Re: [MISC] [OT] Bring and Battle

On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> If I find a good system, I stick with it. Period. 

After wasting many many years with AD&D, the system has to prove it's
good
and workable in rather short time to be worth my effort. Like the first
three games.

Do you spend 2 years with every system you own to find out if it's any
good for your purposes? 

> Although I do take your point about the fickle masses, I'd also point 
> out that some things hard to learn are worth mastering AND many 
> things with a point system give you an illusion of balance that 
> rarely bears out.  

I'm not saying there aren't bad point systems. There are. There are good
pointless (no pun intended) games, but typically you care to play the
pre-packaged scenarios only so many times.

Magazine scenarios and such often also have the problem that they're not
tailored to your miniatures leading to the old "but I don't have three
companies of katyushas" dilemma. 

> Okay, in that sense, I've played Car Wars, Traveller (N 
> incarnations), own Guns!Guns!Guns! and I too love to design ships and 
> other stuff and see how it works (I actually, being a software dude, 
> believe my talents lie here anyways). 

But not in SG? Do you think FT would as popular as it is if it didn't
include a ship design system? I played the first few games of FT with
predesigns, liked it, and "graduated" to designing my own ships.

> depends. But in some extent yes, but this is the opposite complaint 
> of the other fellow. If he didn't like designing a scenario, he sure 
> won't want to spend the time designing formations or vehicles. So the 
> preset scenarios fill that niche. With enough of them, and enough 
> force cards, its never the same game twice.  

If your tooth aches when you drink hot or cold, you go to the dentist
and
he fixes it so you can drink your coffee but ice cream is still painful,
are you satisfied?
 
> No, but games with a point system often revolve around equal odds 
> battles, thus missing much fun. 

This is a fault of the players, not the system. If you only want to play
platoon-vs-platoon meeting engagements, well, that's what you play. 

A good point system shows ways to use points to create *imbalanced*
forces
for a *balanced* scenario. Dare I say it? GW's Adeptus Titanicus had a
set
of generic scenarios that set the (often unequal) point levels for the
forces involved -- and victory conditions other than "kill more points
than you lose". In fact, the scenarios are so generic you could easily
import them into any point-based land warfare game.

Winning the *battle* and winning the *game* are two totally different
things, a point often forgotten (and sometimes on purpose, methinks) by
no-points advocates.

Yes, I do care about winning the game. 

> Besides, points are often used to 
> calculate 'victory'. If you don't care about that, but you care about 
> playing, only gross imbalance is an issue and I think common sense 
> can help you avoid that. 

I don't agree. It is not a game if you don't have goals to strive for. 
It's a toy, a simulation, a social pastime, something. No fault in that
(heck, our minis are essentially expensive toys), but it's not a game
unless you can win or lose.

Greg Costikyan has a very good article on the subject at

http://www.crossover.com/~costik/nowords.html

Greg is, ofcourse, an old school SPI game designer.

> Sure, but I don't think the granularity of vehicle or force design in 
> FMA systems is enough to allow the same level of distinction. Given, 
> someone who brought nothing but AA troops to the table would get 
> beaten up, but that isn't the same. 

Well, I think it is. Actually, I think it's even better (or could be) in
FMA. I quit Car Wars partly because it became overcomplicated arms race,
partly because the design process gets too big a share -- you can
literally win the game on the drawing board.

Ofcourse no point system can protect against idiocy, but a good one will
ensure a well-designed force can get a maximum of, say, 20% edge against
another well-designed, balanced force, even a no-surprises, bog standard
vanilla one.

> And custom force design DOES NOT 
> address the issue of time that the other player said he didn't have 
> to spend. He sounded like someone who'd like a preset formation list 
> so no contention exists run within preset scenarios with preset 
> conditions for win/loss. This can be done. Without points.  

Sure. I wouldn't mind such a thing myself. But it doesn't cover
everything
I want to do.

> I think judgement, experience, and maturity as a gamer are huge 
> assets here. I've seen plenty of point based victories that I didn't 
> agree with the estimate of the outcome because points are such a 
> rough tool.
   
Just because you use points to compose your initial forces does *not*
mean
you have to use (the same) points to gauge victory.

That's another no-points fallacy.

> Experience. Did you quit after the first few times when you got hosed 
> in the early days because you didn't have a point system? No. 

Actually, a lot of people do. It is a real problem for the sport. 
Maybe I was lucky I started back when the skill and equipment gap
wasn't quite so pronounced.

And like most sports, we do have a "points system". It's the
pro/amateur/novice classification system for tournaments.

> Then 
> why quit a game under the same situaiton? Gain experience. Then you 
> know WHY things work or don't. Points are, IMHO, a poor substitute. 

Because I loved paintball from the beginning. If my first 6 months had
been real shitty, I probably would have quit. My first game of DSII
*was*
real shitty. Haven't had much interest in it since.

> or accept that (like life) some things take experience to truly 
> understand. Or you can live under the sometimes false illusion of a 
> points system for balance. 

I have no illusions about points. They're a rough estimation tool,
that's
all. 

If I wasn't counting points to estimate a force, I'd be counting men,
guns, tanks, planes, ships, tonnage, whatever. But I'd be counting
something.

Which would be just another name for a (very bad) point system.

> Which can be munchkinized or min-maxed by 
> the wise - not always to the betterment of game play. I'm not even 
> sure one should BE designing stuff until one has experience, because 
> you don't (even with points) understand the impact on the system.  

I have nothing against pre-designs. In fact, I think lack of such is one
of the great failures of DSII. They're a great help for beginners.

The way I see it, player type and what they need from the system:

Beginners, pick-up-and-play value: Predesigned forces and scenarios
Intermediate players, design freaks: Point system, generic scenarios,
guidelines
Grand masters, simulationists: No holds barred

Nobody starts as a grand master. Not everyone can have a grand master
for
a referee/scenario designer. And many people don't graduate to grand
master without spending time on the intermediate level. 

> BTW, can you attempt an english phoenetic tranlation of your name? 
> I'll guess at MEE-KAH KOOR-KEY SUE-OH-NEE-OH but I may be about as 

MICK-OH (like Mickey but ending in "oh" instead of "ey")

The rest is probably as close as you can get, as I understand that it's
very hard for English-speakers to distinct between vowel lengths.

E.g. "savi" and "saavi" are two totally different Finnish words.
E.g. If I were to spell "key" in Finnish phoenetics, it would be "kii".
My name has a shorter "ki" sound.

> far off as any gaijin westerner trying to pronounce Morihei Ueshiba 
> or Miyamoto Musashi. 

Actually, Japanese is easy to pronounce for a Finn. Or don't we count as
westerners?

If you know Japanese, just switch j with y and pronounce Finnish words
as
if they were Japanese, and you're not very far off. Except for the
sounds
Japanese doesn't have...

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