Re: [s-d] [s-b] Consultation

[Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 5, 2007, at 5:28 PM, Mike McGann wrote:

> On Dec 3, 2007 4:30 AM, Daniel Lepage <dplepage@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Speaking of which, a subgame idea: A grid board, with objects on the
>> spaces, and players move around, say once per nweek, taking actions
>> with said objects.
>
> I've been thinking this over for a few days now, and I'm having a hard
> time of thinking how to implement this. If each player is a player in
> this mini-game it could be a lot of people. How do players make a
> move? In turn? That would take too long. Upon arrival at the forum?
> Too time sensitive. All at once after actions are gathered? In that
> case, how are things resolved if people perform conflicting actions?
> If you have any more details to this idea, they would be helpful.

Upon arrival to the forum actually works pretty well, as long as you  
limit how many moves per some period of time a player can have. Most  
subgames we've had in the past used this strategy, and it was rarely a  
problem. That said, sometimes you do get irritating race conditions,  
but I think any style will have some flaws.

Turn based doesn't work because, as you say, it could take a long  
time, especially if a lot of players wait until the last minute of  
their turns to move. Doing it all at once is hard on the admin(s), but  
it can be done, with extra logic to deal with collisions (in the style  
of Diplomacy).

>
> Also, how about something along the Mornington Crescent theme or has
> that already been done? The playing board is the London Underground
> map. One move per nweek. You can only do one of two moves, get on a
> train (direction must be specified), or get off a train at a station.
> If you are on a train, you can get off at any stop on that line in the
> direction you are going. First to arrive at Mornington Crescent wins
> with the caveat that the station is "closed" and you can't stop there
> according to the initial ruleset. It starts off with really "nothing
> to do" but the fun would be keep adding to it and somehow try to find
> a way to win (with an emphasis on weird rules and not on massive game
> state).

There was once a Mornington Crescent Nomic, but I never knew much  
about it and I don't know what became of it. We had a subgame a while  
ago where the board was a graph (rooms linked by doorways), which is  
similar but not quite the same.

> Of course, trying to introduce a mini-game would be a large rule to
> introduce unless it was a very simple game. Without enthusiasm, coming
> up with a large rule that is likely to be voted down isn't really
> worth the work.

These generally evolve over time. One of the main factors driving the  
design of my proposed subgame was to find a way to build a subgame  
that wouldn't die out the way most past subgames did. Rather than  
playing "until it gets boring", I hoped to divide the game into  
definite rounds that would always end, given enough time. Also, the  
levels system keeps it from being too complex at any given time.

I actually first started designing this idea three years ago, to be a  
successor to The Grid. The Grid was similar subgame in that we had a  
20x20 grid of squares, and players could move around and interact with  
objects, but it never ended - it kept getting more and more complex,  
until the defining rule was more than 10 pages long and dozens of  
other rules tied into it. At about that point Dave became unable to  
keep up with the administrative tasks, leading to the downfall of the  
Adminocracy and the end of the First Era.

The main goals of this game:
1) It should be Grid-like. The Grid worked really well and was a lot  
of fun, it just got out of control.
2) It shouldn't change faster than the administration can keep up.  
This is taken care of by limiting new objects to *later* rounds - when  
a round starts, you know exactly what objects will be allowed and how  
they will interact.
3) It shouldn't continuously accumulate complexity. One of the reasons  
The Grid got so ugly was because we kept adding features, but rarely  
deleted old ones. Breaking the subgame into rounds solves this  
problem, because it gives us a natural point to stop and discard old  
mechanics in favor of new ones.
4) It should be easy to draw. The House failed this test, because the  
node structure was tricky to lay out, and we ended up with several  
displays that one had to consult to see what was going on - the main  
Map, the chart of who was in which rooms, the Tool descriptions, etc.  
By contrast, HTML has lots of features that lend themselves well to  
laying out regular grids.

-- 
Wonko

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