Calling something "Classical" is loaded with a lot of meanings. It can mean that the item is old - not with our times. Or it can mean something that defies time and space. Something that is like bedrock - unchanging. I am finally seeing something like this emerge with Matrix Games. The military games that are now being run on the internet (I know of at least two and other being prepared) are all following roughly the same set of rules. Players make arguments, a referee rules on their strength, some arguments compete with one another to see which happen, and are conflict and trouble handled by additional rounds of arguments. Most of these games have maps and movement is largely lose and free flowing (argue to move between map areas other wise just say where you are within the area you are in). In short the rules I've been using in convention games since around 1994. These "classical" rules are forming a baseline standard from which many new game approaches will spring. And since they are at the root of these yet to be developed methods these future game makers will be able to talk to one another easily. Just like board gamers understand hexes and combat factors and role players understand character stats and hit points - Matrix Gamers will understand arguments, trouble and conflict. IT'S A ROBUST LITTLE SYSTEM - EVOLUTION IN ACTION When I was designing the Matrix Game, I wanted it to be extremely flexible and VERY SIMPLE. The classical Matrix Game is. Without changing the rules, people can play a wide variety of games. But the basic system is not pretty. I know that people will find faults in it. As they say in Russia "Scratch a Tajik, find a Tartar". Invariable every new referee will alter it to meet his own personality. This is fine since a robust simple system should be up to this. The classical Matrix Game is open to individual evolution in ways previous games were not. Consider how say...computer games change. To make a new game, one has to come up with a small mountain of computer code that programs in the pictures. Or with a card game - one has to get the art together and come up with a sequence of play different enough from the other card games out there to avoid being sued! Role play games and wargames are no better. Each new application requires a major retooling for it to work. Gamers add to this confusion by tweaking the rules with little specialty rules. Soon even good games look like something out of a nuclear disaster movie! Nine legs and two heads! This kind of evolution by addition seems to come from the idea that "more information is better." So by adding new rules in, one is getting closer to reality. This is a fallacy. Evolution favors the simple and flexible and leaves specialty animals to die. Too much data produces static/noise rather than information! Information comes when ideas are arranged in patterns that relate to predictable processes (like mathematical formulas, logical steps or behavior patterns). Without a context and data is noise not information. What the classical Matrix Game is is a unifying context (a shared language of how the world fits together) that can be applied to a large number of games without any need to alter them. So players can "evolve" Matrix Games, not by reinventing the wheel but instead by just plugging the basic model into a new situation and let it go. THE CLASSICAL GAME IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO DO THINGS The rest of this issue of "The Matrix Gamer" is dedicated to a completely different way of doing a Matrix Game. My take on it, the "You are there" game is organically compatible with the classical game. But as of now there is no one way to do this. The game in question puts you, the players, in the roles of minor people in important historical events. The players do not control the world (as they do in role play games or war games) instead they are just trying to survive it! My way of doing this is to present people with trouble (taken from the classical game - where players get a free argument to deal with it or get the effects). The game moves from trouble to trouble with the players surviving (or not). It is not as free flowing as the classical Matrix Game. I've used it in role play games and as a teaching tool in psychotherapy. Those few of you who have seem the actually commercially printed Matrix Game "Dark Portals" by Chris Engle (available for sale on his web page - Shameless plug!!!) will recognize that it uses this trouble based approach. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #16 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 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