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Saturday, 3 June 2023

Can Interactive-Dynamic Influence Diagrams (I-DID) be helpful for Clarifying Rules?

I came across this interesting concept and thought it should be applied to manual wargames rules (see below, forget the highbrow writing and text - do the diagrams make it clear? All you need to do is get your head round the legend.):


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8 comments:

  1. Martin Rapier3 June 2023 at 09:49

    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.

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  2. Stu Rat3 June 2023 at 15:54

    No.

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  3. Geordie an Exiled FoG3 June 2023 at 21:18

    Fair comment Stu Rat, I was just asking the question ;)

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  4. Geordie an Exiled FoG3 June 2023 at 21:25

    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).

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  5. Archduke Piccolo3 June 2023 at 23:03

    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

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  6. Geordie an Exiled FoG3 June 2023 at 23:35

    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.

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  7. Trebian4 June 2023 at 10:01

    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.

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  8. Geordie an Exiled FoG13 June 2023 at 00:27

    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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