[Cainehill]

Wyatt Hebert said:
Wow, someone who actually mentions both MoM and Fantasy General...

Classics among turn based fantasy strategy games. Also, mmm, Sword of Aragon and, mmm, a couple of TSR games. (There was also one that wasn't necessarily fantasy, I was playing in, mmm, well, it was between 1985 and 1988, that was just great - in some ways low level like Risk, but without huge stacks of armies, and I think there were 3 kinds of armies, each with their own advantages.) Heck, I even paid a second time for Fantasy General and Sword of Aragon to get them on CD in a collection.

The whole problem I think is that people see computers as the fix to minutiae of a game... which they easily can be... no dice-rolling, no keeping track of counters, just making the decisions.

For some things, it is a panacea. At one point Gemstone III, a very early commercial online RPG, was using ICE's Rolemaster rules. Fairly nice system, except for all the permanent character deaths, and worse, all the very VERY complex tables required. (Example : A full page of a table, maybe .... 2000 numbers, dedicated to the broadsword alone. Then imagine : 40 weapon types. 30 spell types. 20 miscellaneous types of damage, and 20 types of crits. Each with their own page of results. Heh!)

So it was awesome to have it wrapped up and handled via the computer. It was nice to know the system and have some idea what was going on, but not vital. And it was awesome to not have a round of combat take 10 minutes.

But yeah :

However, the main problem is that with that ease people aren't paying attention to two other major issues: attention span and mental hold. I've noticed in myself that when either of those limits are exceeded, my fun factor starts going downhill.

I also truly enjoy cribbage, and it is an excellent game. Short enough not to drag on, and limited enough in each installment to not have to count all the cards in a deck.

MP Dominions doesn't solve this; if anything it makes it worse, because people eventually discover that a game on a huge map like Faerun becomes totally stultifying, in terms of time required per turn == hours per day, etc.

A game of cards essentially has a built in turn limit, with few exceptions (games where a players score can go up or down - said games almost never get boring though because of the possibility of 2 or 3 hands with luck / big points finishing it). Dominions doesn't, with the exception of playing with .... victory conditions generally regarded as lame : research, dominion, etc.

Hopefully Dom3 will see a few new things : cumulative victory points (discussed in other threads, but essentially... Now, if the VP condition is 5, you may not have held a VP _ever_, but take 5 the next turn and have a surprise win. With cumulative, you add the number of victory points held by each player each turn. No stealth victories. No never-ending games, and the game gets more tense / exciting for everyone when they know one player is nearing the victory.

And also : Timed turns. Where a player has a time limit on how long they can play their turn, for one thing. This aids blitzes - it's actually currently possible, but the concept is crippled, because : in game, players don't get warned about how much time is remaining. Nor do orders get uploaded when the time is up. Right now, the concept of playing 10/20/30 minute forced hosting is ... undoable, as turns take longer, people would have to concentrate on doing their turns and updating constantly, then continuing, just so their previous 1-50 orders didn't get lost. No fun.

Speaking of no fun : No beer in the fridge, and the boss sending an email saying "we need to talk - take tomorrow off."