Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary

From: srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1993 20:58:49 +0000

>Strategy gamers, of course, are those who play with [maximizing] as
>their primary objective.  Adventure games are those in which the
>primary goal is to explore and learn, and adventure gamers are those
>who play this way....

>I can take just as much enjoyment in trying to find the best
>strategy to acquire the Staff of Calyx before someone else does, as I
>can in trying to find the best strategy to obliterate some other player...

>And that process is simply more enjoyable, for me, when
>conducted with the knowledge of the formulas which comprise the game
>system.

An interesting distinction.  This makes me realize another reason why
I dislike making the formulas explicitly known.  A "strategist" can
play a game like Olympia with or without the formulas, because he's
not much affected by the roleplayers.  But it is much more difficult
to roleplay when the formulas are known, because the strategists are
going to be much stronger, and you'll be forced out of roleplaying
simply to stay in the game.

>It's true that you can make the formula so complicated, or depend on
>so many diverse factors, that I may never discover it exactly.
>However, I will be able to discover an approximate version, in which
>some of the effects may be replaced by "unknown" or "random"
>quantities.  That will still be enough to give me a tremendous
>advantage over other players, who don't have even that approximate
>understanding.  (Further, if you make the formula increasingly
>complicated, it is increasingly likely that I will be able to
>discover "bugs" in the formula---ways in which its behavior is
>counterintuitive, and which I can use to my advantage.  I don't want
>the formula to have those, but if they do exist I generally do feel
>it necessary to use them.)

I think the ideal game system wouldn't have complex formulas, but
rather many simple, interacting systems.  Complexity should be an
emergent phenomenon, not an explicitly modelled one.  Many of the
problems inherent in complexity go away if you can do this.

>It really seems to me that, if your goal is to provide a game system
>which can satisfy players who enjoy exploring and discovering but don't
>want to be obliterated, then the easiest and most effective way to
>accomplish this is not by attempting to obscure formulas and mechanisms
>(which in the long run just gives the analysts an even bigger
>advantage), but by designing a game system in which players _don't get_
>obliterated.  Make it possible for players to be noncombatants, which
>can't be attacked.

It's not simply that people are either roleplayers or strategists.
Most players are some of both, and will adjust their style to the
particular game.  I think what you want to avoid is things that
incline the game too heavily one way or the other.  I feel that giving
away the formula is a heavy, heavy weighting towards strategists;
likewise I think that limiting faction size to a single character
would be too heavy a weighting towards roleplaying.

-- Scott T.

References

PBM design and formulae - a summary
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 28 Jun 1993 09:53:02 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 28 Jun 1993 20:30:42 +0000

Referenced By

PBM design and formulae - a summary
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 28 Jun 1993 09:53:02 +0000
Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)
Mon, 28 Jun 1993 20:30:42 +0000