| Asker, 16/7 1990 |
I've been thinking a bit about movement orders and seem to have come
up with a compromise. Basically a dog can move in five different directions
relative to his facing. Let's try another diagram, which of course the
onetthe right. This diagram is supposed to show six of the seven moves you
can make from x, which of course is the dog's position. You can
move:
1 - straight to the left, 2 - forward to the left, 3 - straight forward, 4 - forward to the right and 5 - straight to the right. |
An example of how the directions are interpreted is shown in the
next diagram. Here you see a section of the city with a schematic dog
standing on the right pavement near the bottom, and if you look closely
you'll see that he is facing the top of the page (That thin line is
supposed to be his tail). The T behind his tail means that M
T will change his facing, the X on the other pavement shows
that that is where M X will take him. The numbered directions have
the following effects:
Right, the T does not cost any movement points, so 3T4 would cost
two points just as I said...
And I've finally noticed that move 2 (cross the street and round the
corner on the other side) isn't mentioned in that part at all, probably
because I thought of it as a combination of 2 (X) and 5
(4).But it does only cost one movement point, so...
The big question is of course how all this works in a backyard!? Well, if the you-dog stops immediately after passing through an alley, then he'll be standing close to the wall on one side with one alley right in front of him, one to the left, one to the right and one diagonally either to the left or to the right. The four other alleys can be entered by turning around just like before. Now you can try to find a way to apply this movement system to the situation described in supplement 2 page 2-3!
Now, what was the next subject...? I got a letter with a few comments in the other day, but it's playing hide-and seek with me for the moment, and I'm not quite in the mood for games (not for that kind of games anyway!) right now, so I'll just write down some ideas and wait until it turns up on its own or I remember where I saw it last.
I was looking through the primary draft before mailing it to someone
(whose comments should be in part 3) when a remark about Alsatians made me
think of another scenario I'm working on that has nothing to do with games.
It's a story about a weredog (right, an Alsatian), and so of course I
started thinking about using weredogs or other shapechangers in
IADL! Not seriosly, though. However, I got as far as figuring out
that a shapechanger would be much smarter than the average dog, but
would suffer the disadvantage of not speaking the same language, and most
dogs would consider them as freaks anyway. And of course, if we've got
werewolves that only change under the full moon, they won't have a very
significant position in the game at all!
Just a thought, though: An average game would probably take less
than a moon cycle, so maybe each game (level) could end with the city being
invaded by werewolves, driving all the ordinary dogs out? At least this is
slightly more plausible than the suggestion from the letter I can't find -
the writer suggested having the city burn down to force the dogs to
move!
Okay, no werewolves (Unless everyone wants them, of course!)! But
how about ordinary wolves or other wild animals? They would live in the
wilderness outside town and occasionally venture into the streets for va-
rious reasons. The risk/chance of meeting a wild animal would be more or
less inversely proportional to the distance to the nearest city limit.
But if animals from the countryside can go into the city, why can't
city dogs go out in the countryside? Well, they can, but to avoid having to
map the whole country (!) I've decided that they are (to make an
understatement) not very good at navigating without such landmarks as
streets and corners (parks are just acceptable), so a city dog who leaves
the city can only move about at random and follow his own tracks back to
the place where he left the city. If he loses the track or for some reason
decides not to follow it, he still has a chance to make it back to the city
(he can see the lights at night etc.), but he will arrive at a random
point. An exception is made if there is a river running through the city,
in which case a dog can find the river and follow it into the city.
That seems to be all I have on what passes for my mind right now - time to hunt down that letter, I guess...
| 22/7 |
Well, it took a while before the letter from Torbjörn Löwendahl turned up, but now I've got it here. First of all I could perhaps mention something he takes up in a completely different context (well, in connection with another game anyway!) - he doesn't like games where alliances can't win. Well, I don't either, but I am not quite sure about dog alliances. The first question is of course whether they would be plausible - I can imagine scenarios where two or more dog packs join forces temporarily in an emergency, like when facing a superior common enemy, but temporary alliances sounds a bit strange. The second question is of course how two or more dog packs can share a victory... I suppose we can let that wait until I've decided what the victory conditions are!
To start at the end of Torbjörn's commments about IADL,
as I mentioned he is the one who suggested having the whole town burn down
at the end of the game. Apart from sounding a bit drastic, there is
something I said on page 1 about a scenario being plausible enough to
repeat... Cities don't burn down that often!
Torbjörn is another "consultant" who doesn't like the
suggested name because it's "too much like It's A Crime".
I wish someone would elaborate a bit on that. Too similar for what? I can
see two possible problems with the name: Firstly, ABM may cause trouble
because they find it too similar to a title they've got the copyright on.
Secondly, there is (may be) a risk that gamers who e.g. see an ad may get
the games mixed up with each other. My personal opinion is that while the
first halves of the names are indeed similar, the last halves are different
enough to make up for it. (What's the difference between a crime and a
dog's life? Well, if you've got a couple of days...), but as mentioned
earlier I am not totally opposed to a name change on the condition that
someone comes up with a really great and original name. I haven't
seen one so far...
Torbjörn has some suggestions for a name, though.
Straydogs, for instance. Well, maybe Strays (but not
Stray - that's the name of a Norwegian politican!)... He also
suggests Dogs on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which I find it a
bit hard to take seriously. One idea I got myself the other day came from
reading part one of this. You may recall that I suggested that if you find
the nomenclature suggested in "The Me-Dog" confusing, you may
feel free to call all the dogs me-dogs, you-dogs, SOBs or whatever else you
may want. Today's crazy idea is to call the game S.O.B.! (For
the uninitiated, the initials stand for "son of a bitch"
(Occasionally, one of my dictionaries claims that the plural form is
"sons of bitches")) Of course if I use this title I'd better have
an alternative explanation ready in case someone should ask. Silly Old
Bassetts, for instance...
Another name idea: I once noticed that in the fantasy roleplaying
field there are no less than three different games with titles made from
the same "formula" - Two plural nouns joined by a
"&", one being a creature and the other an environment, the
most significant of the two placed first (In case you're not familiar with
this field, the three games I have in mind are Dungeons &
Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls and Bunnies & Burrows).
I once wrote something about this in a gaming magazine and invited the
readers to suggest other (fictive) game titles using the same formula, and
after a while I actually had enough titles to cover the whole (English)
alphabet nearly twice! Some of my own suggestions included Lions &
Lochs (about lions escaped from a Scottish zoo), Parks &
Predators (you're a sparrow searching for food and looking out for cats
and kids with airguns) and Nurses & Nightmares (where you,
rather than fight adult monsters, babysit their young!). To get to the
point, it might be an idea to make a title for this game by using this
formula. Let's see... how does Streets & Strays sound? Mutts
& Metropolises (a bit long perhaps)? What else can you call a
street dog? "Mongrel" is a nice word, but substituting it for
"mutt" above would make the title even longer. We could drop the
"creature & environment" idea and call it Mutts &
Mongrels, but that would make a funny acronym... What could the
initials M.O.N.G.R.E.L. stand for?
Okay, enough about names for now. Just to see what we've got so far,
I will try to put together a list of all the titles suggested so far. To be
a bit fancy I'll alphabetize them.
(Give me a break...down!)
Most of Torbjörn's comments are about different old ideas that he either likes or doesn't like... Sewers, for instance. Maybe the whole game will end up down there, it seems to be a popular environment! Another of his questions is "If you raid the dog pound, shouldn't you be able to free a lot of dogs, even those who are not your underdogs?" Not necessarily! Dogs are kept in individual cages most of the time, and by the time you've managed to get inside, locate your friend and get him out of his cage, both time and courage are in very short supply. It would take a very brave dog to stay in a place like this any longer than strictly necessarily!
That seems to be all for now; my plans for the rest of this day involve some other game (Archipelago)...