Fistful of TOWs - Design Theory

Design Theory

Ty Beard designed FFT after becoming frustrated with existing modern wargames like Combined Arms by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). He felt that most were too slow and tended to focus on minutiae rather than on the important concepts. The particular event that caused him to take the plunge was an 8 hour game of Combined Arms that only resolved 4 turns and ended in a draw when the players all had to go home.

In Ty’s game design paradigm, there is a finite amount of detail that can be crammed into a game before it becomes unplayable. This means that game designers must ration the amount of detail and abstract anything that isn’t critical to the game. In the case of FFT, this meant for instance that the vehicle combat system is fairly detailed, while the rules for counterbattery fire are pretty abstract.

In addition, he believed that speed of play was critical in any simulation of modern warfare. So he ruthlessly streamlined every FFT subsystem to speed play. As a result, turns typically take only 10 minutes or so. A 2 player battle between a US battalion task force and a Soviet regiment usually takes 1-3 hours. And since Ty designed FFT to easily accommodate multiple players on a side, it usually takes the same amount of time to fight much larger battles.

Hundreds of players have provided priceless feedback but three other major contributors are recognized: Dave Burnett, Paul Minson, and Bob Mackenzie.