Wargaming and Analysis Presentation for MORS Special Meeting

Introduction

In practical terms, when we design one of these things we call a wargame, what do we do? Like any game, we basically create a synthetic or virtual universe in which our players will have to live. They’ll observe situations, process information, and make decisions within the constraints we have defined in that universe. Their decisions and actions will change the universe as the game progresses. My colleagues at CNA—including Mike Markowitz, Ed McGrady, and Al Nofi—and I have tried to characterize the key dimensions of this wargaming universe a couple of times now. My current thinking has led to these six main components. By the way, they can be arranged to form the acronym TREADS, a term that fits the manly image of wargamer as tank-lover. But I kind of like the pairings on this slide: time and space; entities and relationships; activities and dynamics. In particular, I use “activities” to describe what the players do in the game, and “dynamics” to mean the changes their actions instigate in the game universe. Now, what about war? How can we articulate a framework for defining the characteristics of real war so that we can help our games to represent it better?

*Originally published in October 2007, this paper was reprinted in December 2024.