This August I got a new idea that has taken over the MG by storm. Conflict. Previously, the one thing that MGs did not do well was battle situations. Now they do them easily. First of all though keep in mind that conflict is much broader than just combat. Courtship is conflict, recruiting employees is a conflict, negociations and votes are conflicts, climbing a mountain is a conflict (between you and the mountain). So the following proceedure is actually applicable to the romance game as much as it is to military games. A player makes an argument to do something that another player will not agree with. The referee gets to decide if this is a conflict or not. If it is then the referee dedicdes who the parties of the conflict are. He then decides who is in the strongest position and asks that player to argue for what the outcome of the fight is. If he fails, then the ref asks the next most powerful player (possibly going back to the strongest player once all the other players have argued once) until someone succeeds in defining what the outcome is. For example: President Clinton faces impeachment. "We bomb Iraq. Everyone pays attention to this." The argument succeeds. REF: The President, the Congress and Saddam Husein are in the conflict. The President is the strongest. "The bombing prevents the Congress from voting on impeachment and topples Saddam from power." REF: VERY WEAK! Almost stupid. You may be able to push around the Congress but Saddam is in like a tick on a hound. (The president rolls and fails) The Congress goes next. "We impeach his ass!" REF: Veery strong, you clearly have the votes to do this, even though you'll never win in the Senate. (They succeed) But it seems to me this still doesn't resolve the situation in Iraq. Saddam, you make an argument. "The bombing only serves to increase my power since I am seen as the leader of the faithful standing up to the infidel giant. France and Russian take my side and students demonstrate in my favor in Damascus." REF: Strong. (Saddam succeeds). I'd say that Saddam was the winner from that encounter! So you see, this approach creates a dialogue between the players that is not cooperative but which does help them reach a solid conclusion for what happens. It's also a fun process. MATRIX GAME ARGUMENTS: BASIC ARGUMENT FORMAT In 1989 I defined matrix arguments as consisting of and action, a result and three reasons. I stuck with that format right up to a couple of years ago. Tom Barnes suggested back in EGG doing arguments as a single statement. I tried it out and found that it works! So now an argument looks like this. "I do this." No reasons needed. This makes it possible for very young players to join in games since even six year olds can say "I did it!" Players can still make more formal arguments (now called "advanced" arguments) which do allow smart players to do a whole lot more per argument. But most players (me included) use the simpler format. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #1 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 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