Re: PBM design and formulae - getting hotter

From: rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)

Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1993 23:54:03 +0000

bc@lnec.pt (Luis Miguel Sequeira) writes:

>For instance, I'm  a role-player myself.  If  someone asks, "But which
>system  do  you like most?"  I answer: "I don't play by  any  system".
>Inconsistency?  Not at all.  What I like  most in  role-playing is the
>role-playing in itself, and not the rules. The most obvious reason for
>my "hate of rules" has to do with the fact that I couldn't bear having
>those nasty  players  with  me  who never spoke a  single sentence  in
>character, but  knew *all* (and I really mean  ALL) the rules by heart
>and quoted even their page number, or chapter,  or whatever.  Thus,  I
>said something like "well, I move forward to meet the green dragon..."
>and the player would pop up and yell: "Sorry Luis, you  can't do that!
>First  of all, the  dragon is further away than your current  movement
>points allow  to  move  this  turn.  Secondly, by rule #2532  in  book
>#1376531 you are a type #64343 elf,  which is terrified  by type #6363
>green dragons, so you can't actually ''meet'' a green dragon.  Ah, GM,
>by the  way, we're using  the  #75 variation on the Multiverse, aren't
>we?  According to chapter #5677 of book #652, in this variation, green
>dragons  don't exist.  Only  lavender types allowed. Just  thought  to
>point it out to you." Fun... oh lots of fun, indeed...

I absolutely agree with you.  As a GM, whenever I run into this sort of
thing, I generally say, "Well, by rule #0, your character has just
undergone a total reality failure and disappeared in a puff of logic".
"What rule #0?  I can't find it in the rulebook!"  "No, I just made it
up."

>Same thing applies  to PBeMs,  or,  in fact,  most wargames relying on
>player interaction (on  wargames  WITHOUT player interaction,  I  mean
>verbal one, you have no other choice but stick with the rules...).

>Let's  take  Russell's own  Atlantis, for instance.  Perhaps  not  the
>world's best PBeM  ever, but - let's see what it offers!  Hm, a couple
>of rules.   Hm, no formulas - or so  little that  you  can almost look
>over them on your first reading. Hm.  Not much, is it? *WRONG*. _LOTS_
>of player  interaction  needed!  And I'm talking LOTS  with capital L.
>Curiously, I started in a  weak  position, made  many mistakes (and am
>still doing), and have heard of a large number  of friends having been
>promptly  wiped out  of  the  game.  All of  them  had  made a serious
>mistake:  having  not enough contacts.  Perhaps  I do have  not enough
>contacts, either; only in the future, as the game develops and friends
>turn suddenly in bloody enemies, I will find out.  The hard way! :-)

>But  the point is, there  is a LOT more in Atlantis than  just knowing
>the rules, and  even knowing the rules _well_.  And that's what I find
>quite encouraging in the game. This applies to almost all PB(e)Ms I've
>ever played or are currently playing.  When the rules complexity grew,
>there  had to be _something more_ than just knowing the rules well and
>exploiting bugs et cetera.  Fortunately, I've sticked with those games
>which had that  quality of great player interaction...  in some games,
>even too much. On one medieval-style  game which I have played for the
>last 5 years (not  always with the  same position, mind you),  I  have
>managed _NOT_  to move my army for 3 years, real time!! And even today
>I don't  know the  battle rules in full, know  almost  nothing  of the
>naval  rules,  and  have  perhaps a  passing  knowledge  of  the  game
>economics.  Nevertheless, I'm  one of the twenty oldest players in the
>game,  and almost certainly the only one among them  who DOESN'T use a
>spreadsheet to calculate the next turn... :-)

Thanks for the compliment! :-)  This is precisely one of my main design
criteria; that the rules should be simple enough that clocking up 100
hours on a supercomputer is not a prerequisite to play the game well!
(Are you reading this, Rich Skrenta? :-)).  I believe that a simple set
of rules, which come together in many possible ways, can provide all the
required complexity of gameplay.  (Back to the comparison with
roleplaying, I have seen the argument seriously put forward, that
gratuitously complicated character generation rules are required in
order to make things too difficult for rules lawyers to cope with.  This
is nonsense, since rules lawyers love this sort of thing, and will find
it easier to cope with than anyone else will.)

>>Yes, this is precisely what it seems to be.  You seem to object to the
>>idea that people play games to succeed in a within-game objective, such
>>as the military defeat of another player.  Virtually all PBM games are
>>designed with this as at least an element of the game.

>Not all. Remember the ones with an open end.

>And besides that, why is _winning_ the game enforced, anyway? :-)

>What's the problem of just having fun? :-)

None whatsoever.  My point was that warfare etc. is *one element* even
of open-ended games geared towards role playing; and an important
element at that.  (Example from Olympia: Dr. Pain's military prowess
added a lot of spice to the game for lots of other players who would not
have initiated any such warfare themselves.)

>>You have
>>objected to the formulas being made available, and to the possibility of
>>the best strategies not being obvious from the rules.  What you're
>>looking for is a game that resembles a 60s love-in session rather than a
>>military/economic strategy game, and where it doesn't matter that you
>>haven't a clue how to run a military campaign because strategic
>>competence confers no advantage.  Of course, tastes differ.  I would
>>find such a game mindbogglingly boring, but if you want to write one,
>>feel free.

>You're  being a  little harsh on  poor Graham.  After all, you _don't_
>need  to  be  a  militar  expert  to  "win"  (deliberately  quoted)  a
>military/economic strategy game. What I mean is, the  game  is as good
>and as fun as its players are. Diplomacy is important. Double-crossing
>(and  the  ability to  do it) is  vital. Being  able  to convince your
>friends/enemies without needing brutal force  is interesting.  Look at
>your own games, they offer all that, and much more... :-)

I completely agree.

I think the best way to design a game is to have a simple, fully
documented set of rules, which can be used in many different ways.  The
game *doesn't* come down to who can clock up the most CPU hours
analyzing this or that paragraph of the rulebook with their spreadsheet
program, but who can make best use of what they have in terms of
strategy, diplomacy, or just roleplaying to have fun.

I don't think anyone would argue for example that any of the formulas in
Atlantis should be hidden.

But consider the case where the rules are very complicated.  (This
thread was started by Rich Skrenta, who has the avowed intention of
making Olympia 2 so complicated as to "make Russell Wallace nauseous"
:-).)

Having lots of complicated rules is I think a bad start.  The best way to
avoid making matters worse is to at least publish them so they can be
got out of the way as quickly as possible.  There will be enough of a
tendency anyway for the game to be dominated not by the best strategist
or the best diplomat, but the one who can spend the most hours wading
throught the rulebook.  This will be made much worse if one first of all
has to clock up months of trial and error to figure out what all the
*!@#@*! rules are in the first place.

(Barring Graham's solution of fiddling the rules so that skill makes no
difference in the end anyway and you might as well have a monkey enter
your orders for you.)

>Want to know how they were finally defeated (well, let's say: how they
>were severely restricted in their all-expanding  domain...)?   You got
>it: a group of "role-players" seceded from their  nation...  :-)  They
>fought badly, but there were more of them... :-)

>That is, victory in a wargame WITH DIPLOMACY does not  go  necessarily
>to the "spreadsheet  master", and  even  the strategist can have  some
>difficulty... beware of the double-crosser! :-)

Right.  I agree.  And either preferably having simple formulas, or at
least publishing them if one must have complicated formulas, is a good
way of encouraging this.  This sort of thing is what makes multiplayer
games fun, and that's the whole point of the exercise.  What's fun about
having to spend 6 months filling in the missing half of the rulebook by
trial and error?

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie

References

PBM design and formulae - getting hotter
bc@lnec.pt (Luis Miguel Sequeira)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 16:56:51 +0000

Referenced By

PBM design and formulae - getting hotter
bc@lnec.pt (Luis Miguel Sequeira)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 16:56:51 +0000