One interesting question when setting up to play is what are your
intentions. Are you playing with the aim to win? (Lots of players primary
aim is to have fun - and nuking an ally can be considered fun in that
manner!)
These shallow types are encouraged partly because of the fact that there's no game to game reward or recording system for winning. The VP system is the weakest part of the game, who's ever going to win as Rhudaur... so why not nuke your allies. A Player Rating system would have been a real answer, but there's not enough interest to do the work needed to debate one. Disappointing, but understandable, most people it seems just want to play the game, for all its flaws, rather than develop it.
So you should impose something simple. The "Show Your Mom" GWCs may be regarded with a little mirth by we hardnoses who debate here, but they would be a little bit of fun, and might keep some of the less mature more focused. Knock out some little card certificates and send them to everyone on the winning team, in all games which exceed 12 turns. If you put the game number and the date on them, and the names (spelt correctly) of the team, they would be nice little souvenirs.
I'm not saying that this would eliminate all the psychos, but it would be a step in the right direction.
At 04:13 PM 24-10-01, Middle Earth PBM Games wrote:
One interesting question when setting up to play is what are your
intentions. Are you playing with the aim to win? (Lots of players primary
aim is to have fun - and nuking an ally can be considered fun in that
manner!)
These shallow types are encouraged partly because of the fact that
there's
no game to game reward or recording system for winning. The VP
system is
the weakest part of the game, who's ever going to win as Rhudaur...
so why
I agree.
Probably the majority of us who play this game play primarily because
it's fun anyway or because we choose to look at the team victory and
mostly ignore the individual victory points.
But most of us probably "glance" at the victory points anyway, since
it's the only measure of "performance" that we have.
I have to say that especially for a new player the current VP system
is detrimental to gameplay and enjoying the game.
As previous discussions have revealed, a perfect VP system probably
does not exist. But it would be really nice with a _better_ system
which could more justly measure the performance of each particular
nation.
