Writing rules

Steven Paul Petrick writes:

Game design has many aspects. One aspect is the conversion of a module sin one game system to another game system. A recent example was an effort to convert Module C5 to Federation Commander stats made by one of our customers. I will not name him, or her, because I wish the effort to continue and see no reason to create any undue embarrassment.

The first thing to understand is that writing rules is not a simple thing. You have to try to make them, much like a lady's dress, short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject.

That means reading the rules you want to convert, and reading carefully the rules you are converting to. Then ask yourself every question you can think of.

an example is Magellanic Shields in Module C5 and Shield Burn Through in Federation Commander. If you were converting the former, you would need to decide how the Volley Resolution Factor applied, of course, but since the Magellanics have double layer shields, there are other problems.

You have to plainly state that if ten points of damage hits the outer shield, does the burn through point skip the inner shield, or strike the inner shield? While the answer seems obvious, if you do not state it, there will be people who will take both views.

But that is the EASY Question with the Easy Answer.

Here are harder ones: Does the ten points needed for burn through accumulate? By this, if the outer shield had eight boxes, does the 10th internal (the second that is hitting the inner shield) burn through, or do you not get burn through until the inner shield takes ten points of damage?

If the outer shield had more than ten boxes, does a burn through point that hit the inner shield (assuming that is the resolution of the first burn through point, which I think it must be) count as the first box of the ten needed to burn through the inner shield, or does the inner shield only begin counting the ten damage points needed for burn through of itself when the first normal damage point is applied to it?

As Burn through is part of the normal function of Federation Commander damage, it is not something that can be ignored in converting the Magellanics. It must be covered in any such conversion rules.

There are, of course, other aspects. Like different shield repair costs for inner and outer shields, whether or not inner shields can transfer boxes to outer shields and vice versa (I would think not, but would allow transfers between the outer shields and between the inner shields, but not between inner and outer shields), not to mention "preemptive shield repairs (a Magellanic rule).

Writing rules is simply not as easy as it seems.