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

From: "Chris Dempsey" <Chris@spelbinder.demon.co.uk>

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000

>A computer's ability to keep track of more than a human could ever hope
>to has consequences you're not considering here.  The human moderator's
>ability to look at the big picture is limited by how much of it he can
>keep before his mind at one time, and he's apt to miss a lot of possible
>connections between one player's actions at one place and another's at
>another place because they involve too many intermediate steps to easily
>think through.  A computer will only see what it's programmed to see,
>but it will always see what it's programmed to see; it will never miss
>anything through inattention.  If the program is good, this can make for
>much richer interactions between diverse parts of the game world.
>
>--
Which immediately starts making it tedious and boring. One of the riches of
a hand-mod game is that you cannot ever be sure that A always follows B,
much like real life, a GM forgets something, reacts in a way that you
wouldn't expect to a certain situation, and this all adds to the richness
and interpretation of the game, a computer on the other hand, `always
getting things right seems to me to be a recipe for repetition and
dreariness in the end!'

Sounds very much like madhouse so much in love with their game that they
can't see the woods for the trees.  His claim appears to be for an
intelligent computer program that automatically extends and re-writes itself
when it sees something new, now a human GM can do that immediately, I
suggest his program would need to go back to the programmer to put a new
module in to deal with anything it can't already deal with, or has
programming changed since I last touched my machine. I'd be more inclined to
believe this if these claims weren't backed by, `but our game does this!'
Sounds too much like self-advertisement to me.

As we do with Bledian diary the computer takes all the tedious
record-keeping off the GM's shoulders, leaving him free to do all the clever
bits. This a computer cannot do. If it could then wouldn't Feist, Eddings
and the like be out of business, as computers would surely be able to write
fantasy novels?

References

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
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

Referenced By

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
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