Re: [s-d] The idea of a chess-subgame

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 28, 2005, at 9:41 PM, Dan Schmidt wrote:

> I had an idea for a chess subgame thingy. It would be
> a normal (By nomic standards) game of chess except
> that rather than have one player control a side each
> player is a Piece. So one player would be a Pawn, and
> another would be a Knight, and so on.
>
> Any thoughts?

Mostly, I'm thinking it would suck to be a Pawn.

Which is really the fundamental problem with many of the subgames we've 
had so far. Some of them allow players to grow stronger and more 
powerful. The House is, at the moment, a good example of this: I'm a 
lot more powerful than most people, just because all Talismans cost 
Genechips, and I have an absurd number of those. While this can be fun 
for the powerful players, it's not for the weaker ones, who have little 
hope of contending with the higher-level players, and who in some past 
subgames had little hope of advancing to higher levels either, since 
the powerful players could just swat them to keep them down.

On the other hand, games that don't allow advancement get boring. 
Political Go and Tiles are good examples of this - they were played 
incessantly for a few nweeks, but then they just died, since they never 
really went anywhere. Tiles didn't even reach its own expiration date.

So what we really need is a subgame that doesn't allow one or two 
players to take over the world, but also doesn't get old after a few 
nweeks.

One way to do this would be to come up with an extremely well-balanced 
game that had many opportunities for rule changes. The balance keeps 
players from taking over completely, while the frequent rule changes 
save the game from boring repetition.

Another would be to make a game that *ends*. This solves the first 
problem because it doesn't matter if somebody becomes invincible. It 
just means that they'll win the subgame, and then we'll start over. 
Meanwhile, it won't get old after a couple of nweeks just because it 
won't live that long.

I'm thinking about ways to modify the Haunted House to incorporate this 
vision. First, the overly complex bits would have to go. The combat in 
particular is more effort than it's worth. I'd prop to scale that back. 
Perhaps, remove all the damage, and just make it a way for players to 
grapple with each other in order to prevent actions. The Talisman 
purchasing system also needs to change. I'm thinking of redoing the 
prices in terms of House-specific currencies, and periodically given 
equal amounts of these currencies to all players.

I also think that a "turn-based" approach would help. Each Checking 
Period would be one player's Turn. This means that they get special 
powers and abilities, for the duration of their Turn. So then the game 
turns into a bunch of small games: every Checking Period (or two?) the 
game for one player is to figure out how to accomplish the most using 
eir extra powers, and the game for everyone else is to stop whatever 
crazy scheme e comes up with.

I think this will fit into both schemes above: the rotating nature of 
power will keep any one player or group of players from dominating the 
game, while the changing power structure will keep the game 
interesting, and the various turns will turn into minigames with clear 
endings.

The prop won't come out for a few days, though, since I'm rather 
swamped at the moment (as, I gather, are many people).

--
Wonko

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
  -- Ford Prefect

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