World Builders' Guild Newsletter

The Prussians invented "fudging the dice".

In the early 1800s, the Prussian military were enthusiasts of a genre of chess-like wargames. They represented a tabletop simulation of military conflict using tokens and complex combat rules. Entire wars are fought on scale model battlefields with tiny trees and infantrymen.

They loved them so much that they developed their own flavor called "Kriegsspiel".

George Leopold von Reisswitz came up with the first prototype in 1811.

Their hat game was bonkers. (Photo: Accessed from PrussianHistory.com)

King Wilhem enjoyed the game so much that he introduced it to the entire royal family. Despite the royal endorsement, the game never achieved greater appeal. Reisswitz would abandon his project during the later battles of the Napoleonic wars.

However his son, Georg Heinric, took over and made several compelling improvements.

Georg Heinric's changes would be so well liked by the military brass that the king ordered it an official training tool. It became wildly popular.

Kreigsspeil is hard.

Think of the most complicated game you've ever played.

Now add 100 more rules.

And several dozen miniatures.

Like this except not boring and with way cooler cannons and stuff. (Photo by Halacious on Unsplash)

The game was so intense that it needed a referee to judge the contests. In fact, the referee became the "computer" of the entire game.

Opponents submitted their strategy to the referee and he would then consult numerical tables, roll dice, and relay the results of the actions to the players.

The number of rules proved cumbersome to the players. This led to slow games and conflicts between players and judges. The demand for knowledgeable referees was astronomical as a result.

We think of the best referees in sports as being the ones who make the calls by the book and get them right almost every time.

Given the dense rules of the Kreigsspeil, you would think that the best referees were those that knew the rules implicitly. The human calculators who could compute number tables at an instant from memory.

You'd be wrong.

It turns out the most in-demand referees of Kreigsspeil were the ones who were making it all up on the spot.

They used their knowledge of armed conflict, the nature of the battle environment, and the general rules of a given scenario. This gave them the leeway to make fast calls.

As long as it seemed fair, the players favored these outcomes more than the textbook rulings. They also were able to more accurately simulate real world situations.

Solders know that war doesn't follow the rules all the time so why should the simulation?

We should practice using our experience and knowledge to adapt to a given situation and make calls on the fly.

Worlds have rules, but sometimes it's about which rules you choose to ignore for the greater outcome.

Break a few and see how it feels.

To future worlds,

Matt Ventre

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