intfiction.org

I'm looking to create a "house of games" type of environment. The goal is to make something that's richly interactive.

Now ordinarily, in a house of games, the games would (in our terms) be toys, because they wouldn't affect the story much. I'll solve that down the line, by varying the NPC's stakes.

I'm looking for games and game-like interactions that the PC might play with NPCs, or that NPCs might play with each other. Especially, I'm looking for such interactions that might be rigged by one of the competitors, or by a person who's not directly in the competition.

Thoughts?

_________________
http://tiltedcandle.wordpress.com

The first thing that immediatly sprang to mind, after reading your description, was the game "Beta-Test". Is that the sort of thing you're after - but with much better implementation and diversity? Just curious.

Nim comes to mind, a game played in Last Year in Marienbad. The perfect opponent could definitely be implemented in interactive fiction, and it can be rigged in that the perfect opponent if playing second always wins. The rules:

You have four lines of matchsticks, arranged like so:



Each player takes it in turns taking as many sticks as they like from any one horizontal line. The person who picks up the last stick loses.

Do you mean "Beta-Tester"? Comp game a few years back?

--No, I'm thinking more of something that models cooperative - competitive behavior. I was thinking of poker, which is interesting for the money decisions (and I've often wanted to write a game that included playing poker) or perhaps a game like setback, where the possibility of partnering appears.

The trick is that these are very complicated games. The 'matches' game is about the right level of complexity (=simplicity).

I suppose one-turn, or one-move games are easier to start with, but I doubt there are any that really have much in the way of cooperation-competition.


Conrad.

_________________
http://tiltedcandle.wordpress.com

What about Mafia/Werewolf/etc.?

Matt, that is brilliant! Probably far too complicated in its pure form, but I may be able to simplify it to a little model game.

I'm not sure how, but I'll work on it -- thanks!


Conrad.

_________________
http://tiltedcandle.wordpress.com

Werewolves is the best! Though probably the highlight is lying to your friends when you're a killer or experiencing the terrifying wrongdoings that arise from collective paranoia.

Rock-paper-scissors is easy to do, and you can add in some prison dilemma elements, like 'Laser' beats everything, unless you both pick laser and then you both lose, 'mirror' always ends in a draw, unless you both choose mirror, if so you both win. etc. etc.

Another thought might be Diplomacy. Obviously you can't model actual Diplomacy -- that would be insanely complex, and probably illegal -- but you could do a little schematic of interactions. Something like this:

Germany, Austria, England, France, and Italy each start with 3 territories. There are 6 unclaimed territories at the beginning.

Every turn, one player can ATTACK another, SUPPORT another, or EXPLORE.

Resolution of attacks: if the combined strength of the ATTACKing player and everyone SUPPORTing them exceeds the combined strength of the player who has been attacked and everyone SUPPORTing them, the attacked player loses one territory and the attacker gains one. If not, no change.

If you EXPLORE and no one ATTACKs you, you get one unclaimed territory, as long as there is one left and enough to go around. If there are more EXPLORing players who are not ATTACKed than there are unclaimed territories, no one gets an unclaimed territory.

Example: England and France decide to go after Austria. Austria and Germany make an agreement to go after France, but Germany decides to betray Austria instead. Italy explores.

Turn 1: France attacks Austria. England supports France. Austria attacks France. Germany explores. Italy explores.
Resolution: France's attack on Austria is 6 (England + France) to 3 (Austria). Austria's attack on France is 3 to 6. France gains 1 territory from Austria. Germany and Italy get one unclaimed territory each.
Now: France has 4, England has 3, Austria has 2, Germany has 4, Italy has 4, there are 4 unclaimed.

Austria decides to get Italy to help take its revenge against Germany. Germany attacks Austria. France and England continue to go after Austria; now it's England's turn to try to get a territory.
Turn 2: England attacks Austria. France supports England. Germany attacks Austria. Austria supports Italy. Italy attacks Germany.
Resolution: England's attack on Austria has a strength of 7 (3 for England + 4 for France) against 2. Italy's attack on Germany has a strength of 6 (4 + 2 from Austria) against 4. Germany's attack on Austria has a strength of 4 against 2. All attacks succeed. Austria loses 2, Germany stays the same (gaining 1 from Austria, losing 1 to Italy), England gains 1, Italy gains 1.
Now: England has 4, France has 4, Italy has 5, Germany has 4, Austria has 0 and is eliminated! There are still 4 unclaimed.
I suppose that if there were more successful attacks against a side than the side had territories, there'd have to be some rule about who wins first -- probably the strongest attack. (If three sides had attacked Austria, they could only lose two territories.)

Anyway, maybe this won't do at all, but it seems to me as though it could give you a lot of scope for bringing various kind of motivations in play. One player will mercilessly strive for revenge against anyone who betrays her, one player will ally with you in exchange for some out-of-game fetch item, one player will always strive to take down the person in the lead, that sort of thing.

I'm looking for games relevant to personal characters, rather than nation-state characters. But yes, that is the general idea. More the diplomacy around water coolers than colonies.

...maybe I should read some Jr. High drama.

_________________
http://tiltedcandle.wordpress.com

Well, I meant the Avalon Hill boardgame Diplomacy, in which individual players take the roles of the European powers in 1900. So England, France, Italy and all that would be played by people, and they could do their betraying etc. on the gameboard, and make their alliances and negotiations in the living room. But it might be too complicated to implement this and the relations that would be involved.

In my schematic "Explore" should probably be "Colonize," by the way.