David comments on The Ghastly Complexity of it All

The depressing thing about writing these formal scenario specification pages is that, by the time they're finished, they appear so complex. Normally, the Ouargistan group has much less written out in advance. If anything comes up that is not covered, the scenario designer comes up with a way to handle it. If there is serious objection from another player, a compromise, a consensus of those who care, or failing that, a die roll for interpretation, clears up the matter, and the game goes on. This works best when you have a group of people who care more about the fun of playing than about winning.

When I write a scenario specification page for the Major General's site, I have to start concretizing the ad hoc decisions we made during the game into fixed, consistent rules. I start thinking of all the possibilities, and then feel as though I have to cover them all, then add one or two features that occur to me as I write, and the concept starts to drown in the minutia. It's almost like writing a complete rules set, and takes a great deal of time and focus. That is why I asked the ColonialWars newsgroup whether anyone really reads all this scenario-specific detail, hoping that nobody did and I could quit doing it or abbreviate it considerably. Unfortunately, lots of people said they read it all, enjoyed it and some even used it to play the specific scenario, so I'll keep doing it.

Of course, Sher-Li is worse than most because of the large number of special features, but I look at the scenario page and think: if I were cruising the web and saw this truckload of legalese, I certainly wouldn't read it all, possibly wouldn't read any of it, and probably wouldn't want to play the game because I would find the mass of detail intimidating.

But it was a great game when we had a loose outline and made the rest up as we went along. You'll just have to take my word for it.

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