Gunboats Suggestions

[watakshi]

Well,
    If Chris designed the scenario type, then he knows what it was originally meant to be. If he is "harkening back to the good ole days..." then the heavy restrictions on whom you can curse, double, kidnap, steal from, etc should be removed as well. Having played a couple of "good ole days" game, everyone is fair game for everything, no restrictions, no protections.

    As far as little reports, the arguably best thing to do is to de facto reestablish the 3x5 card, sent out once a turn, when the turns are delivered. However, if this is what we are going to use, then you should be able to send the 3x5 cards to anyone. Gives all you fun loving trash talkers a chance to talk about things you have no clue about in order to scare your opponents, or spout a little warning or planning with your allies. One card per nation tops, and basically, have the card be a limited number of characters (or words) to represent the restriction on a 3x5 card.

    This seems to me that it would be sufficiently restrictive. Some nations have mages and palantir, we all have access to start up information, but this should leave us all sufficiently bumbling around.

     As far as 3 nations, ultimately, you made the scenario, you can say, but restricting the number of nations seems incredibly silly, or if you are going to do it, make it 1. Yes, you do get more info, because you get 3 nations...So what? So does everyone else. Assuming the powers that be have chosen well enough, the groups should be reasonably well balanced (a problem I have always had with the good ole days, some nations get more powerful characters, some nations get better artifacts, some nations get better SNAs, and whaddya know, they are the same nations!), I would go so far to say that a group of 3 nations forces you to be better with your skill and information gathering BECAUSE everyone is more balanced than they are in single or even double nation games. This is just my opinion. Its your scenario, other people can just come up with a new one and tweak it a bit. There is almost always improvement to be made in any situation. The game itself can be improved, and I for one, and perhaps alone, am glad to see Harley looking in to doing it...(*ducks and waits for the rotten tomatoes of the zealots to begin pelting him*)...even if I have no intention of being a part of the ranking schemes.

*steps down off his soapbox*

-Ken

···

From: "Colin Forbes" <colin@timewyrm.co.uk>
Reply-To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [mepbmlist] Re: Gunboats Suggestions
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 14:29:37 -0000

Hi,
I agree wholeheartedly with Chris Courtiour on the subject of Gunboat.
The whole point of the game is to restrict information severely and I
have to say that this is a very attractive part of the game. I
probably shouldn't say how many Gunboat games I'm playing in, but
suffice it to say that I feel qualified to express an opinion on this

The concept of this weird omniscience every ten turns (let alone every
five) would, for me, remove much of the fun from the game. Personally
I do not like the idea of giving a list of eliminated nations every
two turns (as is the case with some of the Gunboat games). i have
found that this distorts the game somewhat and reduces the previous
additional dimension of information gathering.

For instance Mages become much more useful as there is a real need for
scrying spells and things like perceive secrets. Likewise moving
emissaries around to uncover secrets, or even sending a commander or
agent off to recon/scout to see what's going on with your own team
(let alone the other side) is a big part of the game.

I'm all for additional variants to the basic game of MEPBM, but I'm
not sure that further twiddling with the Gunboat concept will leave
the game doing what it was originally intended to do. By all means
let's have another variant with limited communication, but it won't,
can't, be called Gunboat.

I like Chris' idea of a written report from players every so often but
with one or two refinements ...
* Player reports should be restricted in length as Chris suggests - no
reporting lists of stats (eg pop centres and armies)
* Ideally reports should be of an in-character roleplaying type.
* These reports should not be compulsory
* I can't see a way to avoid the necessity of all reports being
subject to GM censorship. Which probably makes it a no-no

Colin

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[Harlequin_Games1]

  There is almost
always improvement to be made in any situation. The game itself can be
improved, and I for one, and perhaps alone, am glad to see Harley looking in
to doing it.

*** We'll support games that we can technically do and that players want to play. So if there is a desire for minimal communication then we can organise games with that in mind. Having put forward the concept of turns every 10 turns my reasoning is that there is too little information. If you are playing a nation with minimal or no mages information of any sort is a bind to get hold of. I think 10 turns would allow players (note some games don't even last 10 turns in a normal game, and most are over by turn 20-30) to have a minimal level of communication so that you know where your allies are attacking.

For instance I can't see how you can attack Mordor effectively in this game. It might be that the less well organised defence of the DS means that an individual FP can attack but I doubt that. Hence Mordor is out of bounds as far as an attack is supposed to occur. (The only way I can see is by relying on players missing turns which is not a good way).

We wouldn't want to do the 3x5 - but the 10 or 20 word (no German words please!) email might be interesting. I think I prefer the idea that this diplo goes out to everyone in the game as well. Seems much more fun. At present I have half filled the 3player Gunboat game.

Clint