RE: (OT) Rules "inspiration" (was [OT] Bring and Battle

On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Tim Jones wrote:

> This could be seen as minimaxing, your (the player) motives
> for doing it of course may not be that.

By now I am *well* aware that some see any attempt to logically dissect
and analyze the Holy Writ(tm) rule system as the ultimate evil and
sacrilige and that my stated goal of unmasking and closing loopholes is
just a flimsy cover for my evil desire to actually use said loopholes in
a
game.
 
Understanding is a sin. True believers have only blind faith.

Welcome to the club, Tim.

> I don't agree with this statement. Heuristic (A rule of thumb,
> simplification or educated guess that reduces or limits the search
> for solutions in domains that are difficult and poorly understood.

Heuristics, in gamesman terms, equate to playtesting.

Let's review the GRW example:

Fact: There is a rule that quite obviously fails to achieve the desired
effect (the designer even named some troops "snipers" and gave them
Shootin' D8). 

It can only be concluded that the designer did not check the validity of
his rules mathematically, nor playtested them enough to find this
rather obvious failing. 

I am ready to amend my statement: I don't think anyone who can't do this
much probability math, doesn't have someone to do it for him AND doesn't
bother with equivalent amount of playtesting, has no business designing
fundamentally mathematical processes, i.e. games.

Besides, being *initially* heuristically designed doesn't mean it
couldn't
or shouldn't be checked out with exact calculations. It seems to work
the
way you wanted -- now make sure. 

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