Wargames have been around, in some form or another, for quite some time. Most modern wargames derive from the Kriegspiel (literally wargame) of 19th-century Prussia:
The nineteenth-century Prussian game started life with a rigid structure and copious formal rules. The two sides were each placed in a separate room with a model of the terrain or a map. The umpires moved from one room to another collecting orders from the players, and then retired to a third room to consult the rules and find the results of combat. A great deal of their time was consumed in leafing through voluminous sets of rules, consulting tables and giving rulings on fine legal points. By about 1870, however, this rigid system was starting to be thought rather clumsy and time-consuming. Quite apart from the many defects and loopholes in the rules themselves, it reduced the umpires, who were often very senior officers, to the role of mere clerks and office boys. clearly, such a state of affairs was intolerable.
Most “modern” games of the 1980s (e.g., Squad Leader, Third Reich) followed the “voluminous sets of rules” model, but the Prussians moved away from it 100 years earlier:
It was General von verdy du Vernois who finally broke with this system, and abolished the rule book altogether. His approach to the wargame was the free kriegspiel, in which the umpire had a totally free hand to decide the result of moves and combats. He did not do this according to any set of written rules, but just on his own military knowledge and experience. He would collect the players’ moves in exactly the same way as before; but he would then simply give a considered professional opinion on the outcome. This speeded up the game a very great deal, and ensured that there was always a well thought-out reason for everything that happened. This was a great help in the debrief after the game, and it allowed players to learn by their mistakes very quickly.
A modern “free kriegspiel” often combines umpiring with a randomizer (e.g., a ten-sided die, or “nugget”):
The system for finding the results of combat in a free kriegspiel is classically simple. First of all the umpire looks at the position of each side: how many and what type of troops are involved; how their morale is bearing up; and what orders they have been given. He next considers the ground on which the action will be fought, and any special tactical problems which either side might encounter; whether there are any obstacles in the way of an attacker; whether a flank attack might be possible, and so on.
When the umpire has all relevant information at his disposal, he ought to be able to give an informed opinion on the probabilities of the result. He will not simply say something like ‘The French infantry hassuccessfully stormed the hill’, but will quote possibilities, such as: ‘The French have a 50% chance of storming the hill successfully; a 30% chance of capturing half of it, while disputing the rest; and a 20% chance of being totally repulsed. High scores favour the French’. It is important that the umpire is as specific as possible with these figures, as this forces him to consider all the factors involved in the combat and to think through the full implications of his decision. He must also be clear whether a high dice roll will be good or bad for the attacker, i.e., whether the top 50% (a die roll of 5-9) or the bottom 50% (a roll of 0-4) will mean the hill has been carried. In this case he has stated that the high score will be good for the attacker.