The Random Victory Conditions

mepbmlist
#1

There has been some comments lately on the random victory conditions and
how inappropriate they seem to be. Let me take some of us to another
level and, perhaps, illuminate things a little.

Part of the genius of this game WAS its ability to replicate Real World
conditions, despite being a fantasy game. Anyone who has worked in a
large organization is well aware there are organizational goals and
individual goals. Sometimes these goals clash. A wise man will adjust
his individual goals to commplement the organiztional goals. Getting
crosswise with the organization is a sure road to problems.

Now lets say you are in a team. You want the team to win (the
organizational goal) but you want to win also (the individual goal). But
beyond that there is, say, this irritating Englishman who is constantly
mounting his "high horse". You would prefer he does not end up in the
top three. You now have two individual goals that, somehow, must be
reconciled with the organizational goal. How do you do that?

Well, blatantly pursuing your individual random victory conditions is
likely to be noticed and provoke negative comment. However you can
pursue the irritating Englishman's random victory conditions and it will
never be noticed. He has as a victory condition the elimination of a
named enemy character? So, you pursue that character and kidnap him.
He is then imprisoned in a "safe" location (don't want anything happening
to the lad).. The mythical Englishman has a minor combat artifact as a
victory condition, so you make a point of recovering same and keeping it
in the back field. There is this enemy camp that is a victory condition
and you make it a priority to influence it away. Now all of these
actions erode the enemy and attract no negative comment. You are
furthering the organizational goal.

The game is won, hooray! Making zero effort towards you own victory
conditions results in, say, 200 bonus victory points for yourself. These
were delivered by the "normal fortunes of war". Thanks to your efforts
the mythical Englishman has zero random victory points. Now two hundred
points is oftem/usually what separates third place from fourth place.
You have the brag rights and he does not. Best of all, he doesn't even
realize what has happened.

So, our mythical Englishman is now riding a pony. He always wants
stealth on his ME characters but he is unable to spot stealth in the RealWorld.
It might bite him on the rump, but he wonders why the cabinet
door was left open.

Now that it has been forcibly pointed out that there are really ghosts
under the bed, what is our mythical Englishman to do? The only thing he
can do is wrap himself in an honorable robe and strike a noble pose.
Anything else would be an adnission he has thought things out to a
certain point and no further. So it goes. Bit by bit a tree with many
branches is pruned to just a trunk by men of limted imagination.
Ed Mills

#2

Or... you could just ignore him and work towards the team victory,
instead of misdirecting valuable resources towards obtaining a
vindictive goal. :wink:

Mike Mulka

From: Ovatha Easterling [mailto:ovatha88@hotmail.com]
Subject: [mepbmlist] The Random Victory Conditions

There has been some comments lately on the random victory conditions

and

how inappropriate they seem to be. Let me take some of us to another
level and, perhaps, illuminate things a little.

Now lets say you are in a team. You want the team to win (the
organizational goal) but you want to win also (the individual goal).

But

beyond that there is, say, this irritating Englishman who is constantly
mounting his "high horse". You would prefer he does not end up in the
top three. You now have two individual goals that, somehow, must be
reconciled with the organizational goal. How do you do that?

Well, blatantly pursuing your individual random victory conditions is
likely to be noticed and provoke negative comment. However you can
pursue the irritating Englishman's random victory conditions and it

will

···

-----Original Message-----
never be noticed.

#3

Mike:
That is certainly an option. That is what I like, lots of options. Some people want your suggestion to be the only option.

As a one time leader/administrator/manager, one of my biggest management concerns was subordinates derailing the organizational goals. You want to talk about fantasy and non-reality? That would be a simulation where the organizational goal was the only goal.
Ed

···

From: "Urzahil" <urzahil@darkfortress.us>
Reply-To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
To: <mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: RE: [mepbmlist] The Random Victory Conditions
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:37:05 -0600

Or... you could just ignore him and work towards the team victory,
instead of misdirecting valuable resources towards obtaining a
vindictive goal. :wink:

Mike Mulka

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ovatha Easterling [mailto:ovatha88@hotmail.com]
>Subject: [mepbmlist] The Random Victory Conditions
>
>There has been some comments lately on the random victory conditions
and
>how inappropriate they seem to be. Let me take some of us to another
>level and, perhaps, illuminate things a little.
>
>Now lets say you are in a team. You want the team to win (the
>organizational goal) but you want to win also (the individual goal).
But
>beyond that there is, say, this irritating Englishman who is constantly
>mounting his "high horse". You would prefer he does not end up in the
>top three. You now have two individual goals that, somehow, must be
>reconciled with the organizational goal. How do you do that?
>
>Well, blatantly pursuing your individual random victory conditions is
>likely to be noticed and provoke negative comment. However you can
>pursue the irritating Englishman's random victory conditions and it
will
>never be noticed.

#4

Ed,
You've repeatedly made this arguement that ME Games
has chenged MEPBM for the worse.

It seems your argument is this, "Once upon a time it
was 25 nations. Now the game is more-and-more about 2
alliances."

Well, ME Games did not start this change. It seems to
me that GSI set the game on this path way back 10 or
more years ago (before I even started playing) when
they created the "team game" then the "grudge game".

Still, this change had near 0 effect when compared to
the effects of email and group web sites. Now, your
teammates can see your results, can see you plans, can
see you assets and needs.

And what really turned the game around wasn't any of
these things. What transformed the game is the simple
fact that any alliance working as a team will VERY
QUICKLY stomp any alliance that is woeking as a group
of nations.

Therefore, everyone that doesn't want to have their
butt used to mop the floor will work as a team rather
than a set of nations.

Yes, ME Games has tried to update the game with new
tools to help teams coordinate more easily. To give a
more GUI feel to the tools, to help teams share data.

But this is NOT was caused alliances to become teams.
We've been doing it for a decade since email became
widely available. I desire to not lose, and quickly,
is what caused this change.

···

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#5

Ed,
You've repeatedly made this arguement that ME Games
has chenged MEPBM for the worse.

It seems your argument is this, "Once upon a time it
was 25 nations. Now the game is more-and-more about 2
alliances."

Darrell:
You have misunderstood me in your second paragraph, but not your first. I will repeat my concerns.
ONE: The erosion of the fog-of-war.
TWO: The constraining of an amoral Real Politik into an English 'spirit of the game".
THREE: Simplifications that amount to a "dumbing down" of the game.
Ed

#6

Darrell:
You have misunderstood me in your second paragraph,
but not your first. I
will repeat my concerns.
ONE: The erosion of the fog-of-war.

What erosion of the fog of war? I've not seen them
provide players any information that the player
couldn't get by reading all their teammates' pdfs.

Email and Yahoo groups eroded the fog of war, not ME
Games.

Yes, Palantir presents the information in a more user
friendly way, but it doesn't provide ANY extra
information.

TWO: The constraining of an amoral Real Politik
into an English 'spirit of
the game".

Most people I know HATED, HATED, HATED what you call
the "Real Politik". I think this is what spawned the
team and grudge game formats, which happend LONG
before Harlie took over from GSI.

I know I hated that aspect of the game. I LOVE, LOVE,
LOVE that Harlie doesn't reward individual game
winners.

I love that this aspect has been removed so much, that
I just about got myself banned from the game by
fighting AGAINST the PRS that returned these STUPID,
much harted personal victory points to ANY kind of
importance at all.

The aspect that has been removed, was an aspect I
HATED!!!!!!

THREE: Simplifications that amount to a "dumbing
down" of the game.

What dumbing down??? Give one example of a
simplification that dumbed down the game.

If you consider a "user friendly interface" to be
dumbing down, then we'll NEVER see eye-to-eye on this
point. I love the user friendly interface that is
Palantir.... It needs a lot of work, but is much
better than trying to keep a full-sized map up to date
with lots of little stick pins and stickers.

Ed

Darrell

···

--- Ovatha Easterling <ovatha88@hotmail.com> wrote:

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#7

Yes, Palantir presents the information in a more user
friendly way, but it doesn't provide ANY extra
information.

If you consider a "user friendly interface" to be
dumbing down, then we'll NEVER see eye-to-eye on this
point. I love the user friendly interface that is
Palantir.... It needs a lot of work, but is much
better than trying to keep a full-sized map up to date
with lots of little stick pins and stickers.

> Ed

Darrell

RD: Personally, I find a lot of the fun of the game is to collect all the
maps from all the pdfs of my allies, cut and paste 'em, then go thru the
pdfs making appropriate annotations on the map. This to me is basic
intelligence work. If a player does this well, and his team wins as a
result, it has done so as a result of his hard work, and THAT is rewarding.

If you have all the info given to you on a plate, as palantir attempts to
do, where will it all end? Will some genius come up with a program which
suggests what orders you write for your characters?

Thankfully palantir is not 100% reliable and long may it be confounded, sez
I.

Richard.

···

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#8

Personally, I don't want a game to be that much hard
work.

If that is dumbing down, then I guess I'm dumb.

Personally, I think it has less to do with dumbness,
and more to do with laziness. If Harlie wants the
game to be played by lots of people, then they need it
to be playable by lazy people since there are so many
of us out here.

···

--- richard devereux <rd@pagan-47.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

RD: Personally, I find a lot of the fun of the game
is to collect all the
maps from all the pdfs of my allies, cut and paste
'em, then go thru the
pdfs making appropriate annotations on the map.
This to me is basic
intelligence work. If a player does this well, and
his team wins as a
result, it has done so as a result of his hard work,
and THAT is rewarding.

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#9

Hi There

V-conditions is a no go for me, they are IMHO outdated. To put it mild - its crap, on no account will I do something thats not in agreement with my or my teams plans to get these points. By accident I got some, never figured out how to get rid of them, its impossible it seems.

Loke/Holger

···

--- In mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com, Darrell Shimel <threeedgedsword35@y...> wrote:

--- richard devereux <rd@p...> wrote:
> RD: Personally, I find a lot of the fun of the game
> is to collect all the
> maps from all the pdfs of my allies, cut and paste
> 'em, then go thru the
> pdfs making appropriate annotations on the map.
> This to me is basic
> intelligence work. If a player does this well, and
> his team wins as a
> result, it has done so as a result of his hard work,
> and THAT is rewarding.

Personally, I don't want a game to be that much hard
work.

If that is dumbing down, then I guess I'm dumb.

Personally, I think it has less to do with dumbness,
and more to do with laziness. If Harlie wants the
game to be played by lots of people, then they need it
to be playable by lazy people since there are so many
of us out here.

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#10

Personally, I don't want a game to be that much hard
work.

If that is dumbing down, then I guess I'm dumb.

Personally, I think it has less to do with dumbness,
and more to do with laziness. If Harlie wants the
game to be played by lots of people, then they need it
to be playable by lazy people since there are so many
of us out here.

Preach on!

GB

#11

Yes, Palantir presents the information in a more user friendly way, but it
doesn't provide ANY extra information.

*** Many players used to used Maetzing's mapping program before Palantir
came out btw. Palantir takes away the boring compilation work. (Some
players like it and I can appreciate that - I print off the map, cut it up
and during our meet we put the army moves on it and so on - great fun). I
think that's what Ed is talking about as he appears to enjoy that. Feel
free to continue to do so - we're not stopping that. For those "lazier"
players use Palantir if you want.

One example : Do you use a combat calculator for combat or do you work it
out from first principles? Personally I see that as an aid to playing the
game but I could see how others seeing that as removing the fun of the game
(seems a tad masochistic to me).

Another example of dumbing down that I can think of: Some players, who've
complained about the dumbing down in the game, use our service for
informing players if there is an error in their turn that they've sent us.

> TWO: The constraining of an amoral Real Politik into an English
'spirit of the game".

Most people I know HATED, HATED, HATED what you call the "Real
Politik". I think this is what spawned the team and grudge game formats,
which happend LONG before Harlie took over from GSI.

*** That's our take as well. We've chatted to players and the old GMs
about this a lot. It was a major disrupter of games and the majority don't
like (or strongly detest) it. For those that did like it I attempted to
get a game going but had no replies. Hence I stick by our decision (with
player backing).

> THREE: Simplifications that amount to a "dumbing down" of the game.

*** Personally I think the game is actually played at a higher skill level
than ever before. What used to be good tactics have been superceded by
other tactics. I think the game is continuing to develop.

I also think that items like Palantir allow you to focus on the (to me and
most players) fun part of playing the game rather than compilation of data
(which although a part of the game often clashes with playing the other
parts of the game). I'd agree that the compilation systems we've (and
players) created do remove some of this information-gathering but for most
players this is seen as a good thing. Eg we could post your turn but email
is effectively more efficient. Hence, I think it would be a step backward
to remove these aids.

As usual if players have an issue please get in touch we're happy to
discuss the game and the decisions we've made. We've been in error in the
past and no doubt will be in the future and we need feedback from as wide a
range of our players as we can to continue to support the game.

Clint

···

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