Theory of the game

A thread of 2 messages, 27 June 1991 to 1 July 1991, in the order they were sent.

#2470 Theory of the game

Bertil Jonell · 27 June 1991

  Don't you just hate it when someome issues a broadcast message that mucks up
the editor once every five minutes:( I have 40 minutes to finish this so we'll
see if I manage to make my point before the end is here:)

  Some weeks ago, the tv here showed 'The Longest Day' which prompted me to
hunt through the bookshelf after the original book by Cornelius Ryan and got me
thinking about the problems that would appear if the characters in a campaign
got a pan-galactic too much and enrolled in the ground force of some faction.

  I normally supports the idea that there shouldn't be any difference between
a PC and an NPC from a game-mechanical point of view, but playing out an entire
planetary invasion looks as unappealing as rolling all the 'to hit' and 'to
penetrate' tasks of a 200 battery batron salvoe:)

  One workable solution might be to look at it from the characters standpoint:
They see just a small part of it, and they don't know about all those bullets
that arn't aimed in their general vicinity. In game-terms this would probably
be something like a task to avoid getting shot at during a certain interval
of time (COACC uses this approach with regards to small arms fire vs low flying
a/c) and some sort of random list of what types of weapons the enemy uses.
Has anyone done something like this? Did it work?

- - -bertil-
- - --
"Some people almost never think. They just reshuffle their prejudices."

#2494 Re: Theory of the game

Adrian Hurt · 1 July 1991 · reply to #2470

[email removed] writes:
>
<Summary: he saw "The Longest Day", and wonders what happens if PC's get
involved in a really big battle.>
>
>   I normally supports the idea that there shouldn't be any difference between
> a PC and an NPC from a game-mechanical point of view, but playing out an entire
> planetary invasion looks as unappealing as rolling all the 'to hit' and 'to
> penetrate' tasks of a 200 battery batron salvoe:)

This is a job for a computer.

>   One workable solution might be to look at it from the characters standpoint:
> They see just a small part of it, and they don't know about all those bullets
> that arn't aimed in their general vicinity.
> ...
> Has anyone done something like this? Did it work?

Yes.  I had a group of PC's who were mercenaries, and who were involved in
a big war on some planet.  There were several actions going on at once; the
PC's were only involved in one.  I used "Book 4 - Mercenary" and its abstract
system to handle all the other fights, and ran the PC's battle directly.  (If
I did "The Longest Day", I'd have use Book 4 on all beaches except Omaha, and
run that one directly.  If I were in a good mood, maybe I'd let the PC's be
on a different beach.)  After the whole thing was over, there was a debriefing
in which the commanders of various units discussed their parts in the whole
thing.  One was proudly describing how his forces had shot down a Zhodani
fighter, although he didn't know what the Zhodani were doing there.  The PC
commander chose not to reveal that he had been using a captured Zho fighter
which he allowed to stray from his battle area.

- - --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

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