Designer's Diary Part 3: The Evolution of That Others May Live

With the game's upcoming release, I wanted to talk a little about the inspiration for That Others May Live and how it evolved over the years. 

The game went through a three-year on-and-off period of trial and error before it finally crossed the finish line. While reading countless mission reports and sifting through a mountain of declassified information, I developed no less than three complete games that tried to address the topic of Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR). 

Though these early efforts offered a rough approximation of controlling combat aircraft, none of them captured the feel for the essential teamwork that formed a core element of these missions. I needed a system that would take the focus off individual aircraft control and get the player thinking about how to coordinate aircraft actions and their overall effects on a rescue operation. 

I also had to find some way to model terrain, the enemy's location, search teams, combat, rules of engagement, the condition of the survivor, and the use of various kinds of ordnance and how they would play into the outcome of the rescue. No sweat, right?

CSAR operations were intense, highly dynamic and complex. So it was a real challenge to figure out how to offer an experience that would emulate these aspects and bring them together in a tight, simple, and playable package.

Follow the Leader - The Map and Movement System

After several false starts, I looked toward Dan Verssen’s “Leader” series for inspiration. These well-loved aircraft games boil down mission planning and execution to its essentials. Minimalist in its presentation, the map board uses a several outer zones surrounding a central target zone. By using an area movement system, the game plays quickly and avoids the use of computations, hex counting, and turn charts. 

I decided to use zone markers to represent terrain features (villages, heavy jungle, mountains, etc.) and other elements that would help make give players a sense that they were fighting over the rugged hill and forests of North Vietnam and Laos instead of a featureless desert. At the beginning of each game, the player draws or assigns a zone marker to each zone as directed by the scenario setup. 

Zone markers can represent impassable mountains, which your Survivor cannot cross. They might be a nearby village, the presence of which means that certain kinds of ordnance cannot be dropped nearby. Heavy jungle markers make it nearly impossible to see the enemy below and your efforts to troll for fire will be fruitless.

The Art of the Knife Fight - Aircraft Movement & Action Cards

With the map taking shape, I developed a simple system of movement for each aircraft type and role. Skyraiders and helicopters move across the map one zone at a time and stay in play from turn to turn for the entire game. Fast Movers can be placed in any zone and start and end a turn in the "Orbit Box". Due to their high rate of fuel consumption, they only remain in play for two turns before they are placed back into a Fast Mover pool. Unless damaged by enemy fire, they can be called back into play with the successful use of a Command Card.

Aircraft actions were another vital piece of the puzzle. It was not enough that the planes could move around the map - they had to be able to make attacks, rescue people, mark targets, and troll for enemy fire. I needed some practical way to show this without having to encumber the player with tracking fuel and bomb loads for each plane over the course of ten turns. The solution came in the form of Aircraft Action Cards, which allowed the player to "order" an aircraft to commit to a particular action during a turn. 

It also added to the realism. The lack of a playable card on any given turn might represent an aircraft's pilot being otherwise engaged with some more important task, such as evasive maneuvering, communication, navigating, or lining up a target. 

The two-card limit per zone on Aircraft Action Cards also provided a reasonable limit on how much an aircraft could actually do in such a small operational area. CSAR has often been described as a "knife fight in a phone booth", so putting the brakes on the number of possible actions in one zone each turn seemed the right thing to do. 

Aircraft Action Cards also solved the problem of how to account for variations in aircraft roles. Each card specifies which aircraft can be assigned the card. Fast Movers can't troll for fire. FACs can't drop napalm. Helicopters get no action cards - they can only do one thing in the game - conduct rescues. This approach helped me to sidestep the need for rules or charts outlining what actions were available for which aircraft and when.

Modeling Hidden Threats

With a rough idea of how I wanted friendly aircraft to move and act, it was time to turn my attention towards the enemy. All of the threats in TOML are from the ground - specifically the countless anti-aircraft weapons that defended the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

Although there was always the deadly possibility of MiGs showing up while a CSAR mission was underway, it was far more likely that death would come in the form of a hurtling shell from an anti-aircraft weapon or small arms. The major problem for fliers, however, was not only the guns - but the lack of knowledge of their whereabouts.

The single most common factor that concerned CSAR operators was the uncertainty about the threat below. Again and again, the questions that pilots and scene commanders had to deal with were related to a lack of information about the enemy coupled with the need to act quickly and decisively in a hostile environment. 

The questions boiled down to: How many guns are there? Where are they? Are all the guns suppressed or are there more down there just waiting for the rescue helicopters to come in? When is the best time to go in? What are the safest routes out? 

Project CHECO Southeast Asia Report - 1969

The numbers show that operating over enemy territory with incomplete information was a deadly occupation in North Vietnam and Laos. Of the 778 total rescues conducted throughout the war, 109 aircraft were lost. 76 CSAR personnel were killed. Expressed as a ratio, this translated into 1 loss of aircraft for every 7 rescues and 1 loss of CSAR personnel per 10 rescues.

One of the greatest terrors in the mind of CSAR operators was known as the “flak trap”. This was the NVA practice of setting up AAA guns in concealed positions around or near a downed American pilot and then opening fire point-blank on the rescue helicopters as they came in for a pickup. Coordination among the NVA depended on tight discipline, timing, proper siting of guns that accounted for line of sight, and good communications. 

Needless to say, the conditions needed to pull this off were not always ideal. Poorly trained gunners got jumpy and trigger-happy. Sometimes, they took potshots at low-flying aircraft and revealed their position. An FAC familiar with the local area might notice something amiss and spot a concealed emplacement. Overeager commanders lost patience and ordered their men to open fire too early. 

All of these human elements were further complicated by nature itself. Hilly and broken terrain hampered radio and visual communication. Guns were hard to maintain along the trail and those that worked could not always be moved into position quickly enough. Weather and cloud restricted line of sight and the American rescue teams were adept at using the terrain to their advantage when running in for the pickup.

In the end, I created two types of information counters related to the enemy - the "Hidden" and "Enemy" counters. Each counter has two sides - a label ("Hidden") or ("Enemy") and a number on each side indicating how many enemy guns must be drawn from an opaque cup when they are revealed. These numbers range from 0 to 3. 

Both types of counters are drawn at random from a cup at the beginning of the game and placed face down in each zone. "Troll for Fire" cards may be assigned to Skyraiders and FACs. If the cards are resolved successfully, the player can flip over the Enemy marker in the zone to find out if any hostiles are down there (and then hopefully suppress them!). This rule models the ability to gain a partial picture of the numbers and types of enemies in an area before committing your vulnerable helicopters.

On the other hand, there is only so much information you can reasonably expect to get from the air. The Hidden markers represent the possible presence of disciplined gunners assigned to the flak trap. These guns can only be revealed by the presence of a helicopter. 

Since American helos were big, slow moving, and had more crew members, they were prime targets for NVA gunners. This counter represents the things that you cannot know before sending in your force. The only thing that can mitigate these threats is to have a plan for dealing with them in contingency. Good players will have something special tucked away in their Reserve hand and some Action cards ready to burn away the hits.

Once the system was worked out for hidden enemy information, I had to work out how much variation there should be in terms of the types and numbers of enemy guns. 

Most of the weaponry on the trail was small-caliber, 37mm and under. To that end, I set the bulk of the gun counters as heavy machineguns and ZPUs with some M38s thrown in for good measure. There was always the chance of a 57mm S-60 gun rearing its ugly head so I put one in there just to keep players on their toes. The barrage markers really represent the presence of mass small arms fire and the threat that it posed to aviators.

I considered putting in SAMs, but the North Vietnamese mostly used SA-2 fixed installations to protect high-value targets and their approaches rather than the trail itself. Handheld SA-7s were not introduced until almost mid-1972 and this was beyond the scope of the scenarios that I had set the game (from '65 to early '72) so it wasn't a problem to just leave them out.

At first, I was tempted to keep the number of enemy guns on every mission high and make the game as difficult as possible. But looking back at the reports, this seemed unrealistic. Some CSAR missions were quick pickups with minimal or no enemy resistance. At other times, the mission turned into a close-range knife fight between forces in the air and on the ground. 

I adjusted the Hidden and Enemy marker mix by putting in some extra "0"s while at the same time, creating just a bit of extra uncertainty by adding in an Enemy and Hidden marker that would require drawing for additional Enemy or Hidden markers and placing even more guns. This raised the possible number of guns in an area beyond the initial 3. Now, there was a huge variation in the number of enemies that one might encounter on a mission.

It is possible that the player will have an “easy game’, where a Survivor is picked up after only a few turns and minimal enemy resistance is encountered. It is also possible that a mission that's seemingly going fine will suddenly turn into a desperate battle between air and ground. 

For this reason, TOML can be unfair at times, but I don't regret this at all. Fairness was not something that entered into this situation, and the game tries to reflect that reality. Just as no two rescues were the same, it will be rare to have two games of TOML that play out the same. 

The Search Conundrum

One other aspect of the enemy that needed to be modeled were the NVA search teams. This left me in a bit of a quandary. Certainly, it was true that the longer the downed aviators stayed on the ground, the more likely they would be captured. One study by the 3d Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Group during the war concluded that the chances of rescue diminished rapidly after only thirty minutes. How best to represent this threat in a way that made sense and made as few demands as possible on the player?

At first, I made counters for each search team and created a set of rules that allowed them to move around randomly around the map. When a search team counter was in the same zone as a Survivor, the player drew several cards to check for capture. Search teams could be attacked from the air to keep them from doing their job. 

The result was less than stellar. Making the player check for each search team's movement, attack results, and removal of suppression effects made a lot of extra work for the player in return for very little result. It was also just plain unrealistic. Although there were certainly cases of aircraft engaging infantry on the ground during rescue operations, they were not specifically targeted in premeditated attacks (unless they were very close to the Survivor). The idea that these small groups could be detected under triple-canopy jungle from the air stretched the design beyond credibility. 

In the end, I settled on a search track that gave an idea of how close the enemy was to finding and capturing the downed pilot. Each turn, the Search marker moves along the track and things get more dicey for the rescue team and the Survivor. Instead of showing individual enemy infantry markers that could be targeted, action cards may affect the search and enemy operations on the ground. Napalm, for example, was often used for area-denial and dropping it in the Survivor's zone causes the Search marker to move back along its track. Although highly abstract, it reduced the workload on the player while putting on the pressure to get on with the rescue and get out of there.

Development and Playtesting

At this point, the game worked well enough. I felt I had the right approach and intentions with the design and playtesting would reveal the elements that needed further simplification or abstraction. I was sure there would be one or two things that could be discarded without losing too much fidelity. At this point, I was too close to see where to focus my efforts and only the intervention of a solid developer and an excellent group of playtesters could find them. 

Luckily, that is exactly what happened.

In summer of 2022, TOML went through three long rounds of playtesting and development. Ryan Heilman (designer of Brave Little Belgium, Ginormopod, and White Eagle Defiant) assembled a great group of playtesters, organized feedback, and provided a solid sounding board for changes that improved and smoothed out the design. 

By the time the second and third playtest round came and went, the game had improved across the board. I decided to add some flavor by creating a "Pilots & PJs" deck that allowed for unique pilot and pararescue abilities in the game. A mini-campaign gave players a little extra challenge if they wanted to see their rescue team grow in skill over the course of three missions. After receiving positive feedback from the playtesters, both new features were added to the game.

At the same time, playtesters had some legitimate beefs with the encumbrance of the combat system. It was not always clear who was shooting and at whom and why. Some guns, for example, were firing at targets two zones away while being attacked by aircraft that were circling directly above them. That didn't seem to make any sense. Also, the system had some vulnerability to being  "hacked" by players to hedge for a win. It wasn't 100 per cent, but there were certainly some ahistorical workarounds that could be exploited by a clever player.

Instead of making minor tweaks, I took the opportunity to dramatically overhaul the combat system to make it simpler and more realistic. I approached combat on a zone-by-zone basis where the overall volume of fire was calculated and hits were applied randomly to aircraft in the affected zone. 

Almost as notable were the things that were taken out to streamline gameplay and make things easier for the player. At first, victory was determined according to a complicated Victory Point system that required the player to remember and track actions and results throughout the game. Taking out an enemy gun netted you two VPs. Rescuing a survivor gave you 5 points. Hitting a target of opportunity gave you two. And so on and so forth. At the end of the mission, you tallied up your VPs and compared them to a victory point table.

To put it politely, the whole thing felt disingenuous. Combat Search and Rescue team members almost invariably measured success by one simple metric - did everyone get home or not? That was their raison d'etre and it needed to be the central victory condition in the game. I jettisoned the victory points entirely, and made the win conditions solely dependent on whether your Survivor is coming home or going to the Hanoi Hilton. Again - simple and realistic.

Another mechanic that fell by the wayside during playtesting: I had created a rule that allowed the player to split and combine aircraft into teams. This gave them some special abilities when working together. Each aircraft counter had a one-aircraft side and a two-aircraft side. 

Counters on their two-aircraft side could play a single Aircraft Action card twice at no special cost, or they could both play separate actions. This was especially useful when suppressing and attacking enemy guns in an area. It was also a neat way to highlighted the nature of teamwork during these missions.

The bulk of the playtest questions revolved around complications surrounding these rules and this confusion bled into other parts of the game. 

If a two-aircraft counter was shot down, which one was hit? This was especially important when it came to assigned Action Cards and Pilot counters. I originally doubled down and had players draw randomly to determine which card or counter to discard. But this bloated the rulebook and put more demands on the player in a game that already had plenty of card draws. 

When I went back to one aircraft per counter, the game flowed more naturally. This was the only mechanic that I was sorry about getting discarded. It had the potential to really highlight the team aspect of CSAR operations, but I couldn't find a way to fit it into the game without making major changes elsewhere. Having already made some significant overhauls after the first round of playtesting, I was loathe to make the alterations needed to make this work. 

When we went into the third round of playtesting, everything finally seemed to be firing on all cylinders. Playthroughs with the new rules and scenarios had confirmed what I had suspected - the game was indeed getting better and things were going in the right direction. A fourth round would have been nice, but it seemed that the bulk of the issues had been resolved. Besides, the playtesters had already been heroic in their time commitment toward the game. It was time to move on.

Letting Go - The Final Submission

That Others May Live was submitted in its final form to Hollandspiele after three rounds of playtesting ended in late August/early September 2022. Except for a quick revision to an optional rule, nothing has changed since then and its impending release. During that time, I had no desire to alter anything in the game - incredibly rare for me, since I was born to tinker. 

That says a lot - not about me, but about how much the development cycle helped to get the game where it needed to go. For that, I have the playtesters and the developer, Ryan Heilman, to thank profusely for their efforts.