simont | (no subject)

Oh, and I invented a silly game last night in the pub.

rmc28 was describing a card game to me called ‘Nuclear War’, which sounded like a reasonably complex affair involving warhead cards, propaganda cards and all sorts of rules. It crossed my mind that surely nuclear war would be better modelled by a very simple Hofstadterian non-game, along roughly these lines:

The first player to shout ‘BANG!’ is the winner, unless the other player also shouts ‘BANG!’ within four minutes, in which case both players lose.

I didn't think I was serious about this. But later on, it occurred to me that if you cut the four-minute warning time down to about two seconds (after all, in this simulation the players aren't separated by half the world!), it might actually become a halfway plausible game to be played between (for example) small children on a long car journey. They wouldn't be playing it to the exclusion of all else, of course; they'd be conversing, squabbling, staring out of the window, asking ‘are we nearly there yet’ and all the other things small children do on long car journeys; but every so often one of them would shout ‘BANG!’, and if the other one didn't remember and react quite quickly enough, they'd score a point. Experiments in the pub suggest that it's actually quite tricky to realise why someone is shouting ‘BANG!’ at you fast enough to respond in kind within two seconds, especially after a couple of pints.

(It's an important feature of the game that a draw involves both players losing, so that it's undesirable to be the first to attack unless you think you have a reasonable chance of getting away with it. Without this feature, your best strategy would be to attack first, and to do so constantly, on the basis that that way you could never lose and just might win.)

Of course, you'd build up a reflex reaction fairly fast and then the game would get boring due to mutual assured destruction; so it wouldn't stay interesting for too long. But I was rather amused to find that it was actually a more challenging game than I'd initially thought when I jokingly proposed it :-)

*** Erwin has changed the topic on channel #chiark to BANG *** Pinkbeast has changed the topic on channel #chiark to Erwin BANGed in topic; no response; #chiark all dead. <Erwin> I'm not! * Pinkbeast fortunately is a pinkbeast, and they are quite resistant to radiation. * Pinkbeast eats Erwin *** Signoff: Erwin (eaten)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How does it scale to more than two participants? Is each exchange two-way, or is it that the *last* one to shout loses, or what?

Not sure; I didn't think about that dimension. I suppose that in a real nuclear war, you wouldn't just shout BANG, you'd actually choose a target before launching. So I suppose the natural extension is along the lines of:

each player shouting BANG has to somehow indicate their target player
a player may only validly shout BANG up to two seconds after they are first targeted, after which they are dead and can no longer launch attacks
any player left alive at the end of the exchange wins.

The two-player case is obviously contained in this form as a special case, in which target selection is implicit because there is only one possible choice.

Of course, this means that in a multi-player game it all comes down to alliances and enmities between the players, which I think is a fair reflection of the reality. Not so convinced it'd make a good game though.

Depends whether it's a game for kids inna car or students inna pub.

I quite like the idea of a missile defence system too. Something like this.

1) Targeting is performed by holding up a number of fingers behind your back. Holding up no fingers means a feint, no missiles are fired. This allows up to 10 players if you're normal, or 1023 if you're geeks.

2) Game starts when a player shouts BANG. Some players may be able to see who if anyone is targeted, other players won't, or the initiator can arrange themself so nobody can see.

3) Players have two seconds to respond either BANG (must be targeted) or SPLAT (untargeted missile defence).

4) Every person shouting BANG scores a point unless their target has an active missile defence. Every person targeted by a BANG loses a point unless they have an active missile defence. A player targeted by two BANGS only loses one point, and each of the attackers scores half a point - reduce equivalently for three or more targeting the same player.

5) Any player setting off their missile defence while *not* targeted loses a point. The initiating player scores a point for every player thus affected.

This works quite well for two players, as the outcomes are:

Initiator bluffs, responder blocks - initiator wins
Initiator bluffs, responder attacks - initiator loses
Initiator attacks, responder blocks - draw
Initiator attacks, responder attacks - "draw" (both lose)

With more than two, it becomes complex and tactical. Do you assume you're under attack and throw up a missile shield - it'll cost you if you've misjudged it. Do you retaliate against the attacker - guaranteed hit but you'll probably have to share with other players. Do you attack someone else and try and pick up a crafty point on the side while others respond to the initial threat - you stay undefended though, and your own attack may be blocked? Do you initiate your own attack - you'll pick up points from *everyone* that wasted their missile defence, and maybe your chosen target too, but you'll almost certainly be attacked yourself in return.

Might have to tweak it to give a bit more incentive to launch an initial attack if there are more than two players, though - maybe the initiating player scores *two* points if their attack isn't blocked.

Might have to tweak it to give a bit more incentive to launch an initial attack if there are more than two players, though - maybe the initiating player scores *two* points if their attack isn't blocked.

Probably not, really - I've been ignoring the whole point of your version, which is that the attacks are rare enough that people don't respond in time - so a perfectly good incentive to attack at some point however many players there are.

BANG!

Aha, that was within the original four minutes, which is probably more reasonable for an electronic medium than the two seconds for a face-to-face game, though still not ideal I suspect...

Hmm, I didn't think you were going to make it in time...

mmm its not a bad simulation!!
:)

This seems to put parents in a weird God-like position, in which they get increasingly pissed off by the stupid behaviour of their offspring, but it's all right because they actually know where the car is going and could theoretically throw both children out of the window if necessary. ;-)

And here as well. I'm surprised all over again to find people are actually playing it! :-)