PBM design: give away the formulas? From: bc@lnec.pt (Luis Miguel Sequeira) Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1993 15:01:22 +0000 I was _almost_ dropping this newsgroup forever. In fact, I do _not_ play Legends nor DM, thus the topics discussed herein are cpnsequently of absolutely no interest to me... :-) Then there is the occasional Galaxy article. Well, better than nothing... But finally, something quite interesting: Rich Skrenta wrote, a long time ago: :-) > o Trying to guess the rules shouldn't be part of game play. > Not giving the formulas forces players to use trial-and- > error to discover how things work, which is tedious and > unenjoyable. > My view on this is quite simple, and can be resumed to the following two types of games: A) Basic game, with a few simple rules. The game is not a simulation, and neither completely abstract (ie. chess), but relying on heavy player interaction (eg. politics & diplomacy), _or_ strategy (even if done on very simple way, as in Diplomacy, for example). In such game the rules themselves are a minor plus, what really counts are the PLAYERS themselves. In such cases, giving the formulas away is feasible. They will be quite simple, anyway (eg. Diplomacy, or Risk :-) if someone ever creates a PBeM from that... :-) ). They won't interfere with the actual game being played, as role-playing a diplomatic position _or_ achieving good strategic results is more important (by several orders of magnitude) than knowing the rules well... and they are so simple that they can be easily mastered by everyone! B) Complex simulation game. Obviously, I'm talking extremes here. Consider an out-of-average game, with thousands of possible interactions. Say, players can give orders to pillage neighbouring enemy provinces; automatically (ie. done by the computer, and not by the player), the local rules of the invaded province gather their forces, join them in armies, run towards the nearest castle, gather enough supplies and prepare to resist the invading army. Scouts are sent by both factions in the conflict to learn about the terrain and the whereabouts of the adversary. All this is done using complex rules, like probabilistic chance of finding other armies, terrain type involved, which season it is, the training of each army, the charisma of the generals, and so on. There are no precise "formulas", but in fact very complex algorithms to rule things out. But, at the end, what happened was: Player One: Player Two: Move to province Two, pillage mode Standard patrol on province Two and proceed to siege if castle found --- lots of computer cycles --- Result: Province Two: local ruler managed to get a small army in Castle 2.1 Supplies are enough Army is irregular Enemy from Province One invades. Pillage is successful. Army from Province One finds a castle on alert. Siege on Castle 2.1 occurs. ... etc. Clearly, _all_ the algorithms & formulas which were used to create the above report are quite beyond most people's time and patience. On the above example, I'd just put the basic principles in the rules (eg. never leave a province without troops, and build castles for your fortification; also, regular troops have an extra advantage in combat; remember that pillaging earns the invaders some money, but they will be thinly spread across a province, and will not take automatically any castles there; etc.), and _NEVER_ all the formulas. Anyway, things get so complicated that the formulas rarely will give twice the same result, as the input will vary a little, even if the circunstances SEEM to be the same (eg. between Turn 1 and 2 the weather changed, army status dropped 1.5%, and they are hungry). Fortunately, most games are of Type A. :-) I am currently playing a PBM which is of Type B, and where most formulas are not known (albeit there are still many charts and tables) - but the game suffers from a terrible lack of realism. Another Type B game I joined for a while was so complex that one of the best players _HAD_ actually a PhD in Mathematics and left his PC at home calculating the best move on several spreadsheets. This game has a quite extensive manual, detailing _every_ aspect of it, with a lot of detail and _all_ formulas. I left it because I had no time for so much "intensive gaming". Thus, above a certain complexity level, I'd skip all the formulas and algorithms, but explain the players the basics of the game. As the game increases in complexity, I'd expect a fair amount of "real" simulation. That is, ok, I don't know all the rules, but things happen to work out as in the reality. Thus, I need no rules, because common sense applies (or, failing that, if the game is of the medieval type, I can grab a history book on Medieval History and make it out how armies moved & fought in that epoch). Luis Sequeira New...\nFrom MAILER-DAEMON Fri Jun 25 16:32:30 1993 Subject: Returned mail: User unknown Folder: errors 5826 Up