About this site

The subject is the machinery: resolution systems and the probability shapes underneath them, the procedural layer of initiative, turns and reaction rolls, and the long argument about where authority sits between a referee, a player and a die.

The site is organised into four sections, written as fourteen pieces. Each describes what a mechanism does and what it was designed against, in our own words; no rules text is reproduced and nothing here is playable. Designers, works and publishers are named where the record is clear.

The material runs from the wargame umpire of the mid-twentieth century to systems published in the last twenty years. Where a piece touches a specific game, it names it.