Lamentations of the Damned: Playing Far Horizons for the very first time

[GrimFinger]

I checked into this, turns out a BUG in order fetching caused some peoples orders to be zeroed out

You're totally sane, don't worry. I'll be re-running the turn shortly.

I sent you an e-mail, already. Two areas that I had ordered research for increased this last turn, under the now-old set of turn orders. Maybe they had increased on their own, also. So, maybe my turn orders for this turn did not get processed, at all, originally, even though I thought that only part of them had gotten processed this turn, when I sent that e-mail to you a few minutes ago.

This diary was an attempt to provide feedback to the game's moderator, with an entertaining spin. I had hoped to utilize it to help him to better understand how a person new to the game approaches the game, and help him to identify potential stumbling blocks.

And I do appreciate this log for exactly that reason. In fact if you hadn't expressed confusion over the SCAN orders, I might not have caught the bug and error.

So, what was the source of this particular bug or error? When my turn orders arrive (I send them the same way, each turn), are they in text format? Or do they arrive in HTML format? Is the bug in question in the Far Horizons code? Or is it in third-party software that you are using to fetch all of our turn orders from your e-mail in-box?

With regard to the broader issue of the game manual, itself, players need to understand that just telling someone new to the game to read the 93 page manual, and to re-read the 93 page game manual, and to keep re-reading the 93 page game manual does not make the game or its rules more intuitive.

I have downloaded the game manual more than once. I am well aware of where the latest version of it is on my computer's hard drive. I refer to it quite frequently, in fact - usually more than once per turn, even when I only submit a very basic set of turn orders. I don't operate in a vacuum or a void oblivious to the game manual and the rule set that it encompasses.

It is not an objective of mine to read the rules until I memorize them. If I did that, then how I approached the game would likely be quiet different from how many potential new players to the game would likely approach the game.

Granted, it might very well be true that, if I really honest to God truly wanted to learn and play this game so that I could excel at it, then immersing myself in 93 pages of rules until it all sank in could very well be one way to accomplish that. Except, that's not my goal - not right now, anyway. It may never be my goal. At this stage of things, I honestly don't know if the game is worth investing that much time in.

According to the INTRODUCTION for the game: In addition to being a rich and realistic simulation, there are no true victory conditions|the game is played solely for enjoyment.

So, no matter how much that one excels at it, it is impossible to achieve victory. After all, no true victory conditions exist. Which begs the question of why myself or any other player should feel pressured to consume a game manual, over and over and over, until things just sink in and our respective light bulbs go off.

There are some things in this world, including some rather dry material, that I do enjoy reading. A 93 page set of rules for a game that I know very little about, one which was resurrected from the dustbin of history, is not exactly a well spring of excitement for me.

Once upon a time ago, the Seventh Edition of the game manual for Far Horizons may have sufficed, the question of why the rules needed that many revisions wholly aside. I do not think that the Seventh Edition of the game manual suffices, today - a full decade into the 21st Century. If it is relied upon, then I think that the game's potential pool of active players will be far less than it otherwise reasonably could be.

Do I nitpick the rules? Sure I do. Do I criticize them? Positively. In order to explain them to others, I must first be confident of them, myself.

Some of the rules don't even apply to the player just starting out. I know that much from actually exploring the game manual. So, when they are first starting out, no new players to the game actually need to concern themselves with having to read and digest 93 pages. If they do, then odds are, I think, that their chances of ending up confused about something - about anything - increase. If they become confused at all, then odds are, at least some of them will quit without giving the game much of a chance. How, exactly and specifically, that player dropouts impact other players of Far Horizons, I really have no clue, at this juncture in time.

Using Hyborian War as an example, many players of that game have debated various aspects of that game for years - even decades - on end. Some of the same issues are debated over and over and over, again. There are, I think, worse ways to sort through differences of opinion, than by debating issues under contention. It has nothing to do with intellectual superiority. I've been alive on this planet for almost 48 years, now, and on a day in, day out basis, I encounter very little that might be recognizable as "intellectual superiority."

My experience, over the years, has been that analyzing and debating an issue or a problem can be helpful to myself (and sometimes to others, also) in better grasping whatever it is that is under consideration.

Where Hyborian War is concerned, I am not aware of a single player of the game, as many veteran players of the game that I know and have encountered over the years, that even knows the full and complete sequence of how everything in the games code is processed.

One issue that arises again and again in Hyborian War is over something called mega-alliances. One can either approach such an issue from the standpoint of logic, or from some other standpoint. One of the beauties of logic is that no one holds a monopoly upon it.

A lot of discussion on issues that pertain to Hyborian War are not grounded in either fact or logic. I don't simply assume that those who designed that game intended that there be no mega-alliances, simply because numerous other individuals dislike mega-alliances, or because they have concluded, using their own vague criteria, that the game's designers were opposed to such. Heck, the famed Robert J. Bunker talked about mega-alliances back in 1989, in his Paper Mayhem article about Supernova II. Where that game was concerned, Robert stated, "Mega-alliances are acceptable in my mind also because they are not as strong as most players would think."

Source: Paper mayhem issue # 38