Squares and Colors

Let's talk game balance.

In order to really have this discussion, we need a reasonable lexicon, an understanding of the history of tabletop gaming, and a firm grasp of design theory.

So let's talk lexicon, right? First step in attempting to resolve a perceived issue is to break things down to bare principles, build a lexicon for all of those parts, and then start questioning assumptions.

So what the hell is balance, anyway? Why don't we fiddle with a metaphor for a bit, and see where that gets us.

Let's say that we have two boards for two games. One board is alternating white-and-black, with each player one of the colors. Both colors have an identical piece on the board, with the exact same capabilities - say movement and the ability to capture the other piece.

Pretty damn boring.

Let's say the other board is all kinds of crazy. The board itself is a kaleidoscope of colors, with no clear rhyme or reason to the pattern - some spaces on the board are tiny and misshapen triangles, while others are huge and pentagonal-shaped. Each player has a collection of pieces of an assortment of colors, labeled in some manner so that each player knows which piece is theirs. All of the pieces are unique and have weird capabilities, like being able to nuke all pieces on the same color space by self-sacrifice, crazy movement capability, whatever. Each player has an essentially random number of pieces, with random capabilities.

Interesting... I don't think the second board (let's call it "Color Game", or CG) is sufficiently antithetical to the first one (let's call that one "Square Game", or SG). Let's see if we can induce such a status in CG.

Rather than a random number of pieces with random capabilities, let us say that each player's allotment of pieces is determined by the number of articles of clothing the player is wearing. The relative power of each piece is determined by the article of clothing that birthed it - so a really big, poofy, tye-dyed dress would give you some ridiculous monster of a piece, while a plain white sock gets you a nigh-useless pawn-equivalent.

Let's get even crazier - let's say that, in particular, women's garments are always significantly better than normal pieces (the game designer says that this is to encourage women to play the game, of course). So dresses, brassieres, and say high-heel shoes are just plain better piece-makers than t-shirts or jeans.

Then let's say that certain game elements are decided by other weird things. Who goes first is determined by which player is the most east-facing (rather than a coin flip, as in SG). If some of the board has different illumination than other parts (say a nearby window allows sunshine on a quarter of the board), pieces in shade get a strength boost.

Okay, enough crazy, I think. Let's contemplate.

Okay. Let's say we have two groups of players - let's call them "hardcore" and "casual." The hardcore player will do whatever he can to optimize the situation to his advantage; the casual player just wants to play.

In Square Game, the casual and hardcore players are even. There are no rules minutae to manipulate, no crazy circumstances to exploit. It's just the board, your piece, and your opponent's. It is a level playing field - raw skill determines the outcome.

In Color Game, the hardcore player will do whatever it takes to win. Even if he's a guy, he'll wear high-heels and ensure that the game is played by an east-facing window, to ensure he goes first and to ensure some amount of sunlight - but not too much, of course: the board will be positioned such that, when the game is played, the hardcore player has the sunlit-advantage.

In both games, the casual player just sits down at the table and does their best.

SG-players will complain that CG is ridiculously unbalanced and broken. Too many variables to manipulate, too many circumstantial modifiers. SG is clean, clear-cut; easy to learn, difficult to master, they might say.

Meanwhile, CG-players will mock SG for its simplicity, for its lack of depth and vision, for the inability of players to learn its ins and outs and to truly master the game.

Hardcore players of both games will find ways to mock the casual players of their game. In SG, there will be a commonly-accepted and expected opening gambit, to which a retort will be found, and so on and so forth; deviating from the expected opening moveset will open oneself up to mockery and "learn to play noob." In CG, casual players will be exploited for their unwillingness to cross-dress, their lack of concern for cardinal directions, and their inattention to the state of the sun at the time the game is played.

SG is nothing but balance. CG is anything but.

This warrants further contemplation, I think. I'll work on figuring out where this example is going.

Grey Earth

So, here's a thought. Grey goo, right? Nanobots with a single tiny error in their code/instructions can totally wreak havoc on the local biosphere, basically ending life as we know it in a matter of days, if that.

Think about that for a second. Nanotech gives us access to machinery that can self-replicate at such a speed as to wipe out the entirety of the biomass of the earth in the geological blink of an eye. That's pretty fascinating.

What else is fascinating is when you take a look at that and say, "huh, I wonder what you could do with that." My thought, upon pondering it further, was - why the hell not apply that principle to other planets?

Boom. Terraforming.

Produce a nanobot that converts whatever the hell materials are present on the planet you want to terraform into materials and elements necessary for Earth-based life. Basically, recreate early-Earth lifeforms, but do so with technology that can replicate faster than you can blink.

The best part is that you could almost assuredly produce nanobots capable of predetermined evolution: oh, hey, oxygen levels are at human optimum, but there's no ozone layer? Awesome, 20% of nanobot population, change gears and "evolve" into ozone-respiration mode. Too much nitrogen around? 10% of pop, go into nitrogen-consumption mode. Give the nanobots optimal levels for various elements, equip them with the necessary information/technology to modify their operations so that they can adapt themselves to the local environment, and bam - almost-instant Earth-like planet.

Hell, with sufficient technology, you could possibly even get these things to modify tectonics, produce oceans, induce magnetic fields in celestial bodies with appropriate cores. It might take awhile, but given the premise of the "grey goo" problem, it would take... what, weeks? Months? Hell, years, if we're still pre-FTL at that point? What does it matter, when it takes us longer than that to get to there?

There are downsides to this approach, of course. Any local flora and fauna would almost certainly be destroyed in the process, much as the "grey goo" problem anticipates nanobots basically eating the Earth in a matter of hours. But if we were to hit, say, Mars with this?...

There's probably a lot more calculation that would have to go into it that I'm glossing over. Taking Mars as an example, you'd have to take into account the polar ice caps, figure out how the nanobots would deal with that, and incorporate it into the information you feed them. I'm not sure if we're at the point, yet, where we could even reasonably anticipate what would happen there. Not only that, but the nanobots would have to be designed in such a way as to give off waste products - in this case, the elements we want present, extracted/refined from the elements being worked with on-site.

But to me, these sound like reasonable hurdles, if we were really serious about the idea. It seems to me that nanobot-based terraforming would be an elegant solution to the whole terraforming problem. No human intervention required, just figure out the data, and let the bots loose.

So yeah, that's my fun thought for the day.

Introduction

There comes a time when an individual feels the need to differentiate between his written works.

Such a time has come, for me.

On the Beach of Dreams will continue as my online journal, as it has now for many years. Likewise, The Dream that Time Dreams will be where I post my short stories, poetry, and other such literary stuff.

In the Fields of Time serves a wholly different function. There are times when I feel a thought, and expound upon it in my mind, but have no reasonable outlet for it - while I could write about it in my journals, such a change of pace seems jarring to me. Better instead that such thoughts are separate, kept elsewhere; in this way, the proper theme of my primary blog can be kept, while I can still air out other ideas that don't fit it.

My interests are many and varied. I will possibly wind up discussing things covering a wide variety of fields. Perhaps over time, a focus will appear - and perhaps that may be a subconscious purpose to this new blog: a way to discover what seems to grab my attention consistently. Perhaps in this way I can better find a direction for myself.

Hopefully that makes clear the purpose of this particular blog.