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[Zaratustra]

what did yellow win or something

[MadMAxJr]

I am assuming you used the yellow pieces to make a frame to make a smaller board, akin to blokus duo?

[Lady Duke]

Yeah, that was before we had 2-player travel Blokus.  But did you see that?  19-13.

[McDohl]

Thaaaat's Blockus! 

[MadMAxJr]

Thaaaat's Blockus! MAGDARRRRRR

[Kazz]

i was drunk

[Lady Duke]

 
That is an outright LIE!  Take the loss like a man.

[jsnlxndrlv]

I found my copy of Moonbase Commander.  Does this qualify?  It seems like it would.

[Kazz]

I loved that game but I can't say I completely recall how it worked.

[Transportation]

In MBC destroying the opponents main hub means their entire base is destroyed. There were lots of ways to win quickly because most maps forced some kind of glaring weak point in a base setup.

It rewarded destroying an opponent with 7 energy, which made finishing off their ally quicker if they were already screwed.

So, this probably qualifies as the game doesn't flail around for an hour as you try to find their last supply depot hub. It doesn't reward the winning side as much as crushing the losing side to the point of a , which accomplishes the same thing as instead of an unfair advantage that last the rest of the game you just have a finishing blow.

[Kazz]

This post reminded me of a point that's gone unspoken, but that I felt I should put into words here.

JD writes about how the element of chance gives new players the opportunity to beat experienced ones.  In broad terms, this means that the worse player can get lucky and beat a better player.  Frankly, such a conclusion is largely unsatisfying for both players; the winner doesn't feel he deserved to win, and the loser doesn't feel he deserved to lose, and neither player learns anything.  (I don't know how Battle Masters worked, I'm just making a point.)

A better system involves managing risk.  Rather than praying for good rolls or the right cards, the player should be able to increase his immediate risk of failure for the chance at a big, or even decisive, payoff.  This is the strategic equivalent of pushing all your chips into the pot.  It's not something that most games do well; while it's certainly possible to select all of your units and throw them at the enemy base, you're unlikely to complete an objective like "destroy all enemy buildings."  If the victory condition is simple and the objective is fragile, such as killing the enemy leader or destroying the enemy HQ, a player in dire straits can feasibly make that all-or-nothing gamble, and win or lose, the game's conclusion becomes exciting and satisfying for all parties.

[McDohl]

An example of this would be, say, fate points in tabletop RPG systems, right?  Just to see if I follow you.

[Kazz]

There are similarities, but I'd hesitate to expand the analogy to other genres.  Tabletop RPGs focus on cooperation, not competition, and the balance of power is up to the GM.

Every genre looks at the element of chance differently; someone here recently linked to a blog about interactive fiction, where random elements are rarely a good idea.  Strategy and action games rely on the chance of victory to entice players; if a player can't win, he probably doesn't want to play, and I don't blame him.

[François]

This reminds me of the luck system in a "choose your own adventure" book series. I don't remember the name of the series but I think it was about a ninja. Anyway.

Luck was a stat with a value of 1 to 6. To test it you rolled a dice, and if you got lower than or equal to your luck, you were lucky, and if you rolled higher, you had bad luck. The thing is, whatever the result, the dice roll became your new luck value.

You could choose to use luck in combat whenever you wanted to increase accuracy or damage or whatever it was, but there were also points where the book forced you to roll a luck check to determine the result of an event.

So if you had 6 luck and were therefore guaranteed to get lucky, you had to decide if you wanted to keep it for a crucial moment, or if you wanted to use it and risk getting a low score. And if you had 1 luck, you could decide to risk a combat setback in the hopes of rolling high and being ready the next time you sprung a poison dart trap or whatever.

In effect, the mechanic itself was entirely random, but there was still a strategic decision regarding present risk vs future risk.

[LaserBeing]

Fighting Fantasy did something like that, but the luck was a limited resource that you spent every time you "tested" it. I think I like the version you described better, though.

[JDigital]

Unpredictability is an advantage if your goal is to level the playing field between experienced players and newbies. For experienced players, managing that unpredictability as risk and balancing that against rewards creates another element of strategy. It doesn't zero out the benefits of skill or experience, but creates diminishing returns, so that the game is not a chess grandmaster event of who can make fewer mistakes while predicting his opponent ten steps ahead.

Supposing in Battle Masters you don't know whether your orcs will wait one turn or twenty to move next. You can still play the odds with that. How much risk do you take by moving into the enemy's area? What is the payoff? Are you likely to kill him before he takes his turn again, and if so, is the sacrifice worth the risk?