Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Robert Carroll]

Dlareh,

That seems to work fine! You'd put not-laws under each group when you were sure a certain person voted against, as "voting against" is simply everyone who didn't vote for it. It seems as if it would also be very easy to identify templates/possibilities with your diagram. As long as you keep track of the fact that everyone has to be for at least one thing, you should be ok. Additionally, when a question asks about who's voting against, quickly realizing that anyone not voting for is automatically against (and thus not listed on your diagram) would be necessary, but you are obviously completely aware of that!

For anyone having trouble tracking who is against, it might make sense to write that out in a mini diagram on a question-by-question basis, if it's relevant. Or just remind yourself, "If they're not in a given one of the three groups, that means they're in the against group."

Robert Carroll

[AlyssaY]

I set up this game using a diagram like this:

Screen Shot 2019-10-22 at 8.58.55 PM.png

Since we know from the rules exactly how many votes are for (and thus against) each bill, I thought creating In/Out Groups was the easiest way to show how the variables relate. For each of the bills (rows), you must have F H and G. And for the For/Against (columns), you know you must have at least one of each F H and G, and one variable will vote for 2 of the bills. This led me to create these templates (variables in RED are from the rules)

Screen Shot 2019-10-22 at 9.11.36 PM.png

Since F and H are for the R bill, you know that G must be for either the S or the T bill, possibly both, because each person needs to vote for at least one bill. So if H votes for S, then G must vote for T. If G votes for S, then the T could be either G or F.

Is there any reason it would be wrong to treat this game with more of an In/Out Grouping setup rather than using the 3x3 stacked linear grid as shown in the book? I want to make sure that I am approaching these kinds of games in the right way.

Thank you so much!!

[Adam Tyson]

I love this approach, and not only because it is the approach that I took when i first did this game. In our explanation, we had the people - FGH - fixed as part of the "base" with the votes - For and Against - as the moving parts. You've made For and Against a part of the base and moved FGH around. Both work! Our approach required that there by some mix of For and Against in every row and in every column, while yours (and mine) required that there be FGH in every row and every column.

Brilliant, if I do say so myself! There's more than one way to attack a game, and while in most games there is one method that is clearly superior to the alternatives (perhaps due to tracking numeric relationships), in this particular game it seems to me that these two approaches are equally excellent. Nice job!

[AlyssaY]

There's more than one way to attack a game

Thank you Adam! For me, grouping games have been more challenging than linear games to quickly get an effective setup so it is reassuring that there's more than one way to do it. The explanation for this game in the LGB initially made me panic since it appeared that I had completely misunderstood the nature of the game (linear vs. grouping) but glad there are times when they are interchangeable, although as you said, there's likely elements that make one way more superior than others.

So appreciate all of the help.