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Is the game getting too complex?

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Space Ranger, Oct 30, 2018.

  1. DaRedOne

    DaRedOne Morat Warrior Philosopher
    Warcor

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    Apology accepted. As a rule of thumb, it's nice to avoid using "you" for generalizations after tagging someone, otherwise it might come off as if you're directly criticizing the person you're talking to.

    I used to think infinity was not, in fact, too complicated, but I changed my mind recently. The reason has to do with the old trifecta of player archetypes put forth by wizards of the coast a long time ago:

    Some players play for emotional investment, they play because they want to feel attached to their miniatures, usually by building a narrative or just enjoy the cool looks and big, flashy beasts.
    Some players play for intellectual investment. They see the game, and the rules, as a puzzle, and want to figure out the best solution to any problem.
    Some people play to win, pure and simple.

    Right now I feel there aren't an lot of Infinity players that fit solely in the first category. Sure, this is a hobby, we're all invested in our little dudes and dudettes, on how they look, and how they narrate a story on the game. But up until very recently Infinity lore was sparse and severely lacking.

    Add to that sparse lore the complex rules set, varied weapons and ammo types, and scenario based missions that each value a different type of list, and the game feels like it's more geared towards the two later players.

    So, if one has the profile of that likes to trawl rules and commit them to memory, then the game doesn't feel complex, because frankly there and re other systems out there there can outcomplex infinity by a mile. I think most historical games will have infinity beat in complexity.

    However, and this had me posting in this thread for a while, it's easy to forget that what feels easy for me might be awfully complex for someone else. And this is the kind of thinking that I say is bad for the community "the game is not too complex for me, and therefore it's not too complex and thus anyone saying it is is a whiner and should not be playing"

    That's an extreme example, but it's very easy to fall into that trap when you dismiss potentially frustrating awning admittedly obscure (engage+climbing plus; terrain not being directional, xenotech rules, etc) as merely "part of the game"

    But most people seem to agree the rules need a revision, so I figure we're all on the same page one way or another.
     
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  2. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    I know it's been mentioned. I think it's in HSN3, but I'm not positive. Too many different chunks of fluff over the years!



    The big problem with Beerfinity is that some of the rules don't work the same way as others. If we get a rules revision (whether at the level of N1->N2 or N2->N3 doesn't matter) that gets all the rules working the same way, that would fix a whole lot of the complexity complaints. You can say, "[ rule ] is like X but [ Y ]"

    I mean, that's actually what Full Auto L2 comes down to (one of the most recent specific complaints of 'too complex' or 'not working like normal'). It's like Suppression Fire, but at normal weapons rangebands.
     
  3. DarkBlack

    DarkBlack Well-Known Member

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    I don't think it's a good idea to try make a game that appeals to all three types. You can't please everyone and trying to gives a game conflicting design goals.
     
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  4. RogueJello

    RogueJello Well-Known Member

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    I think it's possible, but you definitely need to decide which is the one you're going to appeal to the most.

    Honestly, I think the all games make some appeal to these types, but the degree to which they do is going to effected by their approach.

    For Infinity there's no reason to make models, or provide any sort of backstory if you're not making an emotional appeal to that type of person.

    There's no reason for continually adding new models and rules if you're not trying to appeal to puzzle players.

    Finally there's no reason to make balance adjustments if you're not trying to appeal to the I wanna win players.

    How well they're doing at these goals is somewhat subjective, but I definitely feel like they're making a serious effort.
     
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  5. A Mão Esquerda

    A Mão Esquerda Deputy Hexahedron Officer

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    And their success at reaching those goals will always be subjective. They’ll do what they feel is best to reach as wide an audience as possible, and we can respond according to how those efforts strike us. If we like it, we play. If we don’t, we don’t.
     
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  6. bloodw4ke

    bloodw4ke Well-Known Member

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    My take on Infinity: yes, it can be needlessly complex. It is a fun game and I greatly enjoy playing it, but it needs some serious streamlining or a better way to bring in new players.

    For some context, I am a newer player, having started about a year and a half ago. My situation is probably also somewhat unusual, in that I don't play in the community at large, but have a tight-knit gaming circle (about 8 people). By BGG standards, we mostly play 3-3.5ish complexity games, have done a lot of D&D and Pathfinder but hadn't done any wargaming before.

    My buddy tried to recruit the group into Infinity, and to start, he went ISS, his girlfriend went Haqq (Red Veil couple). Our other friends went Nomads, PanO, Steel Phalanx, and I went Combined. Who still plays today? 3 of us, ISS, Nomads, Combined. Those who dropped did so for various reasons:
    • The Haqq player was overwhelmed by the tasks of 1) understanding the rules well enough to not just build a random list, 2) spending time learning what a decent list looked like, and 3) the actual act of getting and putting the minis together. Even with Red Veil she said, "nah, too much."
    • The Steel Phalanx player was turned off by the 90-minute to 3-hour game time, plus having to figure out MSVs, smoke, marker states. Assembling minis was too high of a bar for something that was interesting but not a slam dunk.
    • The PanO player really wanted to use TAGs, but this kept going badly for him because of hackers and stuff. He had no interest in learning how to deal with hackers, pitchers, and repeaters... I think it was the "invisible" stuff like walking into boost range, too. These things felt like "gotchas," because you're managing a lot on the table, and it's easy to overlook that something has a repeater when you're thinking about the basics.
    Now, none of those are bad things about the game itself. For me, that's part of the rich tapestry of Infinity rules. It might just not have been the game for those players.

    Where I struggle is the collective complexity on the table. For example, the Nomad player and I recently did a "limited insertion" ITS mission. He fielded a "10 order list" with a chimaera + 3 pupniks, plus the puppetactica with three puppets.

    So now, for 77/300 points, I'm dealing with 8 minis on the table, plus have to think about g:synch, climbing plus, natural born warrior, total immunity, kinematica, i-kohl, hyperdynamics + counterintelligence, g:marionette (the "pseudo-fireteam" nonsense of troupes).

    That's a huge amount of mental space for less than a third of his points. With Morans, it added the crazykoalas, so I had to think about a repeater and boost. He also had a Kriza Borac as an assault piece and a number of specialists.

    It was a very effective list, and we fought to a brutal draw. But managing all those possible skill interactions, effective counter-strategies, and dealing with that many AROs IS mentally exhausting, and over time it wears down my desire to play a game I otherwise greatly enjoy.

    I'm starting fear the ISS player might be out soon, too. We haven't played a game in a couple of months, with him citing rules fatigue.
     
    #246 bloodw4ke, Nov 18, 2018
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2018
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  7. Pen-dragon

    Pen-dragon Deva

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    I think most players play for all three reasons. They might weight factors differently, but for a game as complex and expensive as infinity, I don't think many are playing unless they are interested in all factors. ( And please note, I mean expensive, as all miniature games are expensive. Compared to other miniatures game, Infinity is quite reasonably priced. )

    I don't think there are many players that solely fit in any category. And I take exception to the last statement. Infinity lore was always pretty deep, having sprung out of an RPG game. Glimpses of that lore has always been available with unit descriptions. It only seems sparse, because they give the rules away for free, but you have to pay for most of the lore, and therefor is perhaps less visible, but it is there. The lore is a big part of draw. For me personally I came for the lore and miniatures, stayed for the awesome rules.
     
  8. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    I always told new players that the rules are free, but the fluff is worth the cost of the books by itself.

    In N1 and N2, roughly 3/4 of the book by page count was fluff, even more if you ignore the unit profiles.
     
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  9. MindwormGames

    MindwormGames Well-Known Member

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    And the cool thing about Infinity is that you can play it quickly without much trouble. You can finish a 300 point game of Infinity in the time it takes to play a skirmish level wargames like Mordheim or GoMo or TNT or Dead Man’s Hand or Wolsung or Dracula’s America or Freebooter’s Fate.

    Infinity is really fast for the level of depth it provides. It’s much deeper than any of the above mentioned games, and plays as quickly or faster.

    Frankly, as a person who dislikes tournaments, I thought that I was going to burn out playing 11 games in four days in three tournaments, back to back, but the competitive play was essentially no different from casual play. Except that games finished a little faster because you weren’t BSing as much.

    And that’s a big part of my ‘this game is not too complex’ argument. It plays quick, it plays clean, and it plays fair, all while providing the depth of a large scale wargame.

    The game can be intimidating. That is a huge problem. It LOOKS complicated, and it SEEMS bewildering at first blush. There’s 5 different ways to earn points? What?

    But then you step back and realize that the way you play your units together and manage the basics of movement and face to face rolls is the bulk of what decides a game.

    In Infinity, if you know how to play YOUR models, you will do better than if you pick unfamiliar models tailored to a mission, and that speaks volumes about the game.
     
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  10. MindwormGames

    MindwormGames Well-Known Member

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    @bloodw4ke, I’m sorry to hear about players dropping. I do have to say though, that keeping 3 out of 8 new entrants into table top wargaming is pretty good.

    It is a pretty substantial hobby, especially jumping into the deep end with a full on wargame as opposed to sliding in from a minis- heavy board game. As you point out, just the job of assembling the minis will put people off.

    As an aside, something I would recommend is organizing some narrative, co-op Infinity games. Several people have made up some home brew rules for it. You have the minis, and presumably some terrain. That could get people interacting with the models and the fluff in a lighter, more accessible way.

    Rules fatigue is a real thing, and I don’t mean to diminish that. Infinity is not a simple game. It is, however, on par with most wargames with respect to complexity.

    I’m a new player too. Newer than you, even. Though not new to wargames.

    You make a good point that when your enemy has a lot of different threat vectors (in any game) it can be challenging to keep them in mind. And in Infinity there are a lot of ways to ‘blunder’ into a threat that feels more immediate because of the reaction system.

    You get immediate feedback that you made a mistake.

    But tactical mistakes happen in any wargame. A lot of times your mistake isn’t revealed until the following turn. Maybe you forgot to take a model’s movement into account when you positioned your model in Cover, or wandered into range of a special attack that gets resolved in your opponent’s turn.

    On balance, I don’t think you have more to keep in mind in Infinity than other wargames, but you do feel your mistakes immediately because the action is layered. There’s plenty of “whoops!” in Infinity, but so too in other wargames.

    You just feel it right away in Infinity, before you finish resolving your action.

    Also, in Infinity, in my experience, mistakes aren’t game breaking. It sucks if you are attached to a model, because one mistake can see it dead. That’s a big thing I tell people who want to play Infinity. Don’t get attached to models or units, because things die in Infinity. It’s part of the experience. Infinity is not a game where you can take one badass unit and be pretty sure it is going to destroy stuff for most of the game with impunity.

    But it is also a game where losing a unit isn’t the end of the world. It’s not the cascade failure it can be in lots of other game systems. That gives players the ability to ‘roll with the punches’.

    Certainly, part of the experience in Infinity is analyzing the problem your opponent has created and finding a way to solve it. I think this gets misconstrued as “complexity.”

    Infinity isn’t a game where you can blindly throw models around without a plan and hope to win. But that’s EVERY wargame. You can, however, play sloppy and still have a perfectly fun game with a sporting chance to make it close.

    You can play Infinity ‘light’ by not sweating those oppsies. But again, this goes for pretty much every wargame. Only in some, playing sloppy will cause serious cascade failures, or lead to bitterly one-sided games.

    So he’s got koalas. Okay. If you are trying your damndest to win and play tight, you’ve got to consider that. You’ve got to consider it along with a lot of other threat vectors. AD troops, Hidden Deployment, Hacking, Fireteams, template weapons, etc.

    But what is a Koala? A Dam 15 Shock Attack that you can Dodge. If you blunder into it, it hurts, but it doesn’t end the game.

    It hurts as much as exposing your model’s back to an enemy, only you feel it NOW, rather than later. Infinity INTERRUPTS your play to show you your mistake. And some people don’t like the way that feels.

    But it doesn’t make the game more complex. It makes it feel different. You feel (some of) your mistakes now, rather than in 10 minutes on your opponent’s turn.
     
    #250 MindwormGames, Nov 22, 2018
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2018
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  11. bloodw4ke

    bloodw4ke Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for the thoughtful reply. The ones who kept on were the "usual suspects," competitive Magic players, etc.

    I played against Nomads again last night, similar list (puppetbots, chimera, etc.) and pondered this further.

    I think the challenge is that, when so many rules interactions are possible, we keep having to stop and look things up. For example: there's no doubt that the puppetbots are good; I don't even mind fighting then. What annoys me is the hot garbage fire that is troupes on top of an already cluttered marionette ruleset. He joked that "I feel like I've spent half of my life in the ghost: section of the wiki."

    What happened is that I gunned down two puppetbots. He used an engineer to repair both, and then said "ok, they're in a troupe again." I don't think that's true (and after looking at the rules wiki, am still not 100% on that), but I asserted that he would need to spend a command token to form a new troupe. We wasted a bunch of minutes figuring it out, and I'm honestly still not confident about the answer. That's troubling considering how much time I've spent shooting at those little derps since their release.

    It's a personal annoyance for sure, but I don't see why CB needed to make them so complex. I don't think the puppets are a better or more interesting units as a result... so the outcome feels unnecessary and self-inflicted ("oh, g:synch plus quasi-fireteams that work in vanilla and are sort of poorly defined, perfect, what could go wrong").

    IMO, Infinity is a good game- more elegant rules would make it a great game.
     
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  12. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, that's quite true. I have not been playing much lately, so I know I'm going to have to spend a lot of time in the rulebooks/wiki the next time we play.


    Hrm...

    well, reading Disconnected in the Wiki, I think that your opponent was correct, because Disconnected goes away as soon as he repaired the TacPuppets out of their Null State. But that's a clarification that really does need to go in the wiki, ASAP.


    That's what I've been getting at: get all the rules to operate using the same logic, so you can say, "Rule X is like Y but..."

    N2 to N3 was a change in game core concept. N2 was about maximum realism, and realism over gameplay. N3 changed to maximum gameplay, and gameplay over realism. There are still things I prefer from N2, but generally N3 is much better.
     
  13. MindwormGames

    MindwormGames Well-Known Member

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    Man, I totally get you.

    Infinity produces little niggling questions like that Puppetbot thing for basically no rational reason. It’s just bad writing.

    But to get there you’ve got to drill down pretty deep, yea.

    At the end of the day, puppets are a Fireteam and the Puppemaster can only Idle while they’re on the table.

    N3 is written like someone is trying REALLY hard to cover every angle some grognard might try to get around. It’s pedantic, and tends to cause more problems than it solves in my opinion. This goes for any ruleset in any game. It is a problematic writing style. One sees it a lot.

    My impression is that this is a reaction to criticisms of N2. CB overcorrected. It is understandable, but that doesn’t make it okay.

    Infinity succeeds because the core rules are strong. Puppetbots are a Fireteam. The Puppetmaster Idles.

    CB takes 100 words to say that. And the words they choose come back to bite them. Same thing with the FAQ.

    Now, as a practical matter, whether the Troupe still existed or not is interesting, but not a big deal. If not, it is a Command Token to fix it. If yes, that’s probably because due to excessive verbiage the Troupe is NOT actually a Fireteam in name and so CANNOT be formed or reformed with a Command Token. If CB wrote the rules less anally, these problems would be far less likely to exist. That’s counterintuitive, but true in my opinion.

    I’d love to have clean answers to those questions. And there probably is a logical RAW answer. The bigger issue with Puppets is the Damaged state, lol. Little buggers are deceptively tough for bargain points. They sure can take a beating.

    So you’re in a situation where you beat down these annoying puppets only to see them get back up and now they’re supposed to still be a Fireteam? Jesus! Cut me a break already.

    That’s an odd confluence of factors which makes the rules conundrum especially loaded. And it does not help that the answer (which is probably there) is buried in a wall of text and layered under colored text blocks and “reminders.”

    This is where CB could do a WORLD of good cleaning up the rules. Cut out the bloat, use simpler words, use shorter sentences, use terms consistently, and accept that some grognard is going to try to worm a hole in the rules which will be resolved by simple “yes/no” FAQs and community policing.

    Edit: I think you have a legit hole in the rules here. In my reading of the RAW, a Troupe is never ‘created’ the way a Fireteam is. It simply IS. But the rules do mention that a Troupe can be canceled. But the puppets all have Number 2, so it could only get canceled by having the Troupe reduced to 1, or 0 I suppose.

    Ultimately, the problem exists because CB was way too wordy and persnickety with the rules.

    The rules could have been something along the lines of:

    The Puppetbots are treated as a special Fireteam: Core that does not count against the limits of a Fireteam: Core and may be formed whenever the Puppetmaster is not in a Null state.

    The Puppetbot Fireteam is Synched to the Puppetmaster, and so is activated along with the Puppetmaster and must declare the same skills, but the Puppetmaster may only resolve declared skills as Idle while Synched to a Fireteam of Puppetbots.

    When the Puppetbot Fireteam is activated, choose a Team Leader, which may be any member of the Fireteam.

    A Puppetbot that is not part of a Fireteam: Core, for any reason, is Disconnected. Forming a Fireteam: Core of Puppetbots cancels the Disconnected state for all Puppetbots in the Fireteam.

    That gets you REALLY close to the same rules, and is in the spirit of what the rules are supposed to do and represent. It is much simpler in terms of verbiage, and probably has less holes, or perceived holes, than the extant text.
     
    #253 MindwormGames, Nov 24, 2018
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
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  14. Leper

    Leper UPGRADE: EXILE

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    While I agree that there is a problem of wording, I'm going to disagree on the source and solution.

    First off, writing a clear, concise ruleset is difficult. Let's take your proposed example as... an example. To be clear, I'm not picking on you, just using an obvious at-hand example.

    "Puppetbots are a Fireteam. The Puppetmaster Idles. CB takes 100 words to say that." Now, when we look at your further clarification, you use 120 words. Furthermore, it doesn't address how I reform the fireteam, (same problem as before) and now I can spend a command token to cancel the disconnected state instead of bothering with engineering. Was this intended? I'm sure I can find some other problems, but that's just the first two that jump out at me. Again, I'm not trying to pick on you, just show by your own demonstration that what you're asking is easy to ask, difficult to deliver on.

    That's the whole reason why technical and procedural writers exist as an industry and a skilled trade. They (mostly) write rules for things that aren't games, but a lot of the same skills and methodologies apply. It takes years to learn, and longer to master. It's the reason why so many rules for so many games look "just fine" to some people and "make no damned sense" to others.

    It'd be nice to see a "N4" type revision that cleans up, consolidates and standardizes things, and those are the keys: consolidate similarities, standardize format and use of uniform, unambiguous language, (i.e. "may," "must," "must not," "functions as," instead of things like "don't have to" or "like.") removal of "X does Y to Z" and "A is Z, except that it's not Z at all, and attempts to use X to do Y to this Z will not work as it does on Z even though it says it does and you have to skim 400 pages of rules forum posts to find that out." Yeah, I share your frustrations, in case that's not coming across properly. :wink:

    "Puppetbots are a fireteam, The puppetmaster idles" is great for an off-the-cuff response to someone who already plays and is familiar with the rules. It's a seriously bad idea as a standard of initial communication of what the rules are, and it's important to remember that rulebooks (and wikis, etc.) aren't just there for older players who need a reminder, but for every player, at all levels of familiarity with the game.

    As for "overcorrecting for grognards," Eh.

    Sometimes it's genuine confusion from new players who have thought processes that are different from yours, or a slightly different cultural intonation from similar language. Sometimes it is "grognards," (or just annoying rules lawyers who don't understand that just because they can argue a point doesn't mean that the objective of the game is to argue the point until the other player is fed up with it.) and preventing those kinds of arguments in the first place is a hallmark of proper rules writing. Doing it in a clear manner that embraces concision and brevity is the hallmark of great rules writing--remember how rare that is? I also didn't mention how expensive it is to hire someone with a strong background/education/credentials for that style of writing.

    Keep in mind that arguing "the book never really defines 'rolling dice'" is a real thing that actually happens sometimes.
     
    #254 Leper, Nov 24, 2018
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
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  15. MindwormGames

    MindwormGames Well-Known Member

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    Fair enough that my example is 120 words, but the point is that it uses far, far less words than the extant rules. I just didn’t bother to count them, because an exact word count wasn’t salient.

    “100 words” was rhetorical, meaning “an atypically large word count in the context of wargame rules text.”

    And in the context of the post as a whole, I feel this meaning was clear.

    Yes, my example rewrite of the G:Marionette rules is different from the extant rules, but it is sinpler, cleaner, and feels about the same in terms of gameplay.

    It leverages the existing Fireteam rules (which the extant Marionette rules do) but with fewer exceptions.

    You reform the team like you reform any Fireteam. That is the point of the rules I wrote. In fact, you FORM the team like you do any Fireteam, with the exception that the Puppetmaster must not be in a Null state.

    This corrects a hole in the extant rules whereby a “Troupe” technically has no mechanism for being created or even existing. A Fireteam is created, always.

    It is created for FREE in Deployment, after which it requires the expenditure of a Command Token. In my exemplar rules, the Puppetbot Fireteam works the same way: formed in Deployment, subject to all the cancellation clauses of a Fireteam, and reformed with a Command Token provided the requisite conditions are met, i.e. at least two Puppetbots, within ZOC of a Team Leader, and the Puppetmaster not in a Null State.

    Yes, forming the Puppetbot Fireteam cancels Disconnected for all team members. This is different from the extant rules. And this could allow a player to cancel a Disconnected State without an Engineer. That said, there is a trade off for that benefit.

    First, it costs a Command Token, no small price. Second, in my exemplar rules, a single Puppetbot is always Disconnected, unlike the extant rules. The Puppetmaster cannot operate a single Puppetbot.

    I feel that this well compensates for the ability to cancel Disconnected with a Command Token.

    And more importantly, it is cleaner.

    It requires fewer new concepts, fewer exceptions to established rules, and operates intuitively.

    Here the Puppetbots actually work like a Fireteam; one that is SYNCHED to another model, thus leveraging an already established concept. In theory, were the entire ruleset simpler the term “Synched” would have a consistent meaning and would require no further explanation in the text. However, one could then include a true REMINDER box in the rules.

    True in the sense that it would not, like many such boxes in the N3 ruleset, add NEW and DIFFERENT rules, but rather restate an existing rule tagged in the above text, so that the reader does not have to then look up the rules for Synched. Thus it reminds the reader about an applicable rule.

    Doubtless my exemplar rules might require an FAQ, or miss a detail. But my point was that this is demonstrably true of the extant rules. Yet mine are simpler and cleaner on their face. So even if there IS an unclear point or interaction (I don’t see one at the moment), this is well true of the extant RAW, with the caveat that the extant rules contain a legit logical hole (which is a big deal).

    So my point stands.

    Without changing the fundamental nature of the game, CB could easily clean up the language. And writing rules the way CB does demonstrably creates the very problems that it purports to solve, while also creating additional confusion related to the length and complexity of the text itself.

    In short, it is not merely a different way to write game rules. It is an objectively worse way.
     
    #255 MindwormGames, Nov 24, 2018
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
  16. RogueJello

    RogueJello Well-Known Member

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    It's been interesting reading this exchange, and I think you're both somewhat correct.

    I think that Leper is correct in that the N3 rules are far more exactly than the N2 rules, and this is a good thing. What's needed is not less technical writing, but rather more. CB made some serious progress forward with N3, it would be a shame to see them regress to the less formal writing of N2. I think it's important to understand that a lot of the new writing is examples, tips, and watch out for this. CB is clearly learning from FAQs and other things that were not clear in the previous edition.

    I also think that Mindworm Games is correct that there are still things that do need to be cleaner, and simpler. A lot of times things are added that are overly complex, which make the game more obscure, rather than less. Often times those things are like thing A is to A', mostly the same, but with a small twist. Sometimes this works well, like mines, other times not so well, like all the various close combat skills (Guardian, Protheion, Martial Arts, I-Kohl, etc).

    It's been mentioned that it's time for N4, which is what it would require to really address a lot of this systematically, but I'm not sure that I completely agree with this. It's true it's been about 4 years since N3 was released in 2014, and a lot of new skills have been added. However, I don't think the system needs a complete overhaul. Maybe a N3.5 is sufficient to gather all the rules together in a single book, and clean up some of the more problematic interactions.
     
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  17. bloodw4ke

    bloodw4ke Well-Known Member

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    Absolutely agree.

    What I've been turning over in my head is, why the fireteams at all for puppetbots? It seems like the main reasons are +1B for when there are three active puppets, and only one attacking puppetbot... the other impacts are corner case (exile?). If that is the case, it adds a disproportionate amount of overhead for an important but limited boost to the effectiveness of one unit.

    Rather than trying to rewrite the rules to reimplement g:marionette as it is, for me the question is whether this result (+1 B for three puppets, one puppet can attack in the active turn) could be achieved more simply.

    As much as I don't want to take a stab at the rules, I think an example is helpful:

    Delete all references to fireteams, then add the following to the g:marionette rules:
    • In the ACTIVE TURN
      • When declaring an order, one puppetbot is the troupe leader, identified by a troupe leader marker.
      • only the troupe leader may declare attack skills.
    • Troupe coherence is determined relative to the troupe leader.
    • When there are three puppetbots in coherence, each puppetbot applies a bonus of +1B
    • A puppetbot that leaves coherence enters the Disconnected state. The Disconnected state may be cancelled by (spending a short skill? command token?) while in coherence with the troupe leader.
    No, it's not exactly the same. But it achieves basically the same outcome with far less complexity.
     
    #257 bloodw4ke, Nov 24, 2018
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2018
    Wolf likes this.
  18. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    I had a guy try that in a 40k tournament once. *I* damn near went over the table and strangled him. TO threw him out.

    ==============
    Historical players are usually aware of the old De Bellis (X) rules. The writer (Phil Barker) is a lawyer, I think. His rules are short, but you need a dictionary and scrap paper to diagram sentences. IIRC, DBx is 8 pages. The 'how to play DBx' explanation of the rules is 64 pages, because the actual rules are all text. No pictures, no tables.

    Super-dense words do not make 'simple' rules. But getting all the rules to work the same and use the same words (Must, must not, etc) would be really good.
     
    n21lv, xagroth, chromedog and 2 others like this.
  19. Flipswitch

    Flipswitch Sepsitorised by Intent

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    Wait, someone tried to argue you don't actually "roll" dice?
     
    chromedog likes this.
  20. RogueJello

    RogueJello Well-Known Member

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    Sure, there's nothing in the rules about it. Sounds like a perfectly logical, legal argument. Just like there's nothing in the rules that says you can't take your sock out, put all your opponents models into the sock, and then beat them to death with it.

    All free and clear. :)
     
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