Re: PBM design and formulae - getting hotte

From: craa27@ccsun.strath.ac.uk ( Steve Holmes, Computer Centre )

Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1993 09:41:33 +0000

I think the current arguments take irreconcilable viewpoints, partly because they come
from current experience, and so are related to the current state of games.

I'd like to make some suggestions from a slightly more neutral standpoint.

I have role played with some quite terrible rules lawyers. The worst of these were
undoubtedly formula lawyers, those who knew what would give most plusses against
every opponent, and always had it on top of their pack. Such players reduce the
game to paper-scissors-stone with themselves getting to move second (But I digress).
I have seen this stle of play become infectious - copy the munchkin or become a
second rate character. This prejeoudices me against full publication of formulae.

With thought I have reached a position where formulae can be published without the
game becoming horribly deterministic. There are several techniques involved.

a) Hidden information. You know a bit about your own troops (This is a combat example)
    You know a bit about those of the enemy. You probably don't know enough about
    enemy troops to accurately predict enemy strength.  Other factors can be known
    within a certain tolerance - terrain, weather, routes for flankmarching.
    All of these may have some bearing on thje outcome of a battle.
    You probably won't know the morale of the enemy forces, you won't know the exact
    numbers, you may not know your own exact numbers.

b) Random factors. Nothing is more irritating than a system which lets a winner
    predict very low casualties. There should always be a risk of losing
    (Not necesssarily the battle, but losing on the odds offered). Some of the
    Key battles of our History involved seemingly overwhelmed forces either
    winning, or losing a phyrric Victory.

c) Combinatorial explosion. Where battle is a one shot affair.
    My Points - Your points + random = result
   the variety of outcomes is low, while battles tend to be fairly predictable.
   If a battle can be broken down into many sequential events, the range of possible
   outcomes is increased, and hopefully the geeks with spreadsheets will go away
   andc do something simpler like calculating Pi.

d) Abstraction. With a single character, we need a lot of detail.
    With a band of 10 or 20 we can still deal ith some individuals.
    With 100, it becomes difficult to arrange for the guy with the Big Axe
    to always be in the right place. We're dealing with secveral groups of people.
    in the 1000's we're really reduced to using military units which can probably
    be treated as fairly monolithic.
    With an army of 50,000 the commander in chief doesn't issue orders to individual
    units, he may not even know their location. Instead they are bundled up as
    Brigades, divisions or Corps. Generally each officer will issue orders to
    one echelon below, but will need to know the dispositions two echelons below.
    C in C doesn't bother too much about supplies, he has quatermasters to organise
    the details of this. He will want to know the overall state of supply of the army,
    and how this is likely to change in the near future.

Where a game permits growth, there should be some concept of scale like this.
    The small guerilla leader can control things at a detailed level.
    The large army commander who is chasing him has to make much larger scale decisions.
     Hopefully the structure of the army would result in sub-commanders making sensible
     decisions at a lower level. This could be done by some type of computer "Intelligence"
     and the cunning implementor could pass off its shortcomings as being due
      to organisational inefficiency.

Steve Holmes

References

Re: PBM design and formulae - getting hotter
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 23:54:03 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM design and formulae - getting hotter
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 23:54:03 +0000