Re: More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods

From: "Tomas H.V. M�rkrid" <tomas.hvm@c2i.net>

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Aaron-Dirk Boyden writes:
> A big, computer-moderated game will have vast
> quantities of ever-changing stuff which a given player won't know
> about.  Action A will not always have consequence B, because factors C,
> D, E, and F, off in other parts of the game, influence things, and the
> player might have forgotten that C had changed, while his spies failed
> to find out about a shift in D, and E and F were outside his sphere of
> information gathering completely.  You don't need a GM making mistakes
> to get unpredictable results, you just need a system complicated enough
> for it to be impossible for a person to think through everything.  And
> that isn't that complicated.

It is of course quite easy to make a HUGE game with lots of stuff going on,
too much for any player to know it all. But; this is game WIDTH, not depth.
Depth has to do with more elusive qualities, witch are an integrated part
of human communication. Depth will show when a human GM is playing on sense
and sensibility in a way each of us may do, but none of us may see the
origin, or end of. It has also something to do with the fact that we know
it is a human GM who is writing the turn, so we look for innuendos,
fog-talk, and blatant lies. This is not something we expect from a
computer. And it is something you will find it very hard to compute.

Sounds strange ? It is, like in: "depths too deep to see".

> I'm not scorning human-moderated games, by the way; I'm just irritated
> by bad arguments.

A bit haughty this. You're not describing depth at all, and I dare you to
try depth with any computer.

Tomas  :-)

References

Re: More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods
Aaron-Dirk Boyden <Aaron-Dirk_Boyden@brown.edu>
Sun, 18 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000
More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods
casbahcarl@aol.compost (Chuck)
Thu, 15 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods
madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)
Fri, 16 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods
"Steve Pritchard" <steve@spelbind.demon.co.uk>
Fri, 16 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods
Aaron-Dirk Boyden <Aaron-Dirk_Boyden@brown.edu>
Fri, 16 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: More Depth? Comp-Mods vs. Hand-Mods
"Chris Dempsey" <Chris@spelbinder.demon.co.uk>
Sat, 17 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000