A few observations about the Fred Jane naval wargame book

Finished reading it and a few quick observations seem to be warranted. In no particular order.

The Jane's naval wargame rules, like the contemporaneous H.G. Wells Little Wars, relied in large measure on actual physical "shooting" by the players rather than the dice-based systems common to modern wargames. In H.G. Wells case the palyers actaully fired bullets from model cannons at the enemy forces. In the Jane naval wargame the players poked holes in a paper diagram of the target ship using a wooden tool with a tack point on the end. A very odd fixation, really.

The Royal Navy wargame rules are definitely based on providing a training experience and not being a competitive game experience. As a matter of fact, competition is explicitly discouraged! One notable thing about these rules is the way that gunner hits are figured. It's a very deterministic system with the number of hits being based on how many guns are fired and for how long with no random element at all. Likewise damage is an average value. There's no provision for fluke events, lucky shots or bad fortune in general.

One notable thing in Jane's rules are the very short ranges envisioned. The rules devoted considerable attention to battles fought at ranges under 8,000 yards (with 2,000,-4,000 being treated as average) and his tack-poker combat system seems to assume that ships will engage in low trajectory direct fire at relatively close ranges. As it turned out, of course, the combatant navies were in the midst of a gun and fire control revolution that was going to mean that most battleship actions would take place at ranges two, three or four times farther than Jane assumed.

The small handbook written by Jane (based on internal evidence, just before the end of 1914) is a fascinating document. Obviously meant for the general reading public, the book has a bit of a jingoistic flair and also makes certain social assumptions that seem rather odd to modern ears. In particular the strong class-based personnel system used by the British is accepted without question.

Jane had some pretty insightful observations in the handbook, however, and definitely seemed extremely well-informed about likely technical naval developments, but he wasn't much of a seer on how tactical and strategic events might play out. He showed little understanding about commerce-raiding nor was there any hint of what a submarine blockade might entail. He notes that the war was expected to be over before any 15-inch gun battleships might be ready for action -- a common enough sentiment in 1914 -- and seems to have expected that a clash between the two battle fleets was imminent. As it turned out the battle fleets would not meet in action for nearly two more years and Jane, himself, would not lie to see that day.

All-in-all a very interesting read.

Picked up an interesting volume

I just bought a copy of The Fred Jane Naval War Game (1906), which is interesting in its own right, but this 2008 edition edited by John Curry includes a lot more than the classic naval game by the famous man.

Also included are:

A brief bio of Fred T. Jane by Curry

The 1906 rules by Jane, which represented the game in its mature form.

Some "Fast Play" rules by Jane

The Royal Navy Wargame of 1921, which was the official RN rules for board exercises

and finally an interesting historical piece from 1914 "Your Navy As a Fighting Machine" by Fred T. Jane.

All for under $15.

Naval wargaming's Big Three

More than most genres of gaming, naval wargaming's development has been dominated by a small number of designers. Three individuals, in particular, really stand out as giants in the hobby -- Fred T. Jane, Fletcher Pratt and Larry Bond.

All three share some characteristics. They were talented writers who have a long list of published works in both fiction and non-fiction. All three were self-taught naval enthusiasts who became noted experts on naval affairs. Of the three, only Bond served as a naval officer, and he didn't make a career at it. And all three were largely motivated by a drive to understand the naval balance of their own day.

The first of these individuals was Fred T. Jane, whose 1898 All the World's Fighting Ships was really what later wargame designers would call a "data annex" for his set of wargame rules, simply called the Naval War Game. Jane was one of the first popular authors to point out the importance of technical points such as armor thickness and placement and power plant horsepower, not to mention coal capacity as vital in naval affairs. Jane's naval wargame didn't become a big mass-market success, but his data annex crew into an annual series of publications that's still the standard reference today. Jane was born in 1865, just as the Ironclad era was beginning and died in the middle of World War I. His active era covered the dawn of the modern warship era, with the 1898 Jane's appearing fortuitously during the Spanish-American War.

Fletcher Pratt was born in 1897, a year before that war, and lived to see the dawn of the nuclear Navy, passing in 1956. Pratt's active era in wargame design was on the cusp of World War II, with his Naval Wargame rules being published in 1940. They earned considerable notice for correctly predicting that the German pocket battleship Graf Spee was, in fact, not a match for three British cruisers -- in contrast to the conventional wisdom. Pratt's wargame was the standard for naval gamers for a generation, with dog-eared copies becoming cherished possessions among naval gamers. One of my first gaming experiences was playing with modified Fletcher Pratt rules on the deck of the Battleship Massachusetts in 1970.

But even by then there were stirrings among hobbyists that Fletcher Pratt's rules were getting long in the tooth and alternative designs were beginning to appear. Naturally the area where Pratt's rules were most lacking was dealing with naval developments since World War II.

So Larry Bond's Harpoon rules, appearing on 1980, filled a real void. While not the first modern-era naval rules to appear, Harpoon was the best, combining realism with playability and being flexible enough to evolve as naval technology continued to develop. Bond, born in 1952, was a child of the Cold War and served a tour as a surface warfare line officer aboard a destroyer. His rules are not parochial, though, and treat every dimension of naval warfare, air, surface, underwater and electronic. Bond's Harpoon rules are so comprehensive that he really has no competitor on modern topics, although he has long been moving into earlier eras as well. As a matter of fact his latest project is harmonizing his rules sets, currently divided into three eras (dreadnought, WWII and modern) into one comprehensive set covering all naval warfare since the beginning of the 20th Century -- indeed, right back to the era covered by Fred T. Jane's original rules. And so naval gaming comes full circle: Jane, Pratt, Bond and back to Jane.