Time Travellers

Behind one door is Sabrina, with a thousand dollars for you. Behind the other is Brutus, with a big club. Will you choose door#1 or door#2?

Lady Luck Has a New Dress

Am I willing to accept the outcome "Clubbed to death by Brutus"? No. Thus I choose not to play that game. This seems like rational behavior to me.

Can you hear a frustrated Imp screaming "Oh but you must play! I'll make you play! If you wanna finish this game, you'll have to play!"? This is where the player does the Save-Die-Restore thing several times until the result "Sabrina gives you a thousand dollars and the time of your life" comes up. Just rolling dice. Pretty pointless, huh? Imps are notoriously short-sighted.

As a second example "Spin A Wheel": A thief chooses which window to enter a house by. You can check the outcomes by holding your mouse over the various pie slices.

The bedroom window offers a high prize (probabilites are specified), but also a serious loss. The bathroom window offers lower prizes, but a minimum of no-gain/no-loss.

The solution?
Save, BedroomWindow, Restore until best option comes up.

Yep, these aren't the same Laws of Probability they taught me in school.

While it is possible to pre-generate Dice Rolls of Fate, this alters the nature of the choice. Rather than two probability distributions, it becomes a choice between two results. The player checks the results by Save-Die-Restore, and selects the better alternative.

Does this seem a reasonable and intelligent course of action for the player? Is all that dinkin' around with the SaveGames really necessary, or are we just fooling ourselves about the type of choice being presented?

The Threshhold

If the Chance player's moves become important to a human player's game, then the human player responds by eliminating Chance through a Save-Die-Restore. If those moves remain beyond a certain threshold, then the human player accepts chance's move.

For example, if there is a 1/5 chance of gaining a better position, the player must determine if that better position is worth five Restore/Repeats.

One alternative to this process is to reduce the impact that chance has on the player's game to the point where it is not worth the effort to go through that maximizing loop. Then the player spends energy in the game, instead of outside it.

Another possibility might be to display a pre-generated random future directly to the players. The players can survey the landscape of their fate, and decide how to handle their luck.

"Ok, my fourth shot from now is gonna be a doozie, so line up the big guns for that moment." Dancing with Lady Luck. Since players are capable of time travel anyway, this alleviates a veil of pretense about the 'Unknown Future', and it's associated Pre-Explore-The-Level behaviors.

There's also the option to increase the cost of doing a Save-Die-Restore. While this may reduce the play value of the game somewhat, it has the added benefit of relieving the designer of the burden of creativity. Be aware though, that this tactic has been fouled in recent years by product managers, who have begun attaching financial incentives to the success of the product.

Let your sense of humor be your guide: If you hear an Imp saying "heh heh, this'll really mess with the player", then listen carefully: Does it sound like the voice of Beavis to you?