evilgong | 03 Dec 2013 11:04 p.m. PST |
I think there is some unwritten Law of Maximum Improbability in playtesting rules – which the dice will dictate that your playtest games will be pushed into the most unlikley areas. Yesterday I played three games where I wanted to go over some simple combat interactions in a draft rules set. The dice and random events made the game go wild – troops breaking through the enemy line, others surrendering, some running away at mild provocation and some of the poorest troops in the system dicing like fanatics, etc, etc. Various checking of the maths confirmed each of these were individually v rare (ie less than 1 %) outcomes. It did make the solo games more interesting. Is it just me or do your playtest games go strange. Regards David F Brown |
Mako11 | 04 Dec 2013 12:27 a.m. PST |
Well, on the plus side, that does at least let you test the extremes. From many rules I've seen, they only deal with the mundane, and never consider the corner cases like yours, which leads to unfortunate issues as well. Can't say I've run a lot of playtest games. If needed, desired, don't be afraid to fudge the numbers/die rolls, in order to test out the issues you are interested in. |
Chris Palmer | 04 Dec 2013 3:33 a.m. PST |
Yes. Our club routinely playtests scenarios for convention games during our regular meetings, and invariably one player will roll consistently incredibly good, or incredibly bad. Resulting in a skewed outcome for the game. It's hard to know if a scenario is balanced when one side can't fail a dice roll, and the other side can't pass one. |
MajorB | 04 Dec 2013 3:40 a.m. PST |
I find it surprising that most wargamers don't really understand statistics and probability seeing as how it is such an important component of the games we play. Of course it depends on the purpose of a playtest, but if you attempting to validate and/or calibrate a set of rules to check that they deliver historical outcomes then there is a strong case to be made for using average results for all random elements. The simplest way of doing this is that if you get an extreme result then just roll it again. Of course you wouldn't want to do that in a "proper" game, but a playtest is really just an experiment. It's hard to know if a scenario is balanced There is no such thing as a balanced scenario. |
harryhill | 04 Dec 2013 4:18 a.m. PST |
History wasn't balanced and was full of extreme events. It's only gamers blubbing like kids because they want to control everything that makes you even consider last nights games. |
Dave Crowell | 04 Dec 2013 6:04 a.m. PST |
Actually, it seems to me that if one side can roll incredibly well and the other abysmally poorly and the game is still fun, the scenario may be balanced properly. Not, I will grant, in the sense that both sides have equal chances of winning, but in the more important sense that both sides have equal chances of enjoying the game. I think as gamers we may have unrealistic expectations of balance and symmetry on the battlefield. I cannot think of a battle in which one commander held back so as to "balance" against his opponent. |
MajorB | 04 Dec 2013 6:20 a.m. PST |
Not, I will grant, in the sense that both sides have equal chances of winning, but in the more important sense that both sides have equal chances of enjoying the game. A subtle, but important distinction. How do you measure enjoyment? |
Khusrau | 04 Dec 2013 6:37 a.m. PST |
"A subtle, but important distinction. How do you measure enjoyment?" Do the players say 'please sir, may I have another?' Simples
|
doc mcb | 04 Dec 2013 6:44 a.m. PST |
Yes, I've noticed the same thing. And the rules I'm testing now use buckets of d6s, which SHOULD produce fairly predictable results. But I agree that some unpredictability is good, part of the fun. |
OSchmidt | 04 Dec 2013 6:56 a.m. PST |
Dear Evilgong So how is your experience unrealistic? Sounds like you've produced an exciting game. This will mark it off from the vast majority of other rules which are as boring as watching paint dry-- beige paint at that." Anomalies and unexpected events are what makes history, and what we get into games for. But this is simply my own opinion. I believe we should accept what Clausewitz said that "war is the area of human activity most under the dictates of chaos." Success in war comes not from eliminating the chaos which most rules sets attempt, or attempt to allow chaos when they feel it is justified (which is always for the other guy, never for them) but from running your amy to recover from or take advantage of chaos. This is the reason for discipline, training, rational thought etc. Perhaps it is best to remember what the all-arounder Von Moltke the Elder said (remember he was a battlefield commander, theorist, head of an army and he won one of the most successfull and disproportionate victories in history) "Strategy is a system of expedients." |
ArmymenRGreat | 04 Dec 2013 2:14 p.m. PST |
It would probably benefit game designers and testers to read a little about software testing. There's a whole science around this stuff. |
Phil DAmato | 05 Dec 2013 9:47 a.m. PST |
I remember a Check Your 6! Malta game I playtested many times. I thought I had all the bases covered. I ran it at a convention. I had an 8 year old run the AA for the British carrier. The kid rolled 11 or 12 on 2d6's 11 out of 16 times. It totally destroyed the wave of Stukas that were attacking. I asked the players that maybe I made the AA too strong. They all said the same thing. You can't predict a kid rolling dice. They always hit. It is when they get older that they always miss. Phil |
Mobius | 05 Dec 2013 9:59 a.m. PST |
Under most circumstances things should return to the mean even with an outlier result. If it doesn't it may be a catastrophic result or there may be a flaw in the design. You can't really tell by just "checking maths" of individual events. You also have to look at things within the Law of Small Numbers. |
Mobius | 05 Dec 2013 11:46 a.m. PST |
oops, I mean the law of large numbers. |
McLaddie | 05 Dec 2013 11:54 a.m. PST |
That's what play-testing is all about, baby. Even the best game systems can produce wonky or skewed results. It will always be a possibility when you have chance as a basic element in the game processes. The questions are: 1. Are the extremes in results acceptable, within what has been established as the possible or likely? 2. If not, what can be done about it? 3. Does wild swings in chance results constitute a lack of balance in the game? [Balance: where both sides have a *reasonable* opportunity to win
] 4. Are you willing to do the work to answer those questions? |
MajorB | 05 Dec 2013 3:00 p.m. PST |
3. Does wild swings in chance results constitute a lack of balance in the game? [Balance: where both sides have a *reasonable* opportunity to win
] Depends on how you define "winning". |
McLaddie | 05 Dec 2013 4:49 p.m. PST |
Depends on how you define "winning". Obviously. The game designer has a great deal of leeway in determining that
He can set whatever criteria for winning he wants to
. |
CorpCommander | 28 Dec 2013 1:44 p.m. PST |
The worst for me was play testing Saga: Dark Ages Skirmish and having all extremely average die rolls which lulled me into thinking how amazingly well behaved the game was. Then in my first actual game my dice were extremely uneven without an average set among the dozen or more I threw! |