Classical Matrix Game rules call for all players to make one argument a turn. A simple rule that just begs to be tweaked! This winter Alex Hazlett ran a Wild West Matrix Game in which the players we allowed to make two arguments a turn. One for their character in the game (the “Faction” Argument) and the other for other events (a “Non-Faction” Argument). This innovation caused a storm of comment and confusion… THE DEBATE Alex wrote: Players may make up to two arguments each turn; one concerning their own faction, and one that does NOT concern their faction. Marcus could argue he build fences around water holes on his ranch with one argument, and propose temperance leaguers shutting down the saloon as his second action. You are not required to make two arguments, you just can't use them both to directly affect your faction. *As I can see the potential for later disputes concerning the argument that "does NOT concern" a player's faction (which I will refer to as a "Non-Factional Argument" or "NFA"), could you please clarify it, Alex? Certainly. I'm against 'gamesmanship' myself, because then you're not really playing the scenario, you start playing a different game called 'beat the system' that most players didn't sign up to do. In particular: 1) Is the test of whether an Argument is a valid NFA that it involves only action by persons not including those in one's faction. If so a valid NFA would be "Ralph the Banker fears the wrath of the Ponderosa cowboys and so gives ranch-owner Claybourne a $1,000.00 gift to keep his boys off the rancher's back". This Argument, although it refers to the Ponderosa faction and involves a direct gain accruing to the faction, does not involve any action on the part of faction members, but only on the banker's part. *I would accept this as a valid NFA (it's essentially equivalent to an argument that says another player's man comes to town, which you would make so you could ambush that player. In both cases, you are attempting to influence other people, although you may benefit). Of course, you'll need to have given reasons why the banker would fear your cowboys, those reasons will affect the likelihood of success of your argument. 2) Is the test that the Argument does not refer to the player's faction or faction members in any way? If so, would this exclude Arguments that target a group including player faction members? For example, would an Argument that "It is a good season in the Promise Valley, an all involved in agriculture and animal husbandry grow rich in consequence" be an invalid NFA because the Ponderosa faction is one of many groups which would directly benefit from the Argument? If this Argument is invalid, then it might be difficult to make any Arguments about natural phenomena as they don't really qualify either as Factional Arguments ("FAs") or NFAs. *As long as it isn't only for your own benefit, I see no problem with arguments that also affect your faction. As there are other ranchers or would be ranchers, arguments about weather and the like will benefit all, so it's valid. Since there are multiple townsmen/women and rancher-type factions in the game, as long as your argument includes others, it's valid to include yourself. 3) Is the test that the Argument's subject matter must predominantly concern persons not within a player's faction"? If so, a valid NFA for me would be "10 Ponderosa cowboys team up with 100 Indians and drive out the inhabitants of the Preacher's Gulch". As Ponderosa men were very much in the minority, the Argument predominantly concerns Indian activity, not that of the cowboys. *No, This is NOT a valid NFA. The argument includes your men, doing actions to aggrandize themselves, so it's a faction argument. the quibble that it's mostly Indians is specious. The ratio of your men to other actors is not the test. Also, you start with a half-dozen man group. Where'd you get the indians? You'll need to recruit them if you're going to team up with them, and recruiting numbers are going to be small (1-6 for a successful argument, and I'll roll the dice...). 4) Can the NFA deal with how others react to the action in an FA of that or a previous turn? For example, my FA might be that Ponderosa cowboys ride through the town firing their pistols in the air and crying "Whoo-hoo!"- could my NFA be "Hearing the cowboy's intimidating ride, the Ponderosa's enemies quit town in fear"? *Hmmm, good question. You could try, but the result will depend on how good your argument is, and in the case of another player's forces, if your argument succeeds you'll have to work out what happens in a conflict turn. 5) It's OK as an NFA to heap up coals on an enemy faction provided it is an indirect attack not involving members of one's own faction, right? *Yes, absolutely, although of course you may be a good sport and not bother them at all (yeah, right, couldn't even finish the sentence with a straight face...) Sorry to be technical, but I think it is better to get this straight now rather than have Arguments disqualified later because of a misunderstood rule (or have players refrain from Arguing for something they could have validly put, and then accusing others of "gamesmanship" for adopting a looser interpretation of the rule). It is also important for my first turn, as I am not sure to what extent I need to modify my pre-submitted Arguments to make 1 qualify as an NFA, and I would rather not rewrite an Argument too much unless I have to. *Yes, I agree, I think it better to articulate this now and avoid some of the possible 'gamey' arguments that might develop... I would suggest you just give us two arguments a turn, this NFA and what applies and doesn't, doesn't interest me in the least and will lead to incredibile internecine nitpicking, and rule-lawyering. As your first game, I would stay to a proven and tested system and leave the innovation for another day. Valmy used this mechanism because it fit the historical situation, but this isn't the case here in my mind. Fair enough, I rescind all previous restrictions on arguments. It was sounding harder to adjudicate than I'd originally thought anyway. I'd rather it were easier for all concerned. I did a two argument game in 1994 - Murder at Sea - a Hercule Poirot Mystery. Each player got to make a detective argument and a murderer argument. What happened was my brother Ian decided Poirot was the murderer! So he got two arguments a turn to convict someone else!!! I think it was after that that I opted towards the one argument per player standard. It may not be as pretty but it does cut down on weirdness. Multi arguments is a neat idea that should be explored though. I like the idea of specifically targeted arguments. I think they can work because the referee decides argument strength. So if I use an argument about say supply to move my troops into combat, that is very weak for re-supplying my side. Of if I am developing my social status and I argue to invade Poland - that's just weird and may be stupid. It is a referee discretion point. And Another Opinion I'm largely a lurker here, but this NFA argument thing brought up what I think is an interesting point. In most games, players represent s ingle faction, and can't influence events outside that faction at all. On the other hand, within their faction players have total control. I think the NFA/FA distinction was trying to bring up a valid point about matrix games, it just didn't take it all the way. Consider - in a traditional game, players would have complete control over the guys on their side. In one turn they could conceivably have one guy go into town to get more ammo, one guy go out rustling sheep, one guy call out the hired gun the other team brought in last turn, one guy go bribe the sheriff to make sure he's on their side, one guy practice his marksmanship, and one guy prepare an ambush site in case someone comes to attack their base. Furthermore, the fact that you're trying to do six different things wouldn't alter the chances of success for any of your actions. On the other hand, it is unlikely that a traditional game would be detailed enough to encompass all those actions. A matrix game, on the other hand, has no difficulty whatsoever dealing with al those actions, and more. It can even introduce new elements not under anyones direct control, such as the weather. However, in a matrix game, if you attempted to have your side do six different things, your chances of success would be significantly reduced, as your arguments are limited, and you would have to jam 3 very different actions into one argument, and your actions would have to succeed or fail as a group. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. A matrix game is much more flexible, there is almost no limit to the things you can model in the game. A traditional game makes it easier for a player to identify with their side, since they are in more direct control. (It has always struck me as somewhat weird that, in a matrix game, if you make an argument like 'The preparations are complete, and my troops begin the final assault' the argument can fail, and your troops didn't do what you wanted.) I think that this contrast is what the NFA/FA mechanism was trying to ameliorate. By limiting the topic of the arguments, this mechanism was trying to get players to identify more closely with their side, by making sure that at least one of the arguments was about what one of their guys did. Here's an alternate idea which, I hope, deals with the quibbles about which arguments are qualified and which are not. Players receive 1 unlimited argument a turn. In addition, players can give a list of orders to their men. If any of their orders need to have the outcome determined, a conflict round would result. Using the sample orders I gave earlier as an example, I would say that rustling sheep, and calling out the hired gun would result in conflict arguments. The other orders could be used as reasons in future arguments. For example, the order about bribing the sheriff could be used as a reason in an argument that the sheriff arrests someone you don't like. If the order was to bribe the sheriff to do a specific thing, that would result in a conflict argument. I think this system would be interesting, as the orders you give to your men would result in much more activity than you usually see in a matrix game. However it would also result in more work for the moderator, due to the increased number of arguments, and judgement calls about when a conflict round is needed. What do you think? Very thought-provoking idea, I like the sound of it, but let me see if I follow the proposed method. 1) I (a player) get one standard unlimited matrix argument, so I could argue weather effects, or an attack, or anything else I want to do. 2) I also get to write orders for any and all of my men, to do something. 3) These (all) go to the moderator, who a) adjudicates the chances of the unlimited argument in the usual manner b) decides on conflicts between the unlimited arguments and orders as usual and notifies players to send in conflict orders c) those orders that didn't bring a conflict are then available on future turns as reasons to support arguments. In essence, then, the order system is sort of like having a number of preparation arguments each turn which must be defined for future use OR as regular turns that are limited in scope to only what the player's man can do. It does sound like moderator work, but it would help to make individuals more important. This would of course rapidly spiral out of control with big factions... I'd love to try it, if you want to run it (I would like to play it before I tried to run a game this way). More Opinion I don't think that the extra arguments would be too much extra work for the referee. It would be like running a game for more people. I've sometimes imagined that a MG could be run for a hundred people. I may be wrong here but judging 50 arguments should be doable by a good referee. It would not be something for a beginning referee to tackle - I'd say new refs shouldn't go beyond 20 arguments (or less). So this approach could be feasible. I like the idea of having focused topic arguments. It gives guidance to the players about what they need to do. It also makes the game focus on topics ignored or glossed over by standard games (like supply, social connections, general economics and non game related politics). For instance - Imagine a Seven Years War game that included a general event argument that had nothing to do with war. People could argue about interesting scientific discoveries, music compositions, economic developments, etc. Sure these are irrelevant but they are fun and are clearly a part of history! Usually a player represents the character in charge of an operation, whose control can never be perfect. His plan to attack could be frustrated by all sorts of factors such as a problem in transmission or interpretation of orders, a last minute hitch in preparations (such as finding that everyone has been issued with the wrong ammunition or maps), a failure in morale of the men, bad weather, or simply losing track of the enemy. This is the "friction" of war. Ordering an attack and having a 100% chance of it actually occurring is not very realistic. There is usually no need to force players to Argue about what their faction does, as the majority of Arguments are normally of that nature. There might, however, be the odd case (such as in Chris' Hercule Poirot game) in which a player may be attracted to using multiple Arguments to order someone else around, and the proposed rule would at least limit that phenomenon. Of course, you would not compel players to make an NFA- you would require 1 FA per turn and lkeave the players to decide what they wanted to make the subject of their other Argument/s. Wouldn't "order" equate effectively with "Argument", and thus you would be giving a player a number of Arguments equal to the number of his employees plus one. This might be workable if a player ordered all employees to do the boring things most employees do, or to move around in a couple of big bands, but what if every employee is sent off on an individual important and complex mission. One could imagine a rancher ordering: Hank: Bribes sheriff to imprison mayor on immorality charges. Bill: Assassinates Colonel Grant. Skeeter: Dynamites dam flooding western end of town. Frank: Prints communist manifesto and uses it to raise Mexican community in revolt. Kit: Completes work on inventing smokeless propellant. Cowboys can now shoot from cover without being spotted. Jim: Goes to Big City and returns with 20 newly-hired employees (that's 20 more Arguments for next turn!) It would be pretty hard for a ref to run a game like this. Alternatively, a player might order each employee to make an independent attempt to complete the same task- such as each of them to make a differnt assassination attempt on Colonel Grant. Even if every attempt is rated Very Weak, if the player has more than 6 employeees, the odds are that Colonel Grant is going to wind up assassinated (although perhaps with a chance of a "save" through a Conflict Argument). The fact is that the assassination attempt of one employee would inevitably conflict to some extent with that of another- even if only by putting Col Grant on his guard after the first shot misses, so one would need some sort of mechanism to deal with this interaction. This is far less of a problem when there are only 2 Arguments where the actions of many people stand or fall together with a single roll. I think if you limit everyone to one argument you pretty much do away with the problem as Chris suggested. The ability to argue about something other than your side, is a unique tactic to matrix games, and leads to some interesting indirect approaches to victory. Dar As Salaam started with most of the Arab players arguing to whittle down the size of the British invasion force. Half the force disappeared without a shot being fired! I guess this is a matter of taste. Usually, your forced to argue for your side to do something if you want to achieve your goals. However if your in a hopeless position you can still play by making arguments for what happens to your opponent. There is no right or wrong way, just play it the way you want or like. I think the NFA rule could also have led to a strange sort of game in which players would be forced to make 50% of their attacks indirectly. Also, the rule might have caused a player's faction to be controlled more by other players than the faction player himself. Just say I was fighting 2 other players. Both those other players would be likely to direct their NFAs against my faction (not being able to use them on their own and looking for something useful to do with them), having my cowboys do things against my interest. Thus each turn there would be 1 of my Arguments about what my faction does and 2 other player's Arguments. In such circumstances, a player would soon get the feeling that he was not really "playing" his faction at all. POSTSCRIPT After all this debate all the players voluntarily submitted a faction and non-faction argument each turn! Just to show that any rule - even one you don’t agree with or understand - can be obeyed!!! The Range War game turned out to be something of a peace fest. The two opposing factions (Cattle men and Shepherds) made peace rather than go to war. Which left the game open to beat up the local Native American tribes and to make attempts to shut down prostitution! 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