HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tao@truffle.Princeton.EDU (Terry Tao)
Subject: Re: Net.rpg - "modularity"
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 15:47:07 GMT

I'm pretty new to this group, but I've been following this net.rpg thing
with curiousity.

However, it looks like you are all striving for something monstrously
complicated, super flexible, and in the end, completely futile.  If you
want some sort of GURPS with modular character creation, combat, magic,
technology, monsters, etc, etc, it's hard to think of ANY rules at all that
are "base rules".  In other words, you have no system at all! You just buy
D&D or Traveller or whatever and play that.

For example, if you have two different combat systems, and two different
types of magic (say magic and technology), and say a magical item in one
combat system gives you an extra +5% to hit, but in the other system you
are using 6 sided dies and you can't add 5%, or you don't know what happens
if you use the Dodge-dodge-parry option, and so on, then you just get a
mess.  It's like importing bits and pieces from all over the role-playing
genre: Boot hill combat system, Gamma world character creation, Battletech
technologies, D&D magic system, Darksword setting.  You can see there will
be some problems there.

Some things are reasonable; having several different character generation
methods is great, as long as each character has the same sort of "ability
scores": I mean, if one person has Strength, and another doesn't have that
Attribute but has Fitness instead, and another has Power, or Muscle, etc,
then if you set two of them in an arm-wrestling match and one attribute
goes from 1 - 100 and another from 3 - 18 you have basically no way of
adjucating it.

Also, if it is ever possible to unify magic and medieval technology with
futuristic technology under the one system, then that's also excellent.
Super-heroes will definitely strain things, but in say D&D you already have
immortals and gods and so on; I'm sure the system will balance out.

So my basic point is: this project seems worthwhile, but modularity is a
problem.  I'd say you use the Darksword system as a starting point: it's
almost babyishly simple, but every item and monster has unified stats and
there is a very easy resolution of anything (combat, research, pushing
boulders, etc.).

Good luck

Terry
From:  (Spike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Re: Role Playing Genres
Date: 16 Nov 92 20:04:46 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.design
Organization: GE Power Generation


> A modular net.rpg can handle all the problems you bring up. I agree,
> it asks for some very hard design decisions now and then, but I'm
> convinced that the mega-creativity of this group will find holes in
> all the walls we meet.

Don't you mean "walls for all the holes that we meet?" :-)

Spike
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
From: apace@mta.ca
Subject: net.rpg  -Build?
Reply-To: apace@mta.ca
Organization: Mount Allison U, Sackville, N.B. Canada 
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 17:58:58 GMT

I think that the idea of splitting build into height and weight into two
seperate stats is a bad one.  For starters, I thought that we were aiming
for minimalism.  Secondly, I disagree with the rationale for the secondary
stats.  Believe me, being tall tends to make you less agile, not more. 
(In my experience at least).  

Why just not use the nice word Size.  We could have it positively
affect hand-to-hand damage, as well as the amount of damage you can 
absorb, but harm your quickness.

Just a thought.

					Tony Pace
From:  (Spike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Re: NET.RPG:  Mechanic:  Skill resolution
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:40:55 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.design
Organization: GE Power Generation

In article <1992Nov18.223635.4026@alf.uib.no>, magnus@bark-fddi.ii.uib.no
(Magnus Alvestad) wrote:

> Well - it's a dual mechanic - is it bad? Should we stick to one?
> What do you think? 
> 
> -Magnus

We're already looking at three major distinctions. I don't
think this counts as two separate resolution systems -
just two different ways of handling the same thing.

Spike

"I would shelter you, and keep you in light
 but I can only teach you
 night vision" - Suzanne Vega
From: tdunn@ecst.csuchico.edu (Tim Dunn)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Musing on the net.rpg thread
Date: 16 Nov 92 21:43:26 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico
NNTP-Posting-Host: hairball.ecst.csuchico.edu


Well, I'm surprised as all get out.  I remember Mr. Alvestad's posting
suggesting a net.rpg, posted a copy that someone was kind enough to 
mail me when I asked a few months ago (here) and the response has been
extraordinary.

Unfortunately, as one of the proponents (in a sardonic nature) of the
"I am all things to all people" philosophy, I'm starting to have a 
few qualms about the current state of affairs.

1) KISS.  I'm a *big* fan of simplism.  If realism can be accomodated
   in the rules, that's fine, but at the lost of only as little sim-
   plicity as possible.  If not, then make sure the rules don't allow
   for *very* skewed (offensive) results and allow the participants
   (players and referee) to make up the result.

   Example: I was playing in a Hero game set in feudal japan.  My 
   character had a matchlock in a bedroll and fast draw skill with
   both the rifle and his sword.  One time we had to masquerade as
   peasants to ensnare a band of bandits, so my bedroll held most
   of the other swords (we were a bunch of wandering ronin, so what
   little honor we had left didn't feel too slighted.)

   Bandits came, and we beat them soundly, but one took off running
   to warn the others at the camp.  I repeat the familiar motion
   of shouldering the rifle while the bedding unfurls dramatically.
   Me, the player, I rolled a fumble on the fast draw skill.  I said
   instantly that I was shouldering someone's katana and return it
   immediately.  Game stops for a giggle break.

2) Flexibility.  The biggest strength of Hero system (the game in the
   above example) is that it can govern any genre, any time (with 
   enough work.)  It's biggest weakness is #1, simplicity.  It is not
   simple.  I would much rather see a game with basic mechanics that
   are/have been/will be applied to all situations and allow those 
   situations to be resolved quickly and in a mechanically consistent
   fashion.  One rolling mechanic, please.

3) Spike: thanks for the effort in the sheer volume of posting.  How
   ever, whatever you did to your headerfile, it's not allowing me to
   send email.  Can you undo it?  It looks nice just to have your name
   there and all, but is rather troublesome that I need to waste band-
   width when I feel it is a more personal matter (like this.)  =)

4) Magnus: another volume poster.  I regret that my vision of an ideal
   rpg does not seem to coincide with yours.  I will continue to read
   your postings, but fear that I will be commenting less and less.  No
   offense meant.  We just have different tastes.

5) All: that's about it.  Just wanted to share some bandwidth with a
   group that really has some life in it.  Best of luck.
   
-- 
Pascal, n.:
	A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
his grave if he knew about it.
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
From: dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca (David Lamb)
Subject: Re: Net.rpg: Skills trees
Organization: Computing & Information Science, Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 17:43:12 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.185116.24333@crd.ge.com> (Spike) writes:
>As much as I am wary of the idea of skill trees, it would work 
>very nicely to satisfy both the generic-approach and the 
>realistic-approach people. ...
>... Instead, how about setting it up so that characteristics
>are the defaults rolled for skills. Below characteristics are "broad"
>skills (Comp Sci, Thief, Magic, Guns). Below these are sub-skills:
>Programming, Debugging, Hacking; Pickpocket, Lockpicking, Stealth
>and so on. This gives the players a simple way to fine-tune the level of
>detail they want in the game.

My personal rules (unnamed - I'm looking for some catchy acronym that
could incorporate "Modular Polyversal Rule Set"; MPRS doesn't quite
swing it) have a skill tree that works this way.  There are a few twists:
1. If you gain experience in a skill, you can spread some of that
   experience up higher in the tree, thus improving "sibling" skills.
2. Skills default to parent+offset where offset is usually 0 but could
   be anything (positive or negative).
3. There are too many skills in the database to comfortably fit on a
   character sheet.  So players normally keep sheets that only list
   - the skills in which the character has advanced beyond default levels
   - the parents skills of those skills
   There's a copy of the full skill tree in the rulebook.

There are a few problems that show up:
1. The "spreading experience up the tree" thing is very hard to manage
   by hand.  I've had to write a program to help people do it.
2. For an obscure skill, nobody can remember where it is in the tree,
   and the tree is hard to search.  My next iteration has to add an
   alphabetical listing of skills, with directions as to where to find
   each in the tree.  [This is why I was so eager to talk about the
   net.rpg rule-printing program - I know from experience it has a lot of
   work to do!]
3. I was initially too conservative in how much EP I'd let spread up
   the tree.  In a year of play, fighters got to the point where they
   were so good with their specialty weapon that it was nearly
   inconceivable to pick up a "sibling" (let alone a "cousin") weapon
   - your skill dropped too much.
4. Some parts of the tree are obvious, e.g. "long sword" as specialty
   of "sword" as specialty of "melee weapon" (by which I suppose I
   should have said "weapon typically wielded with major sweeping arm motion")
   Other are really tough to figure (and use), like how to organize
   various fields of "lore" or "knowledge" skills.
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
From: fks1@ellis.uchicago.edu (Scaramouche)
Subject: Re: net.rpg
Reply-To: fks1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 22:37:34 GMT

In article <41129@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike) writes:
>
>	Probem #1 with classes/careers/lifepaths when dealing with a
>generic rpg:
>
>	How to do it.
>
>	Imagine it.  You've got to deal with people from the stone
>age all the way up to inredibly futuristic worlds.  You need to
>include alien races, etc.  You must deal with careers from all these
>times.
>	(This is a major drawback to generic systems, unfortunately,
>unless you take the Palladium route.  Publish the same damn
>mechanics with every supplement, write new rules for every game...)
>	Sure, you can go for the "generic career" path, but then you
>might as well just tell people to use PA however they wish.
>Careers, lifepaths, and classes work fine when confined to a single
>genre (AD&D, CP2020, etc), but when you need to spread out among
>countless others, you're going to run into a pretty serious poblem.
 
in terms of a CP lifepath i don't think it would be a bad idea to have
something with tables specific to each genre.  i.e. a parental occupation
table for a CP genre would be diff't than that of a high fantasy, but
you could just have that particular table included with the genre.
well that's how i handled it in my homebrew...   just curious, how would
you handle randomly assigning skills?  are there any games that
adequately do this?


>	Problem #2
>
>	How do you deal with various "power levels"?  There's a huge
>difference between a super hero and Jack the Lawyer.  Will the
>random character creation system take care of this?  Will the
>lifepath, careerpath/whatever?  (Another problem I've hit and can't
>get around...there's a couple kludges, but they're messy.)
>	As in GURPS, how are you going to deal with 25 pt. normals
>all the way up to 500pt. "four color" superheroes?  Ignoring this
>will limit the random charater generation method, although make the
>random method more effective...
>
>	If anyone has some good solutions to these, I'd love to hear
>about them!

hmm... except for really gross cases i don't think player balance is 
all that important.  i mean is the 500 pt PUNISHER character more
powerful than the 500 pt fringe scientist experimenting (and failing)
with super high technologies?  is a 100 pt PUNISHER better than that
500 pt scientist? he could probably kick the scientists ass, but he's
only 1/5 the points?  so i don't really think that player balance is
necessary or really achievable.  just MHO. 
-- 
>>>-----------------------------------------------------------------------<<<
"It is human nature, I suppose to be futile and ridiculous"
"If the windmill should prove to formidable, I may see what can be done
           with the wind."            -Scaramouche (fks1@midway.uchicago.edu)
From: orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: PENTE: rules
Date: 19 Nov 92 07:22:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Nov19.072253.14902
Distribution: world,local
Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR


  yingst@milori.ccit.arizona.edu (JIM YINGST) writes:
: No, it's definitely 19x19 (I have one).  There are some graphic designs 
: around the edges which seem to cut into the playing space, but according 
: to the rules it is legal to play on top of these designs as though they 
: weren't there.

  I ought to say that if you're running out of board to play on, you're
probably just not seeing a lot of good moves. However, I've always thought
the board and the number of players should be unlimited. Why not?
  Those designs near the edges are used in a tournament variant, I think.

  Theus (orpheus@reed.edu)
From: flee@cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Gale's Game
Date: 21 Nov 92 23:59:27 GMT
	<MJD.92Nov20181855@saul.cis.upenn.edu>
	<1992Nov21.120351.19368@infodev.cam.ac.uk>

Chris Thompson:
> Isn't this the game that is called Chomp in Winning Ways?

Yup.  Winning Ways also gives a related game: Given a number N,
players take turns naming divisors of N which may not be multiples of
previously named divisors.  Whoever names 1 loses.

Here's a rectangle showing the similarity between the geometric and
arithmetic game, for N = 432 = 2**4 * 3**3.
	  1   2   4   8  16
	  3   6  12  24  48
	  9  18  36  72 144
	 27  54 108 216 432
--
From: starback@student.docs.uu.se (Per Starb{ck)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Othello search space (Was: World Othello Championships)
Date: 16 Nov 92 18:37:30 GMT
	<STARBACK.92Nov15121935@Minsk.docs.uu.se> <cpD=yd+@engin.umich.edu>
	<1992Nov16.163832.2313@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
Organization: Uppsala University, Sweden
NNTP-Posting-Host: minsk.docs.uu.se
In-reply-to: cet1@cus.cam.ac.uk's message of 16 Nov 92 16:38:32 GMT

Tom Fawcett <tomf@gte.com>:
TF> No, it [Othello] hasn't been solved, and probably won't be.  The
TF> search space is estimated to have about 10^60 nodes, [...]

me> What kind of fancy combinatorics do you need to get to that number?

Jonathan Scott Hass <positron@engin.umich.edu>:
JSH> Well, a game of Othello is about 60 moves, and there's about 10
JSH> choices for each move...

Chris Thompson <cet1@phx.cam.ac.uk>:
CT> I would have thought that 10 was a substantial overestimate for
CT> the average number of legal moves in a typical position during a
CT> game.  But in any case, this is estimating the number of legal
CT> games, while "nodes" suggests to me the number of legal
CT> *positions*. This is trivially bounded by 3^64 (each square is
CT> empty, white, or black) < 3.5*10^30.

Yeah, the number of positions is more interesting.  How about a
not-as-trivial much smaller boundary, namely those positions in which
all the non-empty squares are contagious.  This number sounds to me
like something you could get with "fancy combinatorics", even though I
don't have a clue as to how to do it.

(Then one might get rid of lots of positions through rotations and
reflections too.)
--       "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden.  email: Per.Starback@student.docs.uu.se
 "Life is but a gamble!  Let flipism chart your ramble!"
From: jens@chemeng.ed.ac.uk (Jens Krabbe)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Okay, Folks, Here is the FAQ
Date: 16 Nov 92 14:52:17 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University Chemical Engineering Department

m_rheau@pavo.concordia.ca writes:


>okay, Everyone, sorry for the delAy, buT at laSt,
> Here Is hopefully The Answer to all your questioNs.

>this incluDes the faq anD purpose of thIs usErgroup.

>thiS information will be in several segments. 
>this first one is jUst to give you...an abstraCt outline
>for this usergroup. 

>KnowlEdge acquisition.  logic.  fun!  useR-input.

>next post to follow Soon! a capital idea!

>Roger Gentric
>alpo@dogpound.nasa.gov


Brilliant idea - pity about the message.
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: jonboy@nadia.stgt.sub.org (Jonathan Welton)
Subject: Twixt - rule correction
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 22:08:14 GMT
Organization: Stuttgart Net Systems, FRG

The descriptions of Twixt posted so far have all been incomplete.
A move consists of 3 parts -
 1. Place a peg in any free hole,
 2. Remove any of your own bridges,
 3. Place bridges between any two of your own pegs which are a knights
    move apart.
In parts 2 and 3 you may remove (add) any number of bridges.

Part 2 is the rule that is most often forgotten. Even in the rule books
accompanying some productions of the game it was incorrectly ommitted.
It is an important rule, since it often resolves otherwise drawn
positions. A good example is the mini situation already posted

>       . . O .    If X is connecting right to      . . O .
>       X ./. .    left, he can play at x,          X ./. .
>       .\O X .    remove his leftmost bridge,      . O X .
>       . X O\.    and make a winning connection.   x X O\.
>       . ./. X                                     . ./. X
>       . O . .                                     . O . .

In fact, with the help of this bridge removal rule, drawn games are
extremely rare in Twixt.

Twixt was invented by Alex Randolph, a prolific inventor of games
(see Sid Sackson's "Gamut of Games"), who introduced it to a group
of artist freinds who used to frequent a Vienese cafe. It has been
produced by several manufacturers, all of whom are required to credit
the inventor (what a good practice).

Twixt is, quite rightly, very highly regarded, and is rated as one of
the best modern board games around.

If you think that the concept of non-intersecting knight moves is simple,
try programming Twixt. Or try to find a non-intersecting knight tour
of 17 moves on a 6x6 board (with no square visited twice). The unique
solution can be found in Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Circus".

Alternatively, try the following little game. The first player marks a
square on an 8x8 board. The second player draws a line from this square
to one a knights move away. The first player then draws a line from this
square to another a knights move away and so on, each player extending a
knights tour, which must be non-intersecting, and no square may be
visited more than once. The last player able to move is the winner.
This is an entertaining little game, and one capable of being played
with a high degree of skill. I would be interested to hear of anyone
who manages to program this one.

-- 
   Jonathan Welton             
   jonboy@nadia.stgt.sub.org
From: dubach1@husc10.harvard.edu (joev dubach)
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: New game: Think Small
Date: 18 Nov 92 10:05:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc10.DUBACH1.92Nov18020557
Organization: Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Cambridge, MA
In-reply-to: shoham@ll.mit.edu's message of Tue, 17 Nov 92 04:14:47 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.041447.15268@ll.mit.edu> shoham@ll.mit.edu (Daniel Shoham) writes:

   [stuff deleted]

   Since all players are competent, they will all use this strategy! hence the
   probability of victory would be 1/N, regardless of which number *you* play.

   the probability "1" is the winning play = probability no one else plays "1":
   1/N = (1-P1)^(N-1)       hence we can solve for P1.

I'm afraid I don't follow how you reached this equation.  You seem to
have started in the case of "if X follows this general strategy, then
X will win 1 out of N games on average" and added the condition "X
plays 1" and concluded that "X wins 1 out of N games on average when
playing 1."  1/N is the global probability, true, but it's useless in
finding the local probabilities.  Please explain.
  
   the probability "2" is the winning play = probability no one else plays "2" and
   at least 2 players played "1": (if both "1" and "2" win, we will assign the
   probability to "1")
   1/N = P1^2 * (1-P2)^(N-3)       hence we can solve for P2.

nitpick: all else being equal, this should be 
1/N = (P1^2 + (1-P2-P1)^2) * (1-P2-P1)^(N-3).

Joev


--
_____________________________________________________
DDDDDDDDD   JJJJJJ      | Joev Dubach
     D      J     J     | dubach1@husc.harvard.edu
     D      J     J     | 249 North Mail Center
D    D      J     J     | Harvard University
DDDDD    *  JJJJJJ  *   | Cambridge, MA 02138
From: gardner@cs.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
Subject: Re: Nomic Game Full!
Date: 16 Nov 92 00:17:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: bruce.gardner.721873053
Organization: Computer Science, Monash University, Australia

boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell) writes:

>BTW, the MUD that was posted about is interesting, but how do I find
>a list of the current rules (Not just the original ones) that are
>in effect on it? I wandered around a bit there.

Once you are logged on, "show [im]mutable" gives you headings, with 
rule numbers, and "rule <no>" gives you the full text of any rule.
"list" in the voting room gives you all the proposals currently being voted 
upon.

*******************************************************************************
* __  ___  ___ \    /  ___  |  * Yes it's sad to say you will romanticize     *
*|__   |  |__   \  /  |__   |  * All the things you've known before           *
*___|  |  |___   \/   |___  o  *                                              *
*gardner@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au*                   They Might Be Giants       *
*******************************************************************************
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: caspar@sci.kun.nl (Caspar Terheggen)
Subject: Re: Abalone.
Organization: University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 10:03:27 GMT

In <1992Nov13.184934.2778@panix.com> rpowers@panix.com (Richard Powers) writes:

>differently  (The newsletter doesn't explicitly say how th report a
>broadside move.  We're on our own here.)  Also, the newsletter says
>"Always mark the space to be emptied and the space to be filled"

Your notation is clear and concise.  For linear moves it adheres to
the (de facto) standard and for diagonal moves it is in the same vein.
Let's stick to that.

Caspar.
--
 Caspar Terheggen  +31 80 652801  caspar@sci.kun.nl  U634008@HNYKUN11.bitnet
Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract
From: umsmigi0@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Trevor Allan Smigiel)
Subject: Re: Duell
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 08:00:49 GMT

     Duell was played on an 8x9 board.  With each die starting in a specific
orientation.  You were only allowed to make one turn with a die (that might
be wrong, but that is how I played it.)  You could win by either capturing
the opponents king, or by landing on the starting square of your opponents
king.  The king could always only move 1.  Each side had 8 dice and a king
placed on the back row of the length 9 side.

Trevor

(I don't own the game, but I played a few times during summer break.)

Newsgroups: rec.games.abstract