intfiction.org

Oh, I understand now.

Yeah, I'm looking to build a kind of infrastructure for character interaction that I can leave scattered around an environment, or build into the texture of a game, so that characters (PCs and NPCs) have diverse, richer ways of interacting with each other than moving items around the simulator. That's the broad goal.


Conrad.

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Yeah, I was mega unclear in my initial post, especially because I just saw that I wrote "you can't model actual diplomacy" when I meant "you can't model actual Diplomacy," that is, you can't program the game itself into your game.

It might just be better to think of it as Risk with fewer dice. I think S. John is probably going to kill me for that comment, unless he approves of it.

He's a pretty scary character, that S. John.

--Characters who are diplomats (or generals) might be an interesting development. But right now, I'm working more on the, "Hey Jimmy, that thar stranger is awful friendly with yor girl" -type stuff. Small-scale interactions, and currently pretty physical ones.


Conrad.

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I've been playing Kerkerkruip, and I think Victor's basic "concentrate/attack" mechanic would work well for two players - also a slight variation of rock/paper/scissors or Prisoner's Dilemma.

I'm not in the market for playing Kerkerkruip right now. (All respect to Victor -- just not in a playing kind of mood right now.) Could you lay out the logic that maps players' moves to outcomes?


Conrad.

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Roughly:

During combat, certain commands are available. "Concentrate" will increase your level of concentration, up to a maximum of 3. With each higher level, your chance of hitting your opponent will be better, and the amount of damage you do will be greater. "Attack" is pretty much what it sounds like. You have a random chance of hitting your opponent and a random amount of damage, but both "dice rolls" have modifiers based on concentration, character stats and abilities, weapons, and "tension." Tension is a number that goes up every turn that nobody hits anyone, giving an additional advantage to anyone who attacks after waiting.

The key factor is that if someone hits you and does damage, you lose all your concentration and the tension resets to 0. So there's a waiting game similar to Prisoner's Dilemma.

There are also special abilities (some activated by commands) that affect chances of hitting, damage, and pretty much anything else you can imagine happening.

There's also a special "react" turn given to anyone who is being attacked. They have a choice to either dodge, parry, or do another non-attack action, including some provided by special abilities. The relative success of dodging and parrying usually depends on the weapons of both the attacker and the defender.

So... it can be quite complex (and I didn't even get to the way initiative grants extra turns to some characters), but the basic mechanic could be used for all sorts of situations.

That sounds pretty cool. Thanks for describing it... I'll probably have to play the game and look for pirateable ideas!

Conrad.

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Reminds me of "The Magic Toyshop".

If you want to get into coding ascii grids and different AI tendencies for different characters, simple board games like checkers might work.

I wanted to propose HAGL and just provide a link, but I find lots of HAGL, even HAGL games, but not the game I mean.

"My" HAGL starts with everybody receiving an envelope with some tokens (pieces of coloured paper will do nicely) and two game rules. There are as many rules as there are players (the game being constructed by a games master who doesn't play), and every rule comes in two copies. All the rules together describe how to valuate a collection of tokens. A rule set for a small (4 player) game might be:
[list=]
[*] Blue tokens are worth 1 point each.
[*] Yellow tokens are worth twice as much as blue ones.
[*] Three yellow tokens cancel each other, and are worth nothing.
[*] The goal is to come as close as possible to 5 points.
[/list]
The players are free to exchange tokens, rules and true or false information as they see fit. One can give a rule away, or just allow one to read it, or just recite its contents (maybe untruthfully). No one has an information monopoly, because every rule comes in two copies given to separate players, nor has anyone complete information.
The game normally plays on the side during another informal meeting.
At the end of the meeting, everybody shows what they have (it is illegal to destroy tokens, by the way), the games master reads off the complete rule set, the values of the various token collections are computed, and the winner(s) declared.

[[Hmm - the list doesn't show..]]

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-- Biep.