the Great game was Re: A new power to deal with, The New Confederate States

On Tue, 19 Jan 1999, Los wrote:

> Interesting side note: Imagine a future GZZ ECC that decides the fate
of
> the official GZG Universe after 2200.

i have occasionally wondered about something like this - *really* get
the
player base involved. maybe not for the Big One, which is just too
critical, but if the fourth solar war comes around some time (am i
counting right?), with everyone vs everyone else (none of this two-bloc
rubbish!), then it might work.

ok, here's the plan. i will say theez only wance.

i call it the Great Game.

first, find your operations centre. we have one right here, on gzg-l -
certainly the biggest and most far-reaching permanent assembly of gzg
players. we would establish a group of referees - gzg officials (jon t
can
sit there with a cup of tea and a fluffy white cat), plus some of the
senior members of the list who don't mind being neutral - to keep track
of
things and generally administer (they'd be the UN). everyone else who
wanted in would become national officers - admirals or grand admirals.

we'd use a big map / astrographic database, using Nyrath the Entirely
Indispensable's data. the grand admirals would move fleets about in
space
and use some sort of campaign system (must be quite simple), and battles
would be resolved by two players meeting up somewhere in realspace and
playing a game.

obviously, we couldn't use a fixed mapping of admirals to players - if
Grand Admiral Schoonmacher deploys Admiral Martin's 7th Deep Space Fleet
to the Xen sector to engage Admiral Barclay's 22nd Colonial task Force,
we
can't expect Andrew to up sticks and move to Canada. not unless GZG is	
willing to pay the air fares :-).

basically, there would always be a list of actions which have to be
fought, and players would either volunteer to fight them, or be assigned
them on a rota basis, or something. alternatively, all the big fights
could take place at cons; this whole thing wouldn't have to run quickly
-
if we can keep it going until 2005, that'd be fine. play the war in
realtime!

the whole shebang would depend entirely on electronic communications,
but
i don't see that as a problem. we could always set up post-to-mail
gateways (eg, if someone in the uk plays a battle, they could send me a 
postcard with the result and i'd upload it).

the business case is pretty robust - if players know that their actions
affect the course of history - even if they are only commanders of a
sector fleet - then they will be hooked.

it would certainly take some work to set up - agreeing some campaign
rules, setting up the scenario, picking UN and national officers, making
the list of gamers, sorting out the strategic play procedure, etc. it
would also take a pretty scary commitment, but i think we could minimise
the impact by making it a very low-intensity war; maybe if 20 - 33 % of
all battles played by listers were Great Game ones, that would provide
enough speed. in fact, that might make for a ridiculously fast war, now
i
come to think of it.

we could always rotate people - if a grand admiral can't commit the time
to command a nation, he can resign (or take some leave) and have one of
his subordinates take over. regular players could join or leave the
Great
Game register at any time. if the regsiter ever got below some critical
level, the Game could be suspended - the war has ground to a stalemate
for
a while.

an alternative to having a strategic-level game going on (and so placing
a
huge burden on some peoples' shoulders) would be to have some sort of
random/automatic system which duplicated the politicians.

> You have a campiagn of somesort in
> the months leading up, with the final big fight at the con. If the
NSL,
> NRE, NAC or whatever alien force the humans take on is elimniated then
> the discussion of new happenings for that power are stricken from teh
> roles forever....

i think that's a bit excessive - too much would be dependent on the turn
of one or two battles. my model has no one player in a position to
change
history (provided the campaign game made decisive strategic strikes
hard).

> I know it would never happen but imagine the tension and seriousness
of
> such an important battle.

why would it never happen? my way, which would inevitably end up with a
generic big fight with no winners, is safe to plug into the future
history. the only people we need to kick into motion to do this are us -
the future is in our hands, and we have the technology (dammit, i've
always wanted to say that!)!

of course, this could just be the caffeine talking. it says "strength
rating 4", but out of what? i didn't see any rating 5 in the shop ...

anyway, there's an idea. comments, anyone (and, yes, that is a
rhetorical
question)?

Tom