Dear Etotheipi
Ah, for that you have to go back to my definition of a "real game" and a "true game" and also the question of the nature of games themselves, that is the idea of equity and truth. It's in the artificiality of games, and the mutual agreement of rules. Let me give you an example from an article I wrote for the Courier years ago called "Ambiguity in War Games."
Suppose you are playing a game. It is a very simple game.
GM: He hands you a card with three doors printed on it. He says "There are three doors. Behind one of them is nothing. Behind another is a ferocious starved tiger which, if you open the door, will launch itself at you, rend you limb from limb and eat you up. Behind the third door is a beautiful princess, only daughter of the king who will throw herself into your arms, marry you, and her father will give you half the kingdom to rule.
You; "OK you say." You open up the leftmost door and it is the tiger. Sorry, you are eaten, The princess will no doubt shed a tear for you, but you are dead. She will pine for you, for a while, at least until daddy finds another candidate for Kitty Vittles.
GM: Want to play again?
you: Sure!
GM: OK open any door.
Now the GM has not handed you a new board. The Board you have has not left your hands. (I am abbreviating the many examples I gave of the iteration of the game in the article). So you KNOW that the tiger is behind the left most door, so you open the middle door.
It is a tiger.
The GM: commiserates with you about your bad luck and suggests you might want to fix your affections on a less bloodthirsty princess.
You: (However) say "Wait a minute, you said that one door had the tiger, one door nothing and the third the princess. Now there are two tigers (you open the first door and see there is a tiger there ) What gives.
GM: Oh I forgot to tell you there are other rules in the game. One of which can be that there are two tigers.
You: "Hey, unfair! You didn't tell me that!" and in a fit of pique open the third door to find-- yes-- a tiger
GM: Smiling begningly with a smile the subtlety of which would hypnotize the Buddha, says, "One of the rules of the game is that I do not have to tell you the rules, or that I have to have rules at all."
Now I've horribly abbreviated this, but it is the essence of the problem. While life IS in the situation above, a game is NOT life and we do not expect it to be. Such a game as above is not fun, or would not be fun. Indeed, it is obvious from the physical form of the game that it can never change if you use the same board over and over, so even if the GM WANTED TO, he could not change the result.
Now anyone can see the huge problems of the game above from the standpoint of equity, fairness, interst, conception, and interpersonal relationships between gamer and GM and at the same time problems of perception and the physical-ideal relationship (paradigmatism) of any game.
And at that moment you understand why is Pezz's the players off. It violates the most basic rule of the game.
Now… having said that I once had a game which I put on at a convention which was in the 18th century called "The Battle of the Backovbeyond." This was a game where a large 18th century army attempted to dig out of its wooded, rocky, mountains lair a smaller force. The table top was a jumble of hills, mountains, swamps, forests, tortuous and bad roads and blocked hexes, swamps and ponds. My terrain is all on large hexes so I could easily shift things about. Each player was given a map of the table top, which was clearly visible. However, only the guy who had the smaller force on the table top had the correct map, and the guy coming on from all sides from OFF the table top had an erroneous one.
Much of the game was then the much larger force actuallyf findiing out (the hard way by coming adjacent to a hex) what the real configuration was.
The game went swimmingly well. But the reason was that I had made the game emminently clear to the guy with the inaccurate map, that his map could be inaccurate. He understood this from the start and was quite willing to put up with dealing what he could see and did not know.
The point was as he said." I assumed that the GM would make some sort of balanced scenario and I would have a chance, and I also knew that by patient effort I could win. That was simple. (Note unlike the Princess/zip/tiger game above I had not lied and I did not make the disclosure of terrain random, NOR DID I ALLOW TERRAIN ONCE VERIFIED TO BE CHANGED.
The point was that the principle of equity was preserved as was the trust in the GM. With changing terrain driven by card the pezzed off players felt that it was pure randomness, and no matter how much you argue with them about the cruelties in the real world of uncaring fate, they still don't like it.
Otto