Posts
Kind of like the Triptych but with much more than three topics per.
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Has anyone made a list of Euroish game mechanics (mechanisms) that are generally unsuited to games that are models of something (because the mechanic has nothing to do with reality)?: worker placement, drafting, and change-each-round role selection are three that come to mind.
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Video games: the games (and the players) now depend so little on imagination. Then "immersive" is almost necessarily about photo-realism. But they're wrong. Tabletop RPGs can be immensely immersive, if players and GM provide the necessary imagination.
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Another claim sometimes made about video games is that they are far more interactive than other forms of entertainment. That's true if you can compare them to movies, plays, and books, but not true if you compare them to tabletop games. In fact tabletop games - some of them anyway - are much more interactive because you are interacting with humans, not with software (the game).
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A person doesn't play a multi-sided game like Diplomacy or Britannia five hundred times to figure out the system, or to learn the story the system tells them. In these cases, the story is an abstract version of World War I, or a representational version of a thousand years of British history. They play to enjoy the interaction of the system and the players, to learn how people cope with the system and how they can be persuaded to think or act in certain ways.
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A hallmark of a game of maneuver and geospatial relationships: position can be as important as possession.
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SO amusing to see people who pirate copyrighted material, complaining that someone else scams that to get their credit card info! Justice?
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"We give the fantasy author one giant leap away from reality, then demand tight-nit probabilities and no coincidences thereafter." -Robert McKee (Talking about novels)
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"Poor technical decisions coupled with the newly hired team led to all key metrics being below thresholds required for an ROI positive title," Niccolo de Masi [ROI - Return On Investment]
Means, they lost money for all kinds of reasons.
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Sue's reading about people who set what seem, to her, to be odd goals. Such as visiting the north pole, south pole, and peak of Everest all in one year.
I observed, we're more and more a nation of destinations, not journeys. The same thing has happened in video games, in college, and in lots of other places. People don't seem to enjoy the journey.
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For multi-sided games with significant player interaction, the better the players know/understand the system, the more they can concentrate on playing the other players.
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Creativity requires you to murder your children. If you are so enthralled with your designs that you can’t let them go, then you’ll never have the hard-bitten creativity of a truly good designer. -Chris Crawford (Eastern Front and other famous old video games)
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The "zeitgeist" of 1e/2e AD&D was cooperation and exploration. For 3e it was "be a one-man army" and finding rule imbalances, showing off. ...
For 4e it was cooperation, purely tactical play, and a lack of real challenge (WoW-ification). What is it for 5e? The lack of real challenge is still there. But there's more than just tactical play. And co-operation is still important.
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Gygax said: "There is something in D&D that strikes a chord in many people; the call of adventure."
But that's lost when you can't lose
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A reason why historical interpretation changes from decade to decade, or generation to generation, is that the data is never as solid as some people want it to be. Even historians are subject to wishful thinking.
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I don't believe in "outdated" rules or concepts in game design, that's pointless snobbishness rather than clear thinking. What's good is good whether it's old or new, and it always depends on the situation. If it's bad, it doesn't matter if it's new or not. "Outdated"? Poppycock!
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Henry Ford said "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." Yet that's what many try to do these days, to rely on intention and vocalization and (so-called) plans rather than on action.
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Online Britannia sales - shipping is extra at all, afaik.
80 pounds at PSC Games (UK)
$$74.97 https://www.gamenerdz.com/britannia-classic-duel-edition. But listed as out of stock.
Atomic Empire is preorder $84.99
2 comments:
I enjoyed this format. I hope we will see more of it.
"A hallmark of a game of maneuver and geospatial relationships: position can be as important as possession."
In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu there is a saying, "Position before submission." Meaning that in order to successfully apply a joint attack or choke/strangle (ending the match when the opponent submits) you must:
1. Maneuver to a position of advantage.
2. Control the movement of the opponent so that they cannot 1) Counter attack 2) escape to safety 3) reverse the position and gain advantage over you.
If you have not done those two things and the opponent can escape your attack or turn the position to their advantage then you must continue to move until you achieve a state of positional dominance. Impatient white belts get reversed and submitted because they lack the patience to fight the maneuver game before going after the finish. High level black belt matches can be boring to watch because they will spend several minutes fighting over a a hand grip because if your hand position is off by an inch the submission won't work.
I like this analogy a lot.
I'm a big fan of maneuver rather than slaughter in generalship. The very best a general can do is convince the enemy to give up by maneuver, without fighting.
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