Is Love and War Turn Based?

A couple of summer loose ends are introduced here for these dog-days (Jeff Freeman's Love Story and "Turn-based Worlds")...

(1.) Jeff Freeman posted a fine read for the summer-time hive mind.   Love Story is fiction but well-crafted and suggestive of a number of Terra Nova themes (beyond the frequently discussed *spoiler* one).

(2.) I've long been musing  upon a post about "Turn-based worlds."    Never quite got around to squaring it all up.  But Jeff's Love Story wiggles a bit from my hand.  A starter's glimpse now, more later...

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The demise of the turn-based strategy game is a common lament in grognard computer game circles.   There are many, including myself  (though not blindly), who consider the over-use of real-time simulation and strategy to be an unfortunate distraction.   One of the biggest sins (IMO) of the "real-time" fashion is how when overused it can hide otherwise apparent shortcomings in AI and game design.

By and large, the forum arguments in favor of turn-based games tends to be 'meta' in nature and fall into categories similar to those described by Trey Walker ("more strategic", "elegance"...).  A subtle and powerful point however, is that turn-based design is not an absolute but is a choice on a continuum of possibilites.   Chess played with a timer -- taken to the limit-- can approach real-time simulation clock-tics, though it would become a very different game.

Other board games discretize turns further  into segments.  For example, a turn-based  battle game such as Advanced Squad Leader  can by its 1977 ruleset, have turns segmented into 8 phases each averaging 4 sub-phases.  The purpose of segmentizing a turn into phases (e.g. "prep fire phase", "movement phase"...) is to balance  play and to better simulate the real-time process they seek to capture.

They also help the player to organize the mass of detail into coherent action.

Another notable  about turn-based design is that it can interleave  player interactions.  So, player A's movement phase might well be interrupted by  an "opportunity fire" phase, where player B decides choose to shoot at the moving vehicle, for example...  Interleave enough, and you are approximating simultaneous play...

In part, Jeff Freeman's Love Story is about how two players delve into an elaborate interpersonal dance of uncertainty and exploration.   It is a process of give-and-take, of banter.  By so doing, a protocol, a turn-based set of transactions emerge (btw, related tangent, see:  "Best. Phone. S*x. Ever").

I'm reminded of Richard's point about Code is Law in software-based real-time virtual worlds.  Yes, sometimes, rules are meant to be discovered by trial and error.  But other times, rules are better left explicit as anchors within a process.  The spaces between are what of interest.

Whether your world is explicitly rule-based or not is a choice.  Arguably, these choices imply different kinds of worlds.  And arguably, both have their places, but they shouldn't be mixed up.

[ End of part 1.  Your thoughts? ]

Comments

[Kira]

1.

Nifty points. Ian Bogost's 2004 paper for the Other Players conference discusses asynchronous, multiplayer gaming: examples headed in the direction of turn-based worlds include the way Animal Crossing can be played serially and collaboratively within a household, and Ian's own The Howard Dean for Iowa game that aggregated individual player actions into an evolving map.

Love turn-based? Definitely. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for starters. Actually, that one could be counted as war as well...

In our own era, Carl Steadman's epistolary story Two Solitudes originally was a series of emails between the two characters, with the reader bcc'd. It made great use of the form's tics such as sigs and bounce daemons, and ends in a way that's sad but authentic, and not unfamiliar to anyone who's ever had an outdated address book.

[Arnold Hendrick]

2.

I have a lifetime of gaming experience behind me, including over 20 years designing computer games and another 10+ designing paper games (including turn-based wargames as well as RPGs, miniatures rules, etc.).

For game mechanics reasons, most wargames and miniatures rules have been turn-based. Game mechanics are fairly clean, no matter how many phases and sub-phases designers add to reflect doctrinal differences, air power, armored breakthroughs, etc., etc.

However, some of the greatest designs, starting with Victory Games' Korean War title, broke the mould and had players alternating moves (you move something, I move something, you move another something, I move another something, etc.). One could invoke extra supplies, quality generalship, and similar ploys to move a few extra somethings when you had a chance to move. This allowed you to horde resources and expertise to inflict major blows, or counterblows. While the game still had an overall concept of "turns," there was incredible back-and-forth throughout the turn.

An even more revolutionary approach to gaming was Scotty Bowden's "Empire" series of miniature rules. In these you could select a general, and his associated troops, and move them large distances - until they came in contact with the enemy. That fight ended the move AND the player's turn. Then the opposition could select a general and moved their troops into a fight (the same one, or a different one, as they wished). When it was back to your "turn" you could select any general again, even the fellow you'd just moved. Of course, his troops were probably full of casualties and exhausted, so using them again was a calculated risk. Alternately you could not move anyone and let all your men (and generals) recuperate. Of course, this inevitably meant turning over the initiative to the enemy.

This approach was remarkably good at reproducing the ebb and flow of the Napoleonic battlefield, from Margeno to Borodino, Talavera to Waterloo. Small but elite armies could cut through the enemy, wheel and exploit victory, especially if the enemy's organization was compromised and they couldn't find an appropriate force with which to react (a common problem in many continental armies through 1806).

My point is that serious, sophisticated wargames can "play games" with turn structures to such a degree that the traditional "my turn, your turn" concept all but disappears. In its place emerges a very real pace and fog of war, major clashes in which opportunities emerge for one side to exploit and the opposition to nip in the bud, often with a counterattack.

Needless to say, many RTS games have the same feeling, although the rapid-fire click-fest can be dizzying to watch and tiring on the wrist.

[Nate Combs]

3.

Arnold>
In its place emerges a very real pace...

This is a great point. I think a common misconception introduced by the simple "my turn... your turn" mechanics is the concept of *initiative* and how it can be reflected by interrupts and choice in a turn-based system.

An exhausted opponent may have few options in the imaginary field of battle, and too, few options afforded by the mechanics of the system.