I’d like to see what the interest level is amongst MEPBM players in a game where the map (and a host of other things) are random every game.
The “old days” of MEPBM included lack of familiarity with the map, lack of familiarity with the behavior of dragons, lack of familiarity with the riddles, lack of familiarity with the effects of the various Artifacts, and, for a short period of time, a lack of familiarity with the details of Special Nation Abilities.
Most of this is gone now, and MEPBM has become a radically different kind of game than it was when first released circa 1985.
I’d love to see the same ruleset used, but in a game where all those unknowns were present EVERY game. This would include the following for EACH GAME:
[ul]
[li]Randomly generated map
[/li][li]Randomly-generated dragons (names, attributes, etc.)
[/li][li]Randomly-selected dragon hunting grounds
[/li][li]Random reactions for the dragons themselves
[/li][li]Randomly-named Artifacts
[/li][li]Random attributes for the Artifacts
[/li][li]Perhaps even new riddles, purging out the known ones
[/li][li]Perhaps a Nation-designing aspect like one of the scenarios (1000?) now offers
[/li][/ul]
Every game would be fresh. Really fresh.
It would no longer include an immediate mad scramble for the same twelve Artifacts followed by an immediate known-Character/known-Artifact hunt.
It would no longer include “canned” strategies – at least not to the detail currently seen.
Games would probably run longer. Building your Nation would again be a real part of the game.
I would be very interested in such a thing. Though I acknowledge that continuing to call it MEPBM would be a bit idiosynchratic, since it wouldn’t really be about Middle-earth anymore.
Steven,
in general i’d be interested in playing such a game. But if you’re opening up pandora’s box of game design, then why not really open it up?
a. why do armies go away when their commander is assassinated? why isn’t the “next-in-command” promoted, as a C10 with the other 20 points randomly assigned between C,A,E, & M?
b. why is the combat system designed such that it’s almost never useful to have anything other than HC or HI? And… “wood weapons???” give me a break…
c. why do orc pop centers readily convert to Elrond’s siren song (or vice-versa)… shouldn’t there be a natural distaste of DW/Elves for non-human emisarries, and vice-versa (if we’re staying in ME universe)
d. why are mages the least useful class? why can’t their combat spells actually make a difference in a combat? What else could be done to beef up the class? (i.e. have mage-skill abilities that raise mage rank other than PrenMgy - or have PrenMgy have a chance to actually discover something useful - location of an artifact, lost list spell, etc.)
e. why is naval combat such that both navies virtually sink each other? What can be done to enhance the rules such that it isn’t so complicated to move armies from ships onto land & vice-versa? just why exactly do there have to be “troops” to man a navy? Aren’t sailors sailors? DOn’t they stay with they ships? Why do HC convert into sailors and then back into HC again…Seems to me that construction of ships should imply the hiring of the sailors, and that maintenance of the ships implies paying their wages. I see no reason that troops are required for a “transport” navy to be operational. I can see an argument for LI, MA, AR to man warships, as usually such were used in boarding actions But again, it could be assumed that such are implied in the creation of the warship and the maintenance of it. Why can’t navies land in “hills & rough?”
and so on and so on… Lawrence Tilley also has a bunch of great suggestions on his web site. check it out.
Not: because the program doesn’t create “random” anything. Anything different than the set existing world would have to be manually programmed.
I was part of the Kin Strife (new module) discussion group and many of the traditional “fix the game” ideas as espoused by Dave were floated, precious few if any were adopted due to programming complications. A new map was also floated as an idea, one that “zoomed” into the Gondor/Harad/Umbar region (I mean, it was about the Kin Strife…) but it wasn’t endorsed by the company.
So pipe dream away, anything that is coded isn’t going to change beyond “tweaks”.
The best shot at “random” anything is playing FA, but that game is undergoing a supposed overhaul (really just increasing the power of the nations at start) and has found itself in a “standard play” rut also.
It could be called Eastern Earth or look in the Silmarillion (or like) for another name. Random nation characters and pop centers would be interesting also. It would eliminate ‘standard tactics’, since everything is new every game.
Granted the current games have huge paradox holes in them, but every game has limitations. These are more like a board game than an online video game.
If you take a realistic approach towards this, FA is the most random game you can get and will get for a while. Randomizing the 1650 scenario would just make it like FA and kill its flavor, so I don’t see much sense in that. Apart from the map, almost everything in FA is fog of war, play FA gunbout to make that fog complete.
As for the other things that have been discussed, I am still waiting for a real 2nd edition, now that harly owns the code. And I am a patient man
I don’t think that an exercise of this type would be successful, for the same reasons that fourth age games don’t work very well. The original map for 1650 has design choices “built in” in terms of how far capitals are away from one another, in the starting character stats (no agents of any nation starting above 40 rank), etc.
It’d be very difficult to balance a random map. I find something like the WOTR scenario to be a more viable path; set up a different (and balanced) set of starting positions and characters.
I played ME-PBM with GSI back in the day, and that game with all the unknowns was far superior to the “efficiency” game of today, mainly due to the unknowns as discussed. However I do understand that major editing or tweaking 20-year old code is probably not going to happen.
My suggestion is to reach a middle ground with some “random” tweaks, that will give the “old 1650” game some different flavor. I don’t think from a programming perspective that it would be hard to implement for Harley; as they already do similar tweaks for Gun-Boat and Grudge games, but players in the game may have to pay a little more for them to set it up.
Randomize the artifacts. You don’t need to change the artifact qualities, just change the numbers on them so we don’t know if the ROW is a weapon add, or a command arty, etc… Ok, the old die hard ME historian wouldn’t like it, but the gamer who wants a little variety would. From a programming perspective, unless those arty numbers are hard coded throughout, that shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do.
Randomize the Dragon and all encounter response tables at the start of the game. I remember recruiting my first dragon when I didn’t know you could even do it. That was exciting, especially to see the big Arth army destroyed by it, and have that Arth player very unhappy about it. He didn’t know you could recruit them either. By changing the response tables, it will make it a little more work to recruit dragons, therefore changing the DS strategy quite a bit. This alone would change the dynamics of the game HUGE. From a programming perspective, this shouldn’t be difficult either, unless the code is really, really poor.
Two pretty easy changes, even if you have to do it manually, can really spell a different game for everyone. A game I would try. I would love to see the game Steve & Dave suggested earlier, but those changes require a great deal of programming changes, so maybe there is a middle ground where Harley can make some minor changes for us that gives us back the old day play?
I started playing again after about a 8 year hiatus to see if anything had changed, and to play a game with old friends. I’m kind of disappointed to see that the game really hasn’t developed much sense the old days, except the player community has gleened out 99% of all the unknowns in the game. Maybe my expectations are too high, but after 20 years I guess I expected a little more, not necessarily Harley’s fault, maybe more a legal formality.
My first decade in this game was without access to the internet. A wonderful voyage of discovery it was in a fog shrouded ME sea. Harley conquers the ME world and I am forced to buy a computer and become marginally literate just to continue playing. Mighty disappointed when I discovered that Harley (as a ‘service’) and the MOS boys (for their own reasons) had destroyed the mystery of the game… Randomization of everything has no mystery either.
Gentlemen, ‘different’ and ‘better’ are not identical words. A game can be no ‘better’ than the imagination and horizon of the game developer. If Harley is unable to see some levels of this game and disagrees with others, how can they really create something ‘better’? They must build upon the GSI inheritance and expand upon it, not constrain it further.
I tend to agree with some of the others that you get a lot of this variation with FA. The variation that you can’t get in FA - such as HC and HI and WO weapons - require programming changes and are a major untaking. A new map I am unsure of - likely also new programming, but perhaps less. Question is, should Harly spend resources on programming and such to create the mysteries beyond FA on a new scenario/new map etc … or spend those programming resources improving the games we have? The list of needed/wanted improvements is long, I won’t rehash them. But I would think that improving the main game(s) that most people already play, as well as the game(s) that provide the most revenue, would be a priority to creating marginal changes to what is already provided in some way in FA (random artifacts, new/random placement of nations, etc). I don’t think your idea is a bad one, indeed I would be interested, but I think it is likely not a priority.
If anyone wants to get involved in the conversion program then that would speed up any future development. Interested?
There’s lots that can be done and as time and resources allow I’ll look at what we can do within the what we have available.
The tweaks to 1000 have been very successful so far with a high level of positive feedback. Some things need to be changed of course but we’ll see how things develop there. We plan to keep 1650 basically the same (ie no changes planned at present) but develop new scenarios instead such as Kin-Strife.
As mentioned lots of development = lots of work = money/time and we’ve got limited levels of that available. The more we automate the process of running a game the more we can work on development for those that want it (the majority it seems and those that don’t want it, a handful, have informed me).
Kin-strife is the first step in that direction but not the only one. It’s something that we can achieve with present resources and in a reasonable level of time and a good test. After that we can look at other scenarios and creations.
well, having played in two of the “new rules” FA playtests, I must disagree with you a bit Brad. The goal of the new rules is to increase the variety of viable nation designs. (sort of the opposite of a “standard play” rut)
I don’t think we’ve achieved the goal yet. But we are making strides in the right direction. And the playtests are exposing lots of opportunity for further improvement. Whether or not the player community and ME Games take notice of these opportunities, and implement further changes to move FA closer to the above goal is an exercise that is only now beginning.
Best to not yet throw out the baby with the bath water.
If there was enough interest in returning to the golden age of unknowns using the MEPBM ruleset as it otherwise exists today, I was going to offer ME Games my services to implement these randomizations (which would no doubt include helping with the conversion project which is apparently not yet complete).
Thus, though I appreciate the feedback, those messages discussing the changing of the rules and mechanics other than those listed in the first post on this thread are actually beyond the scope of my inquiry. I do not (yet) want to change the rulesbase. Only those items listed in the first post.
It appears there is some interest. The question is, does the interest level warrant ME Games seriously considering this? Because if they are serious about it, I can offer my services to make it happen.
So I will let this thread simmer awhile and see who else pipes up on the matter. After that preliminary data is well-stewed, I may have a chat with Clint.
Of course, he has the survey data from last year, so this discussion may be truly superfluous. Nonetheless, I wanted to see what the interest level was. Thus far all I can tell is there seems to be some.
If you are disenchanted with Third Age, why not try a Fourth Age game? Clint has one almost ready to start (requires five more players) with a modified rule set and three teams. Should be at least somewhat different from your experiences with the game to date.
This sounds like you might be interested in the changes I propose.
I cannot tell if this indicates interest or disinterest. Sounds like maybe no matter the quality of the return of mystery, you won’t like it if ME Games is behind it, even tangentially.
Again, this sort of sounds like no matter what the result is, if ME Games is involved, you are determined not to like it. But I can’t be sure.
As this is precisely what I was proposing, it sounds like you might actually be interested.
So, unfortunately, Ed, I cannot tell if you are indicating an interest or not in the changes I proposed in the first message on this thread.
Which is funny, 'cuz I was mainly worried that you and I were the only two who would be interested, and here I find that I don’t even know if you are or not.
Can I trouble you to express an interest or lack thereof in the idea I set forth in message #1?
Please?
This will be no small undertaking if I decide to offer and ME Games buys into it. It needs to be worth the effort. To know that, I need to know: INTERESTED or NOT?
Best Regards,
Steven K. Mariner
Disenchanted MEPBM Player
I have been considering it. Problem is I do not yet have enough experience with some aspects of the game (strongest example is the effective use of Mages) and I’m a bit squeamish about spending money only to downgrade everyone else’s fun as I screw my Nation into the ground.
I’m definately interested in the format changes you have proposed. My suggestions is to offer some short term changes that can be implemented quickly and then some long term changes. Phase the project so to speak. The game definately has its flaws that need to be fixed, Dave Holt’s original email spells them out, but we all continue to play the game with them. If those flaws were really that bad; we would have all moved on to better gaming systems by now.
Steve, please keep us posted if you volunteer your services, and when your variant becomes available to test.
David - I totally agree that the game is a brilliant game and hope I didn’t come across as otherwise.
I was attempting to make the point that if game redesign was going to be considered, that there are some things that could be looked at to improve it.
But all in all, I think it’s a brilliant game. What I’d really like to see more than game-redesign is:
an integrated web-interface that combines:
palantir
autominister
automagic
meow
financial planning (including future turns)
team message boards / chat support
“what if” support (being able to speculate as to enemy army composition, character locations, etc & analyze what the enemy could do.)
Now, all of the above definitely changes the player interface with the game and levels the playing field somewhat (allowing newbies to more effectively compete with old timers). Some would probably hate it in the extreme as they like using paper and pencil. None-the-less, we live in a world where progress moves forward. There are lots of competitive games. They come on the market all the time. ME is one of the most brilliant I’ve ever played and I play lots of games (MMO, single player, & tabletop). It’s why I stick around. But the brilliance is not in the format in which we submit turns, or look at turns (.pdf). Rather it’s in the mixture of character action and military action, in the precarious balance of power among the nations, the large number of players in each game, the infusion of a meaningful diplomatic element, the temporal shifts of allegiance power throughout the game, and the juxtaposition of all of this onto one of the most beloved of all fantasy milieus: Middle Earth.
Anyway, all of the above are just grist for the idea mill. As Clint says, they are running a low-margin business and have to prioritize. I appreciate the customer support from ME Games and think they’re doing well with the game.
By changing the response tables, it will make it a little more work to recruit dragons, therefore changing the DS strategy quite a bit. This alone would change the dynamics of the game HUGE. From a programming perspective, this shouldn’t be difficult either, unless the code is really, really poor.