Subject: MN: Re: Winning

From: Dunx <dunx@d...>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 10:10:53 AST

Snow wrote:
> Dunx:
> > I'm also terribly impressed that we've generall avoided the 'Monopoly
> > syndrome' where the sole aim of the game is to collect tokens.
> 
> Monopoly doesn't have tokens and the sole aim is to bankrupt your
> opponents.

Tokens, money... whatever.

Whilst I agree that the stated aim of Monopoly is bankrupting your
opponents, this is achieved by collecting all the money. I apologise for
the misrepresentation though.

The point I was making was that, although specific tokens are needed to
open MC, the aim of the game as a whole is not the collection of tokens.

> > The nice thing about
> > Charge is that it was an attribute of Piece which was manipulated by
> > moving around... I suppose what was wrong with it was that its changes
> > were actually too unpredictable to anyone but the player whose Charge
> > it was.
> 
> I tend to think the problem with Charge is that it's too predictable.
> Unless something happens to
> change a Player's charge other than Moving (eg a Shunt) then it will
> always be the same at the same
> Station. Different routes to a Station should produce different Charges.
> Special Moves should not
> change Charge.

I agree, and I cannot remember why it was changed. I think it may have been
based on the interpretation that even during a Special Move the Piece is
still considered to travel along the Lines, as opposed to the
'teleportation' interpretation.

> Changing line should have some effect......

Good idea.

> Once some
> system has been introduced to
> make charges more interesting then more rewards can be given to those
> that achieve higher or lower
> charges. Some form of enhanced electroplating maybe.
> 
> At the moment Charge is just a burden to calculate and has little affect
> on the Game.

I would tend to agree, to be honest, although it is not a very large burden
- there was more point when you could Charge Open MC.

Time for a Proposal, methinks. After you, sir.

--
Dunx
"Fixing HTML is like trying to graft arms and legs onto a hamburger."
Ted Nelson

---

From: "Kevan Davis" <kevan@s...>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 06:55:46 -0800

Precious little time available to say anything, sadly, but...

> - there was more point when you could Charge Open MC.

*cough* Electroplating! *cough*

Such was a more than reasonable replacement for Charge Opening, I
thought - only one Gold can be collected per Turn, so that other
Players have time to react, and the critical Charge is dependent on the
Charge of the other Players, rather than being an arbitrary number. If
a fixed number is preferred (making the Action harder for other Players
to prevent - a good or bad thing, I'm not sure), though, a simple "If a
Player has a charge above sixty or below negative sixty" amendment
should do it.

Kevan

--
kevan@s...
http://www.stormloader.com/kevan