Speculative Decision Games

Decision Games: A Guidebook for Marines (6 of 7)

Jan 22, 2026

In a few instances, the author of speculative decision game make up all of the elements of the problems that players engage. Most of the time, however, they combine real world elements with products of their imaginations. The designers of the most common type of speculative decision games, for example, superimpose imaginary tactical situations on real pieces of terrain.

As a rule, speculative decision games offer players less in the way of complication, complexity, and context than decision games based upon real events. For this rea son, instructors will use them to teach fundamental facts and basic conventions , things such as the technical characteristics of weapons, foundational techniques, and elementary concepts. The simple, straightforward character of speculative decision games also makes them useful for introducing more experienced Marines to new weapons, novel organizations, and un familiar enemies.

Skillful instructors like to introduce a little bit of ‘fog and friction’ into speculative decision games. The degree to which they can do this, however, depends on the ability of players to suspend disbelief. Marines who know that miscommunications, navigation errors, equipment failures, and short ages of various kinds abound in war will, nonetheless, regard them as out-of-place in a fictional decision game. Indeed, they will often look upon such attempts to add realism to a fictional decision game as unfair, improper, and, strange to say, unrealistic.

'Only an expert, who possesses a thorough professional knowledge, who is master of his subject, and who has the facility for presenting it skillfully, will be able to produce imaginary scenes which faithfully represent reality and which are free from objectionable features.'

William Balck (Walter Krueger, translator) Tactics: Volume 1, Introduction and Formal Tactics of Infantry (Ft. Leavenworth: US Cavalry Association, 1915) page 10

'To give full, detailed, and precise information would not be war-like. In actual warfare information usually is scant, indefinite, and often unreliable. It is the commander’s business to sift the probable from the improbable, the true from the false, and to shape his course of action from his own deductions.'

M.W. Meyerhardt 'The War Game' The Pedagogical Seminary, Volume XXII, (1915) page 507