God Save Us from the Fury of the Northmen is now up to turn two (or is it turn three? a good question raised by Vince Zahnle). Before I jump in to explaining this turn let us stop and review what is being attempted. God save us is a Matrix Game that seeks to simulate a Viking raid on England sometime in the long ago. It is not like other wargames since it does not use a mountain of numbers and charts to recreate the world. Instead it uses WORDS to do the same job. Players form "arguments" about what they want to happen and then support them by giving three reasons as to why it is reasonable. These reasons come from a "matrix" of descriptive phrases (thus the term Matrix Game). It all sounds complicated because it is new, but in fact it is a simple system which I have been able to teach to 12 year olds inside of 1/2 hour. First take a look at the Matrix and map. Now take a look at what has happened so far. Turn 1 ENGLAND IS AT PEACE - So nothing happens - Except that Egbert, Thane of Alton, rides to Lindesfarne with all his housecarls. [So far this is ALL we know for certain. There were several other arguments about what should happen but they lost out when the turn was resolved. Which meant that people thought to do that but that for some reason, which Is not Important here, It did not happen.] Chris Blair, the ONLY Saxon player, won the first turn and was thus given the priviledge of writing the PRESENTING argument for the second turn. [This is the argument that all the players get to respond to this turn.] It runs like this ... Action: The holy farm folk of Puddleby come to Lindesfarne for a special mass. Result: They reach Lindesfarne on turn 3. Reasons: 1) Peasants have FAITH. 2) Monks are respected by Saxons. 3)Walking men take two turns to reach destinations (le 2 and 3). Just because this is the presenting argument does NOT mean that is has happened or ever will happen. What It does mean is that it Is more likely to happen than something from out of the blue (that is why the past is the best predictor of the future until of course something NEW happpens!). The players get to respond to the argument by 1) agreeing with the action and result of the presenting argument (which makes It happen) and adding a second result to the action (called a YES AND counter argument - which is very strong since it builds on the past); 2) by agreeing with the action of the presenting argument but with a different result (called a YES BUT counter argument - which is moderately strong); and 3) by saying that nothing in the presenting argument happened and that instead a completely different argument happened (called a NO ACTUALLY counter argument - which is weak since It diverges from the herd). Look at the counter arguments for turn 2 and spot out the the YES ANDs and NO ACTUALLYs (no YES BUTs were used) So now on to the turn ... Chuck Hagen sends Action: My Viking role models land at Lindesfarne. Result: Towns people abandon their homes and flee to southern villages. Reasons: 1) Vikings are well trained soldiers, not only in physical combat but in the ability to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies. (If a big hairy, smelly man is running at you yelling and screaming for blood, wouldn't you run?) [see the Matrix element: Raiders well trained.] 2) Monks are poor leaders of untrained combat troops. [see Monks are poor fighters.] 3) Being a live Lindesfarnian is better than being a dead Lindesfarnian. [see Self Preservation.] Chris Engle (yea me) sends ... Action: YES the presenting argument and result happen AND ... Result: This makes it easy for the Vikings to land 3 ships at Alton. Reasons: 1) Ships can land anywhere on the coast. 2) Raiders seek to gain wealth. 3) Thanes have horses, and horses are a sign of wealth. Vince Zahnle sends ... Action: (NO, the presenting argument does not happen, ACTUALLY] Vikings lay to just out of sight of land and try the same thing the next night. (Vince is repeating his argument of the first turn, which said: Vikings land Just east of Alton at night.) Result: The Vikings are prepared to attack Alton at dawn. Reasons: 1) Surprise is the best weapon. 2) Men cannot react to what they can't see. 3) Raiders seek to gain wealth. Ned Zuparko sends ... Action: YES, the holy farm folk of Puddleby come to Lindesfarne for a special mass and reach there in two turns, AND ... Result: Since England is at peace and Monks have been preaching Doomsday their mass is too appease God so he'll send the Vikings elsewhere (since as has already been accepted by the matrix, it is useless to resist). Therefore, the monks have insisted the Thane and his housecarls attend the all day services without their weapons. The Vikings land at Lindesfarne and surprise the UNARMED housecarls and Thane in church and yea, veruly, slaughter theri without respite. The monks flee. Reasons: 1) Monks are respected by Saxons (and so I therefore assume by Thanes - unless thanes are not Saxon. I am ignorant about this period of history and am assuming that in your matrix the tern Saxon and Thane share common characteristics. If this is NOT the case then I would substitute for reasons #1 "Surprise is the best weapon"). 2) Thanes serve God (if reason 1 allows the Thane to follow what monks say, then this reason #2 is redundant and should instead be "Surprise is the best weapon"). 3) Housecarls follow Thanes. Those are the options of what will happen this turn. only ONE of the arguments will win (unless a YES AND wins). Note that Ned and I used YES AND arguments so our chances of winning are higher (but we are acting as lacky dogs to the Saxons who have set the stage). Vince and Chuck did NO ACTUALLY arguments. They are less likely to win but are steering an independent course so If they win the direction of the game will change. What about The Presenting Argument for turn 3? Vince asked In his letter how this could work. If I say what happens next turn don't I have to know what happened this turn? Yes you do. You are right, Vince, and this point stopped me from doing Matrix PBM for a long time. Then it hit me. If the person how wins the turn gets to make the next presenting argument then he already KNOWS what happened this turn. So when I write a turn and make a presenting argument I just assume (arrogantly) that my argument will win. With this in mind the following Presenting arguments for turn 3 were given... Chris Blair ... forgot to send In a new presenting argument, oops. Chuck Hagen sends... Action: The Vikings plunder the village of Lindesfarne. Result: They find all kinds of goodies to take home. Reasons: 1) Vikings are here to plunder. 2) Churches and religious establishments tend to be rather wealthy. 3) There is little challenge to my Viking heroes. Vince Zahnle sends Action: Vikings attack Alton at dawn. Result: All who bear arms against the Vikings are killed but all others (more or less) are rounded up in the town center. Reasons: 1) Surprise is the best weapon. 2) Peasants do poorly in battle. 3) Raiders well trained. Chris Engle sends ... Action: Alton is looted and burned.. Result: The Vikings carry off all the movable wealth of Alton. Reasons: 1) Raiders seek to gain wealth. 2) Cry havoc release the dogs of war. 3) Vikings are GREEDY. Ned Zuparko sends... Action: The Vikings plunder Lindesfarne and leave unscathed. Result: The Puddleby folk (who include women and children and who are unarmed in time of peace heading to a holy mass) encounter the terrified monks who remind them of the Doomsday predictions, hear of the death of the Thane and housecarls, and flee. Reasons: 1) Peasants want to protect their families. 2) Peasants respect monks. 3) Peasants axe poorly armed. Now you know all that there is to know about the turn. So who wins? I guess you think it has to be done in some long winded boring way that takes hours to complete. WRONG! It took about 5 minutes. Turn resolution works kind of like a bunch of kids betting on who can hold their breath the longest. Little kids may be at a disadvantage but they could still win. Everybody takes a deep breath and holds it. As time passes, faces begin to turn red... purple ... blue, and individuals drop out gasping for breath. Finally only one kid remains. The whole contest usually lasting less than a minute. Matrix resolution works a lot like the kiddy contest described above. Individual arguments are ruled out through a series of rolls. Depending on the strength of the argument it has a better or worse roll. They are weighted in the following way. Per reason given 1 Presenting argument 0 YES AND argument 1 YES BUT argument 0 No ACTUALLY argument -1 Strong argument 1 Weak argument -1 Each argument has 3 reasons, is either a presenting argument or one of the counter arguments and may be ruled to be "strong" or "weak" by me (the referee). Using this weighting system, which is by the way completely arbitrary and open to change and debate, the arguments rated as follows ... Chris Blair 3 reasons + presenting argument = 3 Ned Zuparko 3 reasons + YES AND + weak = 3 Vince Zahnle 3 reasons + NO ACTUALLY = 2 Chuck Hagen 3 reasons + NO ACTUALLY = 2 Chris Engle 3 reasons + YES AND = 4 I ruled Ned's argument weak not because it is a bad argument, it clearly is not. It is weak because it tries to do "too" much. I have no hard fast rule on this, but taking a turn or two to set something up makes it strong, while having everything happen at once tends to make it weak. A face to face game has the individual players making their own rolls. Naturally, I do the rolling here. The 1st round rolls ended with all the rolls being beneath or equal to their various arguments number. No one was ruled out ... yet. The second round ruled out ALL the arguments EXCEPT Vince's. Since Vince did a NO ACTUALLY argument, Chris Blair's presenting argument NEVER happened, instead while the peaceful farm folk of Puddleby sleep the Vikings are preparing to crush Alton. RESULT: The following happened in turn two ... Action: The Vikings land east of Alton at night. Result: The Vikings are prepared to attack Alton at dawn. Reasons: 1) Surprise is the best weapon. 2) Men can not react to what they can not see. 3) Raiders seek to gain wealth. The presenting argument for turn 3 is ... Action: The Vikings attack Alton at dawn. Result: All who bear arms against them are killed, but all others (more or less unharmed) are rounded up In the town center. Reasons: 1) Surprise is the best weapon. 2) Peasants do poor in battle. 3) Raiders are well trained Wow! It took a lot of words to get that turn out. It really didn't need to. I could have just told you the out come of the turn and kept you in the dark on how I reached it. But that would mystify something I want to make more clear. When people are more familiar with the system I will dispense with all the words. Imagine, it would be relatively easy to run a PBM game with as many as 50 players. Everything is written so, referee record keeping is minimal. In addition to that the referee does not need to keep a game board set up in some safe place (were demonic CATS may they soon return to their master, do not roam), taking up valuable space. The referee is also saved from the mind numbing Job of writing out highly detailed reports of every bit of minutia that happened (as role play PBMs do). The players do the bulk of the work. I have it in mind to do such a large scale Matrix PBM when God save us ends. Maybe a WW2 game on a tactical level? If you have a preference write and tell me. Last Word One last word on the PBM before I close. I did not consider that people would not know some of the terminology in the matrix. Oops. This is one of the risks of getting too far into any one period of history. I've always fancied the Dark Ages (something about my Germanic roots I guess) and in the Dark Ages the Vikings always seemed the neatest (even though my ancestors were eaten by Vikings for breakfast). So let me fill you in on some of the more arcane terms. Thane = A noble, In this case a Saxon noble. Housecarls = The small private army no self respecting Thane was without. You can think of them like Knights, but they fought on foot. Monks = Friar Tuck like guys who brought literacy and Christianity to us barbarian types. Peasants = The poor slobs who did all the work, the source of most of our ancestors (except for the Irish who are all descended from kings - for example my family personally own Dublin or so the story goes) Berserkers = Crazy Viking warriors who wore no armor and went into battle in a frenzy. Some how related to Werebears or Schizophrenics, take your pick. Back to Experimental Games Group # 3 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1989 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com