Mind Games: Magic and Interruptions

One of the key points about yomi, I think, and about mind-games in general is that there isn't any sort of feinting and counter-feinting unless you have an opportunity to do something about it. In other words, your actions aren't a sure thing anymore. When roleplaying online, or "RPing" (a term which I've always hated, but which seems to be the accepted term these days), it's considered common courtesy to only state that which your character is trying to do.

In other words, it's not "I kick you in the face and knock you over," but "I attempt to kick you in the face to knock you over" and then the other person agrees or disagrees, depending on their personal preference. Of course, in that case, there's a lot of dodging and blocking and negating going on, because it's a freeform system and there's no reason for anybody's avatar (usually riddled with overly masculine or feminine "cool" traits like being half-demon or having angel wings or unusually colored hair or some silly such, but that's neither here nor there) to get injured or killed or whatever.

But I digress. The important thing is that actions become interruptable, somewhere between where they start and where they end. And that's why I said in my last post that yomi and mind games have been in D&D all along.

Most people have had experience with magic-casting, and the way it's somewhat balanced by having the magic-user declare their spellcasting in the beginning of the round, and then having it occur sometime near the end of the round, after the guys with swords and arrows and the guys running across the drawbridge or wherever the hell they're going, then the wizard gets to throw his mighty fireball across the temple, or whatever it is that he's doing. If somebody even tries to put a sword in his guts, the spellcaster probably fumbles his spell.

So what you have is a sort of simplistic mind-game, where the wizard is trying to hide and the warrior is trying to skewer him with his sword, except that the wizard doesn't have a counter to the sword-stabbing. He can only run for his life, and the warrior can follow. The wizard needs something of an outside force to stop the warrior, whether it's a trap or mechanism or even something as simple as other people to stand in between him.

(Which brings me to an interesting parenthetical notation: maybe D&D's as popular as it is among Americans because of its fairly clear-cut class roles that are very similar to football; the wizard's the most important member and needs to be protected like the quarterback- the dwarfs and fighters are the linebackers. I dunno what the theifs are, but they can be the wide receivers. I dunno.)

The point is that there should be something the wizard can do to counter the warrior's rushing onwards other than "have other people deal with him." Wizards, both in movies and in literature, often have quick-spells to throw at a warrior, often with illusion or summoning of henchmen or something. Sometimes it's lightning bolts or gusts of fire that startle the warrior and make him back off, right? Then the wizard runs up his tower, and he's got a head start already. In game-terms, maybe the wizard's quick spell could force a saving throw of some sort, and if the warrior fails it, he's got to waste a round (6 seconds or so, I understand) doing nothing, or maybe it's just that the wizard gets a head-start on the chase.

Of course, the warrior hasn't got a counter other than maybe he could choose to either run him down or steel himself against the magic, and that'd be a pretty decent yomi styled decision to make, too. As the warrior, you're probably not alone. If you run the wizard down, you have a good chance of catching him if he decides to run. But he's probably going to shoot a fireball or something at you and even if you know it's going to be fake, it's gonna be bright and loud and you won't be able to see. That's if he doesn't do something dastardly like rearrange the room so that it's unrecognizeable. But anyways, you could alternately hang back and wait until he casts and then squinch your eyes closed, and then you tackle him since he wasted his time wiggling his fingers and stuff and now you've got him.

As the wizard, of course, you have three options. If the warrior runs you down, you throw a quick distraction spell at him. Of course you had one ready- you forsaw this occasion as an emergency you might want to prepare for. You have to weigh your options. If he runs you down, you can throw the proverbial wool over his eyes and try and flee. If he stands there and knows what you're up to, you can take advantage of his hesitation to take off and get a head-start in the footrace.

Or, you could say "screw it" and throw a real spell on his head. That'll show him.

Mind Games: Part 1

Drak Lich-Bane was clearly outplayed by his nemesis.

When writing about mind-games, I'm going to define yomi so that we're all on the same page.

Yomi is japanese for "reading," and we're using it in the sense that you're reading the mind of your opponent. Have you ever played a game of Chess, or whatever your preferred game would be, where your enemy was always two or three steps ahead of you, and it seemed like no matter what you did, he always had a plan and a counter-strike for every single one of your moves? Then you understand yomi already.

Central to the concept of yomi is the counter. But not just counters. Let me explain, in fantasy terms.

Let's say you have a strong character, a champion of sorts. Let's name him Drak Lich-Bane, a name I invented no more than five minutes ago to describe the character on the picture to the right. Let's say you're a good swordsman, tough and quick and strong and brave. You're even fairly bright, and have picked up a magic trinket or two, and maybe even learned a simple spell or something. It doesn't matter.

Now let's say you're dungeoneering and you come across another hero, armed similarly. Let's say his name is Erik the Brave. You both have roughly equivalent swords and shield, and neither of you are lacking in strength of arms or courage. In short, victory will come to whoever's luckier. In your standard D&D mode, it's whoever can get the lucky critical hit, or rolls slightly higher dice for damage, or who continuously rolls low for no reason other than it's not their lucky day.

There's a reason that people continously complain about combat in D&D (and by extension, 99% of roleplaying games) because there's usually only one real option and combats go downhill from there. Drak Lich-Bane's only real option is to attack or retreat, and his opponent's choices are the same. In the situations that should be the most exciting, the fights to the death over things that are worth sacrificing your life for, the game is the least exciting.

I attack the goblin... again.

And that's where yomi comes in. Let's say your best move for ol' Drak is a regular attack. If your opponent's best in-combat move is also an attack, then you're encountering the problem that you usually encounter; namely, that you're in a slug-fest to the death. There's nothing more boring than rolling dice back and forth.

But if we're going to create interesting tactical gameplay elements, we need for there to be a counter to your slicing sword attack. Let's say that Erik the Brave, your enemy, has a counter-move to your attack, which we'll say is a Block. He just straight Blocks your attack, and you get hurt because of the shock going up your arm. Or something.

But this isn't yomi either. If your best option is to Attack, then his best option is to Block. And he knows it, so he's going to Parry while you Attack, and that's going to be that. Of course, you could both Block, but then nothing happens. So what you need is a counter to his Blocking.

Let's say that you can also choose to smack him with your shield. We'll call it Shield Bash. You can't block a shield bash, since it slams into you whether or not you're blocking it. It doesn't hurt as much as your sword attack, but he can't do anything about it. Of course, if he chooses to attack with his weapon, then he'll take advantage of the fact that you're not protecting yourself, and his Slash will do significantly more damage than your Shield Bash.

So we've developed a little guessing game. Your strongest attack is the Slash. But if you do nothing but Slash, he'll counter you by Blocking every time and you'll end up losing. So you mix it up and Shield Bash him when he starts to rely on Blocking, but you don't want to Shield Bash too much or he'll Slash when you're trying to Bash and you'll take more damage than him, and he'll win the battle of attrition.

But we're not done yet. We have your optimal move, Slash, and a counter to that move, Block. We even have a counter to the counter, in Shield Bash. But if that's all we have, then it really is just rock paper scissors, which, even though it's yomi at its finest, we need a little more to make it interesting. After all, we're all rock-paper-scissors guys and really like complications.

Always smiling, those Legionnaires.

Let's say that there are a couple of classes we can choose from when we go into this deathmatch-styled arena. Let's say that you can choose to be a Legionnaire, in which case your Block move is stronger since you've got a great big shield. Your Slash and Shield Bash moves are weaker by comparison. This means that you're going to tend to Block when you're not sure what's going to happen, which is a stylistic approach that vastly changes the metagame, so to speak. If you're going to tend to Block, then I'm going to tend to Shield Bash, which means that you're not going to want to block quite so much. You can even bait your enemies by acting like you're going to Block (which is where roleplaying comes in, I suppose), and then Slash to counter their Shield Bash.

Or let's say that instead, you're choosing to play as a berserker. Your Slash is more powerful when you're in your Berserker Rage, but it's obvious when you're in that state because you're frothing at the mouth and scrabbling everywhere. It's a similar situation, where you're more inclined to try and Slash your opponent to death, but your opponent knows the same thing and will be inclined to Block until you calm down. So let's say that the Berserker knows this, and has a move where he can totally neutralize your ability to Block by grabbing you and trying to bite you with his teeth. He can only use it if you go totally defensive, so it throws yet another wrinkle into the system.

If you Slash him, he'll Slash back and probably win the fight. If you Block, then he'll Grab you and that's not going to be pleasant. If you Shield Bash, you'll be alright, except that you're still going to do less damage than him, since his only real options are to Grab and Slash. Very berserker-y, and very painful. So what do you do?

Well, you know that he's going to Slash, with a side of getting underneath your guard and Grabbing. So you have to guess your enemy's moves, try and predict when he'll Slash and when he'll Grab by using how much time he has left in his Rage. He's going to try and end the fight before he runs out of rage, so you can afford to play it defensively until he's winded, at which point you'll have the upper hand.

This ran a little longer than I meant it to, so I'll come back and write more later, including a couple more additions and wrinkles that I think can be added to the game, including the great fun of magic and how, in a sense, yomi has been here all along- just hiding a little, and neglected.