[da_chicken]

I'll buy that Little Wars is simple (from my understanding).

Kriegspiel, however, was very far from simple. It was just focused on battle simulation.

From my understanding, it was intended to be played by each side (either individual or team) being in their own room with their own map of the battle. Communication would go to the referee, who would run "reality". The referee would have a map and use charts, tables, dice, and pure fiat to sent information and update the state of the game to the players. Plus the game was played to a real clock. An ideal setup would have the opposing generals only communicating with the referee by means of runners, to simulate the telephone effect.

I really can't call a game that requires no less than three terrain maps and three rooms to be "simple". Especially when you see the dice the game uses.

[panzagl]

Simpler than AD&D, not implying that they're simple. What you described is a big kriegsspiel- the equivalent of Gygax and Kuntz running multiple parties through the Greyhawk dungeon at the same time. They would have used similar methods to limit information being shared between parties.

Or for a more measurable metric, the von Reisswitz rules are 76 pages, which iirc was about the size of the player's handbook:

https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product/kriegsspiel-1824/

Edit- Oops, just reread what I originally wrote and I said 'much' simpler, which would be stretching things.