Links to use for Connections UK, Workshop #2
Follow the links. You can find background material and links at this site to participate in the workshop. Click on “LINKS” in the upper right corner or click here.
Connections to Connections. The workshop on scenario writing is intended to follow up on material discussed at Connections US in June 2021. The summary from Connections US has a short summary of that discussion, starting at page 35.
Designing and building a scenario
A scenario describes a plausible situation within a real or fictitious universe. A war game may be intended to refight an historical battle or campaign; a scenario for this is typically found in books on military history, where the terrain, orders of battle, and commanders’ decisions are described, sometimes in excruciating detail. Alternatively, a game may be intended to plan an upcoming military operation; then the scenario would be a real-world situation on the ground as best it can be determined. A war game may be intended to investigate a defence problem further into the future, say to determine future doctrine, to plan the acquisition of a defence system, or to assess the benefits (and costs and shortcomings) of some innovative concept; scenarios for this may be set some years in the future and involve opponents and locales that are not obvious at the time.
Young military professionals learn from the study of battles of the past and speculation about future battles in which they might become engaged. For them, scenarios drawn from military history are particularly relevant. Hypothetical situations for future battles will often be derived from the national defence strategies of their own country and of possible opponents, thereby setting the possible venues and the military capabilities of the various nations that might be involved.
The raw material for scenarios as used by hobby gamers may come from similar sources: history books to refight battles of the past or speculations on situations that might arise in the far future or in mystical realms that exist only in imagination.
Scenario building techniques that were developed for application to defence problems can be adapted to non-military problems like planning responses to natural disasters; the source material for these scenarios is similar to those used for war games, but without the military aspects, for the most part.
Graham Longley-Brown in Successful Professional Wargames points out that NATO distinguishes between “scenario” and “setting”, with the setting being the framework upon which a scenario may be developed.
For this website, the process of scenario building will include establishing the setting. It will also include the preparation of injects that may be used during the course of play of a war game to raise new issues for players to confront. In managing practical wargaming activity, it may be useful to distinguish between the three aspects: setting, scenario, and injects.
There are pages at this website to cover:
Different cadres, different approaches
Six cadres of scenario builders are shown below. There are individuals who may be members of more than one cadre. Some aspects of scenario building will apply to many cadres and some may apply to only one.
Cadre 1: Futurists: Government or military personnel or defence contractors working on defence or security issues of the near or distant future. The problems may be related to the acquisition of new equipment, the development of new capabilities, the analysis of proposed concepts in doctrine, tactics, or methods.
Cadre 2: Military planners: Those who develop or plan military operations for the near future (includes civilians in supporting roles). The problems may include analysis of campaigns that have not yet been initiate or which are in progress.
Cadre 3: Military trainers and educators: Faculty of military staff colleges or military academies who are teaching others, typically young officers or NCOs, about their profession.
Cadre 4: Historians: Those who use war games to replay battles of the past (and may also design and build these sorts of games).
Cadre 5: Hobby gamers: Civilians (and some military personnel) who play (and may design and build) war games in their spare time. (Extends to games in fictional worlds like “Dungeons and Dragons”, or science-fiction games like those set in the StarTrek universe)
Cadre 6: Others: People who use war-game-like methods. This would include, for example, police services planning security for large public events (like the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games), medical/health staffs planning responses to pandemics, local governments planning responses to disasters and similar events, and more.
History of using scenarios in war games
Until the middle of the 20th century, the term “scenario” was rarely used in professional wargaming. The Prussians in the 19th century used the term “general situation” for what we would now call “scenario”.
The guidance for the U.S. Army Coast Artillery War Game in 1913 never uses the term scenario. Rather it offers:
The general situation contains only information to which both [sides] are entitled, such as that the Red fleet has command of the sea, any information concerning this fleet which would be a matter of common knowledge, as well as any information concerning fortifications and Blue forces as might properly in possession of the Reds.
A corresponding term “special situation” refers to information given only to one side. This was typically that side’s objective, its mission, or its orders. It could also include intelligence that side had about the other side, although this might not be complete or accurate.
The general situation (sometimes called the scenario) contains background and general information that would be known to both contestants in a similar real-world environment.
Starting in the 1960s the term “scenario” became more widely used in wargaming than “general situation”. Today the term “general situation” is rarely used.
In current usage, the term scenario is usually inclusive of what would be the general situation, given to all sides, and any special situation information given to a single side. And many 21st century war games have more than the two sides, that were typically called “Blue” and “Red”, of earlier war games.
Herman Kahn, author of On Thermonuclear War [1960], Thinking the Unthinkable [1962], and The Year 2000 [1967], used scenarios to tackle contentious problems. From this period, the use of “scenario” became common to represent a general situation when contemplating some challenging problem in the defence and security realm.
Scenario-based planning in business and economics
In the 1970s Royal Dutch Shell (a.k.a. Shell Oil) popularized a method of using scenarios in developing business plans. Pierre Wack is recognized as the executive who initiated and developed this. This approach was adapted from earlier work by various futurists who dealt mainly with military and defence issues. In 1985 Wack authored two articles in the Harvard Business Review (“Uncharted Waters Ahead” and “Shooting the Rapids”) that outlined the company’s approach and acknowledged that “We were familiar with the late Herman Kahn’s scenario approach and were intrigued by its possibilities for corporate planning”.
Shell provides a handbook on how they develop scenarios.
The use of scenarios as applied to economic issues goes back much further and includes a large military aspect. In 1898 Jan Gotlib Bloch published his analysis of future war based on 14 years of study. Bloch was a financier and many of his conclusions were set in economic terms, but with many insights on military matters. He painted pictures of warfare where, for example, machine guns and artillery would end the era of infantry or cavalry charges over open ground. Bloch developed scenarios where future warfare would consist of massed armies locked in stalemates with infantry living in trenches.
Bloch was discouraged that his military analysis was not given the consideration it deserved. In 1901 in an article in The Contemporary Review he strove to persuade the British public to take his predictions more seriously than had been the case with military professionals.
He “endeavoured to draw a picture of this interesting process [of warfare as it would be in the early 20th century]”. He hoped that the British public would take his scenarios more seriously: “The steadfastness with which the military caste clings to the memory of a state of things which has already died is pathetic and honourable. Unfortunately it is also costly and dangerous.”