Re: That Table Again

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 02:01:19 +0100 (BST)


Eric Hansen defends the HW tables, unto death:
> Conflict resolution in hero wars is based on a comparison of opposed results.
A
> table is, imo, a perfectly acceptable and reasonable way to convey these
> relationships to the player without running through a series of nested if
> satements.

Why not just make the actual rule simple enough that the degree of "nesting" is negligable, if not non-existent? All that the table seems to gain is that the assorted "tied" results -- "Failure/Faulure", "Big Success/Big Success", etc -- differ, which seems to me to be extremely non-crucial. If the mechanism _needed_ to have the degree of complexity that a table can encode, then sure, use a table -- but why does HW need a table for a mechanism fundamentally the same as that of RQ or Pendragon, which do not?

What, in a word, does the added complexification of the HW table, given how totally abstract it's supposed to be, actually _gain_?

> I know you will argue that the table's contents should be clearly
> expressed in longhand rules, with the table included as a play aid.

And your rebuttal of this point would be?

> The principles of conflict resolution are very clearly presented in the
> rules, and the tables simply let us know the outcome of any conflict at
> a glance. It is unnecessary to include the long version.

The point is that the non-tabular version won't be a "long version", it'll be a "short version". And better yet, an "intuitively comprehensible" one. If you don't believe this, compare say the Pendragon rules with the HW ones. (I suggested a way of doing this for HW several posts ago...)

> I stand by my belief that objections to
> the Hero Wars contest tables are irrational.

As you have advanced no cogent argument that this is the case, I suggest your belief in this objection's irrationality is in fact, irrational.

David Dunham:
> As for the main resolution table in Hero Wars, I think this is a case where
> the information is best presented in a table, rather than a bunch of
> sentences which say "if x then y."

To be a bit more explicit: my objection/suggestion is not "why not present the same horribly special-case-ridden rule in non-tabular form", but: "why not have a simpler rule, which doesn't _need_ to be presented as a table?"

> The meta-rule is "the better roll wins,"
> but the table is necessary because of the betting of Status Points.

I disagree. It would be possible to handle this _much_ more uniformly; the question is, why is it necessary to have such a whacky variety of results? Each entry has up to two out of three possible types of result (gain/forfeit/transfer), with a less than systenmatic distribution of these. The mere fact of betting SP's on the result need not complicate or necessitate the table at all.

Slainte,
Alex.


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