Re: (TFT) Rules?

["Jay Carlisle" <Jay_Carlisle@charter.net>]

Hi Marc,

Okay you got me thinking so Ibll just jump right in here.

Itbs been quite some time now since the idea of a Social Contract was called 
to my attention, thanks to someone on this list actuallyb&
As I recall I was initially skeptical of the idea, but BOY has it grown on 
me.

However, referring to the Tic-Tac-Toe example you mention;
bIn TTT, there is the agreement about who goes first that needs to be agreed 
upon, a very simple social contract.b
then go on to say;
bObviously in RPGs, the less that the rules define explicitly, the more the 
social contract comes into play.b
Now this is shooting right at the heart of the matter I think, but I also 
think itbs important to point out here that this part of the Social Contract 
(along with the implied bwe shall follow the rules of TTT) is agreed upon 
before the play session starts.

I know that this sounds like a nit-picky detail but I think itbs important 
in defining the difference between the types of bgamesb webre talking about.

I use the terms Abstract, Conceptual, and Model to try and get a handle on 
the kinds of games with some games having meta-levels.

Tic-Tac-Toe would be abstract.
An abstract game is simple and self-contained.
TTT is simple in rules and its Social Contract and doesnbt use any 
bbackgroundb.

Basic Board-games like Candy Land or Monopoly are pretty Conceptual in their 
play.
Strip away the trappings of the concept from the equipment and rules and 
these type games are very similar.
The concepts of a stroll through Willie Wonka land or youbre a real estate 
tycoon are part of the Social Contract here I think and help to 
differentiate one board-game from another.
Stillb&
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_licensed_and_localized_editions_of_Monopoly:_USA

A model type game focuses on a concept.
Implied in the SC here is that the strong model game adapts itself to the 
details of the concept strongly.
Take the concept away from something like Squad Leader and youbve got a 
strange critter on your hands, not much like anything else...

Strongly related sub-sets can be thought of as being ordered along 
meta-levels.
A game of TTT can be played binsideb a game of 3d-TTT meaning 3d-TTT is meta 
to TTT.

A full blown RPG is interesting to consider from a meta view.
Pretty much, if you can get a correspondence to pen and paper for a given 
game then a player could play that game inside the RPG (real-time computer 
games would need to be conceptualized).
This is mostly because I put RPGbs pretty much at the extreme opposite of 
TTT as a game that implies in its SC of play to be a more or less strong 
model of brealityb.
As such, I use a kind of compound approach for many aspects of game-play and 
adapt other strong model games to handle the mechanics, such as using Dragon 
Pass like rules to describe strategic scale play, Squad Leader stuff a scale 
level down, and TFT AM for the up close and personal stuff.
Doing this however, the players could actually play the exact same system I 
use for something like war as a bgameb inside the RPG.

Stuff like that implies a more complicated SC than that required for TTT.
For the Goblin port Ibm loosely using the three systems mentioned above as 
the bframeb.
The majority of the game-play focuses on the Squad Leader scale for missile 
fire and TFT for melee combat with the Dragon Pass scale used to determine 
aspects like the arrival of reinforcements and determining where engagements 
are likely to happen.
This means that the SCbs of all three games are encompassed by the overall 
scenarios SC.
This makes the SC clearer IMO.
A player who doesnbt care for war-games can listen to the play offer and 
refuse rather than me having them broll upb Figures and then slapping them 
into this war-game junkb&
As a matter of fact, therebs all kinds of more traditional scenarios that 
pop up just by moving chits around on the Dragon Pass level and 
extrapolating a couple of results from the conditions.

Therebs recon missions, supply lines (caravan guard Figures get a pretty 
much automatic encounter if traveling a route compromised by hostiles), 
smuggling, and general profiteeringb& not to mention, when better to make a 
good old fashioned dungeon crawl run to the goblin mountains than when lots 
of goblins are out raiding for food?

Ibm just now pulling many of these topics together in a way that I can begin 
to try and talk about clearly.
PLEASE note the word try in the above as Ibm CLEARLY not clear about any of 
this yet.
Some of this stuff is sophomoric at its very bestb& see my next post on the 
upper bound complexity tree value of the original Melee and my attempt to 
answer it today boff the top of my head (more like depths of my ass)b for a 
plain example.
Quite a bit of this stuff works well in practice, some of it only really 
works for me personally (even a weirdo has some personality strengths), and 
quite a bit more is mostly speculation.
Currently, I think of badventuresb as bRP3 filesb.
By RP3 I mean that not only the main scale-level of play should be well 
described, but also the scale-levels immediately above and below the main 
scale level as well.
Also, certain fundamentals can be bcompressedb.
Consider dice.

1d6 is a rough percentage of 16.6% chance per face of occurring on a single 
cast.
% chance of rolling number or under;
1 =  16.6, 2 = 33.3, 3 = 50, 4 = 66.6, 5 = 83.3, 6 = 100

2d6
% chance of rolling number or under compared to 1d6;
1(1d6) = 2-4(2d6), 2(1d6) = 2-5(2d6 bad match), 3(1d6) = 2-7(2d6 bad match), 
4(1d6) = 2-8(2d6 bad match), 5(1d6) = 2-9(2d6), 6(1d6) = 2-12(2d6)

3d6
% chance of rolling number or under compared to 1d6;
1(1d6) = 3-7(3d6), 2(1d6) = 3-9(3d6), 3(1d6) = 10(3d6), 4(1d6) = 3-11(3d6), 
5(1d6) = 3-13(3d6), and 6(1d6) = 3-18(3d6)

Ibll keep pluggin away but a chime from my mail informs me that poor Mr. 
Beards account is trying to spam me againb&
Perhaps I should give it a rest for now?
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