Random RB Question and Comment

Steve Dunn | May 2, 2009
When you start a concert with random rules, it appears that the cards in your own hand are randomly assigned. Are your opponents cards also randomly assigned, or does your opponent get to choose his or her cards?

I think it would be an improvement if the randomizer chose the play rules and the trade rule, but the players got to choose the cards to play. I see the value of the randomizer as suggesting opponents and rules outside habitual norms. Having the cards randomly selected adds a bit too much randomness for me.

Amy Austin | May 4, 2009
(offered by one who has yet to use any of the new random experience):
I like this, and if it wouldn't be too much of a programming nightmare, I think it'd be pretty cool to be able to select the random features as desired... i.e., another check-box menu where you can have all of the above as it goes now or else only choose the randomized aspects as Steve mentions.

Steve Dunn | May 6, 2009
To answer my own question, I believe I have confirmed that when you issue a random challenge, you get random cards but your opponents gets to choose his or her cards.

Pretty major disadvantage for the challenger, I'd say.

Scott Hardie | May 6, 2009
Grr... I haven't answered this question yet because it gets at something that I find mildly frustrating and confusing about running Rock Block, which is that I see randomization and fairness as mutually exclusive, and sometimes players don't. There have been numerous comments over the years about certain aspects of the game being unfair because they're random, from the Random play rule not always distributing an equal balance of cards, to the Card Exchange giving more cards to certain players in the random distribution. Sometimes I've altered the game as a result of comments, but usually not.

I was aware of the disadvantage that the random concert generator presented for the challenger, but I didn't expect comments about it, because I figured people knew what they were signing up for by using it. The point of the random concert generator, as I understood it, was to fill in blanks for the lazy players who don't care what they get and just want to play. Thus, if you do care what you get, don't use the random concert generator.

I have added the ability to choose your opponent and choose your cards and then randomize the rest. Eventually, I want to implement the "checkbox" solution that Amy mentioned, where you can mix & match your random elements and chosen elements of each concert. I've wanted it myself when challenging certain veterans of the game who have most of the trade rules unlocked, because it's annoying to keep randomizing until I get the None trade rule that I want. It won't be an easy thing to program, but it's on my list of changes to add when I can.

Steve Dunn | May 6, 2009
The point of the random concert generator, as I understood it, was to fill in blanks for the lazy players who don't care what they get and just want to play. Thus, if you do care what you get, don't use the random concert generator.

Fine then, Mr. Grumpy Pants! ;-)

Since you purport to enjoy discussion of the games (presumably even at the expense of occasional frustration) I shall now expound on my understanding of "the point" of the random concert generator.

I saw it as something to shake up habits and routines. I sensed a tendency among players to maximize their odds of winning (through rules and play levels) and acquiring cards (putting few cards at risk but playing enough trade concerts to remain eligible to acquire more). This is perfectly natural, and I did it myself, but I think it led to stagnation in the sense that certain combinations of trade rules and play rules were virtually ignored. Would you ever intentionally challenge someone to an Each concert with Global and Psychedelia?

Neither would I, but dang that concert would be interesting.

The random generator also matches up players who aren't constantly playing each other.

It also allows you to initiate a challenge by clicking just one link instead of navigating through several web pages.

I did not (and do not) see it as something for "lazy players who don't care what they get." I see it as something for players who are up for anything in terms of gameplay, even at the expense of winning concerts and hoarding cards.

Plus, I always like assigning difficult programming tasks to Scott, since as someone who constantly uses the site he built and maintains for others to enjoy for free, I feel like he owes me something!

Scott Hardie | May 7, 2009
Sorry for the grumpiness. It's been a difficult week since Friday.

I hope I wasn't harsh by saying it was for lazy players. "Lazy" is how you described yourself when asking for it. I did zero in on that part of the request and ignore your other intentions with it, and I shouldn't have.

I think the "checkbox" solution will solve all of these issues in time. When I can, I also still intend to start an RB tournament that will pit every pair of players against each other, which should also help to break up the pairs who tend to play each other a lot.

For what it's worth, other players are trying to find fairness in the random concert generator that I didn't build into it. When I recently challenged Russ to a trade concert and brought a good balance of cards, he thought I had randomized it and chose his cards randomly in an effort to be fair. There needs to be a better approach to this.

Steve Dunn | May 7, 2009
Dude, I'm having a tough week, too. Anyway, I like your grumpiness. It's a nice break from your relentless niceness and generosity.

Thanks for all you do, Scott. This site is a great gift to all of us.

I have added the ability to choose your opponent and choose your cards and then randomize the rest.

Having gotten all the hugs and back-slapping out of the way, I have to complain about this part. You need to know the rules before you choose your cards.

Aaron Shurtleff | May 7, 2009
Best. Trade. Ever. Thanks Tony!!!

Yeah, this doesn't go here, but I have nowhere else to put it right now. :P

Russ Wilhelm | May 8, 2009
The one thing about the randomization was that I didn't know what level cards I would be bringing to a trade match, without looking them up. I don't know why having to do that would bother me, I put way more effort than that into setting up (or accepting for that matter) matches before we had randomization.

But I make it a habit of letting my opponent know what level cards I've brought, hoping they do the same. To me, that's fair. Do unto others, and all. Not knowing what levels I'm up against makes me apprehensive in a trade match. No trade, no problem. I could go round and round with myself trying to decide what would be a good balance and get nowhere. So total randomization would work for me, at a set level.

I could have asked Scott what level cards he brought, but I assumed that it was random, being the latest fashion, right? Apparently not in this case. But it worked out to be balanced I think. My prediction is that we will go into a third round in overtime, and I will then be beaten. Not that he brought better cards or that I brought better cards, I think the play rules will decide. Of course I've been known to be slightly wrong before (Predict the Oscars is a recent memory).

I agree that it depends on the level of effort you want to put into it. I have played for a trade while choosing to use randomization to decide on what play rules to use, and then backing out, and setting up the match myself, using the play rules that were generated for me. Minus Decades of course, how I hate them.

By the way, if anyone's interested (It could happen!), I'll let you know how I set up a concert, and you can add another quirk to my list of attributes.

Scott Hardie | May 8, 2009
I'm interested, Russ! Especially if it gives me more ideas for things to add to the game.

I don't really like Decades either, but Psychedelia is the only rule I can't stand. I thought the strategy for Psychedelia would be that you have to play large gaps to capture, like play 8 to capture 4 safely regardless of how the bonuses change. But how often in a concert do you get to capture by such a huge margin like that? Anyway, I like all of the others.

Thank you for the kind words, Steve. Your opinion always matters to me, especially when we disagree.

Steve Dunn | May 8, 2009
I actually like Decades.

Cannot stand Psychedelia.

Scott Hardie | May 8, 2009
Does anybody like Psychedelia?

Steve West | May 8, 2009
I'm giving it a 3 on a 1-10 scale.

Amy Austin | May 8, 2009
LOL... I just take it for what it is -- another variant to mix it up with the rules. Fun for themes and no-trades, but not so fun if you have to lose a card. I'll give it a 5 on the West scale. ;-)

Steve Dunn | May 8, 2009
2/10, with a minor advantage being that there's no need to think about the game at all.

Aaron Shurtleff | May 8, 2009
I like Psychedelia, but I'm just contrary anyways...

Decades, to me, always seems diminished by what I think it should be (i.e. Elemental from FFVIII). For those not familiar with the idea, it worked similar to Decades here, but it showed up randomly. For example (using RB terminology), you could go into a match, and there could be 2 50's spots and 1 90's spot, and that's it. Or rarely, no spots show up at all. It made the card game in FFVIII more challenging, because you could try to bring cards that match the spots, but it wouldn't guarantee they would show up, and you could end up in trouble. Of course, that would make Decades as random as Psychedelia, which would apparently not be fun for anyone but me...

And, sort of on topic, I widely stated that as soon as I got the rules, I would be accepting the first person who challenged me to a match with Random and All. I still don't have All, though. :( I actually get more frustrated losing cards when I know it's due to my poor card choice than when I can blame random chance. I prefer matches with the chaos level turned up to 11! ;)

Russ Wilhelm | May 10, 2009
I like Psychedelia, since it does leave things up in the air.

As far as setting up concerts:

I started way back in the day by making a list of all the cards I had, and their respective RB levels. I then made a list of all the different combination's I could make based on those levels using five cards. Then I sorted those combination's based on the total level of each set of five cards. In those days it was difficult, since the addition or loss of a card had a profound effect on the combination's.

Right now it's all in a spreadsheet, someday I may learn how to put it into a database, which would make it easier to keep track of it all, since there's a lot more to my spreadsheet than just this. But I start to regress.

I now had what I needed from the cards. What I needed to utilize this system was the random aspect. What easier way than rolling dice. Standard dice wouldn't work easily, they have six sides, I'd have to use some algorithm. Don't feel up to doing that. I don't own any non-standard dice. Hey, I'm already on the web, I'll try to leverage that. A few searches later, I come across http://dicelog.com/dice. Perfect this is exactly what I need. Later, I found I needed backup, as they are not always available (99% is still good though). Found a few more sites though not as appealing. This also led me to create my own webpage and learn how to create random outcomes in the same manner, but it was not as visually appealing to me.

I was now ready to create my game. Since then I have been fortunate enough to be able to create any combination of RB levels available to the game, making it much easier to maintain.

And so with that, let's create a concert...

There are currently 20 other active RB players. I roll a 20 sided dice. I roll a 12. Counting down from the top of the players list, That lands on Matt. I'm already in a concert with Matt, and so I roll again, for variety's sake. I roll a 9, Justin, same deal. A 1, Aaron, excellent.

It used to tell me the upper level Aaron is able to play, but no bother. a quick look at his profile tells me he can play up to 46. There is no 46 sided dice already set up, so I have to type it in. Now it is no longer a virtual dice, but rather a random number generator. 1d46. I roll a 37. That will be the level played.

There are 50 different combination's of cards based upon their individual RB levels that add up to 37. Roll a 1d50. Returned a 5. Per the spreadsheet, which is arranged numerically low to high based on the total of the cards and then the highest level of the individual 5 cards, that tells me to bring in R9, R8, R7, R7, R6. Now to choose my cards. If I think it may be too far in my favor, say I came up with 3 R10's an R6, and an R1, I may opt to see if my opponent can match me. If not I'll roll again. But this time it seems ok.

I have nine R9's available to use. 1d9. I roll a 4. Counting down again, this time in the "choose your hand" portion of creating a concert, I find that this is "Pink Floyd". I follow this procedure with the rest of the hand.

With my hand chosen, it's time to choose the play rules. For this I use a d100. I tried to use other methods, but they were quickly found to be way too cumbersome for me. So I role once per rule. Odd, I play it, even, I don't. I don't bother with rules that don't matter. My roll has me selecting "Protect", but waht's the use, right? And "Decades"? Unless I'm feeling particularly froggy, you won't find me using this one. And so it goes.

I do choose whether it's for trade or not, and this one is not, but the process is pretty much the same. Typically with a trade match, I will choose all R3's or rarely, a variance of levels,,,something to that effect, but I still roll for the cards, the play rules, etc. And I will let my opponent know what card levels I bring, hoping they match my levels.

All that's left now, is to come up with a title. Can't roll for that, but if I could....

Accepting is basically the same. Level, roll, roll, choose, accept. Within the limits of the challenge of course. Playing for a particular card, that card is chosen, the rest are rolled.

So what are the odds of winning or losing to me in a match? Beats me. I just try to do the best with what I've got.


So, I do somewhat understand the complexity behind randomization. You would have to enumerate what the challenger can play, this is easy enough, randomly choose any five of the players cards. Then you have to determine what rules the players have in common, also fairly easy. On the other side is where it gets tricky. You have to randomly choose the cards to match a set level using only the cards the challengee has available to play with, and be able to determine that the challengee does not have the cards currently available if need be, and how to handle that situation. Manually it's not so bad. Programatically, I can only wonder.

Scott Hardie | May 10, 2009
Thanks for sharing, Russ. Your method is more involved than I thought, but essentially the same. After you choose your player on the form, the next page does tell you the player's maximum level, if that helps.

The randomization currently built into the form is similar. It chooses a completely random opponent. From all of your available cards (not in other concerts or pending for swap), it keeps choosing five at random until it has a total within the opponent's limits. For each play rule that you and your opponent both have, it does a 50/50 chance. Finally it randomly selects one of the trade rules that both you and your opponent have.

Besides the checkbox solution mentioned above, it sounds like the biggest change I need to make to the system is choosing rules before choosing cards. Until Steve said it, I never thought of it that way, but it does make sense. I guess they happen in tandem – you don't choose Decades until you know that you have five varied cards for it, but you don't choose your five varied cards until you've decided on Decades – so for a non-random concert, it doesn't matter a whole lot what the order is. But for a random concert, it does make a lot of sense to choose rules first.

Amy Austin | June 22, 2009
Why the restriction on trading duplicate cards? For instance... I was interested in making a swap for Fontella Bass from you, Scott, and after seeing that Audioslave is a favorite, I would have happily chosen that card to trade -- but since you already have it, I cannot. However, I also see that they are a favorite of Jeremiah Poisson as well. I'd be happy to swap it to him, but he isn't offering a trade -- you are. If I swapped it to you, though, you could then swap it to him.

I guess I understand well enough the potential for abuse of duplicate swaps -- collecting them simply for conversion, for instance -- but I guess I don't really see how that would be such a big deal, since duplicates can also be had by concerts for trade or in the exchange. Do we really need this restriction, and if so may I ask for further explanation? (Apologies if this is ground already addressed/covered.)

Scott Hardie | June 22, 2009
It doesn't matter as much for veteran players who have many cards and don't care as much about each individual band that enters or exits their collections. But back during the early days when we had fewer cards, it was frustrating to receive a card in swap that you already had, because it felt like an opportunity wasted. Why would I want a second Audioslave when I could have had a brand new card instead?

I think the problem is that the existing swap system is insufficient for the kinds of advanced bartering that we sometimes want to do, like three-way exchanges or multi-card exchanges or cross-level exchanges or just plain back-and-forth negotiating. There originally wasn't a swap system at all, and I built this one in a hurry, and it lacks the simple ability to control what someone gives you for your offered card. Since I can't stop you from giving me a duplicate Audioslave that I don't need two of, the system stops you for me. It's going to be a while before I can build it, but a more complex swap system is the answer. (And that system may just come down to each person in the swap sending me a list of the cards to move around and me doing it manually in the database if their lists match.)

Amy Austin | June 22, 2009
Hm. Okay, fair enough. ;-)

Amy Austin | December 11, 2009
Umm... am I crazy, or did something happen to the Fashion Victims theme??? I've looked for it on my theme chart half a dozen times now! :-\

Scott Hardie | December 11, 2009
"Fashion Victims" is now next in line behind a new theme. With the exception of "By Decade" and "By Rank," both of which have a fixed order, all of the other groups of themes are ordered first by the play rules required to play them, and second by the number of bands in them. The purpose of this is to let the new players access as many themes as possible, since they haven't unlocked many play rules and haven't seen many bands. However, this results in occasional (or possibly not so occasional) weirdness when a new theme hides a lot of old themes below it, and you have to defeat the new theme in order to gain access to a bunch of themes that you've already played and won.

I have been considering a change to this system, in which themes would always be ordered according to age, so that you'd forever expand the lists on the page. This would result in a good number of themes being cut off for less-accomplished players, since the high play rules appear in very old themes in the "By Name" and "By Origin" categories, and probably others too. Should I consider this further?

Perhaps the best solution would combine the two approaches. Within each group, I could show all themes in alphabetical order that you have won already, and show the next theme that you have access to but haven't played yet. You'd have to beat that theme to gain access to another new one, which would then appear alphabetically in place. If I add a new one to the list, it wouldn't interfere with the ones you've already defeated. At most, it would only block the one that you've been trying to beat but haven't yet. Does that sound better?

I need to think about this some more before I change anything. Thanks for any feedback.

Amy Austin | December 11, 2009
Thanks, Scott... I figured it was another such situation -- and thanks also for the explanation. ;-)

Since I know nothing about what you do to make this site run -- other than that it seems like a lot of work, for which I hope you know that your efforts are always appreciated! ;-) -- I will say that your suggestion sounds like a good one... and keep the other silly questions to myself, so as not to feel ignorant/foolish. I'd have to ask a bit and know a little more about how this works to offer anything better... but it sounds like the themes chart is designed such that it appears in the same order for everyone, up to the point of their opened rules, yeah? I guess any suggestion I'd have would be based on wondering if the chart's appearance can be dictated by something other than the orders mentioned... and I'm supposing that 1) you would have already thought of that, and 2) especially if it were that simple.

Anyway... thanks again for your quick reply! ;-)

Scott Hardie | December 14, 2009
Done. Within each group, you can still only play one new undefeated theme at a time, and each theme still requires you to have unlocked the required play rules and seen at least ten bands in that theme. However, you can now revisit themes that you have already won (as long as they're still available), and you can now jump over themes that are unavailable to you and play the next available theme within the group. For a lot of players, this means that a number of new themes just became available that they're never seen before, and in other cases it means the return of some old favorites that disappeared. Enjoy!

And you're welcome for the hard work, Amy. Thanks for letting me know that it's appreciated. :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | December 15, 2009
Hmm...apparently, if you have the automatic refresh of the front page going, after about a minute of each video you test (if you're video testing, which you all should be! ;)), it refreshes, and you lose the video you were looking at. So, I guess you should learn from my error and turn off automatic refresh before you video test... Or is it enough to start the video, and if it starts playing, assume the video is fine and move on?

Scott Hardie | December 16, 2009
I have modified it so that if one of the videos is being displayed, the auto-refresh doesn't happen. If I wanted to watch one of the videos, I'd click on the band name and open it in a new tab, but that's a needless extra step. Good idea.

I've been doing the video test thing by myself for a while, as part of my regular maintenance running the site. It dawned on me recently that some players would probably enjoy helping out with that test, which means less work for me. It divides the work evenly among us, with a minimum of one test per day. I developed a habit of posting three new videos every time a band ran out, so that the band would last longer before running out next time. Helping out with the video testing is totally optional, and totally appreciated.

If you have no idea what we're talking about, read my first comment on December 12.

Scott Hardie | December 22, 2009
Kelly and I will be leaving tomorrow for Illinois, returning late on January 2nd. There are currently four new bands awaiting distribution in the Card Exchange, and I have run out of time to make more. If I have some time to kill during our trip, I'll add some new bands to the game, but that probably won't happen. Expect the "new card" to stop being given out for a little while.

I have lots of plans for the new year, Rock Block and otherwise. I can't wait for 2010 to arrive so we can begin. See you on the flip side!

Amy Austin | December 22, 2009
Have a great time and a good Christmas and New Year, Scott... and Kelly! ;-)

Chris Lemler | December 22, 2009
Scott hope you have a safe trip down to IL. You and Kelly have a Good Christmas and New Years :)

Lori Lancaster | December 22, 2009
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