BURDEN OF COMMAND

Burden of Command came onto my radar completely out of the blue several years ago when I noticed that Chris Avellone announced that he would be working with a team in a consulting role to develop a World War II game. The basic thrust of the game was to study leadership, how command is shaped and what it is called upon to resolve in the most extreme circumstances: those of the battlefield where the individual's instinct of survival clashes with the sense of duty and mission of the team. The pairing of one of my (if not my most) favourite storytellers in the industry along with the historical context of WWII for me was ideal. Several years have since passed and the small team Green Tree Games LLC (literally pairs of coders/audio designers/writers) have delivered a labor of love and life that may well be considered an academic study and could be presented as a management seminar and/or journey of self-discovery.

To begin defining Burden of Command we must quote the necessary disclaimer that appears, as a first sign of its transparency, at its introduction: the game is not for everyone. The presentation of the war beyond any embellishment and pseudo-glorification for the public sentiment requires the depiction of harsh images and situations. It is this conflict of situations that is at the heart of the matter and asks us, the players, to make decisions by weighing the benefits, remembering that there are no ideal situations but only the best possible outcomes of them. We therefore have at the core of the game a narrative RPG (with over 500 thousand words) much like we encountered in Suzerain. The main and secondary characters are the officers of our company with whom we interact, plan missions, support them during dialogues and events. The squads and platoons that make up our company are the main weapons during the outcome of missions, where the game takes on a purely tactical wargaming form.

The military manual in action

The turn-based aspect of the battles is the focus of the bootcamp, perhaps the most brutal tutorial in recent memory. The emulation of the army doctrine, the perpetual - "snitch" umpire who always finds something wrong with the execution of the drills, the "grass" who feel that the SPEN is the worst thing they've ever seen in front of them made me curse, more than a few times. The welcome breaking of the fourth wall by Luke Hughes (the project leader) made things a little more understandable and bearable, but not that much. Bootcamp is a constant grind that tries to plant in your head that anything can go wrong and everything will go wrong. In fact, the thoroughness, repetition, and even failures of Devil's Bootcamp were the equivalent of Captain Sobel in Band of Brothers: it managed to prepare me for the worst possible situations. After I was in a daze trying to figure out what was going on to the point where I had no confidence in myself as to whether I could cope with the demands of the game, I entered the first missions of the African campaign against Vichy France and everything simply fell into place. Suddenly all the instructions made sense, to the point where I felt sorry for the opposing fighters. Surgical execution of maneuvers following bootcamp lessons became second nature.

The battle is based on the basic doctrine of the US Army during WWII, the 4Fs: Find, Fix, Flank, Finish. There are very few times when simply exchanging fire will succeed in overwhelming the opposing platoon groups. In fact this happened to me once, quite by pure coincidence, when my squad with height advantage fired at an adjacent block without cover and killed an officer. Burden of Command requires excellent tactical awareness and methodical thinking to understand your objectives. First and foremost, reading the battlefield and identifying potential hazards is important. Then we must identify opposing groups that may give away their position e.g. by fire, possible orders or even correct detection on our part. Fixing them through suppressive fire is the next step, until we flank them with a different group and lead them to surrender. It is obvious that tactical maneuvers require perfect orchestration and coordination of our teams and different platoons (riflemen, mortars, etc.).

The battle economy is based on the available moves (i.e. Orders) that the Lieutenant (or Captain if available) has available to give to his platoon. Each turn consists of alternating between our own and opposing officers. Each officer can "spend" an order to activate a squad, which then has relative autonomy for further movements. As expected, more experienced officers and teams have more Orders available which radically affects the battlefield, since we have more moves available before the enemy reacts. The officer's function and participation in combat is all important and is not limited to just "activating" the individual squads in his platoon. Participation in the teams, morale raising (bolstering), rallying and even pressing on at the right time can change the course of the battle as long as he is operationally involved. A leader is not just an orchestrator but also a participant if he wants to enjoy the trust of his subordinates. It must be remembered that everything falls under the 4Fs, so existing elements that affect the effectiveness of the team (such as its morale) accumulate, with the officer being called upon to lead and mitigate from within the front lines.

This rather superficial presentation of the mechanisms of the turn-based arm of Burden of Command can be crystallized into one sentence: the leader - officer has to make difficult decisions in the field, to coordinate his teams in order to capture his objectives. To make things even more complicated, we are called upon to keep the balance between the objectives of the higher echelons and the condition (mental, physical) of the manpower under our supervision. Will we choose our mission or our men? Is there a way to accomplish both? It is this contrast between executive and operational that will highlight our own role and position: how can we carry out orders if we do not inspire the confidence of our men to carry them out? On the flip side, how can we protect our men if we don't have the necessary standing with our superiors? To avoid any misunderstanding, Burden of Command is not a middle-manager battle simulator where we try to justify our existence, but an RPG where we will see our decisions tested through fire and lead.

WHO ARE YOU?

The RPG gameplay unfolds through different events both during the battle and between missions. The narrative takes a primary role and usually rewards us with some measurable metric: Prestige with the higher echelons if we manage to complete our mission, Loyalty and Trust from our men depending on how we participate in the battle and events. At the same time, there are turning points where dealing directly with the horrors of war is a small opportunity for reflection and contemplation. This defines our core principles that are summarized in the game's eight different Mindsets with five available for each officer. Investing in the mindsets upgrades them from mere dialogue flair initially to essential battlefield skills later on. All of these attributes translate as resources that we can invest as XP in our officers and teams, replenish our losses with reserves, or remove the stress and combat fatigue that impact their performance in battle.

The RPG mechanic in turn aids the narrative, as better and more effective teams contribute to more positive event outcomes... marginally. A well-organized attack with minimal casualties can give us an extension in the scenario to achieve an outright victory that allows for more e.g. prestige with corresponding trade-offs. There are no absolute victories, only better prospects. Events can be unlocked in this course that will require difficult decisions, weighing between individual and team benefit. This is the price the leader pays at any given time. The narrative of each event is interspersed with a wealth of historical and explanatory photographic material restored from archives, adding further historical context. The gravity of our decisions is further enhanced by the fact that the entire game is in full ironman mode. Even in the event of the removal (or even death) of our main character (a lieutenant in the first platoon of the Nickel Company), there are no dead ends in the army. Just the mission.

I can go on for several pages about why I consider Burden of Command one of the titles that deservedly claim GotY 2025. After all, my love for games that are a product of academic-scientific methodology is well known, whether they are AA games like Senua or smaller in scope like Pentiment. Burden of Command combines the realism of a turn-based gameplay wargame with the historical elements of a real-life company (Cottonbalers) in WWII. It is an unpretentious and heartfelt attempt to study the psyche of the leader, how it is shaped and dependent on both extrinsic factors and the choices the particular person makes with the trust they place in their subordinates. The initial demanding introduction to the tactical elements are only a gatekeeper for an excellent narrative RPG. I felt every choice I made was critical to the main stakes, which was none other than the integrity of my soldiers. The target audience may not be as large as it should be, but the lessons it teaches are for everyone, let alone in our current times. It will test your mettle to the fullest. Are you ready?

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