More on Scenarios

I played in a 25mm WWI battle set in Palestine today. It was great fun. Nice figures, good terrain, and simple rules made for a good game. As always, there were a few points of confusion/contention but not so much that it really detracted from the game. It was interesting to watch Scott trying to "run" the game and his struggle to translate the battle as he saw it in his head onto the gaming table. It was then that the light dimly flickered into life in my brain. It sort of illuminated the struggle that I have been having over scenarios and games.

I am having trouble turning what I know into a framework to allow two sides to compete against each other with a fair chance for either side to "win" the game. I am still learning to "balance" the game so that each side has some obtainable goal that can make even the most unbalanced games "winnable", and therefor enjoyable, for both sides. In most cases, I take an historical situation and scale it down for our game's scale while trying to be accurate about unit density (number of units in a given geographic area), historical positioning, unusual terrain or situations, and leadership abilities of the real life leaders. Where I seem to lose my way is the simple question of "So how do I win?" asked by each side's commanders. It seems simple enough, but sometimes I really don't seem to have an answer, other than "You need to destroy enough of his units so that he runs away..."

I gotta work on that...