The simulation of melee combat is central to many contemporary and traditional strategic games and simulations. In order to elevate this element of play from mere exercises of stats-comparison and dice rolling to a meaningful experience of play, strategy games rely on a rich plethora of cultural motives as deciding factors of their mechanic design. On the example of Samurai-themed skirmishing games, my talk elaborates on the impact that (popular) culture and other inspirations have on gaming experiences. It provides concrete examples from Japanese history, its traditional cinema, and postmodern Western reflections of Japanese cultural practices. Based on these insights, it compares four tabletop strategy games, muses on which phenomena they have adapted in their mechanics, and asks why or why not they may succeed in capturing a cultural essence via their rules. Ultimately, this comparative approach shall serve to decipher the interplay of dice mechanics and aesthetic properties as the longing for a dramatic ideal in tabletop gaming and encourage participants to reflect on the idea in a subsequent, shared gaming experience.

1. A Game of Chess is
Like a Swordfight
Melee Combat and the Dramatic Ideal in Contemporary Tabletop Gaming
I. On Tabletop Strategy Gaming
II. On the Dramatic Ideal
III. On the Case Studies: Samurai-Themed Skirmishers
IV. On Design and Research Purpose

2. Excerpt from Sword of Desperation (2010)

3. From Simulation to Simulacrum Following Barthes 1964
(Left: Prussian Kriegsspiel, photo by Matthew Kirschenbaum. Right: Warmaster Revolution, photo by Helmut Kovac)

4. Melee Combat in Tabletop Gaming
• Combat a central component of direct, strategic player engagement
• Usually elementary, even if win conditions are not combat related
• Dice-based, i.e. rooted in the physical “ability of the player to directly
manipulate, understand and experience game systems themselves”
(Klug 2011, 41)
• Rolling dice an act of imaginative, situational, and audible representation
(Carter, Harrop, and Gibbs 2014, 14-19)
• May employ additional tools (e.g. cards)
• Intended to convey the essence of confrontation via gameplay
• Challenging designers to combine transparency, uncertainty, replication…

5. The Dramatic Ideal
Every step of a tabletop game’s turn sequence is the
mechanic abstraction (the ideal) of a meaningful,
symbolic reenactment (the drama).
The dramatic ideal is the ludo-narrative concordance of
these layers that are intended to provide an experience
representing the events happening in the game.

6. The Dramatic Ideal on the Example of
Melee in Samurai-Themed Skirmishers
From Japanese restaurations
• History, tradition, and lore
• E.g. the ‘one-cut’ dogma of Iaido (Suino 1994, 3)
• The aesthetic and narrative repertoire of Chanbara films
• Small-scale battles, archetypical characters, key scenes in fights…
From Western revisionisms
• The post-war glorification of Bushido ethics (cf. Hurst 1990)
• Pop-cultural hijacking of Afro-orientalism (cf. McLeod 2013)
• “Martial arts in its ideal form is nothing if not cool” (Hewitt 2008, 273)

7. A Comparison of Samurai-Themed
Skirmishers and their Melee Combat
Dice used D6 Six-sided special dice D6 D6
Movement Charge into melee
(high risk, high reward)
Move into melee
(low risk, low reward)
Must charge to attack
(not move)
Charge into melee
Move into melee
Opportunity charges
Challenge enemies
Must move to attack
(not run)
Action Steps
Simultaneous
Determine dice pool, boost
Choose weapon and attack
Opposing roll
(player vs. player)
Compare attack/defence successes
(Base die, + support, - ones)
Fixed order
Attacker determines dice pool
Attacker rolls test
(Three of a kind to strike)
Defender determines dice pool
Defender rolls test
(If activations left)
Simultaneous
Both players determine attack pool
Both players roll test
(+4 to succeed)
Compare successes
Mixed
Allocate combat counter pool
(Attack and defence)
Determine initiative
Attacker removes counter, rolls die
Defender may boost
Attacker may boost
Subtract defence from attack for result
Uncertainty
Bluffing
(Dice Allocation, attack choice)
Bluffing
(Pool allocation, boosting, passing)
(Terminology following
Engelstein and Shalev 2020)

8. I Wrestled a Bear Once…
Thinking of turn sequence steps in terms
of dramatic ideals allows…
… to brainstorm on representation
… to dissect the purpose of mechanics
… to evaluate their contribution to a
game’s experience
(… to reflect what experience you want to create)

9. Sources Cited
• Barthes, Roland. 1966. “Die strukturalistische Tätigkeit.” In Kursbuch 5. http://nina.ort.userweb.mwn.de/barthes.html.
• Carter, Marcus, Harrop, Mitchell, and Martin Gibbs. 2014. “The Roll of the Dice in Warhammer 40,000.” In: ToDigra.
Physical and Digital in Games and Play, edited by Frans Mäyrä, Katriina Heljakka & Anu Seisto, 1-28. Pittsburgh: ETC Press.
• Engelstein, Geoffrey and Isaac Shalev. 2020. Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms.
London: CRC Press.
• Hewitt, Kim. 2008. “Martial Arts Is Nothing if Not Cool: Speculations on the Intersections between Martial Arts and African
American Expressive Culture.” In Afro Asia. Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans
and Asian Americans, edited by Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen, 265-284. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Hurst III, G. Cameron. 1990. “Death, Honor, and Loyality: The Bushidō Ideal.” Philosophy East and West 40, no. 4: 511-527.
• Klug, Chris. “Dice as Dramaturge.” In: Tabletop. Analogue Game Design, edited by Greg Costikyan and Drew Davidson, 39-
48. Pittsburgh: ETC Press.
• McLeod, Ken. 2013. “Afro-Samurai: techno-Orientalism and contemporary hip hop” Popular Music 32: 2, 259-275.
• Suino, Nicklaus. 1994. The Art of Japanese Swordsmanship: A Manual of Eishin-Ryu Iaido. Boston: Weatherhill.