Reward vs. Punishment....

[Mike Holmes]

Sorry, this is very line-by-line, but I'm in a hurry.

The first was an assumption I made about a step-on-up style of game.  I thought that the players, being in competition had a built in incentive to do whatever it took to succeed, to exploit whatever advantages that were legislated, within the parameters of the game system.

I don't think you understand the hypothetical. The player doing the adjudication does have a conflict of interest, yes, but he would be cheating if he used the authority inappropriately. There are two levels going on here. One is the social level of play, and the other is competitive level. This isn't war. The players don't hate each other. They're only trying to win within the parameters of the game. Some will be more competitive than others, to be sure, but at the point where a player ceases to follow the rules they stop playing the game. They've broken the social contract. This is always more important than winning, or you shouldn't play. The point is that if a player is detected cheating, that he is socially disgraced, and so will not do so.

I mean, in chess, would you play with a player who moved his pieces when you weren't looking? The rules that we're proposing are at least as objective as the implicit "pieces stay in their own spaces between moves" rule in chess. The objectivity level can be set at a point where the obviousness of a maneuver as cheating will prevent a player from doing so. Else we could not have competitive games.

If that is the case is it fair to the other, more on the ball players, for the DM to allow a less vigilant player to restate his actions?  Does that not effect the outcome of the competition, something the DM should not be influencing?

Is it fair if it's a rule? Yes. Of course it's fair. What we're doing is taking this element out of the realm of competition. It's not part of the competition, it's window dressing. We're making it emphatically not what the competition is about. Which is what the hypothetical asks for.

And if the DM does allow restatements, does that not erase some of the competitive advantages a good player has who does not make such errors (or oversights)?

Only if what were measuring is whether or not the player can remember to do this one thing. The assumption is that this is an ancillary consideration. The strategy in this case is supposed to be about combat or something presumably. IOW, there will be other rules that are what make the competition itself interesting. This one only serves to make the description of the competition more interesting.

I do not play step-on-up style of games so I don't really have a good understanding of what players in that style are really looking for.

I think you are thinking of some extreme version of step on up. Think "Go Fish". There's nothing about step-on-up that makes it so that the players want to kill each other or anything. It's still social. Yes, if this were rules for how to conduct actual war, this would be different. But then there are no real rules in war.

I guess I was working under the, apparently, false assumption that in a step-on-up game competition was an exciting end unto itself.

It is, this rule isn't part of the Step on Up.

To me one can then increase or decrease certain behaviors if the game is so designed that such behaviors have a direct impact on the competition of the game.

One can. But one can promote other behaviors as well. Like lively narration.

My second point is to take issue with the idea that a DM, who has a fundamentally different role in the game from his players (implicit in their respective titles) as well as being outside the competition thus having no in game vested interests, could cheat.  A DM, an adjudicator, by definition cannot be in competition with his players for the same goal.

That assumes a ton about what the competition is, and what the role of the GM is. In the game Rune, the GM is very clearly in competition with the players. Hence he is limited strictly by the rules in what he can do. In tha game SenZar, players catching the GM in a rules violation get EXP. These are extreme examples, but they show that one can limit the arenas of conflict and the participants' influence on it enough to make for fair competitions.

He would either have more power in the game than the players or he would have to give up his powers thus balancing play, but stripping him of the very powers to DM.

Again, this is your definition. Actually, I have to conceed that this is true for a DM, per se, meaning Dungeon Master, indicating D&D. But this isn't a DM, in fact it's not even a GM, but, in fact a player that we're talking about. So all this rhetoric is pointless. Even players can be given adjudicative powers where the conflict of interest isn't powerful, and infractions aren't detectable. As long as the incentive to cheat is small, and cheating is easily detectable, this isn't a problem. Again, the chess example points that out.

Now, is using your adjudicative subjectivity cheating? Well, that's a subjective subject as well. But at some point it'll be seen that way. As long as you keep the incentives to look objective higher than those to cheat, then the player will not. Simple game theory.

Mike

[Silmenume]

Mike,

Thank you for taking the time to so carefully and instructively respond to my post which, as it indeed turned out to be, was so far off the mark.

I apologize for not providing any insight to your issue.  I hope in the future to be more of an asset.

Aure Entaluva

Silmenume