Tournament Report Darmstadt

Last Saturday I held the 3 Darmstadt tournament this year. Due to christmas and other reasons only 12 players showed up ( i expected at least 20 but then I got several cancellations ). Another reason was that we had the BL prerelease 2 weeks ago and a con with a v:tes tournament 1 week before. So i was happy that 3 people from munich came in spite of the long distance. But nevertheless the 12 people who showed up had a lot of fun. We played 3 preliminary rounds and due to the 4 player tables table split deals were hard to arrange ( i made no such deal in the first 3 rounds ). Another point i saw 2 times 3 player ganging up on 1 who was ver strong in the beginning and seemed to sweep the table. Following players entered the final: Rui Vieira ( weenie computer hacking- animalism trap combat) 7 VP Carsten Isselhorst ( Malkavian madness network bloat/vote) 6 VP Artur Cardoso (!Ventrue deflection unblockable bleed) 5 VP Robert Mueller ( Euro Bruhjah -see his newsletter ) 4 VP Christopher Meisinger (Caitiff( 1cap) Brainwash-KRC-Bribes) 4 VP The seating order was Rui-Carsten-Robert-Christopher-Artur (this was really strange since Rui knew my deck and he could have had a much easier prey in Artur) The game started and Rui made al ot of pressure on me. Then i got Lucian and Gilbert out and could start a little bit 5th and MT but Robert was already quite strong since i couldnt put pressure on him. He even attacked me then which i blocked with an obedience. Since together with robert we had vote majority i then agreed to a 3-2 split (since i couldnt defend much longer against Rui). I called a Kindred restructure and changed the order to Rui-Robert-Artur-Christopher-Carsten. Christopher couldnt get his bribed votes through any more and Rui felt shortly after this to my stealthed bleeds ! Then I walled up until Robert torporized the whole table and withdrew after my library was finished. There are two things to mention taking into account all this table split discussions: There is practical nothing some kind of decks can do against a well made table split. Rui had 5 minions but since he could only bleed he could do nothing to stop the alliance between me and robert once we were reseated. The same goes for Artur and Christopher once the deal was done their deck had no cross table oppurtunities. This is something one has to consider when building a deck : There are decks who sweep tables in the preliminary rounds but once you are in a final the simple bleed deck can only hope to be fast enough or have a weak prey. Cross table actions can toss the balance the way you want it so be sure to include at least something in your deck. The table split deal I made I would also have made under the table win rule thats for sure so the new rule might not banish this kind of deals (as some may hope/wish) ! Thanks for listening and a merry christmas Carsten

On Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:52:09 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: >The table split deal I made I would also have made under the table win >rule thats for sure so the new rule might not banish this kind of deals >(as some may hope/wish) ! A table split deal in the final! Please could you explain your motivation. Was there a prize for 2nd place? Were you trying to improve your rating? Did you just want to play kingmaker? My view is that you lost the game just as much as all the other losers, possibly more. The tournament set-up should not reward king-making because such a result demeans the status of the nominal winner and makes the whole thing into a farce. Andrew

Andrew wrote: >>A table split deal in the final! Please could you explain your motivation. Was there a prize for 2nd place? Were you trying to improve your rating? Did you just want to play kingmaker?>> See--now that is just insanity. Table split deals have no place in a final--there is no incentive at all to be on the losing end, and agreeing to such a deal has *no* possible rational justification that could hold up to any sort of scrutiny. In preliminary rounds, such deals can be reasonably defended--they maximize your VPs in a bad seating situation and consequently get you a better chance at getting in the finals. Once you are in the finals, however, VPs only matter in the sense that if you have more of them than everyone else, you win. Playing to get 2 when someone else gets 3 (making them win the tournament) is just stupid. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com http://www.geocities.com/bakija6 "...and the only person I can stand to be around is a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker!" -Buffy

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@aol.comANTISPAM> wrote : > In preliminary rounds, such deals can be reasonably defended--they maximize > your VPs in a bad seating situation and consequently get you a better chance at > getting in the finals. Once you are in the finals, however, VPs only matter in I thought you couldn't think about getting into the finals, that is an out of game thing? That every round of a tournament was it's own seperate thing? If so, then the reasoning for getting 2/3 split should hold up just as well in a final as any of the prelim games. -- Aaron The Nosferatu Stuff

"The Nosferatu Stuff" <roans...@REMOVE.yahoo.com> wrote: >I thought you couldn't think about getting into the finals, that is an out >of game thing? That every round of a tournament was it's own seperate >thing? >If so, then the reasoning for getting 2/3 split should hold up just as well >in a final as any of the prelim games. You're only allowed to do this as long as you can justify to the judges that you have no chance of winning (whatever that means). As long as you have a chance of winning, you must try to win. When you can no longer win (or once you have already won), you can do whatever you want to that isn't collusion. Finals should be no different from qualifying rounds in this regard. Anyway, 2-3 VP splitting will become decidedly less useful with the "table win" concept. Thanks heaven for that.

Peter D Bakija wrote: > > Andrew wrote: > >>A table split deal in the final! Please could you explain your > motivation. Was there a prize for 2nd place? Were you trying to > improve your rating? Did you just want to play kingmaker?>> > > See--now that is just insanity. Table split deals have no place in a > final--there is no incentive at all to be on the losing end, and agreeing to > such a deal has *no* possible rational justification that could hold up to any > sort of scrutiny. Making a deal to gain 2 VP when not making the deal means you gain 0 VPs is "insane"? Not according to the rules. The incentive to be on the "losing end" of the deal is the same in a finals as it is in any other round - to maximize one's VPs. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

LSJ wrote: >>Making a deal to gain 2 VP when not making the deal means you gain 0 VPs is "insane"?>> In the finals, yes, yes it is. >> Not according to the rules. The incentive to be on the "losing end" of the deal is the same in a finals as it is in any other round - to maximize one's VPs.>> Making someone else win the tournament (by agreeing to help them get 3 VPs, just so you can get 2) is just silly. Far more so than making a 3-2 split in a preliminary round. Maximizing VPs in a preliminary round has a purpose. Doing so in the finals is simply saying "I want to make you win for some ransom reason".

>Making someone else win the tournament (by agreeing to help them get 3 VPs, >just so you can get 2) is just silly. Far more so than making a 3-2 split in >a >preliminary round. Maximizing VPs in a preliminary round has a purpose. Doing >so in the finals is simply saying "I want to make you win for some ransom >reason". > If the prizes aren't the same for second through fifth, then there's nothing silly about it. Calculating individuals will simply calculate the expected gain of coming in second versus the expected gain of fighting for first in a poor position. At some point, it becomes more valuable to guarantee second, assuming, again, that second scores more than the other positions.

>A table split deal in the final! Please could you explain your >motivation. Was there a prize for 2nd place? Were you trying to >improve your rating? Did you just want to play kingmaker? Hey, BTW, what happens if you *want* to get 2nd place because you'd prefer the 2nd place prize as opposed to the 1st place one? For example, a while back, Legbiter was talking about how some 2nd place prize was the original art for Sheldon and (fortunately), he ended up getting it. Um....if you really want the 2nd place prize, are you allowed to lose on purpose? Or even more amusingly, if there are two Methusalehs left (each with 1 VP's) in a four player final (for example), wouldn't it be funny if both of the Methusalehs wanted to end up 2nd place instead of 1st? I guess it's a case of trying to oust yourself the fastest! =) Halcyan 2

>If the prizes aren't the same for second through fifth, then there's nothing >silly about it. Calculating individuals will simply calculate the expected >gain of coming in second versus the expected gain of fighting for first in a >poor position. At some point, it becomes more valuable to guarantee second, >assuming, again, that second scores more than the other positions. Also, don't forget that, while you cannot use outside materials to "bribe" other players, you very well can agree to split tournament prizes. It's been a while since the topic came up but I swore that's what was stated. So say first prize is a box of boosters, a nifty trophy, and the title. If I'm only interested in the trophy and the title, I could very well offer someone a table-split (3 to me, 2 to them) and let them have the box of boosters. Or not? Halcyan 2

halc...@aol.com (Halcyan 2) wrote: >Also, don't forget that, while you cannot use outside materials to "bribe" >other players, you very well can agree to split tournament prizes. Surely that would count as collusion? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Johan Lundstrom <jo...@algonet.se> "Nothing succeeds like excess"

>>Also, don't forget that, while you cannot use outside materials to "bribe" >>other players, you very well can agree to split tournament prizes. > >Surely that would count as collusion? Ack! Careful with that "C" word again! Yes, it would probably be collusion if you decided to split the prize with someone before the tournament (and planned and played accordingly). But it wouldn't be collusion per se, if during a long, drawn-out final game with someone who was previously a stranger, you two decide to split the prize (for whatever reason). Halcyan 2

Halcyan 2 wrote: > > >A table split deal in the final! Please could you explain your > >motivation. Was there a prize for 2nd place? Were you trying to > >improve your rating? Did you just want to play kingmaker? > > Hey, BTW, what happens if you *want* to get 2nd place because you'd prefer the > 2nd place prize as opposed to the 1st place one? For example, a while back, > Legbiter was talking about how some 2nd place prize was the original art for > Sheldon and (fortunately), he ended up getting it. Any winner should be free to choose a prize below her rank (and leave her own for the next rank). If the first place finisher (in any tournament, not just VEKN and not just VTES) wants the secon dplace prize, let her take it (and give the first place prize to the second place finisher. > Um....if you really want the 2nd place prize, are you allowed to lose on > purpose? No. > Or even more amusingly, if there are two Methusalehs left (each with 1 > VP's) in a four player final (for example), wouldn't it be funny if both of the > Methusalehs wanted to end up 2nd place instead of 1st? I guess it's a case of > trying to oust yourself the fastest! =) Allowing first place to choose would rememdy that. [ quoted text not captured ]

AKB333 wrote: > > LSJ wrote: > >>Making a deal to gain 2 VP when not making the deal means you gain > 0 VPs is "insane"?>> > > In the finals, yes, yes it is. No, no it's not. > >> Not according to the rules. The incentive to be > on the "losing end" of the deal is the same in a finals as it is > in any other round - to maximize one's VPs.>> > > Making someone else win the tournament (by agreeing to help them get 3 VPs, > just so you can get 2) is just silly. Far more so than making a 3-2 split in a > preliminary round. Maximizing VPs in a preliminary round has a purpose. Doing > so in the finals is simply saying "I want to make you win for some ransom > reason". You're not "making someone else win". If you're only going to get 0 without the deal, someone else is already going to win. What you're doing is maximizing your VPs, which is what the rules say you should do. [ quoted text not captured ]

AKB333 wrote: > > LSJ wrote: > >>Making a deal to gain 2 VP when not making the deal means you gain > 0 VPs is "insane"?>> > > In the finals, yes, yes it is. Well if you are surely losing you can just sit there and going down or try to make the best out of the situation and your cards ( what i did ! ). So in the end i stayed longer in the final could play more cards and even got 2 VPs. It wasnt for the rating , it wasnt for the prizes (which were almost equal from 2nd to 5th place) it was just for playing thisa game by the rules ! I always want to maximize my VPs thats all ! > > >> Not according to the rules. The incentive to be > on the "losing end" of the deal is the same in a finals as it is > in any other round - to maximize one's VPs.>> > > Making someone else win the tournament (by agreeing to help them get 3 VPs, > just so you can get 2) is just silly. Far more so than making a 3-2 split in a > preliminary round. Maximizing VPs in a preliminary round has a purpose. Doing > so in the finals is simply saying "I want to make you win for some ransom > reason". No thats not true. Player A seems to win at that time I proposed the deal. It was just easier with the table split deal. So he would have won without me and my two VP have been gone to another player(s). Thats all. I think this discussion only shows one thing how upset people are by all this table split stuff. It happens everywhere especially if you are at a table with good players/decks. So either there is a rule that prohibits deals at all or you have to live with such kind of deals. Greetings Carsten

On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 10:23:58 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: >Well if you are surely losing you can just sit there and going down or >try to make the best out of the situation and your cards ( what i did ! >). So in the end i stayed longer in the final could play more cards and >even got 2 VPs. It wasnt for the rating , it wasnt for the prizes (which >were almost equal from 2nd to 5th place) it was just for playing thisa >game by the rules ! I always want to maximize my VPs thats all ! You and others keep justifying your quisling behaviour by reference to the rules. But the rules don't actually say that you should "maximise your VPs". They make reference to a "winner" and so the presumption would be that the object is to be that winner. This is not the same thing. >No thats not true. Player A seems to win at that time I proposed the >deal. It was just easier with the table split deal. So he would have won >without me and my two VP have been gone to another player(s). Thats all. So why did player A do the deal? If he had the game in the bag, would you not say that he should have tried to maximise his VPs and take those extra 2 VP too? AFAIC, you and he were playing the game with different objectives. >I think this discussion only shows one thing how upset people are by all >this table split stuff. It happens everywhere especially if you are at a >table with good players/decks. So either there is a rule that prohibits >deals at all or you have to live with such kind of deals. As I've already explained, there is no rule which permits formal deals and so they are indeed prohibited without use of a card effect like Succubus Club. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 10:23:58 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: > >Well if you are surely losing you can just sit there and going down or > >try to make the best out of the situation and your cards ( what i did ! > >). So in the end i stayed longer in the final could play more cards and > >even got 2 VPs. It wasnt for the rating , it wasnt for the prizes (which > >were almost equal from 2nd to 5th place) it was just for playing thisa > >game by the rules ! I always want to maximize my VPs thats all ! > > You and others keep justifying your quisling behaviour by reference to > the rules. But the rules don't actually say that you should "maximise > your VPs". They make reference to a "winner" and so the presumption > would be that the object is to be that winner. This is not the same > thing. This spurious argument has come up before. If the "object" of some game is to accumulate points (or to get the fewest points - Golf, Hearts, etc.), then it is trivial to see how to figure out second place, etc. The rules don't need to spell this out directly. > As I've already explained, there is no rule which permits formal deals > and so they are indeed prohibited without use of a card effect like > Succubus Club. Heh. Table talk is permitted in all games unless restricted by the rules. [ quoted text not captured ]

> As I've already explained, there is no rule which permits formal deals > and so they are indeed prohibited without use of a card effect like > Succubus Club. The only thing the Succubus Club lets you do that you can't otherwise do is trade cards and give/recieve pool, you don't even have to make it part of a deal. In terms of the game there is no such thing as a "formal" deal. Even if you do have the Succubus Club, "Any additional terms can be established, but none are enfoced by the rules.". The deal can be as "formal" as you like but no-one is bound by the terms and there is no penalty for breaking the terms.

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 10:23:58 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: > > You and others keep justifying your quisling behaviour by reference to > the rules. But the rules don't actually say that you should "maximise > your VPs". They make reference to a "winner" and so the presumption > would be that the object is to be that winner. This is not the same > thing. So if you cant win what does the rule say then ? I think if you loose you should loose the way you like too. I asked the other guy with votes if i can get his vote support for not hurting him but his prey and he accepted thats all so where am i cheating or colluding ( which is written in another posts or at least meant by several others maybe including you ) ??? > >No thats not true. Player A seems to win at that time I proposed the > >deal. It was just easier with the table split deal. So he would have won > >without me and my two VP have been gone to another player(s). Thats all. > > So why did player A do the deal? If he had the game in the bag, would > you not say that he should have tried to maximise his VPs and take > those extra 2 VP too? AFAIC, you and he were playing the game with > different objectives. Maybe he was frightened i could do some damge on him before i get ousted and then my predator would have won, i dont know you. I could for example banish his prince or do a KRC on him whatever i had in my hand. It still made me losing but it might have had an effect on the winner. Since he didnt know my cards he was just precautious. Greetings Carsten

On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 06:50:01 -0500, LSJ wrote: >This spurious argument has come up before. >If the "object" of some game is to accumulate points (or to get the >fewest points - Golf, Hearts, etc.), then it is trivial to see how >to figure out second place, etc. The rules don't need to spell this >out directly. Playing to win, playing for a good place or playing to maximise VPs are not the same thing. It's easy to construct a situation in which one objective gets in the way of another. Alan Kwan raised this issue of diverse objectives here over 5 years ago. He didn't get a good answer then and the matter still seems unsatisfactory. If you have a concrete reward for each outcome (e.g. rating, ante, tournament advancement or prizes) then you can evaluate which is the best objective in a sensible way, e.g. by assigning dollar values and calculating the expected gains. Without a measure of this kind then it seems to be a matter of taste. My opinion is that it's best to play to win and that this results in the best metagame because it's comparatively free of the personal politics which arise when you have table-splitting deals. >> As I've already explained, there is no rule which permits formal deals >> and so they are indeed prohibited without use of a card effect like >> Succubus Club. > >Heh. Table talk is permitted in all games unless restricted by the rules. Rubbish. I don't expect significant table talk when I play a game like Scrabble, say - just the usual grumbling about how long someone is taking over their move. The same goes for poker where you expect some chaffing and banter but there would be general outrage if players started making deals. And we're not talking about some general chit-chat or even some propaganda about how so-and-so is winning and needs to be cut down. I'm used to that in Shadowfist and it's not usually a problem - it only gets to be nasty when players start issuing dire threats to deter attacks upon them. No, the problem in VTES is that you now have players consuming most of the game in negotiating and detailing elaborate formal deals. For example, in the final at Gencon UK, I was told that the players initially spent about 50 minutes negotiating rather than playing. This is worse than Diplomacy - a game which does have rules which permit this sort of thing and which recommends a time limit of 15 minutes for negotiation. And when players routinely treat these deals as solemn and binding and form cabals to ostracise you if you break them, then I'm afraid the whole thing is out of control. The rulebook provides not the slightest excuse for this behaviour. As far as it's concerned, you just play your cards and do what they say. Any time spent on other activities takes time away from the proper play of the game and, in a timed game, that can't be allowed. What's especially outrageous is that the designer of this game, Richard Garfield, went on at length about how he didn't want his multi-player games to just end up as a game of Diplomacy. Allowing this to happen by default is scandalous. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 06:50:01 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >This spurious argument has come up before. > >If the "object" of some game is to accumulate points (or to get the > >fewest points - Golf, Hearts, etc.), then it is trivial to see how > >to figure out second place, etc. The rules don't need to spell this > >out directly. > > Playing to win, playing for a good place or playing to maximise VPs > are not the same thing. It's easy to construct a situation in which > one objective gets in the way of another. Alan Kwan raised this issue > of diverse objectives here over 5 years ago. He didn't get a good > answer then and the matter still seems unsatisfactory. > > If you have a concrete reward for each outcome (e.g. rating, ante, > tournament advancement or prizes) then you can evaluate which is the > best objective in a sensible way, e.g. by assigning dollar values and > calculating the expected gains. Without a measure of this kind then > it seems to be a matter of taste. My opinion is that it's best to > play to win and that this results in the best metagame because it's > comparatively free of the personal politics which arise when you have > table-splitting deals. No. What you have then is the "freedom" to sacrifice a 2-VP position for a 0-VP position. Sacrificing a win is already against the rules, so ignoring the "VP-accumulation" goal already imbedded doesn't gain you anything there. Current situation: must play to win. This matches your opinion stated above, although you use that position somehow to argue against the current situation. Current situation: if you can't win, you should at least try to accumulate as many VPs as possible. This is not a diverse objective, since the "main" objective is the same - positive accumulation of VPs. Your version: if you can't win, you have as much freedom as you like to play kingmaker. > What's especially outrageous is that the designer of this game, > Richard Garfield, went on at length about how he didn't want his > multi-player games to just end up as a game of Diplomacy. Allowing > this to happen by default is scandalous. Heh. At least Richard knew that it (table talk and deal making) was part of the game. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: >Your version: if you can't win, you have as much freedom as you like to >play kingmaker. No. The only time that you're really in a "can't win" situation is if someone has already scored 3 VP. In that case, kingmaking doesn't arise because you already have a king and you are down to two players. In this tournament, Carsten did a losing 2 VP deal when he still had Lucian, Gilbert and was holding a Kindred Restructure. If he'd been playing to win he should have tried to parley this into a winning position. Instead he conceded his winning chances and so Robert left him alone because he had become a willing toady. The 2 VPs that Carsten gained were not a creditable achievement; they were shameful. Andrew

[ quoted text not captured ] I couldnt get the vote through at this time due to other votes and the situation in general without the votes of robert. Thats all about it.

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >Your version: if you can't win, you have as much freedom as you like to > >play kingmaker. > > No. The only time that you're really in a "can't win" situation is if > someone has already scored 3 VP. Not true. Although I agree, as I've said amny times in the past, that it is very difficult (nearly impossible) to be in a truly lost position when there are VPs still available. [snip information about a tournament that I did not attend - did Andrew attend? If so, feel free to second-guess the judge all you like.] I make it a policy not to second-guess tournament judges about matters which fall so clearly into the "need to have complete information about the situation" category. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ wrote: > > "Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > [snip information about a tournament that I did not attend - did Andrew > attend? If so, feel free to second-guess the judge all you like.] He didnt attend. I was the head judge for this tournament but none of the other judges neither the players at the table were shouting for collusion/cheating,shamish behaviour or whatsoever ( there were no bad feelings about this i think because the situation was quite obvious. Furthermore we keep a friendly atmosphere here even when playing tournaments and making deals. The three guys from munich also confirmed that it was a lot of fun to come and play so I dont understand the fuss which is made about things which belong to the game imho.)

[ quoted text not captured ] ... and there you go. Thanks for the update, and I'm glad everything went smoothly. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Thu, 03 Jan 2002 15:53:53 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: >He didnt attend. I was the head judge for this tournament but none of >the other judges neither the players at the table were shouting for >collusion/cheating,shamish behaviour or whatsoever ( there were no bad >feelings about this i think because the situation was quite obvious. I expect that no-one objected because, from what you have said, the 2nd place was not important and your deal didn't significantly change the important result - who came first. When this is not the case, matters might go differently. Andrew

On Thu, 03 Jan 2002 11:05:44 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: >I couldnt get the vote through at this time due to other votes and the >situation in general without the votes of robert. Thats all about it. So the other players would have voted against a restructure even when the alternative was that you and Robert would split the table and they would get nothing at all? As best as I can understand it, Robert had the game sewn up because he could rush and torporise every vampire on the table. The order in which he decided to do this determined who might pick up the odd spare VP. If so, then your deal was insignificant - he just let you get the 2 VPs as a personal favour. Andrew

On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: >> What's especially outrageous is that the designer of this game, >> Richard Garfield, went on at length about how he didn't want his >> multi-player games to just end up as a game of Diplomacy. Allowing >> this to happen by default is scandalous. > >Heh. At least Richard knew that it (table talk and deal making) was >part of the game. I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Anyway, I've just dug up one of the articles that I remembered. Here it is: "In my experience critiquing games, the concept that has caused the most dispute is politics. I refer to a game as political if it has more than two players, or sides, and during a significant portion of the game the other players could agree to make you lose. Two-sided games, like Magic, chess, bridge, and basketball, are never political. Right now my study of political games is riddled with judgement calls, making it far from precise. For example, Yahtzee is a game for more than two players that isn't particularly political: I could win even if everyone else decides I shouldn't. RISK is highly political, however, since one person cannot expect to beat the rest of the players allied together unless they account for less than half the power in the game. There are some good things about political games. Any player usually has a chance to catch up, no matter how far behind he or she might be. A political game is as deep as the players wish to make it: simple and straightforward, or convoluted and laden with conspiracy. That said, I lean towards games where politics take a back seat. I haven't always felt that way, but over the years I have found that when I played games with a strong political component, the game itself didn't matter much. Playing Nicely With Others -------------------------- There is a wide array of opinions, often passionate, about the role of politics in games, with equally intelligent folk at all extremes. Most people who have played a lot have had some good experiences with political games. It is always hard to draw conclusions from past game experience, though, because good players can make any game fun. Similarly, it is hard to determine whether a political game is itself at fault or if the players aren't playing well. When someone is always whining about being behind, is that a problem with the player or the game? Players often increase their enjoyment of political games by establishing unwritten rules of conduct. I know circles where whining is punished by group attacks. Other groups forbid negotiations, or only allow players to exert limited influence. Players are commonly expected to maximize their personal position even when they have no chance of winning. Often it is difficult to figure out exactly what the rules are, and playing around on the boundary of what is acceptable is risking group displeasure. When the game depends on unwritten rules, I usually credit the players with creating a lot of the fun, rather than the game. There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a single viable position. To prevent such abuse, groups sometimes outlaw coin flips or random decisions, but players can still circumvent such efforts b alternating the "winner" between games or by developing understandings. For example, if John is out of the running in this game and gives me good trades or gifts, he will get reciprocal consideration in the future. Bad Games and Good Politics --------------------------- Many features crop up frequently in political games that I consider bad game elements. A major part of the strategy in a political game is to draw attention to other people's positions and attempt to play them off against one another. One of the easiest ways to do this is to take a weak position. This may not immediately appear to be bad, but the implications are profound: if you _choose_ a weak position, then it is not actually weak. And if weak positions really have the same power, then how you play the game doesn't make much difference. What really matters is how you play the players, whether the game is RISK or Family Business. One of the most unpleasant features of a political game is what I refer to as kingmaking. Kingmaking happens when a player who has no chance of winning can choose who does win. This holds some charm for beginners, because being a kingmaker allows revenge against irritating players, and justifies diplomacy - the winner is chosen by someone else. The advanced player tends to dislike kingmaking, though, because it trivializes the time spent playing. The longer the game goes on, the more irksome is such an ending. Another depressing thing about many political games is the way they encourage passive play. If attacking another player costs me and my opponent resources, then there is a strong incentive to sit back and let other people fight. Games that have this characteristic can be a lot of fun if some of the players ignore this and attack anyway, but are real drag if everyone sees waiting as a disadvantage. How many times have you seen one player get sick of doing nothing and say, "Well, I have to be going, so I have to attack"? Boredom should not be an incentive for conflict in a game. It is a good exercise to evaluate the effect of politics on games involving more than two sides. This can be quite a challenge, and people who meet it often come out with a different perspective on the games they play. The result for me was discovering that most political games were, underneath the veneer, the same game, and that I was tired of playing that game." -- Richard Garfield, The Duelist, June 1997

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >> What's especially outrageous is that the designer of this game, > >> Richard Garfield, went on at length about how he didn't want his > >> multi-player games to just end up as a game of Diplomacy. Allowing > >> this to happen by default is scandalous. > > > >Heh. At least Richard knew that it (table talk and deal making) was > >part of the game. > > I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Anyway, I've just dug up > one of the articles that I remembered. Here it is: [snip] "I lean towards games where politics take a back seat." [snip] Right. Which is why he included the predator-prey mechanism, the bleed-only-your-prey default, and why (as he indicates in the article you quoted) he doesn't allow players to freely trade their resources. He didn't want a "no-politics" game (like Yatzee). He just wanted a game where the politics wasn't at the fore. (Silly cross-posting neutered, as usual. Please try to restrict your posts to their approriate newsgroups. It just looks more like a troll, you know, when you spuriously cross-post.) [ quoted text not captured ]

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:7869AC7C6D013CD8.B23ED609...@lp.airnews.net... > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: > Playing Nicely With Others > -------------------------- > There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade > resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could > flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a > single viable position. I know of no group in which such behavior would be acceptable, and would not play in such a group myself. All multiplayer games are subject to potential abuses. To keep them fun and friendly, players recognize the need for a code of behavior that excludes certain activities not explicitly proscribed by the rules. I've never understood why Richard Garfield views this as a problem. There are unwritten rules of behavior in any social setting, where things that are physically possible are nevertheless deemed unacceptable. Why should multiplayer games be any different? - Peter Sarrett

"Peter Sarrett" <pe...@gamereport.com> wrote in message news:3c34f250$1...@news.microsoft.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Hey Peter, Your declaraction that you wouldn't play in such a group makes it clear that following your view of multiplayer gaming doesn't faciliate players "playing together". It is only your benchmark of whether or not you'd like to play with a player or group. Defining the rules in a way to avoid pure diplomacy allows players with disparate viewpoints to actually play together. A casual "just-for-fun" gamer can player with the hardcore "win-at-all-costs" gamer without a problem. Relying on social pressure and an awareness of an undefined, yet understood, code of conduct doesn't work unless the players know each other and plan on continuing to play with each other. -Robert rob...@vtesinla.org > > - Peter Sarrett > > > > >

In article <3c34f250$1...@news.microsoft.com>, Peter Sarrett wrote: > "Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message > news:7869AC7C6D013CD8.B23ED609...@lp.airnews.net... >> On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: > >> Playing Nicely With Others >> -------------------------- >> There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade >> resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could >> flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a >> single viable position. > > I know of no group in which such behavior would be acceptable, and would not > play in such a group myself. It happened in a diplomacy game I was in. It was a 5 player game and a 2 vs 3 situation occurred with the 3 player group having 18 centers vs 16 with no chance of either group getting more without a defection. Nobody thought a defector would be treated well by the side they defected to. The three player side decided to shoot darts to see who would get to win. After the person was determined trading centers to the declared winner were begun. The manuever wasn't completed before we stopped playing since no one expected that the action could be stopped or that anyone would defect and we had better ways to spend the remaining time.

"Bruno Wolff III" <br...@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu> wrote in message news:slrna3a0r0...@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu... > It happened in a diplomacy game I was in. And this was satisfying and acceptable to everyone? I don't play Diplomacy, so I don't know if this sort of thing is the norm. But if I were to invest the kind of time that Diplomacy requires, I'd be extremely disturbed to have it end in a manner which trivializes everything that has come before and would think twice about playing with those players, or that game, again. - Peter

Peter Sarrett <pe...@gamereport.com> writes: > And this was satisfying and acceptable to everyone? I don't play > Diplomacy, so I don't know if this sort of thing is the norm. But if > I were to invest the kind of time that Diplomacy requires, I'd be > extremely disturbed to have it end in a manner which trivializes > everything that has come before and would think twice about playing > with those players, or that game, again. Then why are you flaming Andrew Davidson for having exactly the same problem with VTES (players entering into elaborate, artificial agreements), and coming to exactly the same conclusion (either prevent that behavior from occurring, or don't play that game, or not with those players)? When he says it's better to avoid playing that way, and Richard Garfield says it's better to avoid playing that way, and Bruno Wolff says it's better to avoid playing that way, and you say it's better to avoid playing that way, aren't you all saying the same thing?? David desJardins

On Thu, 03 Jan 2002 17:50:34 -0500, LSJ wrote: >He didn't want a "no-politics" game (like Yatzee). He just wanted >a game where the politics wasn't at the fore. He described RISK as highly political. I consider VTES, as currently played in tournaments, to be more political than RISK. It is not a game in which politics is taking the back seat. Andrew

"Robert Goudie" <rrgo...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:OY6Z7.1411$zw3.2...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net... > Hey Peter, > > Your declaraction that you wouldn't play in such a group makes it clear that > following your view of multiplayer gaming doesn't faciliate players "playing > together". It is only your benchmark of whether or not you'd like to play with > a player or group. Defining the rules in a way to avoid pure diplomacy allows > players with disparate viewpoints to actually play together. A casual > "just-for-fun" gamer can player with the hardcore "win-at-all-costs" gamer > without a problem. In sufficiently complex games players can always find ways to collude if they really wish to, regardless of how the rules are structured. What prevents them from doing so is a combination of personal ethics and the code of behavior of the group they're in. In a tournament setting with players who are unfamiliar with one another these rules, of necessity, may be explicitly dictated by the judge rather than implicitly understood. But the principle is the same. Certain kinds of behavior break a game, or other players' enjoyment of it. Expecting all such behavior to be explicitly banned by the rules is unrealistic and should not be necessary. All it takes is the recognition that certain behavior exists in a gray area and the consideration to ask about a group's preferences toward that behavior beforehand. In short: we don't need to legislate morality, in society or in games. - Peter

Of course, it doesn't really matter what Richard Garfield had in mind - the argument is, AFAICS, irrelevant - but surely when he wrote, "One of the most unpleasant features of a political game is what I refer to as kingmaking. Kingmaking happens when a player who has no chance of winning can choose who does win. This holds some charm for beginners, because being a kingmaker allows revenge against irritating players, and justifies diplomacy - the winner is chosen by someone else. The advanced player tends to dislike kingmaking, though, because it trivializes the time spent playing. The longer the game goes on, the more irksome is such an ending." it could considered relevant to his hypothetical view on the subject of table splits. If two combat decks sit next to one another and no one else at the table is playing combat decks at all, I consider to be basically true that neither has a chance to win without some sort of deal, unless of course one of the combat decks can beat the other consistently at combat - and even then, it's not looking good. Now, given that neither deck can really hope to win, I would argue that any attempt at table-splitting really _is_ just kingmaking - and I also think that either of the combat decks would have a good chance of getting one of the other three decks split the table with them, if they could not work out a deal with one another. Also, I think that Garfield would regard it as abusive, since he said, "There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a single viable position. To prevent such abuse, groups sometimes outlaw coin flips or random decisions, but players can still circumvent such efforts b alternating the "winner" between games or by developing understandings. For example, if John is out of the running in this game and gives me good trades or gifts, he will get reciprocal consideration in the future." It's in the nature of the game that two combat decks probably _can_ effectively pool their resources and split a table made up of non-combat decks, and clearly it's allowed that they should do so. Two political decks can do the same, I suspect, in many situations. I think that it's horrible that this should be permitted, though. It happened at the first tournament I ever played in (although not at my table); and I can't think of a single reason why I would ever play again in a tournament if I saw it happening again. I think, and I am sure that I am not alone, that the game should be played in a different way - that the primary object of every Methuselah should be to fend off his(or her) predator and oust his(or her) prey, and only to take such other actions as are necessary for his survival - and that helping your prey to oust other Methuselahs is a fundamental break from how the game was meant - and designed - to be played. I don't argue that table-splitting is against the rules; clearly, it is not. I just think that the rules should be changed in some manner to prevent it being a viable option for one kind of deck in a hopeless seating position, and not a viable option for another kind of deck in a similarily bad position. Perhaps - I do not mean this seriously, really - players in tournaments should be allowed to bleed and play directed bleed action cards against any other player at the table, to allow a horrible retaliation on combat decks which team up (after all, you only need to kill one of the teamed decks to return the game to the state which I regard as correct - and it's possible to cut some kind of deal whereby the predator of that deck must rescue x number of torporized minions in exchange for the destruction of his prey). Alternately, since this would obviously allow table-splitting deals between two bleed decks sitting next to one another, it could be allowed only by a vote of the majority of the players at the table. =) I guess I feel that if you happen to have brought a deck to a table and gotten a seat where you just cannot win with that deck, you should give it your best, go down fighting, bear in mind that no deck is unbeatable, and remember that the worst weakness of a combat deck is often another combat deck.

"David desJardins" <de...@math.berkeley.edu> wrote in message news:vohzo3u...@math.berkeley.edu... > > Then why are you flaming Andrew Davidson for having exactly the same > problem with VTES (players entering into elaborate, artificial > agreements), and coming to exactly the same conclusion (either prevent > that behavior from occurring, or don't play that game, or not with those > players)? I'm not. I'm commenting on Richard Garfield's article-- and in an unheated manner. The only flame here is yours. > When he says it's better to avoid playing that way, and Richard Garfield > says it's better to avoid playing that way, and Bruno Wolff says it's > better to avoid playing that way, and you say it's better to avoid > playing that way, aren't you all saying the same thing?? If we all said what you claim we said, yes. But we didn't. Bruno offered no opinion one way or the other (at least in r.g.b, where I'm reading this). Richard Garfield said it's better (for him) not to play "political" games at all. I said all that's needed is a community code of behavior. - Peter (I'll restrict future replies, if any, to r.g.b)

Bruno Wolff III wrote: > It happened in a diplomacy game I was in. It was a 5 player game and This is not directed at Bruno personally - I just picked his post as an example (I enjoy reading his stuff in r.g.board, as a general rule). Request: Let's refrain from posting non-V:TES-related stuff to rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad Thanks all. Follow-ups directed appropriately. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Thu, 03 Jan 2002 11:05:44 +0100, Carsten isselhorst wrote: > > >I couldnt get the vote through at this time due to other votes and the > >situation in general without the votes of robert. Thats all about it. > > So the other players would have voted against a restructure even when > the alternative was that you and Robert would split the table and they > would get nothing at all? Well everybody tried to make his VP since everybodys prey was low on blood. Furthermore for my restructure there was only 1 possible position to prevent from being ousted and this the other guy with votes wouldnt have allowed because his prey was soon to be ousted (4 pool remaining) so i was left with the choie to make a deal with robert or die during the next 1 or 2 rounds. > As best as I can understand it, Robert had the game sewn up because he > could rush and torporise every vampire on the table. The order in > which he decided to do this determined who might pick up the odd spare > VP. If so, then your deal was insignificant - he just let you get the > 2 VPs as a personal favour. > > Andrew Well not 100% true since i played already an obedience when he rushed me and had a secure haven on Lucian. Furthermore he couldnt waste his time with killing minions because everyone was low on blood ( giving other players the VPs they needed to win ) and he hadnt too many bums rushes (but Theo Bell ) so when i offered the deal i think it was in his best interest to accept it because otherwise maybe things have gone different.

On 3 Jan 2002 18:11:52 -0800, Hannigan wrote: >Perhaps - I do not mean this seriously, really - players in >tournaments should be allowed to bleed and play directed bleed action >cards against any other player at the table, to allow a horrible >retaliation on combat decks which team up Something of the sort used to be possible - you could bleed any methusaleh if you were using a directed bleed action rather than the default bleed. But I think it would be better if rush actions were restricted in a similar way - make them only usable against your prey. That would leave political actions as the only way to take political action in the Garfield sense. That's obviously appropriate. All players have the opportunity to vote and should seek to ensure that they have good representation. Another useful option would be cards which would allow you to deflect a rush, just as you can deflect a bleed. Most of the cards should be disciplineless, just like Bum Rush, Ambush and Haven Uncovered, e.g. Mistaken Identity Out-of-turn Master Cost: free Play when a minion has taken an action to enter combat with one of your minions. That action is now directed against any other minion of your choice. Andrew

> I said all that's needed is a community code of behavior. Well, yes. Exactly. When I play casually, VP splits never occur. But what we actually have at tournaments, AFAICS, is a community code of behaviour that says that it's OK to combine resources and team up; not, as I think you are suggesting, that it's NOT OK to do so. I don't necessarily want to play that way, and don't want to play against people who do play that way as long as there are some people at the table(like, say, my wife) who don't play that way. I agree that most groups of players would never allow such behaviour, but, as Robert Goudie has pointed out, at a tournament this social restriction doesn't apply, because the players don't constitute a 'group' who have to play together and get along. And, in any event, the social restriction will only be felt by some players as long as the powers that be say that it's the correct thing to do. I think it's important that this awkwardness be avoided, and I think that the only reasonable way is to outlaw deals where one player agrees that he will help another to win. I wonder if the people who say that table-splitting is the correct thing to do also do it in their casual games? It wouldn't be accepted around here, but perhaps they simply play in more cut-throat groups than I do. You see, I don't think there's anything _wrong_, per se, with playing that way, and I would probably do it myself if that was how the game was normally played in my group - there are certainly people who're thick-skinned enough to take it. I just think that you won't get any new players in a group if you make a habit of it, and will probably eventually lose a number of embittered players, because it's an unfriendly way to play. Also, I think it's probably too hard to judge when a player honestly and reasonably believes he has no chance to win the game, which, as I understand, is a precondition for a VP split. How can we know that it's not simply collusion? As far as I can see, there's no way to establish that objectively, which is another good reason for banning the practice.

In message <38DFBDF1C4FA9C1D.6186558F...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes: >On 3 Jan 2002 18:11:52 -0800, Hannigan wrote: >>Perhaps - I do not mean this seriously, really - players in >>tournaments should be allowed to bleed and play directed bleed action >>cards against any other player at the table, to allow a horrible >>retaliation on combat decks which team up > >Something of the sort used to be possible - you could bleed any >methusaleh if you were using a directed bleed action rather than the >default bleed. And such had numerous issues. Whilst the archives are available for Hannigan to look through, the most salient issues tended to be: - design intent. Night Moves, the Jyhad rules Book, Cat Burglary (*Jyhad* text) and so on provided extremely convincing evidence that this is how it was designed and balanced. - power. Bleed affects primary resources with one source of interaction. Votes can affect both primary and secondary resources with multiple points of interaction. Combat can affect secondary resources with only one point of interaction. It is clear that allowing bleed to be 'randomly' directed around the table is more powerful than a vote of KRC, for instance. - players. A not insignificant number of players would use this to take petty revenge on others, rather than playing the game. This is mostly an extension of 'design intent' which is partly what this was designed to avoid. (By primary and secondary resources, I am referring (using relatively old but rarely dug up terms) to pool vs resources in play.) -- James Coupe You remind me of the babe. What babe? PGP 0x5D623D5D The babe with the power. What power? EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 Power of voodoo. Who do? 13D7E668C3695D623D5D You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe.

"Hannigan" <hanni...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message news:6143fc7b.02010...@posting.google.com... > I think, and I am sure that I am not alone, that the game should be > played in a different way - that the primary object of every > Methuselah should be to fend off his(or her) predator and oust his(or > her) prey, and only to take such other actions as are necessary for > his survival - and that helping your prey to oust other Methuselahs is > a fundamental break from how the game was meant - and designed - to be > played. It may seem a little hair-splitting, but to me the object of each Methuselah is to win the game (by getting the most VPs of anyone at the table). This is not always best accomplished by only fending off your predator and ousting your prey. You may need to help another Methuselah survive so that she'll still be around when she becomes your prey and *you* can get her VP. You may need to help another Methuselah get killed so that she won't kill you before you can get anywhere. Trying to work this way won't always win you the game either, of course, but only looking one space left and right is (IMO) rather short-sighted. There are a number of ways in which it *is* possible to affect Methuselahs who aren't sitting next to you, and so it seems to me wise to take those into account as well. I also think the game is more interesting when you're thinking about all the other players rather than only two of them, but maybe that's just me. :-) I'm not saying that table-splitting is necessarily a good thing or a good idea, but cross-table influence is a part of the game, and was designed in from the very start: Bum's Rush's original text was "(D) Attack an opponent's minion. You have an optional maneuver usable during this combat." Cryptic Mission: "(D) Remove 1 blood from any vampire or do 1 damage to any ally or retainer." Major Boon: "Play this card to take another Methuselah's blood pool loss due to a bleed (must be at least 1 blood). Modifiers to the bleed can be played after you play this card. In the future you can force the rescued Methuselah to take a loss due to a bleed against you. This boon is then burned." Eagle's Sight: "This vampire may attempt to block any action of any minion." Nor do I feel that there are really very many (if any) hopeless table positions. Most of these really just call for biding your time and hoping that someone makes a mistake, overextends, or runs into trouble from another player. Making a losing deal instead will often enough be a blunder, and may not even get you the VPs you're hoping for; your partner has little reason to stick to the deal once he's got 3 VPs. (Sure, you can call him a dealbreaker all you want, but people will still make deals with him if they're mutually advantageous, and if they don't trust him in deals where he'd have to spare their pitiful life, well, maybe they shouldn't be trusting *anyone* that much.) Josh thinking out loud

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:38DFBDF1C4FA9C1D.6186558F...@lp.airnews.net... > Something of the sort used to be possible - you could bleed any > methusaleh if you were using a directed bleed action rather than the > default bleed. But I think it would be better if rush actions were > restricted in a similar way - make them only usable against your prey. > That would leave political actions as the only way to take political > action in the Garfield sense. That's obviously appropriate. All > players have the opportunity to vote and should seek to ensure that > they have good representation. It wouldn't, though. Cryptic Mission, Major Boon, and Eagle's Sight (from the original Garfield-designed set) all have cross- table reach in addition to (the also Garfield-designed) Bum's Rush. Continuing the list: Arson, Betrayer, Bloodhunt, Charnas the Imp, Curse of Nitocris, Deflection, Entrancement, Far Mastery, Fifth Tradition, Game of Malkav, Golconda, Grave Robbing, Haven Uncovered, Kine Dominance, KRCG News Radio, Life Boon, Malkavian Prank, Malkavian Time Auction, Misdirection, Minor Boon, Muddled Vampire Hunter, Rampage, Renegade Garou, Rotschreck, Smiling Jack the Anarch, Society of Leopold, Succubus Club, Talbot's Chainsaw, Temptation of Greater Power, Thadius Zho, Vampiric Disease, Vulnerability, XTC Laced Blood. (Incidentally, Succubus Club's effect seems to thoroughly contradict Garfield's stated desire to not let players pool their resources. I don't know why he designed it...) Anyway, the point is, the political aspect of Jyhad does exist as part of the original design. It's obviously not supposed to be apolitical, just not *all* political. > Another useful option would be cards which would allow you to deflect > a rush, just as you can deflect a bleed. Most of the cards should be > disciplineless, just like Bum Rush, Ambush and Haven Uncovered, e.g. This would definitely be interesting. I'd expect, though, that the cards should require a discipline, like Deflection, My Enemy's Enemy, Telepathic Misdirection, and Redirection. A card that allowed you to redefine terms of a vote (which would probably have to be before voting began to avoid being abusive) might also be fun. It would probably also have to require a discipline. (Hopefully these wouldn't all be Dominate. :-) Josh not running for office

James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message > >Something of the sort used to be possible - you could bleed any > >methusaleh if you were using a directed bleed action rather than the > >default bleed. > > And such had numerous issues. Whilst the archives are available for > Hannigan to look through, the most salient issues tended to be: > > - design intent. Night Moves, the Jyhad rules Book, Cat Burglary > (*Jyhad* text) and so on provided extremely convincing evidence > that this is how it was designed and balanced. > - power. Bleed affects primary resources with one source of > interaction. Votes can affect both primary and secondary > resources with multiple points of interaction. Combat can > affect secondary resources with only one point of interaction. > It is clear that allowing bleed to be 'randomly' directed around > the table is more powerful than a vote of KRC, for instance. > - players. A not insignificant number of players would use this to take > petty revenge on others, rather than playing the game. This is > mostly an extension of 'design intent' which is partly what this > was designed to avoid. > > (By primary and secondary resources, I am referring (using relatively > old but rarely dug up terms) to pool vs resources in play.) No, I don't think I need to bother looking at those archives. I played back when you could direct bleeds (with bleed cards) at anyone, and it sucked - we rapidly made a house rule that you could only bleed your prey. Remember, I said that I wasn't serious. I was merely thinking through analogy, and I think the parallel to rush decks going across table is a valid one. Obviously the ability to bleed any player would be better than the ability to designate any player with KRC, since in order for KRC to be a problem the voter must both hold the vote and be able to pass the vote. Is bleeding any Methuselah better than being able to attack the minions of any Methuselah, though? I don't believe that it is. Bleeding your predator, for example, will only very rarely be a good idea. I don't necessarily buy that design intent is a good reason to do things, but certainly I don't feel that allowing bleeds to be directed at any player is a good idea. I also don't feel that allowing a player to make a strong permanent alliance in which he agrees to take second place and by which he feels bound is a good idea. I don't know which I consider a worse idea. Hannigan

In message <6143fc7b.0201...@posting.google.com>, Hannigan <hanni...@yahoo.co.uk> writes: >Obviously the ability to bleed any player would be better than the >ability to designate any player with KRC, since in order for KRC to be >a problem the voter must both hold the vote and be able to pass the >vote. Is bleeding any Methuselah better than being able to attack the >minions of any Methuselah, though? I don't believe that it is. Potentially, it (bleeding) is (better than combat). One of the theories regarding such is that of primary vs secondary resources. The theory goes that a primary resource - pool, in 99% of instances - is more valuable and potentially more fragile than a secondary resource. For instance, if you rush me, I can bring out a new vampire. If you Banish me, I can replace the vampire. Assuming you bring out vampires, you have 10 pool left (say). If I do ten point of bleed, dead. With secondary resources, you have to work through the secondary resources first before you can eliminate the primary ones. This affords a considerable amount more of control (you can take out their defences, whereas a stealth and bleed deck can still be bounced, countered etc.) but for a considerably longer ride. Swings and roundabouts. >I don't necessarily buy that design intent is a good reason to do >things, but certainly I don't feel that allowing bleeds to be directed >at any player is a good idea. Design intent is not the only reason why some things should stay as they are, no. However, when you see that something has actually definitely been designed in a specific manner, this should be enough to evaluate it rather more heavily. Design intent will lead into costing, balancing, wording, play-testing and so on, design intent being fundamental to all this. Of course, mistakes can be made - it is hard to playtest a game to a level which will reach what players will do in open, co-operative (that is, many groups of players can discuss tactics easily), competitive play. But design intent will feed through into a *lot* of the inherent balancing mechanisms that were designed. >I also don't feel that allowing a player to make a strong permanent >alliance in which he agrees to take second place and by which he feels >bound is a good idea. Two players can simply do this in an unspoken fashion if they choose anyway. It can be sometimes made obvious through play what is being planned. Or simple table talk of each individual deal, rather than any grand scheme. It's far from impossible. That people feel "bound" by it is something that the rules will find hard to address. [ quoted text not captured ]

hanni...@yahoo.co.uk (Hannigan) wrote in message news:<6143fc7b.02010...@posting.google.com>... > > I said all that's needed is a community code of behavior. > > Well, yes. Exactly. When I play casually, VP splits never occur. > > But what we actually have at tournaments, AFAICS, is a community code > of behaviour that says that it's OK to combine resources and team up; > not, as I think you are suggesting, that it's NOT OK to do so. I > don't necessarily want to play that way, and don't want to play > against people who do play that way as long as there are some people > at the table(like, say, my wife) who don't play that way. > > I agree that most groups of players would never allow such behaviour, > but, as Robert Goudie has pointed out, at a tournament this social > restriction doesn't apply, because the players don't constitute a > 'group' who have to play together and get along. And, in any event, > the social restriction will only be felt by some players as long as > the powers that be say that it's the correct thing to do These are great points. This lack of social convention is why my wife refuses to play in any tournaments anymore that aren't pre-releases. At the last sanctioned constructed tourney I was in, my wife witnessed someone jump up, point at me when he ousted me, and dance. First thing she said to me was "That's why I don't play tournament Jyhad anymore". She said the same thing to me when she saw someone berate another player at his table for 20 minutes for not making a deal with him. This from someone who back in the late 90's used to drive with me 5 hours to attend tournaments. I agree with Robert that it's better to have something set in stone than an "implied social contract". I used to drive myself nuts imposing my definition of "cheezy" on others. I've been a lot more at peace when instead of getting upset at the boring, redundant, and exceptionally focused decks (especially when I've seen the same deck 1000 times before) I see at tournaments, I revel in those who dare to bring innovative and creative deck designs. Instead of "shaming" people, I make certain to tell the people who enhance my game experience that they did so. In the above example of the dancer/pointer, I did not make an issue of that. I did make certain that the people at my next table who acted with sportsmanship and who added creative twists to their decks knew I appreciated it. Its not fair to yourself or others to impose your social contract on them. Instead just thank the people who play in a way that makes you smile. Matt

Joshua Duffin wrote: > (Incidentally, Succubus Club's effect seems to thoroughly > contradict Garfield's stated desire to not let players pool their > resources. I don't know why he designed it...) You may be misremembering a Garfield quote regarding his dilike of games which allow players to trade resources arbitrarily. If that's not the quote you're thinking of, please let me know. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Thu, 3 Jan 2002 17:46:25 -0800, Peter Sarrett wrote: >Certain kinds of behavior break a game, or other players' enjoyment of it. >Expecting all such behavior to be explicitly banned by the rules is >unrealistic and should not be necessary. >... >In short: we don't need to legislate morality, in society or in games. Unlike the real world, it appears to be an axiom of games that anything which is not explicitly permitted is forbidden. That's because a game is an artificial universe with arbitrary rules in which anything might be possible and so you can't rely upon common sense to constrain the players. Political negotiation and deals can have a significant impact upon a game. It follows that, unless a game explicitly permits such speech, it is forbidden. Part of the charm of Diplomacy is that it explicitly encourages you to make and break deals. The morality it legislates is that of realpolitik. A game such as Scrabble is silent on the subject. It would therefore be inappropriate for players in a multi-player game to do things like show each other their rack, plan big words together and so forth. The game is about making words to score points and that's all. The moral issues which tend to arise concern the legitimacy of words. In the similar case of Boggle, we used to have a player who would regularly use the archiac familiar form of English when conjugating words, e.g. the verb "go" might be extended as "goest" or "goeth". This was so amusing that we let it pass but I'm sure it would cause trouble in other circles. Andrew

I have several comments on Dr. Garfield's articles: 1. No matter how the game is structured, you cannot remove all personality issues with the players. Equally irritating to the 'political' complaints voiced in the article are poor sport problems that are rampant in many gaming environments. There are a lot of *ssh*l*s who game to get a feeling of superiority. Whether you win or lose, the gaming experience tends to be spoiled. There are people who carry grudges from game to game, etc. 2. Artificial limitations lead to uniquely creative responses. This results from the simple fact that the game designers cannot outwit every potential player. The Kingmaker problem is really about victory conditions, not player interaction: there is no incentive to improve your own position in most games if you do not come in first place. If the game singularly rewards a sole victor, then people will create non-traditional paths to victory when traditional paths are exhausted. At the very least, a stalemate option should be available. I think that this issue is a particularly important area for future game development. Especially for games that are supposed to simulate human interaction, to any degree (historical simulations, Jyhad, etc.). People involved in naturalistic competitive arenas typically have different goals, which may or may not be in conflict, allowing more than one party to achieve its goals. Diplomatic games often fail by not allowing this. For example, many countries were victorius in each of the major European conflicts (WWI, WWII, the Napoleonic wars, etc.). However, the game Diplomacy only allows a single victor. Many space opera types of games (Galactic Empires, Twilight Imperium, etc.) provide spectacular simulations of space exploration and technology development, than fall absolutely flat with lifeless victory requirements that have little to do with the game theme. Games usually enforce artificial competitive arenas (usually with the sole goal being domination) to minimize rules problems. In essence, everyone is being forced to play the role of Hitler or Hirohito, rather than Churchill or Roosevelt. Games that offer individual goals-oriented victory conditions are rare, but they do exist. Europa Universalis is a great example, although the game design is prohibitively convoluted. Games with aspects of multiple simultaneous solitaire (especially Civilization) get much of this feel because many players are just trying to improve their own performance in comparison to previous trials. 3. Individual games exist within a broader context. Irritating behavior on the part of a player can serve a function. For example, one guy in our group constantly tries to test the rules boundaries of games when he first plays them, and ends up losing spectacularly, often throwing the balance off, and really irritating the old school gamers in the group. However, he tends to do extremely well the next time he plays the game because he learns the nooks and cranies of the game's strategies. He was introduced to gaming relatively recently, and would otherwise not stand a chance against the older gamers in the group (20+ years of wargaming experience each). Trevor

On Fri, 4 Jan 2002 11:39:44 -0500, Joshua Duffin wrote: >(Incidentally, Succubus Club's effect seems to thoroughly >contradict Garfield's stated desire to not let players pool their >resources. I don't know why he designed it...) I doubt that he intended that it should be abused in the way that some players now do. But, in any case, the fact that it is a unique location obviously constrains its effect. If you want to do deals, you have to put put the card in your deck then draw, play and defend it. If other players don't like to see such dealing going on then there is something that they can do about it, e.g. play Sudden Reversal or Arson. And, of course, the corollary is that you can't do deals of this sort without being in the Succubus Club. Players who want to berate others about deals for 20 mins (as we read elsewhere in this thread) should be told to shut up and play. >Anyway, the point is, the political aspect of Jyhad does exist >as part of the original design. It's obviously not supposed to >be apolitical, just not *all* political. The politics should come from the cards, as above. When two combat decks agree a table split they are going beyond the cards, IMO. Their deal depends upon real-world political factors such as mutual trust. >A card that allowed you to redefine terms of a vote (which would >probably have to be before voting began to avoid being abusive) >might also be fun. Yeah. It irritates me when folk want to know the terms of a referendum before deciding whether they will try to block it - that is not the correct sequence of play and so they are literally out of order in discussing the matter at that point. A card of this kind would force them to make their mind up first - they could never be sure of the terms until later. Andrew

On 5 Jan 2002 14:22:06 GMT, Trevor Hyde wrote: >2. Artificial limitations lead to uniquely creative responses. >This results from the simple fact that the game designers cannot >outwit every potential player. The Kingmaker problem is really >about victory conditions, not player interaction: there is no >incentive to improve your own position in most games if you do >not come in first place. If the game singularly rewards a sole >victor, then people will create non-traditional paths to victory >when traditional paths are exhausted. At the very least, a >stalemate option should be available. It's best if the possibility of victory only disappears when the game is over or the player is eliminated. If a multi-player game can put players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is ipso facto a bad design. >Games usually enforce artificial competitive arenas >(usually with the sole goal being domination) to minimize rules >problems. In essence, everyone is being forced to play the role >of Hitler or Hirohito, rather than Churchill or Roosevelt. Churchill was arguably the most bellicose of these four. I once played his role in a good PBM wargame called WW2. This had excellent personal victory conditions. In his case, these included preservation of the British Empire, the deposing of Hitler and the removal from power of the Nazis. But most important was that Churchill himself should become Prime Minister! (he started the game as First Lord of the Admiralty). He didn't do too well in the real thing because, while he achieved most of these goals, he wasn't PM at the end of it all. >Games that offer individual goals-oriented victory conditions are >rare, but they do exist. The Babylon 5 CCG had a good feature of "agenda" cards which gave the races and their ambassadors different ways of scoring victory points. I like it when there are hidden agendas too, e.g. the UFOs in Illuminati or the missions/character cards in Chrononauts. Something of the sort might be a good addition to Vampire (the game that sparked this discussion). The game makes it clear that the objectives of the ancient masters are inscrutable but then fails to live up to this this by giving them just one simple way of scoring VPs - by destroying their left-hand neighbour. Hidden goals and agendas would be fun and would help undermine solid alliances because the outcome would be less certain. For example, the following might be out-of-turn master cards which you play as and when you achieve a goal: 1. Triumph of the Sabbat - score 1 VP when you burn a vampires with a Camarilla title if there are no other vampires with Camarilla titles in play. 2. Control of the City - score 1 VP if you control five locations and no other player controls any. 3. Cull the Weak - score 1 VP when you burn a vampire with a capacity of 1 or 2 if there are no other vampires of this kind in play. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnews.net... > > It's best if the possibility of victory only disappears when the game > is over or the player is eliminated. If a multi-player game can put > players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is > ipso facto a bad design. If someone has a chance to win at the end of the game no matter how poorly they have played, it is ipso facto a bad design. Rich

[ quoted text not captured ] I think that's kind of your personal taste showing. A million weekday game shows say you're wrong. These are the guys who will lose a ton of money if people vote with their feet and turn the show off. They *DON'T* design "bad" games - at least, not for very long they don't. And they all have a "final round" that counts nearly as much as the rest of the game so that no one's out of it completely until the game has actually ended. Sometimes, if you play badly enough, you can be eliminated before then but it's pretty hard. Yes, my definition of "bad" here is keyed on the cultural medium and who it attracts. Your mileage will certainly vary. But it still makes my point, I think. I've seen some pretty good board games that allowed for players who were way behind but not eliminated from play to somehow get back into it. It's not necessarily a bad thing; it just depends on how that mechanic works. If it's pretty much random and happens often enough that players who've done well in the early game frequently feel cheated by some late game development, then I agree with you. OTOH, if it gives a trailing player something to work at diligently to have _some_ relatively modest chance of putting himself back into the thick of the pack, I think that can be a very good element of a game. However you may feel about good and "bad" play, Andrew's point is excellent. The framework of boardgame rules involves an assumption that all players are playing to win. So creating a population of players who cannot win for a significant portion of the game and who have no motive to do anything else that was designed into the game by the game designers will find their own motivations, and their play will often screw up the intent of the game. This is a classic example of bad design, though it's sufficiently subtle that the average game designer never thinks about it. As for "bad play", in multiplayer games that's often hard to discern from "good play" that went bad for some reason or another: bad die rolls, in CCGs a bad metagame choice, and particularly the play of other players. Particularly that last one. In multiplayer games, it often happens that your position gets hosed not by your own bad play but by the horrible choices made by some dipshit who gleefully acts as the willing lapdog for the wrong alliance, blind to how he's going to get doublecrossed the instant your position has been reduced to rubble and you're no longer able to help him. Therefore, I also don't think it's a good assumption you make that players who lead have played well and those who are way behind played badly and deserve no chance of winning. Tain't necessarily so. Fred

In article <5D9C2BF4C8E67F7A.2ABD9436...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes >Unlike the real world, it appears to be an axiom of games that >anything which is not explicitly permitted is forbidden. That may be true _within the game_, but it clearly isn't true outside the game, where talking about the game is outside it by default. ("appears to be an axiom" is a bit of a dodgy concept as well.) >Political negotiation and deals can have a significant impact upon a >game. It follows that, unless a game explicitly permits such speech, >it is forbidden. And hence I think this conclusion is invalid. At best it may be a social convention that your group follows. (And good luck to you, all groups need conventions, if this works for you, fine. However it certainly doesn't work for any group I've been in - except for specific, highly regulated games such as chess and bridge.) To take a specific example I've never played in a Siedler group where if a player moving the thief said "which is better, next to X's wheat or ore?" other players couldn't answer. (Most groups I've played in allow a lot more, but I'm trying not to confuse the issue, as lines have to be drawn somewhere.) (Whilst posting, a point I haven't seen mentioned yet, but is always relevant in this context - especially the coin flip to combine resources issue - is attitudes to coming second, third etc. for which see many past threads.) -- Christopher Dearlove

In article <3C3884DC...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >Rich Shipley wrote: >> If someone has a chance to win at the end of the game no matter how poorly >> they have played, it is ipso facto a bad design. > >I think that's kind of your personal taste showing. A million weekday >game shows say you're wrong. Three points (a) There's a big difference between the viewpoint of a game player and a game spectator (although of course sometimes they coincide). (b) When playing for money unless the game is designed to be winner takes all (and I have only seen enough game shows, of the sort you are referring to, to know some are, some aren't) positions other than first matter, and things are rather different than games played for fun (if the stakes are large enough). (c) The sort of hardened gamer you get round here has different (I'll avoid the subjective "higher") standards than the majority of the population. -- Christopher Dearlove

In article <882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes >If a multi-player game can put >players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is >ipso facto a bad design. A definite overstatement. I can't think of a multiplayer game in which I couldn't put myself in a no-win situation (generally by doing nothing, or sometimes something even more counterproductive). So to be sensible you have to qualify it in terms of a player playing sensibly ... and then how do you separate this from well? Your comment will end up classifying all multiplayer games as bad. (OK, there are a few minor exceptions, snakes and ladders being one. You can argue if that's really a game - as we've done before here.) >Churchill was arguably the most bellicose of these four. Well personally, maybe (although Hitler was in the German army in WWI). In terms of leading a nation, I think not. Even if you discounted all Hitler's other actions, it's pretty difficult to find any act of any other WWII leader more bellicose than invading the USSR - Tojo in December 1941 possibly excepted. -- Christopher Dearlove

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > > In article <882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnew > s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes > >If a multi-player game can put > >players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is > >ipso facto a bad design. > > A definite overstatement. I can't think of a multiplayer game in > which I couldn't put myself in a no-win situation (generally by > doing nothing, or sometimes something even more counterproductive). All general statements, when applied pedantically, are "overstatements". You need to look at the point he's making (and frankly, the points I was making in my reply to Rich Shipley's point) for what it's worth. You're right, if you try hard enough, you can put yourself in a no-win situation in any multiplayer game. But that's a lot easier in some games than others. So read Andrew's statement as meaning, "To the extent players find themselves in no-win situations in multiplayer games, the game is badly designed." As with a lot of things, it's probably impossible to avoid this problem altogether. But some games are definitely better than others in this sense. I'd elaborate more on why this is, but I already did so in my other post which you nitpicked to death. (Hint: all analogies are ultimately flawed, too. I already knew there were differences between game shows and board games, etc., before I made the comparison. Are you arguing to make a point or are you arguing just to argue?) Fred

In message <E1DAA3EA87BFBA79.36D05C09...@lp.airnews.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> mumbled something about: >Yeah. It irritates me when folk want to know the terms of a >referendum before deciding whether they will try to block it - that is You can always lie to them. Of course, you can expect nothing else you say to be believed for the rest of the game (at least), but in the right situation, it is certainly correct to lie. >not the correct sequence of play and so they are literally out of >order in discussing the matter at that point. A card of this kind Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the stuff of which table interaction is made. And again, you can always lie to them. >would force them to make their mind up first - they could never be >sure of the terms until later. They still aren't ever sure of the terms. There's plain old lying. In most cases, there isn't a good reason to lie, or a lie will be so obvious as to be ignored. When your prey (the vote deck) is about to call a KRC and you are on one pool, and your own predator has not shown any intercept, then you should not try to weasel your way out with threats. You are a dead man. You must block that action, because your prey is WORLDS better off with the non-intercept deck behind him and has every reason to lie. Of course, a lie is also extremely obvious here, so you have only yourself to blame if you believe him, don't block, and then get ousted backwards by the vote. However, if your prey is about to call a KRC, and you've got plenty of pool, and your grandprey has plenty of pool, it can often be worth the risk of the lie to threaten him. If he agrees, great! you've saved some resources. If he doesn't, well, you can decide whether or not you care enough to block KNOWING that you'll lose a pool if you don't. And if he lied, well, he just tipped his hand at a time which would gain him no VPs -- a poor play in any circumstances. -- "Now remember, class; rape BEFORE you pillage."

In article <3C38C33F...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_hom e_do...@removethis.com> writes >Christopher Dearlove wrote: >> >> In article <882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnew >> s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes >> >If a multi-player game can put >> >players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is >> >ipso facto a bad design. >> >> A definite overstatement. I can't think of a multiplayer game in >> which I couldn't put myself in a no-win situation (generally by >> doing nothing, or sometimes something even more counterproductive). > >All general statements, when applied pedantically, are "overstatements". >You need to look at the point he's making (and frankly, the points I >was making in my reply to Rich Shipley's point) for what it's worth. No, I wanted to indicate not just that his statement was slightly too general, but that it was very much too general. I made the mathematician's mistake of providing an extreme case counterexample rather than a more significant one. >You're right, if you try hard enough, you can put yourself in a no-win >situation in any multiplayer game. But that's a lot easier in some games >than others. So read Andrew's statement as meaning, "To the extent players >find themselves in no-win situations in multiplayer games, the game is >badly designed." Well Andrew needs to work on his phrasing, which was the much stronger comment that if the game _can put_ players in a no-win situation then the game is a bad design. That's the statement I was against. Now if I take your, better, reformulation it's actually a valid point. (Of course there's a creative tension between this and the "nothing you do in the first half of the game matters" problem.) However it's also worth point out that a key point is the players' skill levels. To take a specific example a game which is often criticised for this problem is Outpost. It's very easy to get behind so far you're dead meat. So is Outpost a bad game. Not necessarily, among players who know what they are doing Outpost can work very well - and is a regular at one convention I attend. For those players Outpost is not a bad game, they postpone the "can't catch up" until sufficiently late in the game it's worth finishing. In fact why limit ourselves to multiplayer games, it's a problem just as much in two player games. (I know, the discussion came from one about aspects of games which are multiplayer, but this isn't - although some of the consequences thereof may be.) So let's consider chess. It's remarkably easy to get into a no-win situation playing chess. Yes, serious players resign the game when they realise this, but less serious ones tend not to. I've seen a poor player carrying on a lost game for a long time futilely hoping for an error by his opponent with no hope. So is chess a bad design? (Is the Pope Muslim?) >I already knew there were differences between game shows and board >games, etc., before I made the comparison. Are you arguing to make a >point or are you arguing just to argue? I was pointing out that your example of game shows was almost completely irrelevant to the case in point (we were discussing playing games, the example was what was satisfactory to a spectator) and therefore an almost worthless comparison. If you wanted to make the point you need a game which is good _to play_ which has the property you want. (And I think not involving money, as that also is different.) I'm not saying you can't find one. (Actually I can find games I enjoy with this property, but I think they're all flawed in some way.) Is that pointed enough for you? -- Christopher Dearlove

[Follow-ups set] In message <882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes: >The game makes it clear that the >objectives of the ancient masters are inscrutable but then fails to >live up to this this by giving them just one simple way of scoring VPs >- by destroying their left-hand neighbour. Hidden goals and agendas >would be fun and would help undermine solid alliances because the >outcome would be less certain. However, these would significantly destabilise the game. The game is based around the push-pull mechanism of pool vs defence. You spend some pool to defend the rest. Spend too little, you can't defend it. Spend too much, a small error will mean that they get through and pulverise you too quickly. This mechanism is fundamental. All cards in the game as based fundamentally around this. Combat decks have hugely significant power because of their omni-directability, but are significantly depowered by the fact that they aren't affect pool. If simply burning vampires were to give you victory points, the whole designed paradigm would crumble. Granted, if you were redesigning the game from the ground up, you might want to include alternate victory conditions. It would be extremely hard to do so now, however, without completely wrecking the balances that have been designed, tested, exploited, balanced and established. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C3884DC...@removethis.com... > Rich Shipley wrote: > > "Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message > > news:882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnews.net... > > > > > > It's best if the possibility of victory only disappears when the game > > > is over or the player is eliminated. If a multi-player game can put > > > players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is > > > ipso facto a bad design. > > > > If someone has a chance to win at the end of the game no matter how poorly > > they have played, it is ipso facto a bad design. > > I think that's kind of your personal taste showing. Of course it is. Just like the post I was responding to. Rich

>>Games that offer individual goals-oriented victory conditions are >>rare, but they do exist. > >The Babylon 5 CCG had a good feature of "agenda" cards which gave the >races and their ambassadors different ways of scoring victory points. >I like it when there are hidden agendas too, e.g. the UFOs in >Illuminati or the missions/character cards in Chrononauts. B5 is a pretty good game to compare and contrast tournament V:TES with for those who haven't played it. For one thing, it's had its share of problems trying to get the tournament scoring system to reflect normal play. In fact, for smaller tournaments, the problem of playing for second is a serious one. While it already has table wins to an extent, the benefits for winning aren't sufficiently far above coming in second (or for coming in first without winning) to discourage throwing games. However, in large tournaments, the number of players you are competing with forces the players to play for wins. As for agenda in B5, they were intended to get around the multiplayer problem of beating up on whoever is winning by giving a leap to victory bonus which would obfuscate who was truly winning; and, they can be played hidden, though dropping an agenda late amounts to much the same surprise factor. However, they failed. They failed because knowledgeable players memorize all of the tournament level agenda and can accurately gauge where every player is with sufficient thought and concentration. Unfortunately for the game, simply adding more agenda only pushes off the problem for a few months. While there are a few tricky ways to win, they aren't sufficiently tricky that most players can't prepare for them as well.

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > > In article <3C38C33F...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_hom > e_do...@removethis.com> writes > >Christopher Dearlove wrote: > >> > >> In article <882DF3B68D94017D.27044B69...@lp.airnew > >> s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes > >> >If a multi-player game can put > >> >players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is > >> >ipso facto a bad design. > >> > >> A definite overstatement. I can't think of a multiplayer game in > >> which I couldn't put myself in a no-win situation (generally by > >> doing nothing, or sometimes something even more counterproductive). > > > >All general statements, when applied pedantically, are "overstatements". > >You need to look at the point he's making (and frankly, the points I > >was making in my reply to Rich Shipley's point) for what it's worth. > > No, I wanted to indicate not just that his statement was slightly too > general, but that it was very much too general. ... > Andrew needs to work on his phrasing, which was the much stronger > comment that if the game _can put_ players in a no-win situation then > the game is a bad design. That's the statement I was against. > > Now if I take your, better, reformulation it's actually a valid point. > (Of course there's a creative tension between this and the "nothing > you do in the first half of the game matters" problem.) I think that's exactly the point: when Andrew talks about games that put their players in "no-win" situations, you automatically construe that to mean one has to design a game in which the first half of the game doesn't matter to solve the problem - or at least Rich apparently did. Rich's statement is the one I felt went off the deep end. There's an enormous difference between a game where a player has some kind of chance right up to the end of the game vs. one in which the first half of the game doesn't matter at all. It's a bit of a creative tension but I think there's all sorts of creative tensions in game design. > However it's > also worth point out that a key point is the players' skill levels. > To take a specific example a game which is often criticised for this > problem is Outpost. It's very easy to get behind so far you're dead > meat. So is Outpost a bad game. Not necessarily, among players who know > what they are doing Outpost can work very well - and is a regular at > one convention I attend. For those players Outpost is not a bad game, > they postpone the "can't catch up" until sufficiently late in the game > it's worth finishing. It's still a design flaw. Here's the thing: if unskilled players have gotten themselves in such a mess in the first half of a game which severely tests skill, why is the game worth continuing through to the second half? I'm pretty sure the answer is to test the skills of the winning players sufficiently to determine a winner between them. But Andrew is exactly correct about this: when this happens, you have a problem going on in that the losing player or players - however unskilled they may be in terms of advancing their own position - may well be capable of engaging in kingmaking activities, deliberately or otherwise. If so, then your game of skill is out the window - because the behavior of these lousy players represents a random and (depending on the game) often inordinately powerful element in the game. Give such players some kind of goal to work towards and the other, better players can begin to predict the formers' behavior and align their strategies to cope with it. > In fact why limit ourselves to multiplayer games, it's a problem just > as much in two player games. (I know, the discussion came from one about > aspects of games which are multiplayer, but this isn't - although some > of the consequences thereof may be.) The reason you don't worry about this in two-player games is that the issues we're concerned about that derive from unpredictable behavior can't arise. The two players play as long as the game entertains them and then quit - or finish, however they will. Who cares? It's their choice. But the losing player has no other motivation than to attempt as best he can to continue to improve his position. He can't affect play between two or more other players who still have a fighting chance. > >I already knew there were differences between game shows and board > >games, etc., before I made the comparison. Are you arguing to make a > >point or are you arguing just to argue? > > I was pointing out that your example of game shows was almost > completely irrelevant to the case in point (we were discussing playing > games, the example was what was satisfactory to a spectator) and > therefore an almost worthless comparison. My example was just fine. It's not exactly the same thing being a player vs. a spectator but for those purposes, the distinction isn't very relevant. The game has to be interesting either way, to keep players OR spectators interested. I think the example was quite relevant and I think you're picking nits. > If you wanted to make the > point you need a game which is good _to play_ which has the property > you want. (And I think not involving money, as that also is different.) > I'm not saying you can't find one. Then why are we even arguing about it? Rich Shipley's pat statement was incorrect. Period. Fred

On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 16:36:26, Christopher Dearlove wrote: >>Unlike the real world, it appears to be an axiom of games that >>anything which is not explicitly permitted is forbidden. > >That may be true _within the game_, but it clearly isn't true outside >the game, where talking about the game is outside it by default. I would distinguish role-playing commentary and banter from talk which is designed to alter the course of the game. The latter cannot be considered outside the game. >And hence I think this conclusion is invalid. At best it may be a >social convention that your group follows. (And good luck to you, >all groups need conventions, if this works for you, fine. However >it certainly doesn't work for any group I've been in - except for >specific, highly regulated games such as chess and bridge.) These are good examples - I doubt that you will find much free speech at tournament level in these games. They even use screens and bidding cards in bridge to prevent any kind of communications beyond that permitted by the rules. That's because they take the game seriously. The games we're talking about are just parlour games by comparison. >To take a specific example I've never played in a Siedler group >where if a player moving the thief said "which is better, next >to X's wheat or ore?" other players couldn't answer. I've not played that one but my experience is that such questions are the occasion for much tedious time-wasting as players compete in displays of erudition and misdirection. I think games slip into this by stealth. When players are first introduced to the game there is naturally much explanation of the rules and strategy as players are still learning the details. But this then persists longer than it should. Once players know how to play they should make their own moves without all this extraneous chatter. Andrew

On Sun, 06 Jan 2002 15:12:36 GMT, Rich Shipley wrote: >If someone has a chance to win at the end of the game no matter how poorly >they have played, it is ipso facto a bad design. Fred has put the matter well. I would just summarise it by saying that if players have played poorly then they should have a diminished chance of winning. It's having absolutely no chance at all which is bad. Andrew

On Sun, 06 Jan 2002 22:46:53 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: >Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool >from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the >stuff of which table interaction is made. Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. The game has cards like Monocle of Clarity and Succubus Club to provide player interaction of this sort. Trying to get the same benefit without using a card is cheating. And a good practical reason why it _should_ be illegal is that it consumes game time and that is a limited resource. In one infamous example, the ruckus over one such vote/intercept deal consumed about an hour. >However, if your prey is about to call a KRC, and you've got plenty of >pool, and your grandprey has plenty of pool, it can often be worth the >risk of the lie to threaten him. If he agrees, great! you've saved >some resources. If he doesn't, well, you can decide whether or not you >care enough to block KNOWING that you'll lose a pool if you don't. And >if he lied, well, he just tipped his hand at a time which would gain him >no VPs -- a poor play in any circumstances. Players should do this analysis for themselves and not waste time talking about it. There's a bit in "New York by Night" which puts it well: "Michaela? Don't worry about her any more. Polonia took off her head. It was a beautiful thing. I was there with the pack - we're Polonia's templars right now. We literally walked into her haven. He killed her right then and there. It was supposed to be a diplomacy talk. You know, just sitting at the table and trying to work out our differences. Hello, bitch? Do you think we're some kind of New Age therapy fanclub?" -- Hester Reed, ductus of the Love's Easy Tears pack Andrew

On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 20:12:59 +0000, Christopher Dearlove wrote: >A definite overstatement. I can't think of a multiplayer game in >which I couldn't put myself in a no-win situation (generally by >doing nothing, or sometimes something even more counterproductive). Of course you can deliberately ruin your position in many games if you want to be perverse. So what? >Your comment will end up classifying all multiplayer games as bad. There are certainly plenty of bad ones but there are some gems. I came across Looping Louie recently and thought it quite enchanting. You always have a chance in that game until you're out. >In terms of leading a nation, I think not. Even if you discounted >all Hitler's other actions, it's pretty difficult to find any act of >any other WWII leader more bellicose than invading the USSR - Tojo >in December 1941 possibly excepted. Foolish more than bellicose - these were both acts of some desperation. Hitler went to war with the USSR when he did because he was exasperated with Churchill's intransigent blockade. And Tojo went to war with the USA because of their equally deadly oil embargo. What's interesting is that none of these "players" thought that they had lost the game until the end, despite their often grim situation. With hindsight, we now know that the Axis faced insuperable odds and were beaten before they started. This makes it tough to have a WW2 wargame which is both a good simulation and a good game. Andrew

In message <310EBE842C33301D.286BF369...@lp.airnews.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> mumbled something about: >On Sun, 06 Jan 2002 22:46:53 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: > >>Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool >>from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the >>stuff of which table interaction is made. > >Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. The game has cards >like Monocle of Clarity and Succubus Club to provide player >interaction of this sort. Trying to get the same benefit without >using a card is cheating. As demonstrated elsewhere and explained elsewhere, it is neither illegal nor cheating. Sorry. Please try again. The reason you do not see deals like this in Poker is because it is a game of odds -- any time you tip the odds by letting someone else win when they shouldn't, you eventually end up screwing yourself. >And a good practical reason why it _should_ be illegal is that it >consumes game time and that is a limited resource. In one infamous >example, the ruckus over one such vote/intercept deal consumed about >an hour. People should be told to "Just play the game" when it takes too much game time, by the other three players at the table. >>However, if your prey is about to call a KRC, and you've got plenty of >>pool, and your grandprey has plenty of pool, it can often be worth the >>risk of the lie to threaten him. If he agrees, great! you've saved >>some resources. If he doesn't, well, you can decide whether or not you >>care enough to block KNOWING that you'll lose a pool if you don't. And >>if he lied, well, he just tipped his hand at a time which would gain him >>no VPs -- a poor play in any circumstances. > >Players should do this analysis for themselves and not waste time >talking about it. There's a bit in "New York by Night" which puts it >well: They can just as easily waste time thinking about it -- potentially more time, in fact. -- "I am NOT illiterate -- my parents were married!"

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C394149...@removethis.com... > > Then why are we even arguing about it? Rich Shipley's pat statement was > incorrect. Period. My statement was intentional hyperbole, but it was no more incorrect that the statement I was responding to. Whether a game is flawed or not is a matter of personal taste of the people playing it (assuming it is actually playable by the rules). Rich

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:E52FEEB9FC9D51D3.E0D19457...@lp.airnews.net... [ quoted text not captured ] I respect that you prefer things that way. I just think that other preferences can be valid also. If your chance of winning would rely on all other players making intentionally bad moves, would you count this as a diminished chance or no chance? Rich

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:3C36320C...@white-wolf.com... > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > (Incidentally, Succubus Club's effect seems to thoroughly > > contradict Garfield's stated desire to not let players pool their > > resources. I don't know why he designed it...) > > You may be misremembering a Garfield quote regarding his dilike of > games which allow players to trade resources arbitrarily. > > If that's not the quote you're thinking of, please let me know. No, that is the one I'm thinking of. He wrote: "There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a single viable position." It's true that this doesn't apply *exactly* to the Succubus Club, since the "players can trade resources freely" situation only exists when the Club is actually in play, and only between the Club-controlling player and others. But the Club does create this situation, and as such I found it strange that he created (as he presumably did) the card. Josh hasn't gone clubbing recently

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Sun, 06 Jan 2002 22:46:53 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: > > >Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool > >from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the > >stuff of which table interaction is made. > > Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. Not true, as you well know. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:E1DAA3EA87BFBA79.36D05C09...@lp.airnews.net... > On Fri, 4 Jan 2002 11:39:44 -0500, Joshua Duffin wrote: > > >(Incidentally, Succubus Club's effect seems to thoroughly > >contradict Garfield's stated desire to not let players pool their > >resources. I don't know why he designed it...) > > I doubt that he intended that it should be abused in the way that some > players now do. Well, what he wrote in that article you (re)posted indicates that he was well aware of the abuse it would make possible. > But, in any case, the fact that it is a unique > location obviously constrains its effect. If you want to do deals, > you have to put put the card in your deck then draw, play and defend > it. If other players don't like to see such dealing going on then > there is something that they can do about it, e.g. play Sudden > Reversal or Arson. Certainly. But creating the effect at all seems strange when you don't like people to be able to exchange resources so freely. > And, of course, the corollary is that you can't do deals of this sort > without being in the Succubus Club. Players who want to berate others > about deals for 20 mins (as we read elsewhere in this thread) should > be told to shut up and play. You can't do deals of the "trade pool, cards in hand, etc" sort, no. Unenforceable abstract deals, sure. You could equally well, in Settlers of Catan, make a deal with another player to not put the robber on one of her hexes when you move it after rolling a seven, and in return have her not put it on one of yours when she next moves it. It might not be important enough in Settlers to be worth making deals about, but really, almost every multi-side game I know of allows table-talk dealmaking. The ones that don't (like bridge) prohibit it for some specific reason (in the case of bridge, it seems to be to make "talking without talking" part of the skills needed to play). > The politics should come from the cards, as above. When two combat > decks agree a table split they are going beyond the cards, IMO. Their > deal depends upon real-world political factors such as mutual trust. Of course it does. Every deal depends on real-world political factors. Even the ones you'd come up with using political action cards would. (eg, you vote for my KRC now and I'll vote for yours next turn.) The politics come from the multi-player nature of the game. Since interaction isn't restricted to only one other person, beating up on the strongest player is often useful for the weaker players; certainly how much beating up you can do should be limited, but I think it pretty much is. > Yeah. It irritates me when folk want to know the terms of a > referendum before deciding whether they will try to block it - that is > not the correct sequence of play and so they are literally out of > order in discussing the matter at that point. A card of this kind > would force them to make their mind up first - they could never be > sure of the terms until later. So don't tell them. You could also be asked who you're planning to rush with the Talbot's Chainsaw you're equipping, but you don't have to answer that question either. But it's a fair enough question to ask. If you don't answer, they may assume the worst and try to block, but that's what you wanted anyway... Josh want the culture changed? do it yourself!

In article <EPZZ7.53030$fo.18...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, [ quoted text not captured ] The mark of a good game is not whether anyone has a chance to win right up until the end, but whether you will continue to enjoy playing, no matter how badly you are doing. Civilization has the problem that you cannot be eliminated, but growing and nurturing a civilaztion, and trading with others, can be fun, even if you dead last. This is why Civ is a great game. Your Mileage May Vary. I have a friend who is an abysmal civ player, but will keep coming back, because he enjoys playing.

[ quoted text not captured ] I disagree. There is a whole basis of motivation to what you're doing when you play board games that is part and parcel to the whole activity. The assumption is made as you play the game that each player has an intent to win the game to the best of his of his ability. (Mind you, there may be some exceptions to this when you get to certain kinds of board games where one or more of the activities within the game, for instance fomenting honest discussion, is actually the central point of the game and whatever scorekeeping system is in place, if any, is peripheral.) These games tend to break down if this motivation is missing. Therefore, Andrew's statement is absolutely correct: it's *always* bad design to put players in a situation where the central motivation has disappeared. (I guess I would have to add the caveat that I'm assuming they still have real power to affect the game after their chances to win have been obliterated.) The fact that the vast majority of games do this to one extent or another merely reveals how unappreciated this point is by far too many game designers. Christopher Dearlove says he can't think of a multiplayer game where this isn't true; I don't find that surprising. It's a very common flaw in multiplayer games. What you're talking about, IIUC, *is* hyperbole. The ability to comeback no matter how badly one has done - within reason (meaning that one is not intentionally trying to eliminate one's self) - is not necessarily bad game design, for reasons I listed in my previous response to your post. Fred

Joshua Duffin wrote: > > "LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message > news:3C36320C...@white-wolf.com... > > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > > (Incidentally, Succubus Club's effect seems to thoroughly > > > contradict Garfield's stated desire to not let players pool their > > > resources. I don't know why he designed it...) > > > > You may be misremembering a Garfield quote regarding his dilike of > > games which allow players to trade resources arbitrarily. > > > > If that's not the quote you're thinking of, please let me know. > > No, that is the one I'm thinking of. He wrote: > > "There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade > resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could > flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a > single viable position." Yeah, that's the one. > It's true that this doesn't apply *exactly* to the Succubus Club, > since the "players can trade resources freely" situation only > exists when the Club is actually in play, and only between the > Club-controlling player and others. But the Club does create this > situation, and as such I found it strange that he created (as he > presumably did) the card. It's a long way from "trade resources freely" to the non-freely stuff allowed by (the unique location played as a master card). [ quoted text not captured ]

Richard Bell wrote: > The mark of a good game is not whether anyone has a chance to win right up > until the end, but whether you will continue to enjoy playing, no matter > how badly you are doing. Civilization has the problem that you cannot > be eliminated, but growing and nurturing a civilaztion, and trading with > others, can be fun, even if you dead last. This is why Civ is a great game. Funny you should mention that. Civilization is one on my list of prime offenders. The only thing about it is that most of the time I've played the six and seven player games where two or three people have been basically eliminated by mid-game, these people have always been sufficiently weak that they seem to have little concept that they've been eliminated. They still do "bad" things, though: primarily getting so desperate for trade cards that it's often impossible to stop the leaders with a trade embargo. It's an interesting point though. I would say it applies better to Mayfair rail games. I still remember one of my friends some years ago mentioning that he knew he had no chance 2/3rds of the way through the game but he was enjoying the hell out of building the track to make his line real cool. I can appreciate that. Been there myself. You're right: certain games have activities with the game that can be fun of their own accord, outside of how they contribute to winning the game. When that kind of thing happens, it gives an outlet to losing players that gives them some kind of motivation. It's probably not a predictable thing, though (some players like building track or trading Civ cards, some don't), so it doesn't really fix the problem - which is allowing the leading players to set their strategy in view of what the trailing players are likely to decide to do. Fred

In article <3C394149...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >Christopher Dearlove wrote: >> However it's >> also worth point out that a key point is the players' skill levels. >> To take a specific example a game which is often criticised for this >> problem is Outpost. It's very easy to get behind so far you're dead >> meat. So is Outpost a bad game. Not necessarily, among players who know >> what they are doing Outpost can work very well - and is a regular at >> one convention I attend. For those players Outpost is not a bad game, >> they postpone the "can't catch up" until sufficiently late in the game >> it's worth finishing. > >It's still a design flaw. Here's the thing: if unskilled players have >gotten themselves in such a mess in the first half of a game which >severely tests skill, why is the game worth continuing through to the >second half? You've missed my point. Why should a game have to be playable by unskilled players? If a problem only occurs with unskilled players is it actually a design fault in a game? >The reason you don't worry about this in two-player games is that the >issues we're concerned about that derive from unpredictable behavior >can't arise. The two players play as long as the game entertains them >and then quit - or finish, however they will. Who cares? You presume the two players have equal entertainment values. It can be extremely tedious to finish off a chess player who ought to resign but is too much of a beginner to realise it. But I agree, it's less of a problem. >My example was just fine. We'll have to agree to (strongly) disagree on that one. >> I'm not saying you can't find one. >Then why are we even arguing about it? Note that "I'm not saying you can't find one." is not the same as "I agree you can find one." and I'm not making that point either. -- Christopher Dearlove

In article <4549F48043671B68.795CD32D...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes >On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 20:12:59 +0000, Christopher Dearlove wrote: > >>A definite overstatement. I can't think of a multiplayer game in >>which I couldn't put myself in a no-win situation (generally by >>doing nothing, or sometimes something even more counterproductive). > >Of course you can deliberately ruin your position in many games if you >want to be perverse. So what? I've explained elsewhere (with the context of what I replied to) as to why this wasn't the best counterexample, but the original comment covered too many cases, including this one. >There are certainly plenty of bad ones but there are some gems. I >came across Looping Louie recently and thought it quite enchanting. We agree on something! >>In terms of leading a nation, I think not. Even if you discounted >>all Hitler's other actions, it's pretty difficult to find any act of >>any other WWII leader more bellicose than invading the USSR - Tojo >>in December 1941 possibly excepted. > >Foolish more than bellicose - these were both acts of some >desperation. Hitler went to war with the USSR when he did because he >was exasperated with Churchill's intransigent blockade. And Tojo went >to war with the USA because of their equally deadly oil embargo. Tojo, yes, but I can't see invading Russia as desperation. Long term Hitler had a Russian problem, but no one's suggesting that Hitler pre-empting a Russian invasion. Frustration isn't desperation, and I can think of nothing more bellicose than "I'm not winning here, let's start another war". >With hindsight, we now know that the Axis faced insuperable odds and >were beaten before they started. The Japanese yes, but the Germans could have won the Battle of the Atlantic (discovered Enigma was broken and a little more luck), the USSR could have collapsed politically (say if the Germans take Moscow) and the US might not have got actively involved until too late. Maybe you'd call what's left a draw (no one's going to invade the USA) but it's a rather pro-German draw. >This makes it tough to have a WW2 >wargame which is both a good simulation and a good game. Hey, we're back on topic! I would think that if we considered the Pacific War (which we're agreed is always a long term US/Allied win) we have game options not available in real life ... call it a Japanese win if either they get sufficiently far before being stopped (say if they take everything they did plus Hawaii and all of New Guinea) or they hold on long enough on the retreat. A real Japan can't call that a victory, but a game player could. -- Christopher Dearlove

In article <3C39EB88...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >Rich Shipley wrote: >Whether a game is flawed or not is a >> matter of personal taste of the people playing it (assuming it is actually >> playable by the rules). > >Therefore, Andrew's statement >is absolutely correct: it's *always* bad design to put players in a situation >where the central motivation has disappeared. Andrew's original statement was that it was bad design if a game _can_ put the players in such a situation, a stronger statement. >Christopher >Dearlove says he can't think of a multiplayer game where this isn't true and it was the stronger version that I said occurred in all multiplayer games, not your weaker version. My point here is that if you insist on a player always being in with a winning chance, no matter how badly he plays, then forget it, it isn't going to happen. If you want players to be still in with a chance provided they play reasonably well, then you run into a logical problem ... obviously all players are in with a chance if they play well enough, they'll be winning, and there's no dividing line between the two cases. If instead (or as well) you want players no longer in with a chance to have very little chance of acting to "throw" a game (certainly harder than the Monopoly "see everything for a dollar" ploy) then some games are better than others, and many are, for my tastes, acceptably good. And yes, taste _does_ come into it. As for your emphasised *always*, there are no absolute rules in game design, only guidelines. Furthermore _my_ central motivation isn't necessarily to win, it's to do my best. In the majority of games if I can't win, I'll try for second, or third, or fourth, or even not to be last. If you think it's first or nothing, in all games, then we should play in different groups. -- Christopher Dearlove

On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, Frederick Scott wrote: > Funny you should mention that. Civilization is one on my list of prime > offenders. The only thing about it is that most of the time I've played the > six and seven player games where two or three people have been basically > eliminated by mid-game, these people have always been sufficiently weak that > they seem to have little concept that they've been eliminated. They still do > "bad" things, though: primarily getting so desperate for trade cards that it's > often impossible to stop the leaders with a trade embargo. This reminds me of an issue groups I've played with have occasionally grappled with - if trades with the leaders increase their overall chances of winning (even if those overall chances still remain very small), is it ethically valid for them to trade with the leaders even if that makes the person they trade with much more likely to win? I claim that as long as you have any chance of winning, you should play to maximize it, but it could easily be viewed as kingmaking. If the above wasn't clear, here's an abstract example: A, B, and C are playing a game; their current chances of winning are a,b, and c. C can interact with A such that c increases to c' and a increases to a'. What constraints would your group put on a, b, c, a', and c' for this to be considered a 'fair' deal? Adam

Quoth Andrew S. Davidson: > It's best if the possibility of victory only disappears when the game > is over or the player is eliminated. If a multi-player game can put > players in a no-win situation so that their play is aimless then it is > ipso facto a bad design. Interestingly, this is something which crops up as a problem in certain tournament formats, even in two player games. In some variants of the so called "Swiss" format, advancement depends in part on "strength of schedule". In other words, two or more players with an equal number of wins, losses and ties (if applicable) trying to get into the same slot in the next round compare the records of those they played against, such that a player who defeated someone with 5 wins will advance over a player who defeated someone with 0 wins (all other factors being equal). The problem with such systems lies with players who do badly in the first few rounds. Generally, after two or three losses it is utterly impossible to win the tournament, or be among the top percentage of players (when the rounds of Swiss are being used as a qualifier). When it is no longer possible to win, there is very little motive to continue. If there is some form of ranking system (ELO or some other) in place for players extending outside the scope of the tournament, there is some continued motivation to play on despite losses, but even then those who have been doing so badly are likely to call it a day and assume they will not win more. (If the tournament is for a CCG, or any other game where prior preparation of resources like a customized deck or army is needed, this belief is even stronger.) If they leave, they effectively forfiet all further games - making the rest of their record for the day losses. Those who faced them earlier are thus penalized against others with the same number of games, though had the departing player contined they could have won the rest of their games. Thus, someone who has no hope of winning the tournament (or advancing past the qualifiers, depending on situation) is inadvertantly playing kingmaker, whether they want to or not. -Brent Keith

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > My point here is that if you insist on a player always being in with a > winning chance, no matter how badly he plays, then forget it, it isn't > going to happen. I think you're kind of scratching. If players forget they that motivation to win and play simply to destroy their chances of winning, then few if any games will stand up to the requirement that the game never put players into a position of having no hope. But if players do that, then the whole issue of motivation is moot anyway. A motivation to win the game is kind of underpinning assumption of this whole discussion. I also find the concept of players with vastly differing abilities to be beside the point, as well. If you've got adults playing against children or adults who differ greatly in their abilities then the subject becomes pretty much moot also. The play of extremely weak players is usually unpredictable anyway (that's why they're weak) so no design element in any game is solve that problem. In that situation, the problem is the players, not the game. Given those two points, I disagree. It is possible to design games that way. > If you want players to be still in with a chance > provided they play reasonably well, then you run into a logical problem > ... obviously all players are in with a chance if they play well enough, > they'll be winning, and there's no dividing line between the two cases. Absolutely not! A lot of games have an element of luck in them which eliminates unfortunate players too soon despite excellent play. And to the extent games are skill based, it's quite easy and frequently happens that a fairly slight difference in skill will eliminate a player who plays a weak game early. A multiplayer game with a property similar to Chess (as you cited yesterday) except that only one or some of the players are eliminated from effective contention early yet still have a significant position on the board. If there are two or more players who still have a realistic chance of winning the game, it can't be stopped (as chess can) due to one player having effectively won the game yet some players have no chance - which contradicts your statement above. This whole line of reasoning is incorrect. > As for your emphasised *always*, there are no absolute rules in game > design, only guidelines. Furthermore _my_ central motivation isn't > necessarily to win, it's to do my best. That's splitting hairs in a two-player game. In a multiplayer game, it's problematic: outside of winning the game, players often do not agree what "doing your best" actually amounts to. There's a fair number of people who care nothing for achieving the second highest total in whatever scoring system is used (if a there's even a scoring system) and essentially feel that doing their best is taking down the guy who's play (in their perception) destroyed their chances of winning. That's exactly why Andrew's statement is correct: active players without a predictable motivation in a multiplayer game is, ipso facto, a flaw in the game design. > In the majority of games if I can't win, I'll try for second, or third, > or fourth, or even not to be last. If you think it's first or nothing, > in all games, then we should play in different groups. You apparently don't have a wide enough body of experience with multiplayer games. Many of them have no measure of second or third, etc. And while I don't generally subscribe to it, there are many players who play these games who don't care about the difference between finishing second and last. Motivation to win a board game is pretty much universal. Like it or not, the fact is is that beyond winning you will find little consensus in the world. If you only want to play against players who agree with your runner-up mentality, then perhaps you should view Andrew's flaw as being the thing that limits the number of opponents available to you. Fred

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > > In article <3C394149...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes > >Christopher Dearlove wrote: > >> However it's > >> also worth point out that a key point is the players' skill levels. > >> To take a specific example a game which is often criticised for this > >> problem is Outpost. It's very easy to get behind so far you're dead > >> meat. So is Outpost a bad game. Not necessarily, among players who know > >> what they are doing Outpost can work very well - and is a regular at > >> one convention I attend. For those players Outpost is not a bad game, > >> they postpone the "can't catch up" until sufficiently late in the game > >> it's worth finishing. > > > >It's still a design flaw. Here's the thing: if unskilled players have > >gotten themselves in such a mess in the first half of a game which > >severely tests skill, why is the game worth continuing through to the > >second half? > > You've missed my point. Why should a game have to be playable by > unskilled players? If a problem only occurs with unskilled players > is it actually a design fault in a game? I didn't realize you were using players who are so unskilled that they essentially had no chance from the get-go. Then I go to the point I cited in my other post: as players who are that unskilled, they become so unpredictable in their play that the question of motivating them to win (or not) is irrelevant. Since they can't possibly play well enough to win, it doesn't matter whether the game grants them a chance to win: they will not be able to avail themselves of it. Again, this comes from taking Andrew's statement too generally. It's not the game which is preventing the players from winning at any point - it's the players themselves. Fred

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C39EB88...@removethis.com... > Rich Shipley wrote: > > > > My statement was intentional hyperbole, but it was no more incorrect that > > the statement I was responding to. Whether a game is flawed or not is a > > matter of personal taste of the people playing it (assuming it is actually > > playable by the rules). > > I disagree. There is a whole basis of motivation to what you're doing when > you play board games that is part and parcel to the whole activity. The > assumption is made as you play the game that each player has an intent to > win the game to the best of his of his ability. I agree that should be the intent when you start playing. > These games tend > to break down if this motivation is missing. Therefore, Andrew's statement > is absolutely correct: it's *always* bad design to put players in a situation > where the central motivation has disappeared. Attempting to win is my intent when playing a game, but it is not my central motivation. My central motivation is to enjoy the process. I can do this while losing as well as winning. > The fact that the vast > majority of games do this to one extent or another merely reveals how > unappreciated this point is by far too many game designers. Christopher > Dearlove says he can't think of a multiplayer game where this isn't true; > I don't find that surprising. It's a very common flaw in multiplayer games. Then I guess the concept of multi-player games is flawed, so don't play them anymore. I'll go on enjoying them myself. > What you're talking about, IIUC, *is* hyperbole. The ability to comeback > no matter how badly one has done - within reason (meaning that one is not > intentionally trying to eliminate one's self) - is not necessarily bad > game design, for reasons I listed in my previous response to your post. I *said* that statement was hyperbole - why are you still arguing it with me? I don't really feel that any type of game is flawed. It is all in the execution and audience. You are the one saying that the majority of multi-player games out there are flawed and using faulty assumptions to support this claim. If designers followed your advice, the scope of games produced would be drastically diminished. For example, I played three games yesterday - lets see how they stack up using your criteria: Settlers of Catan: Since it possible to be put in a position where you cannot score 10 points, the game is flawed and should be scrapped. I once ended up a game with 2 points (I think I built a road the who game) and knew I had no chance a good while before the game ended, but it is still a story I can laugh about and tell anyone disappointed in losing. Taj Mahal: Any type of game like this where a limited amount of points are tallied each round is flawed because it is possible to be too far behind with a couple turns left to catch up. Chuck it out too. Urland: This one has the mechanism for those behind that they can jump over other players on the scoring track, but it uses a tallied score again, so you still may not have a chance at the end. Bad game - no biscuit. Rich

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:3C39EBD1...@white-wolf.com... [re succubus club vs r. garfield's dislike of "trade resources freely"] > It's a long way from "trade resources freely" to the non-freely > stuff allowed by (the unique location played as a master card). Um. OK, you can only make trades during your untap phase with Succubus Club. And only while the card is in play. But besides that, what could be more free than trading pool, cards in play, and cards in hand? Isn't that pretty much all the resources that exist in VTES? Josh

rlb...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Richard Bell) wrote in message news:<a1cbn7$4r6$1...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>... [ quoted text not captured ] Yes; you've hit the nail right on the head there, Rich. The point, I think, that the others are getting to here is that they don't enjoy a game as a result of either given situation and therefore conclude it is these no-win/easy win factors which signal a bad design. I'll play damn anything, and enjoy most games I play because I enjoy indulging in the social pastime of gaming. If people start whingeing that people win too easily or people don't win at all they have missed the point that the only winners at any game are those that enjoy it. People who do this are usually the same type who might turn round and blame me for their defeat; not because I am the winner but because one of my plays has assisted somebody else in attaining a lead. They might say the game is a bad design because it allows such a situation to arise. They might say that even though my play was within the bounds of the rules (or as a group our play), it was unfair because he was winning and is suddenly no longer the leader. He has lost the game anyway, as he has took the competitive angle to seriously and has detracted from his own pleasure. One might argue the colluding players are doing the same, I would argue (and have) if the rules allow it then it's OK by me. Nothing wrong with competition, but always remember it is a game. That said, if these people do not enjoy a particular game then it will become an intolerable experience to play it. I am not going to force anybody to play something if they don't think it will end in an acceptable manner; perhaps I am just a little more accepting?

[ quoted text not captured ] Yeah. And the "while the card is in play" and the "with you" and the "during your untap phase" put things a long way from "games that allow players to freely trade resources". [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <3C3A033E...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >A lot of games have an element of luck in them which >eliminates unfortunate players too soon despite excellent play I haven't been addressing that point, but rather the case of the problem occurring due to bad play. On this specific point, yes it's a problem if that occurs too frequently. (But to take a specific example, this is a complaint sometimes made about Siedler. However I disagree that that case is over the line.) <the rest of this increasingly tedious discussion snipped> >You apparently don't have a wide enough body of experience with >multiplayer games. Apart from a few decades of experience (though I'd only really count the last quarter century as real games experience) owning more than a couple of hundred of them, and having played a lot more, being a regular at some of the main British games conventions and other points I could note, no experience at all :) Your judgement seems to be even more flawed than your examples. >Many of them have no measure of second or third, etc. Some don't, most do. And yes, I will quantify most. The British boardgames championship (*) is held each year at Baycon. Each game played there is written up on a sheet and submitted, the winner being determined by grinding the scores somehow. Each game write up lists 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. places. In a very few games it's only possible to write 1st and join everyone as 2nd=. In almost every game it is straightforward to rank 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. without inventing any new criteria, just what comes naturally from the game. Clearly games played for (game) money or points are usually easy (except some where it's the first to a score, without evenly scoring everyone else) and many (but not all) race games place by position. Elimination games can be scored by order of elimination. Perhaps _you_ need more experience? >And while I don't generally subscribe to it, there are many >players who play these games who don't care about the difference between >finishing second and last. People often post here expressing that opinion, but I rarely actually come across it in real life, and I've played with what I would guess is a good fraction of the hardened general games players here. I suspect it's an attitude more common in the USA. (As also seems to be the need for how ever many levels of tiebreak are needed to produce a winner, draws seeming to be unAmerican.) >Motivation to win a board game is pretty much >universal. Like it or not, the fact is is that beyond winning you will >find little consensus in the world. Actually I think wanting to do your best is more common than wanting only to win. How many athletes taking silver throw it away because they didn't take gold compared to those who still value it above bronze? (Whilst of course all setting out for the gold, and vowing to try for gold next time.) >If you only want to play against >players who agree with your runner-up mentality, That sounds remarkably like a poor attempt at an insult. Better luck next time. >then perhaps you should >view Andrew's flaw as being the thing that limits the number of opponents >available to you. I don't seem to have any problems finding opponents, or for that matter games I enjoy playing. On the latter point maybe I have it easier than you. (*) Self-elected, as these things are, but it's only real competitor (Furrycon) used a pretty similar system. No, I've never won either - but usually achieve a quite respectable position. -- Christopher Dearlove

In article <3C3A04E5...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_hom e_do...@removethis.com> writes >I didn't realize you were using players who are so unskilled that they >essentially had no chance from the get-go. Then I go to the point I >cited in my other post: as players who are that unskilled, they become >so unpredictable in their play that the question of motivating them to >win (or not) is irrelevant. Since they can't possibly play well enough >to win, it doesn't matter whether the game grants them a chance to win: >they will not be able to avail themselves of it. Again, this comes from >taking Andrew's statement too generally. I originally took Andrew's statement as he wrote it, rather than as you chose to rewrite it. I'm prepared (and have been recently) playing by your new rules however. >It's not the game which is >preventing the players from winning at any point - it's the players >themselves. I will spell it out once more so maybe you will understand it. Consider a game (*) where if a group of player who haven't played it before (although they may be reasonable games players) sit down to play within a short time one or more of them will have fallen behind. As they get better, with practice at the game, the time before this happens gets longer. Once they've got pretty good at the game this point is, or is so close to as not to matter, the end of the game. However it takes some time (quite a number of games) to achieve this state. So do we classify the game as bad according to your rules? We could say yes, because a group of starting players run into the problem. However that marks as bad a game that can be played entirely satisfactorily without the problem by some players, for whom it isn't a bad game. We could say no, because you can achieve the expert state, but for many groups of players just picking up the game it is a horrible game. The only logical conclusion we can come to is that we can't say this is definitively a good or a bad game, it depends on the players, and in particular it depends on their skill. So you can't make absolute judgements, as you've been arguing, and whoever it was who said this is dependent on the players is right. However (and I haven't discussed this up to this point) I also think that the opposing point of view, that all games judgement is 100% subjective, is also wrong, that the issue we're discussing is relevant to judging a game (**). See other past threads. Finally (and I really will try to ignore anything you say by return unless it's so egregiously wrong like the other one I just replied to a few minutes ago) I think it's easy to overlook that most of the sorts of games we discuss here whilst apparently not having the property I discuss above, of needing practice at that specific game, need general games practice to play well. I suspect most people posting here could pick a high skill game they'd never seen before and do much better than average against a group of random family gamers because (whether by explicit calculation or "feel") they know what sort of things to do that appear in many games (husband resources, play to the victory conditions, attack the leader, try to be inconspicuous etc.) and can immediately apply them to many games. I suspect many games we all agree are good wouldn't appear so to less experienced games players. (*) I think Outpost isn't far off this. (**) And hence I think Outpost isn't a perfect game (and actually it isn't one of my favourites either). -- Christopher Dearlove

On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 10:07:23 -0500, LSJ wrote: >> >Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool >> >from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the >> >stuff of which table interaction is made. >> >> Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. > >Not true, as you well know. How do I know this? If I want to play the game, I don't go making assumptions - I read the rulebook. I've just been through all 64 pages of it and there's not the slightest hint in there that players can talk as they please during a game. It's a card game. The players play cards - that's it, nothing more. Without permission from the rules, the players may not make their own Bewitching Orations or Charming Lobbies any more than they may Intimidate, Bribe, Seduce, Grapple or Garotte the other players. No, they just play their cards and announce their actions as the rules lay out. Political speeches are not needed for the game to function but if players were allowed to make them in the manner you imagine, then you'd expect to find rules governing this activity. Such rules are both normal and necessary in real talking shops such as parliaments, meetings, committees, even this very newsgroup. Rules for determining who may speak and for how long. What topics may be discussed and the language which may be used. And, most importantly, when the talking must stop and the matter proceed to a conclusion. Without such rules, the talking can go on indefinitely and that seems to be the trend in UK tournaments. And if making speeches were to be part of the game then you introduce a bias in favour of those with the gift of the gab. When discussing Madness of the Bard, we heard how such verbal skill was not a proper part of the game because it would introduce a bias against foreign speakers. The argument was bogus in that case because there's nothing to stop such speakers from rhyming in their own tongue. But it is certainly valid in this case as it's obviously more difficult to haggle with foreigners because you have to communicate effectively and persuasively - an arbitrary rhyme is not enough. Andrew

On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 13:35:25 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: >Sorry. Please try again. > >The reason you do not see deals like this in Poker is because it is a >game of odds -- any time you tip the odds by letting someone else win >when they shouldn't, you eventually end up screwing yourself. No, you can get deals in poker. Whipsaw raising for example. Players don't discuss them openly at the table because they know that it's cheating. And that's a serious matter because there is money at stake. A further example of what I mean can be seen in the rulebook for the new LotR CCG. This includes the following: "Shadow players may converse and plan among themselves, but they may not reveal to each other the cards in their hands. They can make agreements, but those agreements are not binding." Without an enabling clause of this kind, table-talk of a diplomatic nature is strictly illegal. Of course, players are wont to take advantage of the informal circumstances that many games are played in. But they have no right to do so if the game does not explicitly permit it. Andrew

In message <BD8BFCD7692EC240.0557C2C8...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes: >>> Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. >> >>Not true, as you well know. > >How do I know this? LSJ has told you repeatedly. If you wish to play dumb, you can do that on your own. -- James Coupe You remind me of the babe. What babe? PGP 0x5D623D5D The babe with the power. What power? EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 Power of voodoo. Who do? 13D7E668C3695D623D5D You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe.

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 10:07:23 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >> >Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool > >> >from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the > >> >stuff of which table interaction is made. > >> > >> Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. > > > >Not true, as you well know. > > How do I know this? Um, off the top of my head - my earlier reply to one of your posts stating so [LSJ 02-JAN-2002] Interesting other references: You stated that you believed Jyhad to allow such [ASD 15-SEP-2000] You claimed deals were a part of VTES [ASD 17-NOV-2000] You noted that you didn't need Monocle to ask questions - that (non-binding) deal-making was routine. [ASD 11-JAN-2001] and so on. You also claimed that there are players in your group who are able to make deals with only a glance. [ASD 20-SEP-2000]. How do you propose enforcing a rule banning such glances? [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <48D1D8C83CF4D860.DACAAE28...@lp.airnews.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> mumbled something about: >On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 13:35:25 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: > >>Sorry. Please try again. >> >>The reason you do not see deals like this in Poker is because it is a >>game of odds -- any time you tip the odds by letting someone else win >>when they shouldn't, you eventually end up screwing yourself. > >No, you can get deals in poker. Whipsaw raising for example. Players Define, please? >don't discuss them openly at the table because they know that it's >cheating. And that's a serious matter because there is money at >stake. Horseshit, and crap. A deal not discussed openly is no less a deal than one discussed openly. >Without an enabling clause of this kind, table-talk of a diplomatic >nature is strictly illegal. Of course, players are wont to take Further crap. >advantage of the informal circumstances that many games are played in. >But they have no right to do so if the game does not explicitly permit >it. Additional crap. You know better. -- "I am NOT illiterate -- my parents were married!"

<Everything Snipped> Okay, I've been unable to catch the newsgroup for a couple of weeks now and have a quick gripe. Nothing I've read illuminates me as to why this thread is titled "Games and Politics" by Richard Garfield. I'm not a net-cop by any means, but is it so bad to change the subject header when topics go way off??? Not just this thread is suffering either.. BernieTime

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > > In article <3C3A033E...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes > >You apparently don't have a wide enough body of experience with > >multiplayer games. > > Apart from a few decades of experience (though I'd only really > count the last quarter century as real games experience) owning > more than a couple of hundred of them, and having played a lot > more, being a regular at some of the main British games > conventions and other points I could note, no experience at all :) > > Your judgement seems to be even more flawed than your examples. No, I'm going by your statement, which appear to be extremely naive. I don't read r.g.b much anymore but back when I did, some years ago, this kind of discussion, about the value of second place and metagaming and so forth, came up about every 6 months. You seem either ignorant of the controversy or at the very least, so pat in your position that one would hardly detect you were aware of it. I'm not sure which. In any case... > >Many of them have no measure of second or third, etc. > > Some don't, most do. And yes, I will quantify most. The British > boardgames championship (*) is held each year at Baycon. Each game > played there is written up on a sheet and submitted, the winner > being determined by grinding the scores somehow. Each game write > up lists 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. places. In a very few games it's only > possible to write 1st and join everyone as 2nd=. In almost every > game it is straightforward to rank 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. without > inventing any new criteria, just what comes naturally from the > game. I don't know what kinds of games are played there. The multiplayer games I've played either have no significant metric at all or else they might have some kind of number you could latch on and use as a metric but it would be naive in the extreme to assume that it meant pigshit in terms of indicating how well players did. Take Risk for example. If you were naive, you might award places in inverse order of how the players were eliminated. Indeed, I've been in Risk tournaments were this was how they placed the losers. I recall a game in which I had almost won, attacking a player with 4 cards who had an empire guarded by 25 armies total with my 40 movable armies. I was holding 3 cards and would easily have snowballed to victory had I eliminated her. It was not a slam-dunk but normally one should win that. I hit a spate of bad die rolling and couldn't quite take her out. As a result, the next player eliminated her effortlessly and found himself in a position to eliminate the rest of the players on the board in any order he chose. As it happened, he went after me first. No particular reason, he just noticed me in that particular moment and started rolling dice. Then he chose someone else, then someone else and so forth. I wound up placing 5th in the game for that reason - technically. Really, who cares? I didn't win, the order of finish had nothing whatsoever to do with who played how well, it was just how they wrote up the results. So suffice it to say, I am not impressed by what happens at the British boardgames championship. A lot of games have metrics you could use that, when analyzed, don't mean much in terms of who played better than who. Then and again, some do. Finishing cash in Acquire, a game in which the player finishes with most cash is declared winner. It stands to reason that whoever finished with second most cash can claim second. On the other hand, sometimes the effort to finish first will lead a player to take inordinate risks to stop the leader, if the game allows for that. The effort may rob him of his second place standing the game's convenient metric: Rail Baron, when you go clear across the continent using other players' lines in an effort to tag the person declaring for home and prevent him from winning. If he falls from second in the metric of on-hand cash and rail line value while making the effort, did he do less well? I'd say he screwed up if he *didn't* make the effort but there's no clear answer to that. > Clearly games played for (game) money or points are > usually easy Some are, some aren't. > Perhaps _you_ need more experience? I knew there was a reason I got tired of r.g.b. > >And while I don't generally subscribe to it, there are many > >players who play these games who don't care about the difference > >between finishing second and last. > > People often post here expressing that opinion, but I rarely > actually come across it in real life, and I've played with what > I would guess is a good fraction of the hardened general games > players here. I suspect it's an attitude more common in the > USA. (As also seems to be the need for how ever many levels > of tiebreak are needed to produce a winner, draws seeming > to be unAmerican.) I couldn't say. I've come across them in real life plenty of times and I quite understand the point of view. > >Motivation to win a board game is pretty much > >universal. Like it or not, the fact is is that beyond winning you will > >find little consensus in the world. > > Actually I think wanting to do your best is more common than wanting > only to win. No, that's not what I said and that's not how someone who played only to win would look at it. They would say that if they don't win, there are other things in the game that they equate to "doing their best" besides finishing second by some arbitrary metric. Going down in flames might be one thing if taking a huge risk in risk in terms of whatever second place metric is being used in order to slightly increase their chance of stopping the leader. Another one might be being the kingmaker, if they can't be king. In my experience, there's simply no consensus about this, depending on the game in question. > How many athletes taking silver throw it away because > they didn't take gold compared to those who still value it above > bronze? (Whilst of course all setting out for the gold, and vowing to > try for gold next time.) (Well, there's the 1972 U.S. Men's Basketball Team. Admittedly, that wasn't exactly about shame in losing. I digress. I just thought it was funny that I could think of an example with little effort.) Congratulations. In track and field sports, you've managed to find an area which is pretty much dominated by players who barely interact with each other and basically compete against the same single metric, for instance time to run from start to finish or distance from shot putter to where the shot lands or something similar. Obviously, you can place people reliably with that metric. But let's look at other athletes, such as professional sports leagues. I don't know what playoffs are like in your part of the world but here we typically use a simple single-elimination bracket when playoff teams are determining a champion. Play a game (or a series of games won by the team wins some number of games first, such as best 4 games out of 7) against a single opponent. Win and you advance, lose and you're out. No one in the United States ever bothers to play for third place anymore. They used to, in some sports (I distinctly remember the National Football League had a consolation championship back in the 1960s) but they got rid of it: no one cared. Even the athletes often didn't care. So now, you're either the champion or you're one of the victims along the way. There's no second place trophy, or "silver" to throw away. So sports, like games, vary in their ability to anoint someone with "second place" and down the line. As you say, better luck next time. Fred

Rich Shipley wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3C39EB88...@removethis.com... > > There is a whole basis of motivation to what you're doing when > > you play board games that is part and parcel to the whole activity. The > > assumption is made as you play the game that each player has an intent to > > win the game to the best of his of his ability. > > I agree that should be the intent when you start playing. > > > These games tend > > to break down if this motivation is missing. Therefore, Andrew's > > statement is absolutely correct: it's *always* bad design to put players > > in a situation where the central motivation has disappeared. > > Attempting to win is my intent when playing a game, but it is not my central > motivation. My central motivation is to enjoy the process. I can do this > while losing as well as winning. True by irrelevant. The point is that the rules are designed to assume that you are playing to win. The overall motivation for playing the game may affect the design (i.e., the game is designed to be fun to play) but if you aren't playing to win then you are basically playing randomly. It's hard to design a game very well - including designing it to be fun - if you don't know what result the players are attempting achieve when playing. So the salient point here is that you are playing to win. > > The fact that the vast > > majority of games do this to one extent or another merely reveals how > > unappreciated this point is by far too many game designers. Christopher > > Dearlove says he can't think of a multiplayer game where this isn't true; > > I don't find that surprising. It's a very common flaw in multiplayer > > games. > > Then I guess the concept of multi-player games is flawed, so don't play them > anymore. I'll go on enjoying them myself. The fact that they're flawed doesn't mean they're not worth playing. Only that they're not as good as they could be. And no one said the flaw was inevitable, only common. As I've said elsewhere, I fault game designers for not considering this point as much as they should. > I don't really feel that any type of game is flawed. It is all in the > execution and audience. You are the one saying that the majority of > multi-player games out there are flawed and using faulty assumptions to > support this claim. And what "faulty assumptions" are those? > If designers followed your advice, the scope of games produced would be > drastically diminished. I'm not sure why you say that. I think you're overreacting to what I'm saying. > Settlers of Catan: Since it possible to be put in a position where you > cannot score 10 points, the game is flawed and should be scrapped. I just said it was flawed. I didn't say it should be scrapped. It has an imperfection, a blemish. That's all. You could fix it but you would have to work harder on the design to make sure that didn't happen. And it might cause tradeoff with something else you liked better than solving the problem. (Two other examples with similar overreactions snipped.) Go ahead, play the games and enjoy them. Lots of games have lots of imperfections and I still own and play them - go figure. The *point* is that multiplayer games don't have to necessarily be like that. There are ways to avoid this problem and some games do, at least to a reasonable extent. That is a good thing, IMHO. Fred

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > > In article <3C3A04E5...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_hom > e_do...@removethis.com> writes > >I didn't realize you were using players who are so unskilled that they > >essentially had no chance from the get-go. Then I go to the point I > >cited in my other post: as players who are that unskilled, they become > >so unpredictable in their play that the question of motivating them to > >win (or not) is irrelevant. Since they can't possibly play well enough > >to win, it doesn't matter whether the game grants them a chance to win: > >they will not be able to avail themselves of it. Again, this comes from > >taking Andrew's statement too generally. It's not the game which is > >preventing the players from winning at any point - it's the players > >themselves. > > I will spell it out once more so maybe you will understand it. > > Consider a game (*) where if a group of player who haven't played it > before (although they may be reasonable games players) sit down to > play within a short time one or more of them will have fallen > behind. As they get better, with practice at the game, the time > before this happens gets longer. Once they've got pretty good at the > game this point is, or is so close to as not to matter, the end of > the game. However it takes some time (quite a number of games) > to achieve this state. > > So do we classify the game as bad according to your rules? We could > say yes, because a group of starting players run into the problem. Depends. I don't care *why* the players don't have a chance of winning. If they don't have a chance, they don't have a chance. It's not like they're suddenly going to go home and be replaced by competent, experienced players who would have a chance (or not) to win from that point forward depending on the game system. So it doesn't matter. > However that marks as bad a game that can be played entirely > satisfactorily without the problem by some players, for whom it > isn't a bad game. No. You are just twisting in the wind, scratching for some flaw in the logic that isn't there. If competent players have a chance to win throughout the game, then it doesn't have the problem. If competent players who have a chance to win at the onset but not part way through the game, then the problem exists. It exists because the game-rules-assumed motivation for playing to win has disappeared and - our debate about whether some obvious, consensus backup goal will always exist not withstanding - the play of those players may become quite unpredictable as their motivations for taking all game actions has now become unpredictable. It's no more complex than that. As for players too unskilled (whether by lack of experience or for any other reason) to have a serious chance of winning the game from the onset, the existence or lack thereof of this particular problem is irrelevant as it is not the game system but their lack of skill which is causing the situation. I'm not sure what this talk of "judging a game" (snipped) is all about. I'm just discussing when one particular type of problem occurs in multiplayer games. It is a far cry from judging the overall merits of the game. Fred

On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 14:26:50 -0500, Adam Ruprecht <a...@thorin.dementia.org> wrote: >On Mon, 7 Jan 2002, Frederick Scott wrote: > >> Funny you should mention that. Civilization is one on my list of prime >> offenders. The only thing about it is that most of the time I've played the >> six and seven player games where two or three people have been basically >> eliminated by mid-game, these people have always been sufficiently weak that >> they seem to have little concept that they've been eliminated. They still do >> "bad" things, though: primarily getting so desperate for trade cards that it's >> often impossible to stop the leaders with a trade embargo. > >This reminds me of an issue groups I've played with have occasionally >grappled with - if trades with the leaders increase their overall chances >of winning (even if those overall chances still remain very small), is it >ethically valid for them to trade with the leaders even if that makes the >person they trade with much more likely to win? I claim that as long as >you have any chance of winning, you should play to maximize it, but it >could easily be viewed as kingmaking. I look at it this way - if you don't want me to make deals with the leader, then make your own offer. The last place guy *does* know he's helping the leader, so if he can get the same benefit to himself without helping the leader, that's a Good Thing. As a side note, Stomp The Leader could be considered king-making in reverse. Babylon 5 CCG was bad for that, since you could actually cause the leader to lose ground. And once the leader had fallen past other players, the group would then stomp the new leader. (As is fair.) Except that the game never actually *ends* that way...

On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 21:16:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: >You stated that you believed Jyhad to allow such [ASD 15-SEP-2000] >You claimed deals were a part of VTES [ASD 17-NOV-2000] >You noted that you didn't need Monocle to ask questions - that >(non-binding) deal-making was routine. [ASD 11-JAN-2001] Touché. But I was making unwarranted assumptions then and, having studied the rules, know better now. Now eat your own words: On Fri, 09 Jun 2000 12:23:45 GMT, LSJ wrote: >The point is that the primary purpose of the rules is to establish >what you CAN do - everything else (not stated in the rules) is >assumed to be stuff you *can't* do. This is true of most (all?) >games. The rules that deal with stuff you *can't* do typically serve >to limit a corresponding "can do" rule. I agreed with this then and still do. Your position on deals rests upon unwritten rules, just as Garfield said. When we find that players are doing table-split deals even in tournament finals and spending periods of up to one hour doing nothing but negotiating and arguing then I put it to you that it's time to start writing things down. >You also claimed that there are players in your group who are able to >make deals with only a glance. [ASD 20-SEP-2000]. How do you propose >enforcing a rule banning such glances? It's like the rule against prior collusion which is equally difficult to detect. For one thing, one forbids actions which are blatantly wrong - like helping another player to win. Andrew

On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 05:23:15 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: >>No, you can get deals in poker. Whipsaw raising for example. Players > >Define, please? "Whipsaw: to raise before, and after, a caller who gets caught in the middle." This is from the glossary of Big Deal by Anthony Holden - an entertaining book about the World Championship of Poker. I've played poker with him myself. >Horseshit, and crap. >Further crap. >Additional crap. Hmm, it's time for a bath. Andrew

Adam Ruprecht <a...@thorin.dementia.org> wrote: >A, B, and C are playing a game; their current chances of winning are a,b, >and c. C can interact with A such that c increases to c' and a increases >to a'. What constraints would your group put on a, b, c, a', and c' for >this to be considered a 'fair' deal? [I'm assuming a is about equal to b and c is much smaller than either, since that seems to be the situation in which B will be unhappiest.] I would think it reasonable if and only if c' is greater than c. It's hard luck on B, but he should try to offer C a more attractive deal - and I prefer games where he usually can, so if C is cunning he can play A and B against each other and get back into the running. -- David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C3A9534...@removethis.com... > Rich Shipley wrote: > > > > Attempting to win is my intent when playing a game, but it is not my central > > motivation. My central motivation is to enjoy the process. I can do this > > while losing as well as winning. > > True by irrelevant. No it isn't - your premise is that a player's central motvation is gone once that player cannot win. The above shows that this is not true. > The point is that the rules are designed to assume that > you are playing to win. The overall motivation for playing the game may > affect the design (i.e., the game is designed to be fun to play) but if you > aren't playing to win then you are basically playing randomly. I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. If someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing things I typically do), I don't consider this random. > > Then I guess the concept of multi-player games is flawed, so don't play them > > anymore. I'll go on enjoying them myself. > > The fact that they're flawed doesn't mean they're not worth playing. Only > that they're not as good as they could be. And no one said the flaw was > inevitable, only common. As I've said elsewhere, I fault game designers for > not considering this point as much as they should. Some do and some do not. I like the variety. I would not want every designer to only design games that lack this "flaw". > > I don't really feel that any type of game is flawed. It is all in the > > execution and audience. You are the one saying that the majority of > > multi-player games out there are flawed and using faulty assumptions to > > support this claim. > > And what "faulty assumptions" are those? For one that a player's central motivation is to win. Winning should be the intent, but I try to avoid players that have this as their central motivation. The other is that games should all fit your personal criteria. > > Settlers of Catan: Since it possible to be put in a position where you > > cannot score 10 points, the game is flawed and should be scrapped. > > I just said it was flawed. I didn't say it should be scrapped. It has > an imperfection, a blemish. That's all. You could fix it but you would > have to work harder on the design to make sure that didn't happen. And > it might cause tradeoff with something else you liked better than solving > the problem. If you admit that a game may suffer from this "flaw" being fixed then what is your point? > The *point* is that multiplayer games don't have to necessarily be like that. > There are ways to avoid this problem and some games do, at least to a reasonable > extent. That is a good thing, IMHO. And some games have interesting mechanisms that would not be compatible with fixing this "flaw" and that is also a good thing IMHO. Rich

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C3A9A8C...@removethis.com... > It exists > because the game-rules-assumed motivation for playing to win has > disappeared and - our debate about whether some obvious, consensus > backup goal will always exist not withstanding - the play of those > players may become quite unpredictable as their motivations for taking > all game actions has now become unpredictable. It's no more complex > than that. The flaw in your logic is that you assume that this is a bad thing. I happen to like this in a game sometimes. Your calling this a "flaw" or "problem" is why people are arguing with you. It may be something you don't like, but it doesn't have to be something I don't like. Rich

Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:<273460CE16AB6426.3CEA4A35...@lp.airnews.net>... > > On Fri, 09 Jun 2000 12:23:45 GMT, LSJ wrote: > > >The point is that the primary purpose of the rules is to establish > >what you CAN do - everything else (not stated in the rules) is > >assumed to be stuff you *can't* do. This is true of most (all?) > >games. The rules that deal with stuff you *can't* do typically serve > >to limit a corresponding "can do" rule. > The point here is that, of course, this is entirely wrong. The rules do not say that you can breathe while you sit at the table, but you can still do it. The rules are neither descriptive nor prescriptive, but somewhere in between. Whenever there is a question as to whether something is allowed when it is not mentioned in the rules, it is up to the judges at the event. In casual games, such things are governed by mob rule... a sort of primitive form of common sense. 4CL is a good example of this. It is obviously poor form to "table-talk", and illegal in most civilized games. I agree that such deal making at the table is neither expressly permitted by the rules, nor obviously acceptable, because in games of this type (multi-player card games), table-talk is *not* generally allowed, for good reason. This would leave the restriction of table-talk up to the judges at an individual event, and normally you would expect it to be outlawed. However, Jyhad has a long-standing tradition of annoying players convincing the rest of the table to do what they want, or simply whining until you change your mind, and judges have a history of allowing this. While it's perfectly normal for deal-making to happen in casual games, table-talk should be limited or outlawed in tournament games. However, as a rule, it is not. And unfortunately, we have to live with that.

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > Touché. But I was making unwarranted assumptions then and, having > studied the rules, know better now. Now eat your own words: > > On Fri, 09 Jun 2000 12:23:45 GMT, LSJ wrote: > > >The point is that the primary purpose of the rules is to establish > >what you CAN do - everything else (not stated in the rules) is > >assumed to be stuff you *can't* do. This is true of most (all?) > >games. The rules that deal with stuff you *can't* do typically serve > >to limit a corresponding "can do" rule. > > I agreed with this then and still do. Your position on deals rests As I said before, some basic things don't need to be in the rules. Allowing players to look at their hands (or even defining what a "hand" is). Allowing players to breathe or speak. Allowing them to count cards. In games, the default is to allow table talk, as I said before. Games are inherently social activities. So be social. > upon unwritten rules, just as Garfield said. When we find that > players are doing table-split deals even in tournament finals and > spending periods of up to one hour doing nothing but negotiating and > arguing then I put it to you that it's time to start writing things > down. Deals are inherent. And Garfield knew as much. This is even indicated in Succubus Club's card text. The tournament system functions fine as is. When it no longer does, we'll visit methods of fixing it. > >You also claimed that there are players in your group who are able to > >make deals with only a glance. [ASD 20-SEP-2000]. How do you propose > >enforcing a rule banning such glances? > > It's like the rule against prior collusion which is equally difficult > to detect. For one thing, one forbids actions which are blatantly > wrong - like helping another player to win. OK. Point yielded. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

Can we please stop posting articles that have nothing to do with V:TES to rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad (where such posts are off-topic)? (Second request in this thread) Thank you. [ quoted text not captured ]

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:3C3A1DC6...@white-wolf.com... > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > Um. OK, you can only make trades during your untap phase with > > Succubus Club. And only while the card is in play. But besides > > that, what could be more free than trading pool, cards in play, > > and cards in hand? Isn't that pretty much all the resources > > that exist in VTES? > > Yeah. And the "while the card is in play" and the "with you" > and the "during your untap phase" put things a long way from > "games that allow players to freely trade resources". OK, I agree that it doesn't make VTES into a game that allows players to freely trade resources. But as I read it, his concern was that free trading was a problem because it enabled two players with weak positions to combine them into a strong one. Succubus Club can do exactly that, which is why it seems to me like it was a bad idea (or inconsistent with his concern). It doesn't make VTES into one of those games, but it does create the same problem that he objected to in those games, though not as pervasively. Josh not sure what the disagreement is here

Joshua Duffin wrote: > OK, I agree that it doesn't make VTES into a game that allows > players to freely trade resources. But as I read it, his > concern was that free trading was a problem because it enabled > two players with weak positions to combine them into a strong > one. Succubus Club can do exactly that, which is why it seems > to me like it was a bad idea (or inconsistent with his concern). > It doesn't make VTES into one of those games, but it does create > the same problem that he objected to in those games, though > not as pervasively. Sure. Try playing V:TES with an additional rule: "at any time [*]". Where [*] is the trade stuff allowed by SC: "Methuselahs can give you pool, and you can give them pool. You can trade cards from your hand or in play. These trades cannot result in any Methuselah having less than his or her hand size. Any additional terms can be established, but none are enfoced by the rules." That game is beset with problem, not the least of which is the pain with which one ousts one's prey. It might be fun to try it out just to see how un-Diplomacy-like the current game is, even with SC available. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <BCF6150E1B09FC26.D8530BD9...@lp.airnews.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> mumbled something about: >On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 05:23:15 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: > >>>No, you can get deals in poker. Whipsaw raising for example. Players >> >>Define, please? > >"Whipsaw: to raise before, and after, a caller who gets caught in the >middle." Ah. Yes, I'm familiar with the tactic. This is not a deal. This is two players who both believe that their hand will win, and choose to raise. They are both aware that the person getting caught in the middle is going to get screwed for more and more money the longer he stays in -- but in the end, only one of those two players will get the pot. This is exacerbated by the game in question being Texas Hold'em -- where it is entirely possible that both players have the "best" hand, and a third player is calling foolishly. The other two players would be stupid not to raise on their best possible hand, as they cannot lose. There's no deal involved here. The closest parallel from V:TES is a 4-player table with two vote decks sitting on opposite sides. What normally happens, if neither of the other two decks can provide any vote defense, is that the two vote decks hand out damage indiscriminately to the other two players, ousting both at almost the same time. They then fight it out for the winner of the game. This could be seen as a deal, but I know that no V:TES player actually OBJECTS to this sort of deal other than from the personal perspective that it really sucks to get caught in that position. This is not the situation under debate -- so your analogy is invalid. >This is from the glossary of Big Deal by Anthony Holden - an >entertaining book about the World Championship of Poker. I've played >poker with him myself. I'm sure we can find or recruit enough players for a Hold'em table if you're ever in the States and we're in the same area. It would be a most enriching experience, I feel -- I spent some time on the tables at Vegas when I was last out there. Quite cutthroat, but fun. -- "I am NOT illiterate -- my parents were married!"

In article <3C3A817C...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >No one in the United States ever bothers to play for third >place anymore. Whereas in the football (*) World Cup, certainly the most important single sport event in the world (**) there's a third-fourth place playoff, in which both teams try to win. I rest that portion of my case. As for the rest of it ... I'm past debating (if you can call it that) with you. (*) That means the game most of the world calls that. (**) And I don't care for it, so that's not a personal bias. -- Christopher Dearlove

My better judgement says to drop this, but just to sum up and withdraw. In article <3C3A817C...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >You seem >either ignorant of the controversy or at the very least, so pat >in your position that one would hardly detect you were aware of >it. I'm thoroughly aware of it (Go to Google and have a look.) And my position on the original point is (a) All multiplayer games _can_ put people in an unwinnable position. (b) In some multiplayer games this happens more frequently. (c) Neither (a) [the original claim] nor (b) "ipso facto" makes the game a "bad" game, it's a negative factor, but has to be balanced against the other characteristics of the game. Then there are all the other extraneous points that have arisen (which you seem determined to confuse) such as (d) Skill level makes a difference to how often (b) happens. and that's not just a distinction between the incompetent and the competent, but can be a gradual thing. (e) Almost everyone starts a game with the intention of winning. Sometimes (how often depending on the game) this is no longer possible. Some people then try to achieve the best they can - and in my extensive non-US experience among gamers these people are in the majority. (f) Most multiplayer games, of the sort we consider here, have meaningful 2nd, 3rd etc. places. This is a proposition for which evidence can be produced. It is obviously true for many categories of games (such as ones where you play to the end, not defined by an event which favours one player, and see who has the most points or money). (g) Games have a social side, as well as a try to win side. As for (f) consider Spiel des Jahres winners like Carcassonne, Tikal and Mississippi Queen, 18xx games that don't end in bankruptcy, classic games like Acquire ... the list goes on and on and on. >So suffice it to say, I am not impressed by what happens at >the British boardgames championship. No, you wouldn't be would you? >Congratulations. In track and field sports, you've managed to find >an area which is pretty much dominated by players who barely interact >with each other Typical strawman argument. Incidentally who said track and field (there's a little more to the Olympics than that). Relevantly this was addressing the point that people only care about winning. See my other posting for a very specific point. If you want another consider marathon running, or long distance yachting where people carry on for miles, or hundreds of miles, even once they've no chance to win. If they felt second and last were of equal value they'd give up. -- Christopher Dearlove

LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3C3B16EE...@white-wolf.com>... > > In games, the default is to allow table talk, as I said before. > Games are inherently social activities. > So be social. > Bridge is generally considered a social game. The stereotypical bridge group is a bunch of old ladies sitting around playing cards and gossiping about the Joneses. But talking about what cards are in your hand is strictly prohibited. Similarly with Spades. The reason for this is that knowledge of your hand can make the game trivially easy for your "partner". In Jyhad, you have no partner, but the two people opposite you are called your "allies" in some circles. This is because it is generally to these people's benefit that you not die. And to your benefit that they do not. Coaching them, or telling them what is in your hand is *still* often considered bad form. I know that in most games I have been in, if my grand predator is about to make a very bad move and I assist him, it is not appreciated by anyone else at the table. In casual games, this is to be expected. No one expects to squelch all table-talk in casual games. In tournament games, each player should be expected to play by his own skill, and to make the final under his or her own merit. Allowing coaching, even from someone else in game, is IMO a terrible idea. Other forms of table-talk may have some merit, but a blanket allowance of all table-talk doesn't seem to be a foregone conclusion. With no rules governing what is or isn't allowed in tournament play, I fail to see why the default is to *allow* it.

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:3C3B27A6...@white-wolf.com... [re vtes variant in which Succubus Club-type trades are available at all times to all players] > It might be fun to try it out just to see how un-Diplomacy-like the > current game is, even with SC available. Good point. I don't know if I'll get to try it, but just thinking about it is enlightening. :-) However, it does seem to me that the reason Succubus Club doesn't cause these problems more often than it does is that, in "friendly" games, it's annoying and stupid to play kingmaker like that, and Succubus Club doesn't have a whole lot of other uses, and in tournament games, it's illegal to play kingmaker like that, and Succubus Club won't usually help you that much in legitimate ways. In other words, the Club could be a much bigger source of problems than it actually is, but is restrained by "outside" factors rather than its inherent abilities. (Which is probably good enough.) Josh king me!

On 07 Jan 2002 15:49:05 -0800, David desJardins wrote: >> The concepts of optimal tactics in multi-player situations has been >> fairly well-known for several decades. Either there is a strategy that >> will dominate all other strategies, and you use it, and it doesn't >> matter that other people can figure out you're going to do, or there >> isn't, and you use a mixed strategy of your good options in such a >> proportion that your opponents are on a guess for which one you >> picked. > >I'm afraid that none of this is true. Games with more than two players >don't in general have "optimal strategies" of this type. John Nash won the Nobel prize for extending games theory to games with more than two players. His principle result was that such games do have optimum solutions provided that they are non-cooperative (i.e there are no binding deals). This demonstrated in a mathematical way what Garfield was talking about - that it's quite a significant issue whether a game allows alliances and deals to be made. It's not something that designers should leave to players to figure out for themselves. Andrew

Some of these posts might be off topic, but I think in general they are very relevant. What is appropriate behavior for a player who no longer has a significant chance of winning? The lure to play kingmaker seems pretty obvious, and the frequency of this occurrence can be considered a flaw in the game. So what do you do when you can't win? What can be considered appropriate or ethical? By the strictest measure, the player should still carry on the hopeless cause. I know that can be pretty depressing at times. Within our group winning is primary, but we have plenty of other objectives. We know from the start some of the decks being played are much worse than some others, so we don't expect to win. I know my Brujah combat deck has slim a slim chance of winning with a Gangrel prey. I'm happy if I slow him down, since I don't often do that. Most vampires burnt is worth an honorable mention in our group, or the occasional David verse Goliath, where a tiny vampire makes a valiant stand against some combat machine, and wins. These things don't win games, but they are long remembered. Things like formally removing the appellation, the weak, from Frederick's name. That's our answer to the no win situation, what do the rest of you think? Wisefool Mercuriel

Hi folks, In article <7B209C4D2581989D.8DA79FAD...@lp.airnews.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> wrote: > On 07 Jan 2002 15:49:05 -0800, David desJardins wrote: > > >> The concepts of optimal tactics in multi-player situations has been > >> fairly well-known for several decades. Either there is a strategy that > >> will dominate all other strategies, and you use it, and it doesn't > >> matter that other people can figure out you're going to do, or there > >> isn't, and you use a mixed strategy of your good options in such a > >> proportion that your opponents are on a guess for which one you > >> picked. > > > >I'm afraid that none of this is true. Games with more than two players > >don't in general have "optimal strategies" of this type. > > John Nash won the Nobel prize for extending games theory to games with > more than two players. His principle result was that such games do > have optimum solutions provided that they are non-cooperative (i.e > there are no binding deals). The point David was objecting to was my use of minimax mixed strategies to explain n-player games. If I understand things correctly, what Nash showed is that there are conditions where you get a set of strategies that no single player can improve on without help. That doesn't help for what I was suggesting (and is also covered by David's clause "of this type." Nash equalibria don't care about choosing amongst strategies in the set, and whether your opponent knows about what you're doing doesn't matter.) Tom Courtney

Chris Berger wrote: > > LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3C3B16EE...@white-wolf.com>... > > > > In games, the default is to allow table talk, as I said before. > > Games are inherently social activities. > > So be social. > > > Bridge is generally considered a social game. The stereotypical > bridge group is a bunch of old ladies sitting around playing cards and > gossiping about the Joneses. But talking about what cards are in your > hand is strictly prohibited. Similarly with Spades. The reason for > this is that knowledge of your hand can make the game trivially easy > for your "partner". Bridge expressly forbids table-talk. The players have also developed rules for bidding to circumvent that rule - restoring some level of table talk. The bidding process (that many players use) is used to describe what's in one's hand. Many partnership games have such rules. VTES is not a partnership game (as you noted). VTES has no such prohibition. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <28D_7.57776$fo.20...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, "Rich Shipley" <ri...@rtgames.com> wrote: > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3C3A9534...@removethis.com... > > Rich Shipley wrote: > > > > > > Attempting to win is my intent when playing a game, but it is not my > central > > > motivation. My central motivation is to enjoy the process. I can do this > > > while losing as well as winning. > > > > True by irrelevant. > > No it isn't - your premise is that a player's central motvation is gone once > that player cannot win. The above shows that this is not true. I didn't think that was even close to his premise. My impression was that they were saying "intent to win" is gone once the player cannot win, and that without "intent to win" players behave unpredicatably and can squirrel the game. > > The point is that the rules are designed to assume that > > you are playing to win. The overall motivation for playing the game may > > affect the design (i.e., the game is designed to be fun to play) but if > you > > aren't playing to win then you are basically playing randomly. > > I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people > playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. If > someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game > retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing > things I typically do), I don't consider this random. It's not random if everyone takes the same one of those options every time, I suppose. Otherwise, barring psychic powers on the part of the winning player(s) it is as good as random. Will the losers squirrel the player who "got" them, or muck around with the game quietly and hopelessly, or boldly soldier on? Who knows? If /nobody/ cares who wins ("social gaming"), then it doesn't matter. If some people are playing the game "seriously" though, with the intent of playing their best to see who will win, it matters a lot. FWIW "social gaming" to me is a good conversation interrupted by a pointless exercise. But if your mileage varies it varies. Kevin Lowe, Brisbane, Australia.

"Kevin Lowe" <sp...@spoof.gov> wrote in message news:spoof-1D55BE....@news-vip.optusnet.com.au... > In article <28D_7.57776$fo.20...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, > "Rich Shipley" <ri...@rtgames.com> wrote: > > > No it isn't - your premise is that a player's central motvation is gone once > > that player cannot win. The above shows that this is not true. > > I didn't think that was even close to his premise. My impression was > that they were saying "intent to win" is gone once the player cannot > win, and that without "intent to win" players behave unpredicatably and > can squirrel the game. He said that winning should be the central motivation. I was showing how it is not mine (but it is my intent as long as it is possible). His premise that games in which players can be put in a position where they cannot win are flawed was based on this. Players whose only motivation is winning are *more* likely to screw up a game when they are put out of the running for the win. > > I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people > > playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. If > > someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game > > retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing > > things I typically do), I don't consider this random. > > It's not random if everyone takes the same one of those options every > time, I suppose. Otherwise, barring psychic powers on the part of the > winning player(s) it is as good as random. Will the losers squirrel the > player who "got" them, or muck around with the game quietly and > hopelessly, or boldly soldier on? Who knows? Since you can't predict my game play when I am attempting to win, I guess that is random also. Do you really believe that making a move against someone who prevented you from winning is "squirreling?" Was the person who did it to you in the first place also "squirreling?" I call it playing the game. What does "squirrel" mean anyway? > If /nobody/ cares who wins ("social gaming"), then it doesn't matter. > If some people are playing the game "seriously" though, with the intent > of playing their best to see who will win, it matters a lot. > > FWIW "social gaming" to me is a good conversation interrupted by a > pointless exercise. But if your mileage varies it varies. I'm not sure what this has to do with what anyone has said. If you play multi-player games and don't consider what those who don't have a chance to win can still do, then you are not being serious. Rich

On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 22:13:31 +0000, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> wrote: >On 07 Jan 2002 15:49:05 -0800, David desJardins wrote: > >>> The concepts of optimal tactics in multi-player situations has been >>> fairly well-known for several decades. Either there is a strategy that >>> will dominate all other strategies, and you use it, and it doesn't >>> matter that other people can figure out you're going to do, or there >>> isn't, and you use a mixed strategy of your good options in such a >>> proportion that your opponents are on a guess for which one you >>> picked. >> >>I'm afraid that none of this is true. Games with more than two players >>don't in general have "optimal strategies" of this type. > >John Nash won the Nobel prize for extending games theory to games with >more than two players. His principle result was that such games do >have optimum solutions provided that they are non-cooperative (i.e >there are no binding deals). Does this apply to inherently biased games (like Diplomacy)? From what I've heard, the "Nash equilibrium" strategy is the one that if everyone else is playing it, you can't do better than to play it yourself. This concept in the form I've stated it is clearly inapplicable to Diplomacy; no two Great Powers can use the same strategy, because their units are in the wrong places. I'd advise looking closely at Nash's assumptions about the nature of the game under analysis and comparing them to real-world games. Do you have a reference for some of his principal works on the subject (and, if necessary, explanations in more comprehensible language)? >This demonstrated in a mathematical way what Garfield was talking >about - that it's quite a significant issue whether a game allows >alliances and deals to be made. It's not something that designers >should leave to players to figure out for themselves. -- Chris Byler cby...@vt.edu "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our supper, but from their regard to their own interest." -- Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_

In article <8FCF1F25F90E8041.25E4682D...@lp.airnews.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> wrote: >On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 16:36:26, Christopher Dearlove wrote: >>And hence I think this conclusion is invalid. At best it may be a >>social convention that your group follows. (And good luck to you, >>all groups need conventions, if this works for you, fine. However >>it certainly doesn't work for any group I've been in - except for >>specific, highly regulated games such as chess and bridge.) > >These are good examples - I doubt that you will find much free speech >at tournament level in these games. They even use screens and bidding >cards in bridge to prevent any kind of communications beyond that >permitted by the rules. That's because they take the game seriously. One has to get to very, very, serious bridge before screens see use. (World championships and late rounds of some national championships.) Bidding boxes (or the equivalent) are pretty ubiquitous, but this is probably because they have considerable advantages over spoken bidding. Removing communication by tone of voice isn't really one of them; memory, removal of mishearing, and not hearing the auction at other tables are. >The games we're talking about are just parlour games by comparison. Bridge is a pretty odd case to begin with. It's a team game of extremely limited communication, so, when played seriously, steps must be taken to restrict inadvertant (or deliberate) communication.

In article <9EN_7.58637$fo.20...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, "Rich Shipley" <ri...@rtgames.com> wrote: > "Kevin Lowe" <sp...@spoof.gov> wrote in message > news:spoof-1D55BE....@news-vip.optusnet.com.au... > > In article <28D_7.57776$fo.20...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, > > I didn't think that was even close to his premise. My impression was > > that they were saying "intent to win" is gone once the player cannot > > win, and that without "intent to win" players behave unpredicatably and > > can squirrel the game. > > He said that winning should be the central motivation. I was showing how it > is not mine (but it is my intent as long as it is possible). His premise > that games in which players can be put in a position where they cannot win > are flawed was based on this. Players whose only motivation is winning are > *more* likely to screw up a game when they are put out of the running for > the win. I'd agree with that. I'd go further and say that my experience is that even players who are only mildly keen on winning lose their direction once they realise they are out of the running. But that's just anecdotal evidence, with a fairly small sample size. I'm not a big tournament gamer or anything. > > > I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people > > > playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. > If > > > someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game > > > retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing > > > things I typically do), I don't consider this random. > > > > It's not random if everyone takes the same one of those options every > > time, I suppose. Otherwise, barring psychic powers on the part of the > > winning player(s) it is as good as random. Will the losers squirrel the > > player who "got" them, or muck around with the game quietly and > > hopelessly, or boldly soldier on? Who knows? > > Since you can't predict my game play when I am attempting to win, I guess > that is random also. After staring at that remark on my screen for a minute or so, I think I've figured out what's going on here. Bear with me if I'm wrong. You are using random to mean "unpredictable" or something of that sort. I think that the original poster had to be meaning random to mean something more nuanced, like "unpredictable, unfair and arbitrary". If anything it's a good thing if an opponent's moves can be or are difficult to predict accurately. If you can do so, the game probably isn't terribly deep. What's bad is if players who are out of the running can throw the game one way or another (deliberately or otherwise), so that skill becomes less of a deciding factor in who wins. In that sense - that skill becomes less of a factor - their behaviour is random. Or randomising, or both, or something. > Do you really believe that making a move against someone who prevented you > from winning is "squirreling?" The only sensible answe to that question is "it depends". If it's a mutually destructive kamikaze attack that "punishes" the other player and does nothing for your own chances of winning, yes. > Was the person who did it to you in the first > place also "squirreling?" If they genuinely prevented you from winning, of course not. > I call it playing the game. What does "squirrel" > mean anyway? More or less, to trash the game-as-contest-of-ability. Random, vindictive, foolish or silly play that throws the game to another player who doesn't "deserve" it. > > If /nobody/ cares who wins ("social gaming"), then it doesn't matter. > > If some people are playing the game "seriously" though, with the intent > > of playing their best to see who will win, it matters a lot. > > > > FWIW "social gaming" to me is a good conversation interrupted by a > > pointless exercise. But if your mileage varies it varies. > > I'm not sure what this has to do with what anyone has said. I'm sure someone dragged out the "I play to have fun, and so I profess that considerations of what is good or bad game design are irrelevant and subjective" line. That was what I was replying to, just in case someone dragged that line out again. Sorry if it wasn't you who said it. > > If you play > multi-player games and don't consider what those who don't have a chance to > win can still do, then you are not being serious. You can play any game, even a really terrible one, seriously. I think Diplomacy bites, partially for just the reason under discussion, but on the few occasions in the last few years when I've been coerced into playing it I play it seriously. Of course the games collapsed when a couple of people were effectively eliminated and lost all interest in the game. But hours of our lives were wasted reaching this entirely predictable conclusion. Diplomacy bites. :-) So I don't think the issue of seriousness is relevant. Even if a game has mechanics or dynamics I hate I still take them seriously. I still hate them, too. Kevin Lowe, Brisbane, Australia.

"Kevin Lowe" <sp...@spoof.gov> wrote in message news:spoof-37BE64....@news-vip.optusnet.com.au... > What's bad is if players who are out of the running can throw the game > one way or another (deliberately or otherwise), so that skill becomes > less of a deciding factor in who wins. In that sense - that skill > becomes less of a factor - their behaviour is random. Or randomising, > or both, or something. If the game allows players to affect each other directly, than part of the skill in playing it has to be avoiding being a target. > > Do you really believe that making a move against someone who prevented you > > from winning is "squirreling?" > > The only sensible answe to that question is "it depends". > > If it's a mutually destructive kamikaze attack that "punishes" the other > player and does nothing for your own chances of winning, yes. If he has already prevented me from winning, then my further actions can't affect my chances of winning so I don't understand this statement. > > Was the person who did it to you in the first > > place also "squirreling?" > > If they genuinely prevented you from winning, of course not. This all seems to have to do with timing. If I prevent someone from winning earlier in the game, it is fair, but if I do it later it isn't? > > I call it playing the game. What does "squirrel" > > mean anyway? > > More or less, to trash the game-as-contest-of-ability. Random, > vindictive, foolish or silly play that throws the game to another player > who doesn't "deserve" it. I'm not sure I get the concept of deserving to win. If you really want pure contests of ability, play non-random 2-player symetrical abstracts. > I'm sure someone dragged out the "I play to have fun, and so I profess > that considerations of what is good or bad game design are irrelevant > and subjective" line. That was what I was replying to, just in case > someone dragged that line out again. Sorry if it wasn't you who said it. I said that the interaction of the people playing was more interesting to me that the concept of a pure game. That's why I enjoy playing multi-player games (not that I don't like others types as well for other reasons). It doesn't mean I don't play to win and expect others to do the same (as long as it is possible). > Of course the games collapsed when a couple of people were effectively > eliminated and lost all interest in the game. But hours of our lives > were wasted reaching this entirely predictable conclusion. Diplomacy > bites. :-) The only answer to this is that people shouldn't play Diplomacy if they don't like it. Rich

Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes: >> I'm afraid that none of this is true. Games with more than two players >> don't in general have "optimal strategies" of this type. > > John Nash won the Nobel prize for extending games theory to games with > more than two players. His principle result was that such games do > have optimum solutions provided that they are non-cooperative (i.e > there are no binding deals). Nash showed that such games (under some reasonable conditions) have at least one "Nash equilibrium". That's a vector of strategies, one for each player, such that no one player can gain by unilaterally deviating from the equilibrum. That's not at all the same thing as an optimum strategy for an individual player. The strategy that is part of a particular equilibrium might work very badly if the other players aren't using their corresponding equilibrium strategies. And, there can be multiple equilibria, with different strategies for a given player, and with different payoffs for that player; how can you call any one of them "optimal"? David desJardins

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:BD8BFCD7692EC240.0557C2C8...@lp.airnews.net... > On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 10:07:23 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >> >Certainly not. Such minor 'deals' as "If you give me some of the pool > >> >from that Parity Shift, I won't Eagle's Sight and block it" are the > >> >stuff of which table interaction is made. > >> > >> Such interaction is illegal without a card effect. > > > >Not true, as you well know. > > How do I know this? If I want to play the game, I don't go making > assumptions - I read the rulebook. you can do this kind of deal even when playing monopoly... This is called "society gaming" in France. > Without permission from the rules, the players may not make their own > Bewitching Orations or Charming Lobbies any more than they may > Intimidate, Bribe, Seduce, Grapple or Garotte the other players. No, > they just play their cards and announce their actions as the rules lay > out. So for you, players are lonely robots who cannot forge alliance to prevent others from winning before they do ? =) > Political speeches are not needed for the game to function but if > players were allowed to make them in the manner you imagine, then > you'd expect to find rules governing this activity. Such rules are > both normal and necessary in real talking shops such as parliaments, > meetings, committees, even this very newsgroup. Rules for determining > who may speak and for how long. What topics may be discussed and the > language which may be used. And, most importantly, when the talking > must stop and the matter proceed to a conclusion. Without such rules, > the talking can go on indefinitely and that seems to be the trend in > UK tournaments. Somebody shoot this guy =) If you don't want to talk for ages, ask people to agree, and if they seem to delay the game too much, ask the judge to make them play their cards. But you cannot force them not to speak and make arrangements. with your kind of approach, i bet you can only rely on heavy bleed+stealth heh ? =) > And if making speeches were to be part of the game then you introduce > a bias in favour of those with the gift of the gab. And if constructing a deck is a matter of wits, then the smartest player will win. And if playing the right card at the right moment is a matter of intelligence, the intelligent player will win. That's how the games are made. some require physical aptitude, some intuition (often mispelled statistics or calculation), some, sau "social charm". Again, there has to be criterias to determine a winner : That's how the games are made. > When discussing > Madness of the Bard, we heard how such verbal skill was not a proper > part of the game because it would introduce a bias against foreign > speakers. Especially American and Austrian people, who don't speak proper english for ages ;) In fact, MotB also dramatically reduces the speed of the game... It's the other reason. > Andrew Still here, Andrew =) you're stubborn but so resilient. I may begin to admire you. =D reyda

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:5287ede4.0201...@posting.google.com... (snip) > It is obviously poor form to "table-talk", and illegal in most > civilized games. I agree that such deal making at the table is > neither expressly permitted by the rules, nor obviously acceptable, > because in games of this type (multi-player card games), table-talk is > *not* generally allowed, for good reason. A lot of table games allow such kind of table talks !!! And what about regular card (trump) games that pits players against each other so that one of them cannot grab all the points for himself ? > This would leave the > restriction of table-talk up to the judges at an individual event, and > normally you would expect it to be outlawed. However, Jyhad has a > long-standing tradition of annoying players convincing the rest of the > table to do what they want, or simply whining until you change your > mind, and judges have a history of allowing this. read the first Jyhad the Eternal Struggle handbook (the one with the skul and serpents on the cover). Garfield, designer of this game, tells you that one main tactic is often to maintain attention on what other people do, and look harmless to gain the favor of other players. He suggests that you help other players to show your good will, so they will help you in return. * The designer of V:Tes is not outlawing table talks, he ADVOCATES it* > While it's perfectly normal for deal-making to happen in casual games, > table-talk should be limited or outlawed in tournament games. No. At least not for short term deals. Table split (wich is already obsolete by now) was another concern : as you may all know, french people don't do table split deals ;D > However, as a rule, it is not. And unfortunately, we have to live > with that. If some player is whining everytime, just tell it to others so they can realize. If someone constitantly begging for helps sweeps the table three turns later, i may swear you that other people will remember and not grant him help on the next game. When you know that someone's charming/whining manner is a weapon, you are less inclined to lend him your hand. reyda

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:5287ede4.02010...@posting.google.com... (snip) Crhis, I don't want to pick on you but you wrote... > In Jyhad, you have no partner, but the two people opposite you are > called your "allies" in some circles. This is because it is generally > to these people's benefit that you not die. And to your benefit that > they do not. that's the whole point. These people are "temporary" allies. You'll help them if they are in a bad position, because then your predator or prey grows stronger when your temporary allie(s) are/is weak. It is your benefit to help them. > Coaching them, or telling them what is in your hand is > *still* often considered bad form. I almost never saw anyone telling what's in his hand : simply because every other people at the table can hear it and take good note. Sometime, of course, i have called for help saying : "rescue my voter, my hand is full of politics" or "i've got no intercept, don't add stealth on your bleed". But you know what ? most of times, i was lying to my allies, so my enemies have been lured and played differently. But people remember and some of them are still very suspicious when they play with me. Whatever their position on the table is. Thanks god i'm not a liar in life. It's just for the game, you know =) > I know that in most games I have > been in, if my grand predator is about to make a very bad move and I > assist him, it is not appreciated by anyone else at the table. You assist him only if it's your benefit to do so. -You're helping your Grandpredator to bleed your predator for 7 (say, by playing a D.I on an Enhanced sences) ? then you're a moron. The guy you just help will soon finish you predator, maybe in the same turn, and will be your new predator, with all his vampires intact and 6 fresh pool. -You're helping your Grandpredator to rush your predator's main bleeder (say, by playing DI on an obedience) ? then, you're smart. Because this moves will extend your lifespan. With your predator's bleeding power decreased, maybe you can afford putting a new vampire into play, recruit that specific ally or equip two .44 this turn. think about it. > In > casual games, this is to be expected. No one expects to squelch all > table-talk in casual games. In tournament games, each player should > be expected to play by his own skill, and to make the final under his > or her own merit. V:tes would be very boring without table talk. And some decks will never work under this imaginary rule. And furthermore, some cards are specifically designed to gain you advantage in table talks. If you don't have a silvertongue, you can still do it by packing Fata Morgana, Tourette's voice, London Evening Star or Starshell grenade launcher. Try to make other people benefit from it. And you'll see other people rescue your vampires, help you in votes... As long as they are not your prey or predator. in V:tes, you're in the middle of the Jyhad. If you help someone screw his opponent, he mays help you screw yours. Until one becomes a threat for the other. > Allowing coaching, even from someone else in game, > is IMO a terrible idea. this is not coaching. Another thing : if you remind your ally (or even your foe) to gain the blood from Hunting ground or the rack at the start of his turn, it's not coaching anyway, it's sportsmanship. > Other forms of table-talk may have some > merit, but a blanket allowance of all table-talk doesn't seem to be a > foregone conclusion. With no rules governing what is or isn't allowed > in tournament play, I fail to see why the default is to *allow* it. Because it's in the human nature to talk, maybe =p reyda

On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 10:57:34 -0500, LSJ wrote: >As I said before, some basic things don't need to be in the rules. >Allowing players to look at their hands (or even defining what a >"hand" is). Allowing players to breathe or speak. Breathing is necessary but speaking isn't, except insofar as the game allows for declarations and announcements of game actions (as we see from the examples in the rules). If I decided to subject the players to rambling nonsense in the Malkavian style, I'd expect to be called to order. So too if I decided to treat them to a song in the style of the Daughters of Cacophony or an ode in the style of the Toreadors. Players who fancy themselves Ventrue and wish to make political speeches and machiavellian deals should likewise be restrained. It's a card game, not a war of words. >In games, the default is to allow table talk, as I said before. I just pulled Illuminati off the shelf. This has specific sections in the rules covering gifts and trades; throwing the game; when is a deal binding; threats and negotiations. I think you're too used to playing games like this and so assume that such rules apply to all games. They do not and there are no formal defaults to which you can point. It's just unwritten custom and local etiquette, as Garfield said. >Games are inherently social activities. So be social. Deal-making is often unpleasant and anti-social. That's why Garfield used the heading "Playing Nicely With Others". Do you expect a table-split deal to result in anything other than bad feeling? I haven't yet seen a VTES deal that felt right - they all seemed collusive and unsporting. This appears to be why sociable folk like the Hannigans won't play in tournaments. >The tournament system functions fine as is. >When it no longer does, we'll visit methods of fixing it. The new tournament rules already contain a change which is designed to dampen down deal-making and unfair play. It's too soon to say whether they now function fine. Andrew

On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 17:57:46 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: >>"Whipsaw: to raise before, and after, a caller who gets caught in the >>middle." > >Ah. Yes, I'm familiar with the tactic. This is not a deal. Such tactics are used by two players who wish to force a third out of the game. A single player cannot keep raising by himself. Teaming up with another player gives both of them greater betting strength. I've heard of this happening in the WSOP where professionals are reputed to combine against amateurs in this sort of way. They have to do it in a nod-and-a-wink way though because it's cheating. One might imagine other sorts of deals, especially in dealer's choice game - hi-lo splits or pass the garbage, for example. You don't see this, again because it would be cheating. >The closest parallel from V:TES is a 4-player table with two vote decks >sitting on opposite sides. What normally happens, if neither of the >other two decks can provide any vote defense, is that the two vote decks >hand out damage indiscriminately to the other two players, ousting both >at almost the same time. They then fight it out for the winner of the >game. This could be seen as a deal, but I know that no V:TES player >actually OBJECTS to this sort of deal other than from the personal >perspective that it really sucks to get caught in that position. Presumably each vote deck is attempting to oust its prey as fast as it can. That's fine. >I'm sure we can find or recruit enough players for a Hold'em table if >you're ever in the States and we're in the same area. It would be a >most enriching experience, I feel -- I spent some time on the tables at >Vegas when I was last out there. Quite cutthroat, but fun. I've little experience of Hold'em but am getting back into a school here which plays it. I prefer poker variants with more card play myself. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 10:57:34 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >As I said before, some basic things don't need to be in the rules. > >Allowing players to look at their hands (or even defining what a > >"hand" is). Allowing players to breathe or speak. > > Breathing is necessary but speaking isn't, except insofar as the game > allows for declarations and announcements of game actions (as we see > from the examples in the rules). If I decided to subject the players > to rambling nonsense in the Malkavian style, I'd expect to be called > to order. So too if I decided to treat them to a song in the style of > the Daughters of Cacophony or an ode in the style of the Toreadors. > Players who fancy themselves Ventrue and wish to make political > speeches and machiavellian deals should likewise be restrained. It's > a card game, not a war of words. The rules describe the game. Breathing is not part of the game, so is not covered in the rules. Speaking is not policed by the rules, so is not covered by the rules. Specifically, since "deals" are not enforced by the rules, the rules do not address them. Try playing under Madness of the Bard speaking only what the rules "allowed" you to speak by your incorrect interpretation above. > >In games, the default is to allow table talk, as I said before. > > I just pulled Illuminati off the shelf. This has specific sections in > the rules covering gifts and trades; throwing the game; when is a deal > binding; threats and negotiations. I think you're too used to playing > games like this and so assume that such rules apply to all games. That just proves my point. In that game, the deals are policed by the rules, so are covered in the rules. > They do not and there are no formal defaults to which you can point. > It's just unwritten custom and local etiquette, as Garfield said. Fine. So you agree that it isn't prohibited. That's sufficient. > >Games are inherently social activities. So be social. > > Deal-making is often unpleasant and anti-social. That's why Garfield > used the heading "Playing Nicely With Others". Do you expect a > table-split deal to result in anything other than bad feeling? I Yes, given mature players. Unless, of course, the table-split was made illegally (i.e., one of the players "threw" her own game in order to help another). > >The tournament system functions fine as is. > >When it no longer does, we'll visit methods of fixing it. > > The new tournament rules already contain a change which is designed to > dampen down deal-making and unfair play. It's too soon to say whether > they now function fine. It's safe to say it's "fine" since there haven't been any problems yet. It's too soon to say it's not fine, since there haven't been any problems yet. If there are problems, then we'll visit methods of correcting them. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > Political speeches are not needed for the game to function but if > players were allowed to make them in the manner you imagine, then > you'd expect to find rules governing this activity. Such rules are > both normal and necessary in real talking shops such as parliaments, > meetings, committees, even this very newsgroup. Rules for determining > who may speak and for how long. What topics may be discussed and the > language which may be used. And, most importantly, when the talking > must stop and the matter proceed to a conclusion. Without such rules, > the talking can go on indefinitely and that seems to be the trend in > UK tournaments. > > And if making speeches were to be part of the game then you introduce > a bias in favour of those with the gift of the gab. When discussing > Madness of the Bard, we heard how such verbal skill was not a proper > part of the game because it would introduce a bias against foreign > speakers. The argument was bogus in that case because there's nothing > to stop such speakers from rhyming in their own tongue. But it is > certainly valid in this case as it's obviously more difficult to > haggle with foreigners because you have to communicate effectively and > persuasively - an arbitrary rhyme is not enough. > Of course the only reason the trend for long winded game play in UK vtes is a person, quoted above, has a great tendancy to run on and on and on. creating convesation topics when none formally existed. Raille

Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> wrote in message > > > > Deal-making is often unpleasant and anti-social. That's why Garfield > used the heading "Playing Nicely With Others". Do you expect a > table-split deal to result in anything other than bad feeling? I > haven't yet seen a VTES deal that felt right - they all seemed > collusive and unsporting. This appears to be why sociable folk like > the Hannigans won't play in tournaments. > Andrew, is it just table split deals that you have a problem with, or the whole process of discussing while playing? Would the comment, "hey man, lay off me for a few turns and I'll try and do something about Wynn, yeah?" raise any objections from the Andrew camp? My intense irritation at most things you say aside, I would like to know exactly where you stand on talking whilst playing; because so far you seem to have a problem with any game process not directly and specifically covered by the rules. Is this true or am I being unfair? Tony Literary Thug

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 08:49:58 -0500, Raille wrote: >Of course the only reason the trend for long winded game play in UK vtes >is a person, quoted above, has a great tendancy to run on and on and >on. creating convesation topics when none formally existed. Don't blame me. I'm usually quite terse as I'm too busy concentrating on my cards. Andrew

Chris Berger wrote: > It is obviously poor form to "table-talk", and illegal in most > civilized games. I agree that such deal making at the table is > neither expressly permitted by the rules, nor obviously acceptable, > because in games of this type (multi-player card games), table-talk is > *not* generally allowed, for good reason. This is one of those things I see going by that I'm not quite sure what I mean (so please forgive me if it turns out I'm popping off too soon) but it _sounds_ like something I disagree with pretty strongly. If you have a multiplayer game, it's natural to talk and make deals and, at least if you're not doing it in secret, my expectation is that it's OK unless the game rules specifically forbid it. They may not be binding deals and you may not be able to show any of your opponents whatever secret cards or face down counters or whatever that you control. But just *talking* is certainly not a problem. > However, Jyhad has a > long-standing tradition of annoying players convincing the rest of the > table to do what they want, or simply whining until you change your > mind, and judges have a history of allowing this. That's because there aren't any rules against it (except if it starts to take up excessive amounts of time). It's legal and always has been been, whether you like it or not. > While it's perfectly normal for deal-making to happen in casual games, > table-talk should be limited or outlawed in tournament games. Why? This is starting to sound like your very personal pet peeve. Not really one that a vast majority of people share. For my part - in case you're wondering - I don't think I'm very good at convincing the rest of the table to do what I want. I can probably irritate the table with my whining just as about as good as anyone but I've seldom observed that it's gotten me anywhere. "Whining" is generally just someone in a self-pitying mood who's venting. If they need to do it and gets it out of their system fairly quickly, that's fine. I don't very often see it do anything for anyone besides making them feel better. On the other hand, if an "annoying player" can get the rest of the table to do what they want, that's effective diplomacy and it's part of the game. I hate it, too, because I feel other players do it better than I do. But that's not cause to make a rule against it. Fred

"Reyda" <re...@noos.fr> wrote in message news:<a1ja9f$58o$1...@neon.noos.net>... > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message > news:5287ede4.02010...@posting.google.com... > > You assist him only if it's your benefit to do so. > -You're helping your Grandpredator to bleed your predator for 7 (say, by > playing a D.I on an Enhanced sences) ? then you're a moron. The guy you just > help will soon finish you predator, maybe in the same turn, and will be your > new predator, with all his vampires intact and 6 fresh pool. > -You're helping your Grandpredator to rush your predator's main bleeder > (say, by playing DI on an obedience) ? then, you're smart. Because this > moves will extend your lifespan. With your predator's bleeding power > decreased, maybe you can afford putting a new vampire into play, recruit > that specific ally or equip two .44 this turn. > What you're talking about is not table-talk. I was talking, very specifically, about coaching a player, as one type of table-talk which is never appreciated and should, IMHO, definitely be outlawed. Playing cards to help another player is part of the mechanics of the game. Telling him that he should bleed first with Seduction, using the vampire with superior obtenebration, in case a different vamp with intercept has a wake, and then follow that up by bleeding with this other minion, being ready to play stealth, etc., etc., is not nearly the same thing. > > Allowing coaching, even from someone else in game, > > is IMO a terrible idea. > > this is not coaching. Another thing : if you remind your ally (or even your > foe) to gain the blood from Hunting ground or the rack at the start of his > turn, it's not coaching anyway, it's sportsmanship. > What *I* was talking about, in the post you replied to anyway, was coaching, as a specific kind of table-talk. > > Other forms of table-talk may have some > > merit, but a blanket allowance of all table-talk doesn't seem to be a > > foregone conclusion. With no rules governing what is or isn't allowed > > in tournament play, I fail to see why the default is to *allow* it. > > Because it's in the human nature to talk, maybe =p > What about vampire nature? =P

In message <E37B1472DCD42DFF.9B77A215...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes: >On Tue, 08 Jan 2002 17:57:46 GMT, Derek Ray wrote: >>>"Whipsaw: to raise before, and after, a caller who gets caught in the >>>middle." >> >>Ah. Yes, I'm familiar with the tactic. This is not a deal. > >Such tactics are used by two players who wish to force a third out of >the game. A single player cannot keep raising by himself. Or potentially by two people (with an 'innocent' third in the middle) who just want to keep raising for themselves. Indeed, one might regard one strategy for poker (beyond playing the odds for the best hand etc.) as forcing all other players out of the bidding, such that you collect. Two players could both play such a tactic/strategy for its own sake - with no hint of a deal or collusion - which might result in such a situation. -- James Coupe You remind me of the babe. What babe? PGP 0x5D623D5D The babe with the power. What power? EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 Power of voodoo. Who do? 13D7E668C3695D623D5D You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe.

Christopher Dearlove wrote: > > In article <3C3A817C...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes > > And my position on the original point is > > (a) All multiplayer games _can_ put people in an unwinnable > position. > > (b) In some multiplayer games this happens more frequently. > > (c) Neither (a) [the original claim] nor (b) "ipso facto" makes the > game a "bad" game, it's a negative factor, but has to be balanced > against the other characteristics of the game. I guess most of our dispute, then, is just frustration that you seem to pick at the form of Andrew's statement with very technical objections and ignore the essence of it. But I guess that issue has been pretty much beaten to death. > Then there are all the other extraneous points that have arisen > (which you seem determined to confuse) such as > > (d) Skill level makes a difference to how often (b) happens. > and that's not just a distinction between the incompetent > and the competent, but can be a gradual thing. I never disputed that it was a gradual thing. I'm just making the distinction between how much chance a player has of winning due to the game system vs. due to the player's competence. If a player perceives he has no chance at winning the contest, he will likely choose to take actions for reasons that are difficult to predict since he has no consensus goal beyond winning. Whether he has little chance of winning due to the game system or his competence is only significant in that the former but not the latter is correctable by altering the game design. > (e) Almost everyone starts a game with the intention of winning. > Sometimes (how often depending on the game) this is no > longer possible. Some people then try to achieve the best > they can - and in my extensive non-US experience among > gamers these people are in the majority. But - and this is where we apparently disagree vehemently - there is a slew of complicating factors when one begins to consider goals beyond winning. As I've said repeatedly in previous posts, I think most people do indeed try to do "the best they can". It's simply a matter of defining what that means that breaks down the consensus. Even if everyone were to agree that it meant "having the best board position possible" when the game ended, that's seldom definable, no matter how easily any tournament organizers may find it to define some runner-up metric in most of the games. And a fair number of players find other things they feel is "doing the best they can" that has less to do with their board position at end. On top of that, there's also the issue of player behavior when game goals conflict. By that I mean, if all you're trying to do is _win_ the game - finish first or fulfill whatever victory conditions are defined - then you never have to worry about this. But when a secondary or tertiary goal appears, there's the potential for the multiple goals conflicting with one another, such as when one might heavily risk a second place standing for a fairly marginal increase in his chance to overtake first. There's no obvious way to resolve such conflicts so it's left up to each player's individual philosophy. This is _not_ simply an issue of American vs. British gaming behavior. There may be differences in the two, I agree. But I think this is a more complicated issue than you make it out to be. (Which is why it periodically appears as a philosophical debate that no one can ever win.) > (f) Most multiplayer games, of the sort we consider here, > have meaningful 2nd, 3rd etc. places. This is a proposition > for which evidence can be produced. It depends on what you mean. Can one arrive at some arbitrary metric to for defining the order of runner-up positions? Usually, you probably can, I agree. If it works for your board game tournament and is defined ahead of time, fine. Then players can ignore such secondary goals at their own risk and decide what appropriate behavior is. Outside of the venue of a board game tournament, however, there's no point in worrying about it and it has to be conceded that since these metrics are arbitrary, other player's ideas of what they should be will not necessarily agree with yours. So it's silly to expect consensus in an informal gaming environment. (Remaining parts snipped as I have no issues with them.) Fred

Rich Shipley wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3C3A9534...@removethis.com... > > Rich Shipley wrote: > > > > > > Attempting to win is my intent when playing a game, but it is not my > > > central motivation. My central motivation is to enjoy the process. I > > > can do this while losing as well as winning. > > > > True by irrelevant. > > No it isn't - your premise is that a player's central motvation is gone once > that player cannot win. The above shows that this is not true. All right, I see what you mean. I still think it's irrelevant, however, because each player will differ in his idea of what enjoying the process means to him. It's the lack of predictability which causes the problem Andrew noted. > > The point is that the rules are designed to assume that > > you are playing to win. The overall motivation for playing the game may > > affect the design (i.e., the game is designed to be fun to play) but if > > you aren't playing to win then you are basically playing randomly. > > I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people > playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. If > someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game > retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing > things I typically do), I don't consider this random. Then this is a semantic dispute. I don't care what you call it, it's not a predictable thing and will vary from player to player. If I do something to end one player's chances of winning a game, he might say, "Hey, nice move!" And go on trying to stay in the game as long as he can. But another guy, experiencing the exact same thing might say, "You asshole! I'm gonna get you for that!", and proceed to sacrifice what is left of his position to destroy my chances of winning the game. If a game gives him a significant opportunity to do that, it makes it impossible to predict whether it's a good move or not. So if a good player can't discern good strategy from bad strategy, then we're not talking about strategy. Just random actions on one player's part inciting random actions on another player's part. I don't know about you but that's not what I look for in a game. > > > I don't really feel that any type of game is flawed. It is all in the > > > execution and audience. You are the one saying that the majority of > > > multi-player games out there are flawed and using faulty assumptions to > > > support this claim. > > > > And what "faulty assumptions" are those? > > For one that a player's central motivation is to win. Winning should be the > intent, but I try to avoid players that have this as their central > motivation. Again, may I point out to you that the motivation of winning the game is absolutely central to the structure of most board game rules (again, with exceptions and I'm not referring to games that are exceptions to this). You keep raising the issue of having fun as a motivation which conflicts with attempting to win the game. It is not and should never be. They should be viewed as hierarchy of motivations. You play a game to have fun. In order to have fun, you play the game to win. When playing the game to win ceases to be fun, then the whole point collapses and you stop doing it. (It also has to be kept in mind that it's a group activity and sometimes you may not be having as much fun personally but continue to play for the interests of the group. That issue gets complicated...) > The other is that games should all fit your personal criteria. I'm not sure where you got the idea that this is one of my assumptions. > > > Settlers of Catan: Since it possible to be put in a position where you > > > cannot score 10 points, the game is flawed and should be scrapped. > > > > I just said it was flawed. I didn't say it should be scrapped. It has > > an imperfection, a blemish. That's all. You could fix it but you would > > have to work harder on the design to make sure that didn't happen. And > > it might cause tradeoff with something else you liked better than solving > > the problem. > > If you admit that a game may suffer from this "flaw" being fixed then what > is your point? (I'm not sure that sentence exactly came out the way you meant but I think I know what you meant. You're basically asking why I care about it at all if I don't aim to fix games which have this flaw.) To point out that this trait is a flaw in the game. To raise peoples' awareness that this is not a good thing in a game and why exactly it isn't. To allow people to understand why certain personal disputes arise in the course of games when certain situations come up (a player having no chance to win yet still having significant influence on its outcome) so that they can better consider their behavior in such circumstances. All sorts of reasons. Knowledge is good. > > The *point* is that multiplayer games don't have to necessarily be like > > that. There are ways to avoid this problem and some games do, at least > > to a reasonable extent. That is a good thing, IMHO. > > And some games have interesting mechanisms that would not be compatible with > fixing this "flaw" and that is also a good thing IMHO. Sure. Fred

Rich Shipley wrote: > > "Kevin Lowe" <sp...@spoof.gov> wrote in message > news:spoof-1D55BE....@news-vip.optusnet.com.au... > > In article <28D_7.57776$fo.20...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, > > "Rich Shipley" <ri...@rtgames.com> wrote: > > > I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people > > > playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. > > > If someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game > > > retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing > > > things I typically do), I don't consider this random. > > > > It's not random if everyone takes the same one of those options every > > time, I suppose. Otherwise, barring psychic powers on the part of the > > winning player(s) it is as good as random. Will the losers squirrel the > > player who "got" them, or muck around with the game quietly and > > hopelessly, or boldly soldier on? Who knows? > > Since you can't predict my game play when I am attempting to win, I guess > that is random also. Yes and no. To varying extents, different games allow for players to take differing routes to victory and thus make predicting the routes other players will take part of the problem you need to solve to win the game. This is something you can take into account in your own strategy and learn and improve on over time. You can also do this to a limited extent with "beyond-winning" motivations and behavior that other players will adopt. The difference, to me, is that the former is (supposed to be) a carefully considered and controlled aspect of the game whereas the latter is seldom considered and very difficult to control. It's usually reasonably easy to rebalance a game when some sort of behavior taken in pursuit of winning is causing play problems. You simply change the rules such that that behavior is less rewarding in terms of allowing for the win. But how do you rebalance a game to discourage a player suiciding his already-lost position when that behavior causes a play problem? For one thing, it depends on how your players feel about their losing position to even detect the problem in the first place. The game designer may not even detect the problem in the first place because all of his playtesters had "nice" philosophies about living in a losing position. The all-purpose solution to this is not to allow players to have any significant influence after their position has been fully lost. Fred

LSJ wrote: > > Can we please stop posting articles that have nothing to do with V:TES > to rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad (where such posts are off-topic)? Sorry. This is a situation where crossposting began appropriately enough (IMO) but has sort of wandered away. It's still of peripheral interest to Jyhad, certainly. All of these issues arise in Jyhad just as they do in any multiplayer game. They are probably not "specific" to its play, however, and I guess we've lost the connecting link which had to do with Garfield's reasons for designing Jyhad as he did. In the future, I'll remove r.g.t-c.j from the group list - though I won't see the articles nor their replies. Fred

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C3DD025...@removethis.com... > Rich Shipley wrote: > > > Then this is a semantic dispute. I don't care what you call it, it's not > a predictable thing and will vary from player to player. If I do something > to end one player's chances of winning a game, he might say, "Hey, nice move!" > And go on trying to stay in the game as long as he can. But another guy, > experiencing the exact same thing might say, "You asshole! I'm gonna get you > for that!", and proceed to sacrifice what is left of his position to destroy my > chances of winning the game. I'd complement the move, but would pay it back if given the opportunity. > If a game gives him a significant opportunity to > do that, it makes it impossible to predict whether it's a good move or not. > So if a good player can't discern good strategy from bad strategy, then we're > not talking about strategy. Just random actions on one player's part inciting > random actions on another player's part. I don't know about you but that's > not what I look for in a game. Striving for predictability in an interactive multi-player game is going against the grain of why many people play them. The games I like most involve strategic thinking that has to adapt to unexpected events and/or the whims of other players. > > For one that a player's central motivation is to win. Winning should be the > > intent, but I try to avoid players that have this as their central > > motivation. > > Again, may I point out to you that the motivation of winning the game is > absolutely central to the structure of most board game rules (again, with > exceptions and I'm not referring to games that are exceptions to this). You > keep raising the issue of having fun as a motivation which conflicts with > attempting to win the game. I have not done this. I merely said that my central motivation was to enjoy the process and that I play to win as long as it is possible. No conflict at all. I have problems with people whose central motivation is winning because they are more likely to bahave badly when losing (or winning for that matter). > It is not and should never be. They should be > viewed as hierarchy of motivations. You play a game to have fun. In order > to have fun, you play the game to win. I'd disagree here because I can have fun playing a losing position if the game is good. > When playing the game to win ceases > to be fun, then the whole point collapses and you stop doing it. But when winning becomes impossible, it is still possible to enjoy the process. > (It also > has to be kept in mind that it's a group activity and sometimes you may not > be having as much fun personally but continue to play for the interests of > the group. That issue gets complicated...) Agreed. > > The other is that games should all fit your personal criteria. > > I'm not sure where you got the idea that this is one of my assumptions. Calling something a flaw imples that it should be avoided or fixed (at least to me). > > If you admit that a game may suffer from this "flaw" being fixed then what > > is your point? > > (I'm not sure that sentence exactly came out the way you meant but I think > I know what you meant. You're basically asking why I care about it at all > if I don't aim to fix games which have this flaw.) > To point out that this trait is a flaw in the game. To raise peoples' > awareness that this is not a good thing in a game and why exactly it isn't. > To allow people to understand why certain personal disputes arise in the > course of games when certain situations come up (a player having no chance > to win yet still having significant influence on its outcome) so that they > can better consider their behavior in such circumstances. All sorts of > reasons. Knowledge is good. I'll go along with that, but I think this is just a semantic and preference argument. What you call a flaw, I would call an aspect of the game. If you don't like games with this aspect, don't play them. I don't consider this a flaw so I will. > > > The *point* is that multiplayer games don't have to necessarily be like > > > that. There are ways to avoid this problem and some games do, at least > > > to a reasonable extent. That is a good thing, IMHO. > > > > And some games have interesting mechanisms that would not be compatible with > > fixing this "flaw" and that is also a good thing IMHO. > > Sure. I think we're (or at least I am) done now. Thanks for the debate. Rich

[Follow-ups set away from .jyhad] In message <3C3DD025...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: >> I like the social aspects of game playing. The interaction of the people >> playing is far more interesting to me than some concept of a pure game. If >> someone who cannot win is trying to do their best, taking some in-game >> retribution, or experimenting with an aspect of the game system (listing >> things I typically do), I don't consider this random. > >Then this is a semantic dispute. I don't care what you call it, it's not >a predictable thing and will vary from player to player. And not on-topic for rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad. As enjoyable and informative as such discussions might be, can I ask that they are not posted to the .jyhad group? [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <3C3DC8AB...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes >But - and this is where we apparently disagree vehemently - there >is a slew of complicating factors when one begins to consider goals >beyond winning. No, I'll even agree that there are a slew of complicating factors. I just think that, in many cases, they aren't as serious as you think they are. >This is _not_ simply an issue of American vs. British gaming behavior. >There may be differences in the two, I agree. And I'll agree with the first sentence. This is going well. >But I think this is >a more complicated issue than you make it out to be. Oddly enough (and this may be akin to what I've seen claimed for Diplomacy, that everyone sees more problems in their own position than others do) I could have written exactly the sentence above, applying the other way around - and I think both of us genuinely believe it. (Purely so you can see how I can make such a claim, it seems to me that viewing the point as sometimes a problem, sometimes not, is more complicated. I'm guessing you would say that viewing it always as a problem is more complicated. Let's just agree that it _is_ complicated.) >Can one arrive at some arbitrary >metric to for defining the order of runner-up positions? Usually, >you probably can, I agree. If it works for your board game tournament >and is defined ahead of time, fine. Actually (and here I expect you to be surprised) whilst the tournament defines in advance that positions will be recorded, it makes no stipulations for any particular game. (It couldn't - since the games included are anything played during the convention - with a few constraints such as minimum game length.) Furthermore I don't recall ever discussing before starting a game how places would be awarded, nor do I recall there ever being a disagreement (except for trivial cases, which could be counted as corrections as the disagreed with player immediately agreed with the change). The only serious disagreement I've ever had (at a different convention) was over who had just won the game that had finished - with there being three candidates, not all supporting their own claim! (This was Tutankhamun, and was down to players discovering at the end that they'd interpreted the poor translation then available differently. [For those who know the game it was over the order of multiple set scoring.] The next day we got the proper interpretation from Reiner - and no, it wasn't a fourth one.) >So it's silly to expect >consensus in an informal gaming environment. Substitute unreasonable for silly and I might agree - but actually consensus appears to rule. Doesn't stop it being unreasonable of course. I should add that over this thread, whilst there isn't anything I've said I would go as far as to apologise for, there are a couple of comments I that on balance I would prefer not to have made. -- Christopher Dearlove

In article <El4%7.62030$fo.21...@news1.rdc1.md.home.com>, "Rich Shipley" <ri...@rtgames.com> wrote: > "Kevin Lowe" <sp...@spoof.gov> wrote in message > news:spoof-37BE64....@news-vip.optusnet.com.au... > > > What's bad is if players who are out of the running can throw the game > > one way or another (deliberately or otherwise), so that skill becomes > > less of a deciding factor in who wins. In that sense - that skill > > becomes less of a factor - their behaviour is random. Or randomising, > > or both, or something. > > If the game allows players to affect each other directly, than part of the > skill in playing it has to be avoiding being a target. Indeed. In the original article Garfield was actually saying that he disliked that aspect of political games, since it's exactly the same in every political game. You try to build a winning position while distracting or misleading the other players so that they don't realise you are going to win. However, we're discussing something more specific. What we were focusing on (AFAICT) was the situation that arises when someone no longer has a plausible chance of winning the game but still has enough power to affect the outcome. In that situation their behaviour is dictated almost completely by out-of-game considerations, since there is no in-game reason to do any one thing instead of something else. Which some people (including me) find annoying. I do dislike it if part of the skill of playing consists of manipulating the people who are out of the running to get them to kingmake for you. > > > Do you really believe that making a move against someone who prevented > you > > > from winning is "squirreling?" > > > > The only sensible answe to that question is "it depends". > > > > If it's a mutually destructive kamikaze attack that "punishes" the other > > player and does nothing for your own chances of winning, yes. > > If he has already prevented me from winning, then my further actions can't > affect my chances of winning so I don't understand this statement. If you have no chance to win whether or not you launch a mutually destructive kamikaze attack, there is no in-game reason to do so. In fact, there is no in-game reason to do anything instead of anything else from a win-oriented point of view. So attacking one player or another for metagame reasons is about all that is left, which is IMO bad for a competitive game. > > > Was the person who did it to you in the first > > > place also "squirreling?" > > > > If they genuinely prevented you from winning, of course not. > > This all seems to have to do with timing. If I prevent someone from winning > earlier in the game, it is fair, but if I do it later it isn't? I was trying to differentiate knocking someone out of the game to further your own shot at winning, from knocking someone out of the game for metagame reasons once it was clear you had no hope of winning yourself. > > > I call it playing the game. What does "squirrel" > > > mean anyway? > > > > More or less, to trash the game-as-contest-of-ability. Random, > > vindictive, foolish or silly play that throws the game to another player > > who doesn't "deserve" it. > > I'm not sure I get the concept of deserving to win. If you really want pure > contests of ability, play non-random 2-player symetrical abstracts. That's why I put "deserve" in scare quotes. Most boardgames fall somewhere between chess and snakes and ladders, and between those extremes there're more or less plausible cases of people deserving to win. Mileage varies. > > I'm sure someone dragged out the "I play to have fun, and so I profess > > that considerations of what is good or bad game design are irrelevant > > and subjective" line. That was what I was replying to, just in case > > someone dragged that line out again. Sorry if it wasn't you who said it. > > I said that the interaction of the people playing was more interesting to me > that the concept of a pure game. Garfield's original point was that he felt the opposite - he was more interested in the pure game than the politics. I tend to be more towards Garfield's point of view myself, which probably colours my views. > > Of course the games collapsed when a couple of people were effectively > > eliminated and lost all interest in the game. But hours of our lives > > were wasted reaching this entirely predictable conclusion. Diplomacy > > bites. :-) > > The only answer to this is that people shouldn't play Diplomacy if they > don't like it. That's what I try to tell them. :-) I do think Diplomacy demands unusual levels of commitment, though. You can easily spend hours of your life in a futile position before finally being eliminated, but the game is easily squirreled if one or more players lose hope and play to either punish their oppressor, get themselves eliminated or both. It's also a game of almost pure metagame politics - the tactical guessing game is not exactly deep. Of course if you have a play group with high levels of commitment and the political aspect is what gets you keen, then Diplomacy is probably an ideal game for you. Kevin Lowe, Brisbane, Australia.

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 06:26:40 -0500, LSJ wrote: >The rules describe the game. >Breathing is not part of the game, so is not covered in the rules. >Speaking is not policed by the rules, so is not covered by the rules. >Specifically, since "deals" are not enforced by the rules, the rules >do not address them. Exactly. These deals that players wont to make are not part of the game, any more than breathing is. The practical consequences are: 1. The players make not take significant time out from the game to discuss such matters. 2. They may not use such deals to justify illegal or unsporting behaviour, e.g. helping someone else to win or committing suicide. >Try playing under Madness of the Bard speaking only what the rules >"allowed" you to speak by your incorrect interpretation above. I have no problem with Madness of the Bard. By the Golden Rule, it makes all speech, informal or otherwise, part of the game. This works because the nature of the effect is to make such speech risky, rather than to encourage it. >> I just pulled Illuminati off the shelf. This has specific sections in >> the rules covering gifts and trades; throwing the game; when is a deal >> binding; threats and negotiations. I think you're too used to playing >> games like this and so assume that such rules apply to all games. > >That just proves my point. In that game, the deals are policed by the >rules, so are covered in the rules. The nature of the rules in Illuminati is to give the players permission to misbehave (e.g. by making and breaking deals). They also have rules for "cheating" too. There was a "cheating" tournament for the game at Origins one year. Guess who won? Doomtown has rules for "cheating" too and I've had some success in that game also. If one can freely assume the presence of mechanics which the VTES rules don't cover, then I'll help myself to the ones which suit me ... >> They do not and there are no formal defaults to which you can point. >> It's just unwritten custom and local etiquette, as Garfield said. > >Fine. So you agree that it isn't prohibited. No, I think that you don't play by the written rules. Not the same. >Yes, given mature players. No comment. >It's safe to say it's "fine" since there haven't been any problems >yet. I think Murphy's Law is more realistic. Andrew

On 10 Jan 2002 06:25:02 -0800, Tony wrote: >Andrew, is it just table split deals that you have a problem with, or >the whole process of discussing while playing? Would the comment, "hey >man, lay off me for a few turns and I'll try and do something about >Wynn, yeah?" raise any objections from the Andrew camp? This sounds more innocuous than a table-split deal but it depends on the context. Is this two members of Team Luton colluding to get one of them into the final? Is this someone trying to con a newbie into doing something stupid? Is this just the opening salvo in a general 30-minute round-table discussion? The latter is always going to be the problem. This putative deal sounds like it's not in the interest of the player who controls Wynn. He then makes a counter-offer. A fourth player then gets involved. Then the whole thing degenerates into an attempt to analyse and predict the future course of the game rather than playing it to find out what happens. That's what happened in the final of the championship at Gencon UK, I gather (I heard this second-hand from David Hammond). At the outset, the players spent about an hour negotiating what was going to happen. Having arrived at a conclusion (how?) this was then made to happen as a fait accompli. The transformation of the game into a pure exercise in negotiation appears to be complete. You might as well play the LARP - at least then you get some exercise walking around while you talk. >I would like to know exactly where you stand on talking whilst playing; >because so far you seem to have a problem with any game process not >directly and specifically covered by the rules. Is this true or am I >being unfair? If it's not covered by the rules or cards then it's not a game process. Some games like the RPG allow the players to freely extend the provided mechanics. This isn't one of them. Andrew

[ quoted text not captured ] So you think that it is prohibited even when you say that the designer of the game knew that it wasn't. Interesting, and beyond reason. I'll take my leave of this "debate" now. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > The nature of the rules in Illuminati is to give the players > permission to misbehave (e.g. by making and breaking deals). They > also have rules for "cheating" too. There was a "cheating" tournament > for the game at Origins one year. Guess who won? Doomtown has rules > for "cheating" too and I've had some success in that game also. If > one can freely assume the presence of mechanics which the VTES rules > don't cover, then I'll help myself to the ones which suit me ... > You need to watch what your saying Andrew. You just publicly announced that your a cheater. And Somewhat sucessfull too. Personally I'll stick to games that disallow cheating. Thank you very much, but no thanks. Raille

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 06:36:57 -0500, LSJ wrote: >> >> They do not and there are no formal defaults to which you can point. >> >> It's just unwritten custom and local etiquette, as Garfield said. >> > >> >Fine. So you agree that it isn't prohibited. >> >> No, I think that you don't play by the written rules. Not the same. > >So you think that it is prohibited even when you say that the designer of the >game knew that it wasn't. Garfield said that various groups play multi-player games in various ways. There's no way that this can be taken as default support for playing VTES in a particular way. The strict position is clearly that a game consists of its rules, components and players and nothing else. The more seriously the game is played, the more strictly the players should be made to stick to the rules. >I'll take my leave of this "debate" now. OK. Notice, btw, how long it has taken us to arrive at this conclusion. That's the trouble with a discussion which has no rules - it can just go on and on. Usenet is perfect for this sort of thing but allowing it in a timed game is absurd. Andrew

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 06:32:36 +0100, Reyda wrote: >read the first Jyhad the Eternal Struggle handbook (the one with the skul >and serpents on the cover). Garfield, designer of this game, tells you that >one main tactic is often to maintain attention on what other people do, and >look harmless to gain the favor of other players. He suggests that you help >other players to show your good will, so they will help you in return. * The >designer of V:Tes is not outlawing table talks, he ADVOCATES it* Paying attention, looking harmless and helping other players do not require you to talk and in no case is a formal deal or alliance suggested. But it'd be interesting to see the actual text of this article as it doesn't appear in the VTES players' handbook which I have. It's not the first time that it has been cited and it would be good to have it online. I copy-typed his Duellist article and it didn't take all that long. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 06:36:57 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >> >> They do not and there are no formal defaults to which you can point. > >> >> It's just unwritten custom and local etiquette, as Garfield said. > >> > > >> >Fine. So you agree that it isn't prohibited. > >> > >> No, I think that you don't play by the written rules. Not the same. > > > >So you think that it is prohibited even when you say that the designer of the > >game knew that it wasn't. > > Garfield said that various groups play multi-player games in various > ways. There's no way that this can be taken as default support for > playing VTES in a particular way. The strict position is clearly that > a game consists of its rules, components and players and nothing else. > The more seriously the game is played, the more strictly the players > should be made to stick to the rules. No one has ever advocated *mandatory* table talk or deal making. You stated that it was prohibited. That position has been corrected. Allowing (i.e., not prohibiting) table talk *is* sticking to the rules. Prohibiting that is straying from the rules. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2002 06:52:32 -0500, LSJ wrote: >No one has ever advocated *mandatory* table talk or deal making. See Halcyan2's article yesterday in which he does just that. >You stated that it was prohibited. That position has been corrected. >Allowing (i.e., not prohibiting) table talk *is* sticking to the rules. >Prohibiting that is straying from the rules. No. As you said yourself, if it isn't in the rules then it isn't part of the game and so it's strictly prohibited. Let's try an analogy. In the UK there are speed limits on every highway - either a default or a posted limit. But just about every motorist breaks these limits from time to time, even the legislators and the police. But they don't break them by much - they regard being just a few mph over the limit as reasonable. But the more you go beyond the limit, the less people will regard your speeding as reasonable and the more likely you are to be caught and punished. It's the same with table talk. It's all strictly illegal but few players mind a bit of chatter. Propaganda and banter can be taken with a pinch of salt. Some tactical suggestions might be educational or help to speed the game up. But the further the talk goes, the less reasonable it becomes. When players start making formal binding deals to throw their position, the time has come to enforce the law. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > On Sat, 12 Jan 2002 06:52:32 -0500, LSJ wrote: > >You stated that it was prohibited. That position has been corrected. > >Allowing (i.e., not prohibiting) table talk *is* sticking to the rules. > >Prohibiting that is straying from the rules. > > No. As you said yourself, if it isn't in the rules then it isn't part > of the game and so it's strictly prohibited. You keep missing the point on this. Table talk isn't part of the game mechanics, so isn't covered by the rules. See also breathing. You also note that Garfield himself didn't see it as "strictly prohibited". [ quoted text not captured ]

Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:<37662ECD41B527BC.C26A8A0D...@lp.airnews.net>... > On 10 Jan 2002 06:25:02 -0800, Tony wrote: > > >Andrew, is it just table split deals that you have a problem with, or > >the whole process of discussing while playing? Would the comment, "hey > >man, lay off me for a few turns and I'll try and do something about > >Wynn, yeah?" raise any objections from the Andrew camp? > > This sounds more innocuous than a table-split deal but it depends on > the context. Is this two members of Team Luton colluding to get one > of them into the final? Is this someone trying to con a newbie into > doing something stupid? Is this just the opening salvo in a general > 30-minute round-table discussion? How about; someone being trounched by a predator that is having problems with Wynn. Nice and simple. He makes the deal to help them out in exchange for a less sustained sneak bleed attack. Any problem with that, Andy? > > The latter is always going to be the problem. This putative deal > sounds like it's not in the interest of the player who controls Wynn. > He then makes a counter-offer. A fourth player then gets involved. > Then the whole thing degenerates into an attempt to analyse and > predict the future course of the game rather than playing it to find > out what happens. But that doesn't happen as often as you seem to think. And I say again, I doubt your competency to make such pronouncments regarding the U.K Tournament scene being as how you aren't really a part of it. > > That's what happened in the final of the championship at Gencon UK, I > gather (I heard this second-hand from David Hammond). At the outset, > the players spent about an hour negotiating what was going to happen. > Having arrived at a conclusion (how?) this was then made to happen as > a fait accompli. The transformation of the game into a pure exercise > in negotiation appears to be complete. You might as well play the > LARP - at least then you get some exercise walking around while you > talk. I heard exactly what happened at GenCon from two people that were actually in the final (Oh yeah and you don't want to pay attention to what Dave says, he was probably drunk) and it's not nearly as bleak as you paint it. There was a long discussion regarding the outcome of a specific play that in the end didn't have that much bearing on the game anyway. > > >I would like to know exactly where you stand on talking whilst playing; > >because so far you seem to have a problem with any game process not > >directly and specifically covered by the rules. Is this true or am I > >being unfair? > > If it's not covered by the rules or cards then it's not a game > process. Some games like the RPG allow the players to freely extend > the provided mechanics. This isn't one of them. It's a fucking game, man, relax. People are the major element of the game and as we all know people are strange beasts. The game should be, and is, more than the sum of it's rules. Drinking isn't covered in the rules, neither is what kind of counters to use. Try to open up that mind of yours a little, you might find you actually improve at playing the game a bit. Tony Literary Thug > Andrew My Pal and yours

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:5287ede4.02011...@posting.google.com... > "Reyda" <re...@noos.fr> wrote in message news:<a1ja9f$58o$1...@neon.noos.net>... > > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message > > news:5287ede4.02010...@posting.google.com... > > > > You assist him only if it's your benefit to do so. > > -You're helping your Grandpredator to bleed your predator for 7 (say, by > > playing a D.I on an Enhanced sences) ? then you're a moron. The guy you just > > help will soon finish you predator, maybe in the same turn, and will be your > > new predator, with all his vampires intact and 6 fresh pool. > > -You're helping your Grandpredator to rush your predator's main bleeder > > (say, by playing DI on an obedience) ? then, you're smart. Because this > > moves will extend your lifespan. With your predator's bleeding power > > decreased, maybe you can afford putting a new vampire into play, recruit > > that specific ally or equip two .44 this turn. > > > What you're talking about is not table-talk. I was talking, very > specifically, about coaching a player, as one type of table-talk which > is never appreciated and should, IMHO, definitely be outlawed. mmm... if you consider someone as an ally, why should you let him do very stupid mistakes ? > Playing cards to help another player is part of the mechanics of the > game. Telling him that he should bleed first with Seduction, using > the vampire with superior obtenebration, in case a different vamp with > intercept has a wake, and then follow that up by bleeding with this > other minion, being ready to play stealth, etc., etc., is not nearly > the same thing. Some people are just new to the game. If you explain them those kind of things during play, i understand that may annoy you, but hey, we have to teach them the game. We often ask twice newbies if they play something (their tornsignposts or other effects), or if they want to modify their actions regarding all sort of parameters on the game ("wait, if you do that, he'll block you and you won't rescue your other vamp intorpor. Are you sure you want to do it anyway?"). Even if you're on the side that is screwed, well, you would have been screwed if you faced a good player anyway so let's face it and take it like a man. > > > Allowing coaching, even from someone else in game, > > > is IMO a terrible idea. Coaching players with a 4 years history of V:tes is ridiculous. If they are so bad, so be it. coaching recent (post FN) players which may not be familiar with all the intricate mechanism of the game is, in my sense, important. You want them to have fun while playing, and if they die miserably with a hand full of lifesavers cards in play, but no one told them, odds are they will forget this game where all players play for their own pleasure. > > this is not coaching. Another thing : if you remind your ally (or even your > > foe) to gain the blood from Hunting ground or the rack at the start of his > > turn, it's not coaching anyway, it's sportsmanship. > > > What *I* was talking about, in the post you replied to anyway, was > coaching, as a specific kind of table-talk. It was not so clear by the way. > > > Other forms of table-talk may have some > > > merit, but a blanket allowance of all table-talk doesn't seem to be a > > > foregone conclusion. With no rules governing what is or isn't allowed > > > in tournament play, I fail to see why the default is to *allow* it. > > > > Because it's in the human nature to talk, maybe =p > > > What about vampire nature? =P hehe =) reyda

"Reyda" <re...@noos.fr> wrote in message news:<a1sou7$4ck$1...@neon.noos.net>... > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message > news:5287ede4.02011...@posting.google.com... > > > > > Playing cards to help another player is part of the mechanics of the > > game. Telling him that he should bleed first with Seduction, using > > the vampire with superior obtenebration, in case a different vamp with > > intercept has a wake, and then follow that up by bleeding with this > > other minion, being ready to play stealth, etc., etc., is not nearly > > the same thing. > > Some people are just new to the game. If you explain them those kind of > things during play, i understand that may annoy you, but hey, we have to > teach them the game. Obviously this is different with newbies. Even with experienced people in a casual game ("did you gain your pool from the Edge?" "don't bleed him, he's got Basillia untapped", etc.). But in tournaments, this type of table-talk can be infuriating, and in most other games is outlawed.

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message > > > > > > > Playing cards to help another player is part of the mechanics of the > > > game. Telling him that he should bleed first with Seduction, using > > > the vampire with superior obtenebration, in case a different vamp with > > > intercept has a wake, and then follow that up by bleeding with this > > > other minion, being ready to play stealth, etc., etc., is not nearly > > > the same thing. > > > > Some people are just new to the game. If you explain them those kind of > > things during play, i understand that may annoy you, but hey, we have to > > teach them the game. > > Obviously this is different with newbies. Even with experienced > people in a casual game ("did you gain your pool from the Edge?" > "don't bleed him, he's got Basillia untapped", etc.). But in > tournaments, this type of table-talk can be infuriating, and in most > other games is outlawed. Why? Coaching your Grandpredator is IMO the same as talking him/her into somthing. You can always point out the problems with doing A, and the advantages of doing B. Essentially, coaching is just the same. What's your problem with table talk, exactly? People making deals? Make a better one. People helping each other out? Ask for help when you need it. Jeroen

On 13 Jan 2002 08:45:22 -0800, Tony wrote: >How about; someone being trounched by a predator that is having >problems with Wynn. Nice and simple. >He makes the deal to help them out in exchange for a less sustained >sneak bleed attack. Any problem with that, Andy? I'm not sure I understand your scenario. Anyway, if the conversation is just pointing out a common interest - something which one of the players might have missed - then I wouldn't object to that. If it's a formal quid-pro-quo then I might object. The game does not allow binding deals without specific card effects like Succubus Club. Binding deals outside the framework of the rules are collusion because they depend upon personal relationships outside of the game. For example, I'm not sure whether we've met but you say that you dislike me and make up violent fantasies about me. I therefore assume that you wouldn't deal with me. If collusive deals are allowed then I'd only be playing on equal terms if I brought along a group of friends to collude with me too. That's what we see in the US game where players divide along geographic lines - one city versus another. >I heard exactly what happened at GenCon from two people that were >actually in the final (Oh yeah and you don't want to pay attention to >what Dave says, he was probably drunk Dave was the organiser and I assume that he was head judge too. His version of events is therefore both impartial and authoritative. >It's a fucking game, man, relax. It's amazing. You claim to want a game with table-talk, deals, etc. But when I make a case here in a forum which is explicitly for discussion, you act like it's improper. It's back-asswards. >People are the major element of the game and as we all know people >are strange beasts. The game should be, and is, more than the sum of >it's rules. Drinking isn't covered in the rules, neither is what >kind of counters to use. There's nearly half a page in the rulebook about blood counters. But there's nothing about drinking and so that's not part of the game. If players' consumption of drinks interfered with the game, then I'd expect a tournament judge to stop it. Andrew

On Sun, 13 Jan 2002 06:41:59 -0500, LSJ wrote: >You keep missing the point on this. > >Table talk isn't part of the game mechanics, so isn't covered by the rules. I just put it the other way round - table talk isn't covered by the rules so it isn't part of the game. You think there's a difference? >You also note that Garfield himself didn't see it as "strictly prohibited". I took the trouble to quote him at length at the start of this thread and didn't note that. Because he didn't say it. He talked of "unwritten rules". Lacking written rules which allow deals, that's what you use. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:FB2237D08087FE38.E67B67B8...@lp.airnews.net... > If collusive deals are allowed then I'd > only be playing on equal terms if I brought along a group of friends > to collude with me too. That's what we see in the US game where > players divide along geographic lines - one city versus another. Not so and nearly slanderous. :-) I've often seen players travel from one city to another to play in a tournament. I've done it myself on many occasions. I don't recall every seeing anyone collude with (or even help out) another player specifically because they were from the same city. It's theoretically possible that I might have more trust in a deal offered by a player from my city - because I've played with them before - than one offered by a "foreign" player. But in fact I do not, because I know "my" players and know that they will break deals in a heartbeat if it becomes to their advantage to do so. :-) We may make deals anyway, if they're actually advantageous to both of us, but certainly I don't consider any deals in VTES "binding", nor (IMO) should anyone else. Josh unbound

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On Sun, 13 Jan 2002 06:41:59 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > >You keep missing the point on this. > > > >Table talk isn't part of the game mechanics, so isn't covered by the rules. > > I just put it the other way round - table talk isn't covered by the > rules so it isn't part of the game. You think there's a difference? You said that it was "strictly prohibited" (conveniently snipped from above). See the difference? Deals aren't a part of the game, so the game mechanics don't care if you do what you do because of a deal or not - so long as what you do in the game *is* allowed by the rules. The deal is not enforced by the rules, of course, since the rules don't address it. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 17:36:57 -0500, LSJ wrote: >> I just put it the other way round - table talk isn't covered by the >> rules so it isn't part of the game. You think there's a difference? > >You said that it was "strictly prohibited" >See the difference? No. If it's not part of the game then, if you're being strict, it's prohibited. You understand this perfectly in the case of exposing cards. You can only expose cards when the rules and card effects permit. The same is true of deal-making. Why don't you make more cards which enable the players to make deals if that's what you want? The answer is that the cards which do permit this sort of thing - Life Boon, Succubus Club, Monocle of Clarity - are all under attack for being broken. It's ludicrous to have all these problems with explicit deal-making effects yet to permit unregulated deal-making to flourish outside the law. >Deals aren't a part of the game, so the game mechanics don't care if you >do what you do because of a deal or not - so long as what you do in the >game *is* allowed by the rules. The deal is not enforced by the rules, >of course, since the rules don't address it. The practical question is what should happen in tournament play. You would permit deal-making because you think it's part of the game. You would allow players to spend time doing it, require them make the deals in a prescribed manner (e.g. publically) and allow them to cite a deal as a defense against an accusation of unsporting play, timewasting or whatever. I would not allow any of this because such deals are not part of the game (and also because they are a corrupting influence). My position is consistent. Yours is not. Andrew

In message <9506B64A80F10D7D.54437298...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes: >>You said that it was "strictly prohibited" >>See the difference? > >No. If it's not part of the game then, if you're being strict, it's >prohibited. See under "Breathing". It's not part of the game, but is not strictly prohibited. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 16:11:30 GMT, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote: >This is one of those things I see going by that I'm not quite sure >what I mean (so please forgive me if it turns out I'm popping off >too soon) but it _sounds_ like something I disagree with pretty >strongly. If you have a multiplayer game, it's natural to talk and >make deals and, at least if you're not doing it in secret, my >expectation is that it's OK unless the game rules specifically forbid >it. They may not be binding deals and you may not be able to show >any of your opponents whatever secret cards or face down counters or >whatever that you control. But just *talking* is certainly not a >problem. Unless it's in a language that the others don't understand. Then, are they issued a warning? That being said, tabletalk and deal making are my favorite parts of V:TES. Take those away and all we have is a card game with a million rules and errata. Bleh. Perhaps Andrew does make a good case for some rules, though. Same language, time limits, etc. Merlisk Prince of Dallas

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 22:00:32 GMT, Merlisk wrote: >>If you have a multiplayer game, it's natural to talk and >>make deals and, at least if you're not doing it in secret, my >>expectation is that it's OK unless the game rules specifically forbid >>it. They may not be binding deals and you may not be able to show >>any of your opponents whatever secret cards or face down counters or >>whatever that you control. But just *talking* is certainly not a >>problem. > >Unless it's in a language that the others don't understand. Then, are >they issued a warning? The French tried to enforce use of English as the lingua franca at their big event in Paris last year. That was fairly amazing considering the usual French position on this. I don't think it was entirely successful as there are obvious practical problems. Imagine if you were told that you had to speak French. I have a smattering of the language but can't converse fluently. And I expect that there are French players who have similar trouble with English. If you think that deal-making discussions are allowed, I don't see why you think that they can't be secret. If I talk to my predator, why should I let my prey know what I'm planning? There's no such requirement in other games which do permit this. Diplomacy, Civilisation, Pit - they all break down into private one-on-one deals and the other players are not entitled to know who said what to whom. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message news:011170EFEF3D79BA.AA183333...@lp.airnews.net... > On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 22:00:32 GMT, Merlisk wrote: > > >>If you have a multiplayer game, it's natural to talk and > >>make deals and, at least if you're not doing it in secret, my > >>expectation is that it's OK unless the game rules specifically forbid > >>it. They may not be binding deals and you may not be able to show > >>any of your opponents whatever secret cards or face down counters or > >>whatever that you control. But just *talking* is certainly not a > >>problem. > > > >Unless it's in a language that the others don't understand. Then, are > >they issued a warning? > > The French tried to enforce use of English as the lingua franca at > their big event in Paris last year. That was fairly amazing > considering the usual French position on this. I don't think it was > entirely successful as there are obvious practical problems. Imagine > if you were told that you had to speak French. I have a smattering of > the language but can't converse fluently. And I expect that there are > French players who have similar trouble with English. > Keep in mind that V:TES is only printed in English. Most players should have a basic grasp of the language, otherwise they wouldn't be able to play the game. > If you think that deal-making discussions are allowed, I don't see why > you think that they can't be secret. If I talk to my predator, why > should I let my prey know what I'm planning? There's no such > requirement in other games which do permit this. Diplomacy, > Civilisation, Pit - they all break down into private one-on-one deals > and the other players are not entitled to know who said what to whom. > I don't know how it works for Pit (never played the game) and Civilisation (unless you mean the Rennaissance version (where we play with open deals, ie everyone hears the deals the others make. IIRC, Dipmomacy has straight rules (and a time limit) for making deals. IMO, table talk is the default for most multiplayer games. Another example: Settlers of Catan. Players are only allowed to trade commodities during their own turn. Nothing in the rules forbids them to make other deals during other people's turns, as long as don't violate the trade rules. Identical to V:TES. You can make all sorts of deals as long as you don't break the rules (showing cards in your hand, giving people cards, ...) Why would the designers have made crads such as: Ignis Fatuus, KRC, Parity Shift,... when table talk wouldn't have been allowed. BTW, in the original Jyhad Rulebook (IIRC) there was a paragraph dedicated to voting, especially about votes that took too long. "... Once a vote has been cast, it cannot be changed. After 15 seconds have gone by with no new votes (give a three-second warning), the vote is closed, and the results are tallied. [snip tied votes]" Jeroen

LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3C3A1DC6...@white-wolf.com>... > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > > > "LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message > > news:3C39EBD1...@white-wolf.com... > > > > [re succubus club vs r. garfield's dislike of "trade resources > > freely"] > > > > > It's a long way from "trade resources freely" to the non-freely > > > stuff allowed by (the unique location played as a master card). > > > > Um. OK, you can only make trades during your untap phase with > > Succubus Club. And only while the card is in play. But besides > > that, what could be more free than trading pool, cards in play, > > and cards in hand? Isn't that pretty much all the resources > > that exist in VTES? > > Yeah. And the "while the card is in play" and the "with you" > and the "during your untap phase" put things a long way from > "games that allow players to freely trade resources". Once you draw the succubus club, you can give away whatever you want. The restrictions are so limited compared to what you are (potentially) doing that it's laughable to suggest that it's anything other than free trade of resources. No offense, but get over it. The card is an amazingly effective kingmaker; get out Info highway, Jost Werner, Muaziz, a few STIs, then give everything to the player of your choice. That should be about 10 pool straight up, 3 more for each STI, 2 extra transfers per turn, and 2 nearly full minions that have +1 stealth on all actions. If this person is your predator, add 6 pool to the total. You can do this on the beginning of your 4th turn, so by the time any of the other players could even see it coming, it's a bit late.

"Peter Sarrett" <pe...@gamereport.com> wrote in message news:<3c34f250$1...@news.microsoft.com>... > "Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message > news:7869AC7C6D013CD8.B23ED609...@lp.airnews.net... > > On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 14:54:00 -0500, LSJ wrote: > > > Playing Nicely With Others > > -------------------------- > > There is a lot of potential for abuse in games where players can trade > > resources freely, since two players who cannot win individually could > > flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a > > single viable position. > > I know of no group in which such behavior would be acceptable, and would not > play in such a group myself. > > All multiplayer games are subject to potential abuses. To keep them fun and > friendly, players recognize the need for a code of behavior that excludes > certain activities not explicitly proscribed by the rules. I've never > understood why Richard Garfield views this as a problem. There are > unwritten rules of behavior in any social setting, where things that are > physically possible are nevertheless deemed unacceptable. Why should > multiplayer games be any different? > > - Peter Sarrett Because what you find fun isn't necessarily going to be fun to everyone else. In the WAR league (www.worldassault.com), there are league impossed limitations on what you can do in sanctioned play. In general, the defenders cannot spawncamp, neither team can use bugs to 'lock' doors or instantly win maps, if one team has the password to the server, they can't login in as an admin and turn on God mode, etc.. Other leagues/ladders have more (or less) restrictions on what you can do. Some things, like using in-game cheat codes, are fairly obvious. Things like WAR's ban on spawncamping are a lot less.

In message <8f507d2e.02011...@posting.google.com>, Shaun McIsaac <smci...@onesourcecorp.com> writes: >Once you draw the succubus club, you can give away whatever you want. And play. And keep in play until your next turn. And convince another player to accept. (Since they can just give it back to you immediately, and any attempts at any further "No, I really want you to have this" would most likely be met with time-wasting accusations (and probably rightly so).) And don't contest. Now, granted, these may not detract from your overall point. But it is not quite as simple as simply drawing the succubus club. -- James Coupe "Never give in to them," she whispered. "No matter what PGP 0x5D623D5D EB they do or how important you feel it is to get their accep- D690ECD7A1FB457CA21 tance. Never kill part of yourself for them. Because other 3D7E668C3695D623D5D people will notice that part is missing before you do."

Shaun McIsaac wrote: > Once you draw the succubus club, you can give away whatever you want. > The restrictions are so limited compared to what you are (potentially) > doing that it's laughable to suggest that it's anything other than > free trade of resources. No offense, but get over it. Follow the thread. Try playing a game with the suggested rule (true "free trade of resources") and note the difference. [ quoted text not captured ]