The Two Types of Decision Games
A Guidebook for Marines (4 of 7)
A decision game based entirely upon faithful accounts of events that actually took place qualifies as a ‘decision-forcing case study’. (This term, often rendered as ‘decision-forcing case’ and abbreviated as ‘DFC’, reminds us that, in addition to being a decision game, an exercise of this sort also belongs to the realm of the case study.) A decision game of the second kind, which contains at least one imaginary element, belongs to the category of ‘speculative decision games’.
In the years between the two world wars of the twentieth century, Marines used the word ‘historical’ to distinguish between the two basic types of decision games. That is, if a decision-forcing exercise was based upon a made-up scenario, they described it as a ‘problem’, ‘tactical problem’, or ‘map problem’. If, however, a decision game was based entirely upon reality, Marines of the 1930s called it a ‘historical map problem’.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marines used the term ‘tactical decision game’ (‘TDG’) to describe both speculative decision games and decision forcing cases. However, because the former were much more common than the latter, Marines began to assume that, unless it was clearly labeled as ‘historical’, a tactical decision game contained fictional elements. This tendency was reinforced by the introduction, in 2010 or so, of the term ‘decision-forcing case’. Thus, present-day Marines will often, and, indeed, usually, describe decision games based on factual scenarios as ‘DFCs’ and decision games with made up elements as ‘TDGs’.
Certain advantages as well as certain disadvantages are inherent in an historical map problem. The situation can not be set up so as to illustrate a particular tactical doctrine. On the other hand, the author cannot be accused of having so stretched and twisted incidents as to produce a situation that could not possibly arise.
The situations in an historical map problem have actually existed and someone has been faced with their solution when a faulty solution might mean the lives of men. The situation is apt to be more vague, information less complete, and events less orderly than in a map problem conceived in the mind of the author.
Many of the decisions in an historical map problem appear minor in a map problem - yet, remember that when these situations were faced by the commander either in battle or in that tense period preceding battle, their importance loomed large.
Anonymous ‘The Battle at Rocourt’ The Infantry School Mailing List Volume XVII (January 1939) page 1
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.
Mark Twain Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1907) page 155 (Internet Archive)For Further Reading
Regardless of the nature and nomenclature of the games, getting the young Marines in the infantry engaged in thinking and adding to mental and muscle memory the TDG’s seems a very valuable tool in the tool box of teaching warfare techniques and so forth up ans down the chain of command. One is never to old to learn.