Hi All,
I was all excited when I found out about this engine. Unfortunately, after trying some things out, the excitement quickly wore off and it got me confused.
So I tried some games which are familiar to me, like Monopoly and Risk. I went into a game with a friend with which I was searching for a solution during these dreadful times which force us to stay home and make it near impossible to play board and card games.
I was expecting that the engine would act interactively and play the rules of the games. So the first disappointment was when pieces had to moved manually after a dice roll. But that wouldn’t be a big problem and it would adhere more to the real thing.
But then we discovered, one could just pick a title deed from the stack and lay it on the own player area and that way acquire the deed without paying for it.
Next experiment made clear we could just get deeds from each other without the game holding us back.
So, we got confused about that. And it made the engine immediately unusable as one of our friends always searches for ways to cheat. Which is actually fun in person but would ruin the experience during social distancing.
So my question now is, is this a shortcoming of the engine? Doesn’t it allow rules to be implemented and enforced? Or is it a shortcoming of in this case the monopoly module?
We tried some other games, which had all the same issue.
There are precious few modules that fully enforce rules, and those that do tend to use quite complex custom programming. VASSAL is first and foremost a virtual tabletop only. You get a board, you get pieces, and it’s up to you to move things manually and the onus is on players to know and adhere to the game’s rules. It’s a digital sandbox. Some modules offer some minor automations and conveniences to speed up mundane, fiddly processes, but that’s about it.
If you want online games that enforce turn structures, rules, and prevent cheating, I would recommend services like Yucata, SpielByWeb, Tabletopia, BoardGameArena, etc.
Thank you for your answer.
So, if I read your answer correctly, it is possible to enforce the rules in Vassal, it’s just that it’s rarely done.
So if I’d like to program that myself, I could do that with it?
Thus spake crazyharry:
I was expecting that the engine would act interactively and play the
rules of the games. So the first disappointment was when pieces had to
moved manually after a dice roll. But that wouldn’t be a big problem and
it would adhere more to the real thing.
But then we discovered, one could just pick a title deed from the stack
and lay it on the own player area and that way acquire the deed without
paying for it.
Next experiment made clear we could just get deeds from each other
without the game holding us back.
So, we got confused about that. And it made the engine immediately
unusable as one of our friends always searches for ways to cheat. Which
is actually fun in person but would ruin the experience during social
distancing.
So my question now is, is this a shortcoming of the engine? Doesn’t it
allow rules to be implemented and enforced? Or is it a shortcoming of in
this case the monopoly module?
You were expecting something we’ve never promised. VASSAL is a virtual
tabletop, meaining that it gives you surfaces on which you can move
pieces around. There is support for automating moving pieces around,
and some module designers have used that to do some limited rules
enforcement.
Coding what is effectively a program which permits all and only legal
moves in a game is not what VASSAL is intended for, and we’ve never
advertised it as that. If your friend is a cheater… well, your problem
is not with VASSAL.
–
J.