An article from The New Yorker about underdogs using unconventional tactics to win.  Mentions a Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Thanks! That's an excellent article.

Eurisko reminds me of the Zerg rush strategy in Starcraft: enemies expect you to come down with a well-balanced army later in the game, but you flood them with construction units early on.

The article also reminds me of the Amber campaign I'm currently playing.

That was a very interesting article.

It had one aspect that I found very relevant to role-playing: when people have different understandings of the unwritten rules, tension and stress will follow.

Koltar posted about this article a week or so back.  Very interesting.

You know, funny thing is, when I saw the article was by Malcolm Gladwell, I though of you, John.

!i!

Quote from: Ian Absentia;302880Koltar posted about this article a week or so back.  Very interesting.

Maybe it should be posted to the Role-Playing board, since both Koltar and I posted it to other topic boards and it didn't get a lot of replies in either place.

Re: Zerg Rush,

Aside from the fact that its been long foolish to expect the enemy to come at you when you are ready (eg the balanced army later in the game), the interesting bit about the mechanics of Starcraft, at least from the human side, was that the cheap and easy units of the human faction (the marines) are more than capable of handling a zerg rush, point for point, making it a sub par tactic if the human player is building units as relentlessly as the Brood (?... been a while...) player.  Where the Zerg Rush tended to be strongest was when the other players were just upgrading and hoarding resources or were spending their resources on the goliaths and tanks and so forth, expensive, dangerous units that were unable to deal with mass rushes and fast, cheap, units.

Or maybe that was just me....

I can't speak for the Protoss, but as far as I recall, they were excessively vulnerable early in the game, but they had their own, late game, Zerg Rush tactic (the carrier with the drone swarms... death on wheels... or hover feilds, whatever.)


Now I'm off to read the article.



EDIT::::

Okay, working from memory... a lone Marine, standing in the the open out to his range could reliably handle seven zerglings, with low odds on surviving an eighth (Four dropped rushing, four on one bringing the Marine down nearly every time), with slightly better odds if stimmed, but lets leave upgrading units out of it. Two marines did not, sadly, change the numbers appreciably unless you staggered them (where the zerglings stop to 'finish off' the first marines while the second keeps shooting from farther back, but that also assumes that you get a staggered line of oncoming (16) zerglings... More zerglings mean the first marine drops faster in that senario.  In a bunker, however, two marines could easly handle 20+ zerglings with no loss (repairs to bunker), due to extended range and the durability of the bunker itself.  Cost wise you got 6 zerglings for the cost of one marine and... either 4 or 8 for the cost of the bunker...  ironically, masses of Marines also tended to be the solution to Protoss drone carriers...  The weakness, however, was that a 'marine wave' army was far more fragile when trying to assault 'brood' bases, unlike the zerg swarm which was primarily an offense tactic that didn't really suffer on defence.  Bigger bugs were also more cost effective against marines as I recall...)

Okay: About the article: This actually illustrates a point that has long bugged me about the combat rules of RPGs for a long time.  Very rarely in an RPG does the rule system support 'out of hte box' style tactics when one side is overmatched, and of course a great part of that, in the article anyway, is psychology. Few games really support the mental aspects of battles.  

I found it interesting on a number of levels.  I don't watch much basketball, but the half court playing did confuse me, particularly since every game I've played personally pretty much involved 'full court press' style play (easier when playing on a half court, I suppose....).   I wasn't aware of any instituitional pressure against the Full Court Press tactic, but from my knowledge of the shot clock's history and the attitudes presented in the article it wouldn't surprise me to see basketball eventually evolve a 'defender' role, a la hockey/soccer where only certain members of a team can cross the half way point.  I figure the only thing keeping that out of the game is the tendancy for street pick up games, which are very frequently 'half court' anyway. Hockey, certainly, can enforce more standards on play based off geography than most other games, given the near necessity of an actual rink to play in for most people.


The Traveller story reminded me of two seperate anecdotes, one involving the old Battletech tactical game, where at least one person brought thousands of battlesuits to a 'tonnage tournament', and of course, won handily against all comers (For that matter, a space marine army that was rather dangerous locally involved no weapons with a strength higher than 5, resulting in a massive army with hordes of smaller shooty guns rather than sinking points into bigger guns... personally I don't see the danger, as the army wasn't much/any bigger than my marine army, and not much more shooty, but whatever... it irritated people because it violated their ideas somehow....)

The second anecdote... damn! I forgot it while I was typing about the marines! SHit!

Anyway:  Fire boats and Destroyers.  Seriously:  The idea of having a bunch of small, sacrificial ships capable of taking down larger vessels isn't all THAT innovative, that's why 'destroyers' were built, to shoot them down.

Oh yeah, the gaming anecdote: In "EVE Online' there are generally useful ships and 'useless' ships.  Battleships were, for a long time, the mainstay of fleet battles.  One of the things that changed all that was when the richest, most skilled PvP alliance in the game started losing fleet battles to one of the nubbiest, poorest alliances in the game, where the Nubs brought hordes of disposable starter ships to the fights, swarming their enemies.  

Of course, with no one enforcing social codes in Eve, smaller ship fleets (gangs) are far more common and effective than ever over the massive Battleship Fleets, which only come out when taking down Space Stations or working on killing Capital ships, recreating the swarm tactic on a larger scale.

Warning: this linked rejoinder to the article contains comments from frothing Dartmouth-Review types.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/05/dont-worry-its-just-malcolm-being.html

I enjoyed the article but I felt uneasy as I often do with New Yorker articles, that facts and real analysis were falling by the wayside in favor of breathless overhyping of rather mundane concepts. In this case, the broad subtext is "asymmetric warfare" and it's sure something worth paying attention to. But aside from the objections in the blog post, I was particularly put off by the comments about Washington, even though they were sourced from a guy with a pretty impressive foreign policy resume.

I mean, yes, Washington turned the northern militias into a regular line. No, he didn't lose every battle he fought. (Monmouth and Trenton come to mind.) Guerilla warfare was still pretty strong in the South. I also wonder if the Americans could have gotten effective aid and coordination from European powers, especially the French (who were key at Yorktown), if they'd remained a pure militia/guerilla army. And Charles Lee (whom William Polk cites as Washington's greatest critic) comes off as an opportunist and borderline traitor. I am not an expert on the Revolution but I suspect that his rehabilitation takes quite a bit of revisionism.

EDIT: I'll also add that Washington pursued a Fabian strategy that tied down large bodies of British troops and forced them to concentrate. Without the Continental Army as a "threat in being", the British would have had an easier time pacifying the countryside.

Damn you, Elliot, your link is blocked!

Try one of these http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Malcolm+now+has+an+enormous+article+up%22&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&filter=0

Quote from: Spike;303521Damn you, Elliot, your link is blocked!

Are you behind a web filter?  Let's just say that Steve Sailer's comments on race and intelligence, among other topics, have gotten him and the site VDARE.com (where he also contributes) labeled as hate speech by some groups and, likely, blocked by web filters as a result.  See this example (if you can), which even had other conservatives calling him a racist.

Quote from: Spike;303076Very rarely in an RPG does the rule system support 'out of hte box' style tactics when one side is overmatched, and of course a great part of that, in the article anyway, is psychology. Few games really support the mental aspects of battles.  

That's true. But I think that unconventional tactics pretty much by definition you can't make game rules about them. So what systems need is some notes for the GM telling them, NPCs should not all fight to the death, should sometimes get overwhelmed or frightened or confused, etc.

I missed that. "Support" is understood in many ways in RPGs. If you want, you can always just say that a clever plan or unorthodox tactics will give a bonus. I'd make it a variable bonus which could range down to being a penalty...but if the plan originated with a "smart" character, then the likelihood of a positive value would be greater.

And of course you can have guidelines or rules covering morale, e.g., the way that cutting edge system, Basic D&D does. Surprise and disorientation are also key factors. You could incorporate concepts of OODA by requiring entire sides to declare their actions or "stances", then limiting the ability of a side to change its declared actions or stances, based on factors like formation, training, and leadership.

But unconventional tactics are best implemented IMO the way that Eurisko did it: you find a hidden loophole or synergy and you exploit it. The problem is that, in games, people either react by trying to plug the loophole via rules (because it violates certain preconceived goals WRT how the game should work), or the exploit becomes SOP...and since the fundamental rules of the game are static, it's very rare indeed that you'll get more than one or two "tactical revolutions"--unlike the real world, where the technological basis of warfare is always evolving, and captains and generals are always playing catch-up, figuring out how those changes should impact optimal strategies and tactics.

Western chess for example reached its modern form I believe sometime in the early modern period (when the queen and bishop both had their moves expanded); it didn't take long for many of the still-standard openings to be developed. I'll go out on a limb and say that although there were refinements and improvements in the rigor of chess theory, the only real revolution was the development of the so-called hypermodern approach around the latter half of the 19th century...and that didn't turn things upside down on anything like the scale of, say, the machinegun, the airplane, or the submarine in warfare.

I have seen that 'plug the loophole via rules' now that you mention it, Elliot.  You are right of course.   I hate to turn to Eve Online (again...) wrt to tactical evolution, but it provides an interesting case study in both allowing tactical 'exploits' and 'rules plugging' examples in an MMO format.

As it stands, each item in the game lends itself to certain tactical and strategic application.  The PLAYERS are the ones to find the proper means, largely in group actions, to employ these devices and other game mechanics for tactical and strategic actions.  This often leads to the rise of specific 'win conditions' that are considered optimal, the so called 'flavor of the month'.   Of note, however, is that despite a 'optimal win condition' tactic, alternative tactics are frequently employed, as one of the most important factors to consider here is that Eve Online requires, above all other games I am familar with, resource management.  The number and quality of ships that can be brought to an engagement is unlimited by the rules (as in life), but is severely limited by the money to purchace or the resources available to build (and the time necessary, etc) and replace losses.  THis means that in order to beat a fleet that is 'optimal' one must either outnumber them or come up with alternative strategies (the David vs Goliath senario) to win... often the successful david tactics are then mimiced by the other players and it becomes, for a time, the new Flavor of the Month.

A prime example of this (and one that has gotten real world press) is the infamous Goonswarm vs Band of Brothers fight. BoB is (was, until about two months ago) the untouchable invincible overlord of Eve, the player alliance with the best pilots the most money and the greatest mastery of the metagame.  Goonswarm, at its inception was nothing more than poor new players with at best a shaky grasp of the game's intricacies. The only advantage GS had was numbers.  Goonswarm proved, against all prevelant logic, that tiny cheap frigates could regularly down super expensive battleships, winning a logistics war and blackening the eye (and three years later) finally killing their mortal enemies once and for all.  Even now Battleships have been relegated to anti-NPC actions and the rare fleet operation where raw firepower and durability is needed (destroying capitals ships and space stations), and almost never used for 'conventional' pvp.

Of course, the developers frequently weigh in as well. When 'speed tanking', or essentially outrunning enemy firepower got so prevelent that it outweighed all other forms of combat they swung their mighty nerf bat and changed the speed mechanics significantly. THis had the interesting side effect of putting the previous underdog of ships (laser platforms) at the top of the heap due to a quirk of how range was suddenly dictated in combat. Previously lasers disadvantages (high power requirements and easily 'tanked' damage type) was not at all offset by their advantages (specifically in this case their 'short range high damage' was longer than any other short range weapon and not any weaker). As the previous damage kings (blaster boats and autocannons) could no longer dictate the range of the engagement their measley 5% (or so...) damage superiority was entirely offset by the fact that they had one quarter of the range, and would frequently be killed long before they could actually engage their enemies.

More interestingly, the Developers frequently add new items and thus new tactical and strategic options to game play, and as the massive player base is constantly looking for new edges to use against their opponenets, these things frequently get used in ways that we can only assume the dev's never anticipated (which, frequently sees off the wall use nerfed into oblivion.  See also: Carriers), or alternatively embraced and left as is.


How does this apply to RPGs?

I think that when designing a rule set it is best not to flatly reward specific things: calling a Shield wall to always provide a flat bonus to defense or some crap, but rather to ensure that each potential tactic is self evident in both its application and eventual weakness.   There should never be a 'right answer' in designing a combat character (which is to say the majority of characters to some extant).

This has long been my beef with D&D, the idea that strength is the only truly important stat for a fighter, as it applies to both hitting and dealing damage.  Its a broken mechanic, too simplistic, as is my argument here.   Players should have to compromise, and in compromising they leave themselves open to (and conversely their enemies open as well) weaknesses that have to be sheilded or exploited.  

Concurrently with this is the idea of diminishing returns (which is a feature of Eve as well...).  In Cyberpunk 2020 you had no reason not to sink as many skill points as you could squeeze into a single combat skill to max it out because the return on investment was flat. At the maximum skill you never, ever, missed but for the equally flat chance of auto-missing.  And as a single shot could very well be a fight ender, never missing is very powerful (along with always going first, which was another thing you could max out....).  As, at character creation at least, there was little disincentive (other than, you know, 'character balance') to not max out at least one skill like this, and only one (or two) was ever really necessary... well..

I think, in the end, is to avoid designing games around their own mechanics.  That's a bit obtusely worded.  Consider the justification for having strength as a hit modifier, that it allows you to punch through armor. That's designing for the mechanic (and it ignored the fact that it also makes it easier to hit people without armor or who rely primarily on dodging for their AC...), or creatures who have powers or resistances based on specific spells. Spell X is used tactically this way, so to avoid that we'll may creature Y immune to that spell.  Using the spells as shorthand for creature powers is both a lazy step and leads to a fixed mechanical ruleset... imho and so forth...

That is an interesting account of the evolution of Eve Online rules & tactics. Thanks.