thread: 2014-07-17 : Strategy vs Style
On 2014-07-17, Vincent wrote:
Sometimes, in some games, you'll have only one legal play available to you. For instance, in Chess, when your king is in check and only one play can resolve it; in Poker, when you've been called and must reveal your cards; in Murderous Ghosts, when the MC book tells you that your play is to have the ghost say the explorer's name.
In those cases, there's no strategic choice, but you have a stylistic choice in how you present or frame your play.
In Chess, you can make the play with resolution, or resignation, or you can try and re-try illegal moves in a vain attempt to get out of it.
In Poker, you can smirk, shrug, glower, showboat.
In Murderous Ghosts, the stylistic choices you make are everything: how the ghost sounds, how it moves, whether it seems aware or not, what it's communicating by saying the explorer's name.
This makes Nick go "Isn't that MG stuff strategic?"
The description you choose affects how likely the explorer is to screw up (or just abandon the game), which affects how likely you are to achieve your object. So it's strategic, isn't it?
Perhaps this is the ambiguous procedural effect that gets discussed in later comments. Small point, anyway.
This makes VB go "Right!"
It's a stylistic choice when you make it, but later procedures give it strategic significance.
This makes Nick go "Gotcha"
This makes BR go "the poker might be, too"
for instance, you might act naive, or intemperate, to set expectations about later hands. If doing so is optimal, it might mean your glowering or showboating is driven by strategy rather than style; indeed, the distinction feels fuzzy here...
