First paper I read:
Some heavy lifting papers (I warned you):
- http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~parsons/events/gtdt/gtdt06/polich.pdf
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/
science/article/pii/ S0888613X1400173X - https://www.ai.uga.edu/sites/
default/files/inline-files/ Chandrasekaran_Muthukumaran. pdf - https://www.ijcai.org/
Proceedings/15/Papers/013.pdf - https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/
fulltext/u2/a230752.pdf
Anything that can reduce ambiguous text in a set of rules is a good thing to me though.
8 comments:
Richard Brooks uses Decision Tables in many of his rules, and Tbh, most players run screaming in terror from them, so I rewrite them in more conventionally accessible language.
This reminds me of the formal methods stuff I used to teach on Computer Science courses, it may well expose numerous logical inconsistencies, but it will only work as an explanation mechanism for (quite a small) subset of cognitive styles.
No.
Fair comment Stu Rat, I was just asking the question ;)
I think you are right Martin .. just trying to avoid unambiguous languages .. only after about teh tenth reading did I figure what the original Panzer Blitz rules really meant about indirect fire and HE - the fact that you fired at [one or more] counters rather than hexes (which was different to later rule sets including Panzer Leader).
I used to write small user manuals - pamphlets, really - for inhouse users software applications. Each serialised instruction was one step and one step only in a series of instructions. They were written in sentences easily understood. Seemed to be OK - no one came to me with questions or complaints, and the work got done.
One of the problems of the WRG war games rule sets was that they were written in a spare, compact style that kept the price of the rule book down, but led to annoying ambiguities that called for vast quantities of paper with 'interpretations'.
Cheers,
Ion
I hear you Archduke Piccolo - WRG/DBA and DBM variants of "Barkerese" betray his legal training and education .. where correct and straightforward they are good (typically helped by watching a game first then reading the rules after to understand the options) but ambiguous punctuation and strained use of a comma can create the agony of misinterpretation. I remember the saying 10 rules of DBA rules clarified in 74 pages of explanation. I suppose my question is really can I-DID's be simplified further to be of use in rule writing .. I am a diagram man .. I believe the longer the word clauses the more opportunity for paradoxes to creep in.
I put a simple flowchart with yes/no decision boxes in "It Rolls for Ivan" for the NYET/DA! test, as I couldn't get the text exactly as I wanted it (you'll be able to see this at COW if you want) but generally I don't like diagrammatic explanations.
If it helps square the rules circle and serves to remove ambiguity I'll buy anything for a dollar .. rather than move aside for ChatGPT
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