The Castle Doctrine Forums

This was me!

I was halfway through writing my own explanation of events when I reconsidered. I quite enjoy the omission of the thief's motivations. Where my actions mistaken, or purely awful? What was my initial plan? How did it go wrong? Did I suicide intentionally? Why, I asked myself, aught I ruin one of the best elements of your narrative: ambiguity!

The late Mr Morse's (my) maze was, I'll admit, an "infinite loop of death", but haven't you heard the old rougelike saying "death is fun"? People began by dying in droves, but soon people died and learnt and died and learnt and started using more clever tactics. Any 'random' sequence will have to repeat itself eventually as there are only a finite amount of states the circuitry can be in before it repeats itself. To make a clock and pseudo-random number generator with a sequence 120 long took up almost half the house. Quite a few people had figured out the sequence by the end, and were coming up with methods even I hadn't thought of to survive in the maze. In addition, a single damaged wire would render the whole generator useless leaving the floor perfectly inert. You try hiding a bundle of electronics half the size of your house effectively! Add to that the fact that I almost pissed myself each and every self test (and eventually died during one) it's not as if the house was in any way optimal. If I wanted to make an 'invulnerable' house, believe me, it would be easier to do a magic dance or combo lock. I made my maze because I thought it would be fun and different (and OK because I wanted to get rich and famous!). When I finally got done over, the robber, (ukuko?) entered my house with only a pistol. It was beautiful to watch: not a magic dance seemingly disengaged from the danger of death or any discernible meaning for that matter, (which most magic dances are) but one actively engaged in surviving the electrical jolts emanating from a mysterious, but none the less predictable mainframe, a dance in time with the infinite loop of death.

None the less Bill I understand your outrage. The line in this game (or any game with emergent properties for that matter) between something clever as opposed to something that is simply exploitative is always going to be a fuzzy one. If everybody had complete knowledge about what is dangerous and what isn't then it would become a game simply about calculated risks, with incomplete knowledge there is a darker and more frightening edge to your risk taking, I think this is an intentional aspect of the game. Whenever I'm tricked by a new clever combination I feel exploited, but hell, it is, to a certain extent, a game about exploitation. In the end if people can learn ways of dealing with a certain combination of elements I feel it isn't an exploit. True exploits are ones which there is no way to combat, ones which add nothing to the game. As I said earlier, the line is by no means clear, but as far as I can tell clocks are too vulnerable and predictable to be an exploit. I also don't expect every second house to become like Mr Morse's, frankly, the electronics are to convoluted, so it won't end up (as far as can tell) leading to a row of identical houses filling the street. The ultimate success of my house was that it was unique and unexpected, it will not stay that way forever.

It is also true that the game has strayed before (I speak of the blueprint days) into realms where without a degree in computer engineering things might have been tough. (I've got a degree in creative arts by the way) I understand that not everybody gets the glee I get from making or figuring out complex circuitry and that, simply, that is not what the game is about. But in the blueprint days there was a major difference, the mainframe was closed behind an impenetrable wall, all you could do was try to understand it. If you could not then there was nothing at all you could do. But as I have pointed out, my mainframe is different, it is vulnerable, Luddites need not understand my damn contraption, they can smash it to little pieces. Wouldn't THAT at least be satisfying?