Re: [Rails-devel] 1835 Schlesien

[Mike B. <com...@ip...>]

Logically, games divide into two elements: maps and rules sets. Maps include
home bases and therefore starting positions on the board, and determine
which corporations exist within the game. Rules divide into special
abilities related to the maps, such as port tokens and what-have-you,
generic "core" rules, and specific rule implementations for a particular
game variant (1830 vs 1856 vs.... and so on).

Consider the complications of the Prussian Railway and all the minor
companies that form it and placement on, say, the 1830 board. It can't be
done. So tokens and corporations are map-and-variant specific.

While the facility could possibly be coded in for using separate drop-down
boxes to select the map (and related parameters like corporations, tokens,
etc) and the rules set to be used, ensuring that all the combinations are
mutually compatible would be a nightmare, vastly blowing out the level of
testing requirements. There would be times when we would be forced to play
god, deciding into which category a particular rule falls (map or system),
always with the potential of angering someone who doesn't agree. So this
would require a line-by-line reading of, analysis of, possible discussion
of, and potential disagreement over, each and every rule in each and every
version of the game.

I don't think it's worth it.

A possible compromise might be to create a map editor that takes the
existing elements of the map for a particular game and variant and
rearranges their location on the map board, then saves the resulting map in
a format that permits it to be used within that system-and-variant. Since
the map elements don't change, only their relative placement. But even this
would potentially run into problems.


Mike Bourke
Campaign Mastery http://www.campaignmastery.com
Co-author, Assassin's Amulet http://www.legaciescampaignsetting.com



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