I'm brainstorming and fleshing out, and again after I've got the orders written up. Showing it to somebody else helps to get a perspective on what you are doing; they can find the gaps and unclear bits in the orders, point out false assumptions about the balance, etc. Appendices: Appendices 1 and 2 have two formats of OPORD (OPerations ORDer) - NATO format in Appendix 1 and Soviet/Russian format in Appendix 2. Appendix 1 also contains some notes on NATO reporting formats. There is no requirement to be familiar with these documents to play in a CPX. An Operations Order is a formal order - no more. These formats are formal formats for formal orders. There is nothing holy about them, but they can be very useful. They are included for several reasons: 1) The glory of these OPORD formats is their fill-in-the-blanks nature. If you follow their format, and fill in all the blanks, your operations order will be complete and more or less organized (accuracy may be another matter!) They are therefore well worth keeping in mind. While there is no time for a full operations order during play, side commanders and umpires often issue their overall orders for the game in a manner similar to this, because it helps them be sure they've covered everything they need to cover. They are very dry when seen in outline format, but they are pretty complete. They may help you in organizing your planning and presenting it in a comprehensible format. 2) Fun. There is an element of role-playing in a CPX, and using the orders format appropriate to your side can be part of that. Appendix 1: NATO OPORD and action reporting formats (provided by Ian Barefoot, a.k.a. "Tadger".) [Occasional comments by James Sterrett in square brackets.] In 'conversation' with James Sterrett, the organiser of TacOps CPX's, I suggested it might help if we used NATO standard formats for messaging. What follows below is the product of my (flawed) memory, as it's been a looooong time since I used them! Anyway, a bit of alteration might avoid a prosecution under our Official Secrets Act..... ;-) The formats shown below are the product of my (flawed?) memory - but I'm pretty certain they're close. Ian Barefoot - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - begins- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- MISSION BRIEFING FORMAT 1.0. As can be seen, this format can be applied to any envisioned operation from Army down to section/squad level. Obviously the complexity of the order will reflect the complexity of the operation, and the numbers involved! 1.1. The following headings are used, and an explanation of them follows below. 1.2 GROUND 1.3. SITUATION 1.4. MISSION 1.5. EXECUTION 1.6. COMMAND AND SIGNALS 1.7. SERVICE SUPPORT 2.0 GROUND 2.1 This is a brief but concise description of the ground over which the operation should pass. It should include reference to unique features and obstacles such as rivers, high embankments, etc. 3.0 SITUATION 3.1. This is split into three subheadings:- 3.2. An overview of the current political/strategic situation, and an appreciation of the local tactical situation. 3.3. Enemy Forces Those forces expected to oppose the forthcoming operation 3.4 Friendly Forces General details of Blue force, including those on each flank. 4.0. MISSION A brief but pointed outline of the objective of the operation. In verbal briefings it is repeated twice, to emphasise it. 5.0. EXECUTION The subheadings here will vary according to the type of mission, but might include: Route Out Action on Contact (TacOps SOPs!) Action on RVs Action on Objective Route Back Timings. 6.0. COMMAND & SIGNALS 6.1. Frequencies in use (IRC channels..?) 6.2. Passwords 6.3. Nicknames Includes those given to physical features on the axis of advance. 6.4. Action on Lost Comms. 6.5. Requests for artillery/air support. 7.0. SERVICE SUPPORT 7.1. Attached units, such as 7.1.1. 'On Call' fire support 7.1.2. Engineers, 3A units, etc. 7.2. Detached units Units from the parent formation that will not take part, as they are required by other units. ---------- Action reports [Note that the umpire should always begin all sets of reports with the current game time! - JS] 1.0.0 SITREP (Situation report) (Normally sent at the request of a higher formation) Sent as: (A) 'Alpha' - Time (B) 'Bravo' - Location (Coded Grid ref) (C) 'Charlie' Current activity 2.0.0. SPOTREP (Intelligence report on enemy units currently under observation) (A) Time (B) Location of enemy (Grid Ref SENT IN CLEAR to avoid compromise of day code) (C) Description of enemy force (D) Direction of enemy travel (E) What you are doing about it. May lead to: 3.0.0. D/F (Directed Fire) REQUEST (A) Time (B) Grid Ref or TRP ref (Certainly in the British Army, TRPs or D/F refs, are allotted code words or numbers.) (C) Description of enemy force - including types of vehicles, type of cover, etc. (D) Type of shoot (ICM/HE/Smoke, etc.) (E) Number of salvo's (Usually sent more in hope.... 8( ) [The terminology here may lead to some confusion if used in TacOps; a DF TRP, in TacOps, is a target area assigned to a particular ground unit, not the British "Directed Fire" - an artillery request. - JS] Could also lead to: 4.0.0. CONTACT REPORT (AKA "I'm in the proverbial..."!) (A) Time (B) Location (In clear) (C) Description of enemy force (D) Action taken on contact (E) Casualty state (Own troops) (X) - Killed (Y) - Wounded (Z) - Missing. Normally this procedure commences with a very breathless 'CONTACT - Wait Out' in a voice pitched a couple of octaves above normal. The full Contact report is sent when the situation has stabilised. The initial 'shout' is merely to alert someone that you might *just* need some help. A good higher commander will know roughly where to look - as long as the subordinate commanders map-reading was accurate, and they've stuck to the mission brief! The worst situation is when 'CONTACT!' is called - without a follow-up in a reasonable length of time........ Ends. Appendix 2: Soviet/Russian/Opfor Orders Format. Lifted/inferred from examples in Yu. K. Kuznetsov's _Peredvizhenie i vstrechnyi boi_ (_Movement and Meeting Engagements_), a 1989 Soviet Army textbook.) The orders format is based, as the NATO, on a series of numbered sections, sometimes of numerous paragraphs. These are typically *not* labelled but for clarity it may be useful to add labels. Note that in Soviet orders *the operations graphic is the primary document*. They essentially considered the text order to be an appendix to the map. So to be properly complete, include a nice, detailed, operations graphic. ------- 1. Current enemy activity. Includes current front line, probable strength, air activity, probable intent. 2. Current friendly activity, including boundaries with neighboring units (to the front, then left, then right) and current front line. 3. Mission. This details the composition of the commanded force and current status, as well as the mission that must be accomplished. DECISION: (literally Reshil, ("reh-SHEEL"), "I have decided"): This gives an overview of the means of accomplishing the mission. It includes such force-wide information as order of march, SOPs for the entire force, march routes, and actions-on to be taken by the entire force. It includes a brief mission statement for each part of the force. Technically part of section three. 4. I ORDER: (Prikazyvayu ("pree-KAH-zee-vah-you")) This is where each part of the force gets detailed instructions. Times of departure and arrival at various lines or points, unit-specific missions, etc. all come here. 5. Logistics: ammo and fuel issue; expected expenditures. 6. Be prepared to move out at: (time) Dates/times are given in the format: HH.MM DD.MO; thus 11PM on the 14th of July is 23.00 14.7. Note the absence of a place-holder 0 in the numeral for July and the use of periods instead of colons as separators. 7. Command and Signals. Finally, the commander signs it. It is often also signed by the Chief of Staff if any. Commissars, despite popular legend, have not held direct command authority since around 1943. (Similar to chaplains, they have rank, authority, and can issue orders, but are not in the direct chain of command. They did wield more power than the average chaplain, however, because of their position as representatives of the one and only party in a one-party state; thus when they told soldiers to do jump the answer was still "How high, sir?" For the officers this was balanced by the fact that most officers were also members of the party.) The Soviets used an Up and Right map coordinate system (whereas the West uses a Right and Up system - thus our 123456 is their 456123.) I cannot recommend instituting two map coordinate systems into one game, however! We've been using the Right and Up as standard and everyone should continue to do so. 3.0 Revision History. November 15, 1997. Numerous minor changes prompted by Riki Tikki and Chimera. Ver. 1.0 released. Begun: November 3, 1997.