Really a Useful Note: Stock Puzzle

I just discovered that there's a Main page for Game of Nim. This is a very abstract, mathematical game, with absolutely zero story content.

It has a fairly long example list, but all the examples but one are "the game appears as a puzzle in or is mentioned in this work", with no mention of any narrative significance. If it's used as a trope, it's not mentioned in the examples.

The one exception is a Real Life example about how you can use the game to win money against opponents who don't know the winning strategy. Since it's Real Life, there's not narrative significance.

The page has ten wicks, one of which is from Stock Puzzle, and the others are from works where the game appears. All of these seem to be either ZCEs, or "the Game of Nim is used as a stock puzzle here".

The game could conceivably be used as a trope ("Life is like the game of Nim", or something like that, or there could be a narrative point about a person knowing the strategy). However, I see no evidence of this in the examples.

The page could perhaps be made into a work page; however, as a work the game lacks any narrative and doesn't use any tropes, and it doesn't have the cultural connotations of, say, chess or bridge. It may be worth keeping as a Useful Note.

edited 18th Oct '16 6:00:01 AM by GnomeTitan

Opening and pinging ~Gnome Titan.

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I agree it probably fits best under Useful Notes; there are very few gameplay tropes.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I'm betting this was simply overlooked when we started moving useful notes to their own namespace. It should certainly be moved now.

It's not a work page, because it lists works, not tropes.

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My proposal is to turn it into a Useful Note. The list of works using it can stay, and the real-life example should be merged into the Useful Note itself (above the line, that is). Also, the page is currently indexed on Stock Puzzle - that wick will have to be changed to refer to the new note.

The question is what we do with the crosswicks. Work pages aren't allowed to list Useful Notes in their trope list, but it may be worthwhile to mention that the game of Nim is referred in a work. Since most of the works seem to use it as a stock puzzle, would it be admissible to change an example like this:

• Game of Nim: To get past the troll guarding the bridge, you have to beat him at this game.

to

• Stock Puzzle: To get past the troll guarding the bridge, you have to beat him at a Game of Nim?

Or should we just axe the crosswicks?

edited 7th Jan '17 3:35:49 AM by GnomeTitan

I find that axing the crosswicks is a reduction of legitimate content, which is a less optimal solution.

But if Stock Puzzles are tropes, this is a trope, because it's a stock puzzle. Due to the simplicity and use of it, I'd categorise it as that rather than as a work with tropes.

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I'm also against axing the crosswicks. That's why I suggested changing the crosswicks to Stock Puzzle and mentioning Nim in the example text instead.

However, it seems we have precedent: The other stock puzzles on the Stock Puzzle index are tropes (i.e. in the main namespace).

But...

it's just that I feel that the game of Nim is a bit too void of content to be tropeworthy. The fact that a game uses a stock puzzle such as Nim may be tropeworthy, but my spontaneous feeling is that the trope is Stock Puzzle, not Game of Nim, because the way stock puzzles are usually treated in games make them more or less interchangable. In other words, I didn't notice any crosswick where it's really important that the stock puzzle is Nim rather than, say, the Towers of Hanoi. So it feels like overkill to have subtropes for each individual stock puzzle.

Also my reason for starting this thread is that the Game of Nim page really reads like a Useful Note and not like a trope page - it explains the rules and strategies of the game, but says absolutely nothing about narrative significance or trope use.

So maybe we should examine the other subtropes of Stock Puzzle to see if they, too, are more Useful Notes than tropes? I realize that this opens up a whole can of worms. It is certainly simpler just to leave everything as it is...

edited 7th Jan '17 5:02:36 AM by GnomeTitan

It's a subtrope of Stock Puzzle. It's specific enough and there are enough examples of it to justify its own page.

Narrative significance doesn't matter. That's not a requirement for something to be a trope. Game mechanics is one simple collection of tropes like that. They're types of challenges that require different ways of thinking. If you change it, you need to think of a different way to solve whatever it is you're replacing it with. If it's a game against an AI, you need to program that AI with some kind of method for solving it, which may or may not be fair for players.

There is a pattern of people, especially game designers, including this in their works.

It is a trope.

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Agreed.

As a Stock Puzzle, it can be a gameplay element. Even if it has mathematical quirks, it is still a puzzle.

This is a trope, not a useful note.

edited 7th Jan '17 12:33:07 PM by pokedude10

The problem is a lot of the examples are not that and just simply a Math Based Puzzle.

Hmm. I think most is an overstatement. The Pokemon and Shin Megami Tensei examples are stretching it. But the others seem fine. How are "most" of them incorrect?

While I'm not familiar with them specifically, Pokemon seems to be the same, but with additional gimmicks.

SMT sounds like a puzzle that may or may not be considered a variant, where you count numbers and you're only allowed to count 1-3 numbers each time. It's a very similar, and also common, puzzle that has the same basic idea, but slightly different rules. The only actual difference is that it's a single row and you're limited to the amount you're removing.

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I agree; the puzzles themselves should be in the Useful Notes section and wick the works that use them, Stock Puzzle should index those puzzles/games with an example list of works, and the work page should list the Stock Puzzle trope with a wick to the Useful Notes page in the example text.

• Stock Puzzle is the trope.
• The puzzle itself is a [work or real-world element] used in storytelling, but not a trope.
• All three should link to one another.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Since when is a subtrope of a trope not a trope?

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When it's The Same But More Specific. I tend to agree. Stock Puzzle is the trope here. This is a page which someone forgot to move to Useful Notes.

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I agree. We seem to have a case of TSBMS here.

Games tend to use stock puzzles as interchangeable components. "We need to block the player from opening this door for a while, so we'll add a stock puzzle to delay them." I haven't seen any example where it actually matters which stock puzzle was actually used; and if it really should matter, the stock puzzle would be altered to fit with the theme or plot, and then it wouldn't really be a stock puzzle anymore.

This was, by the way, part of what I meant when I wrote that Game of Nim reads like a useful note rather than a trope or work page - the only thing it adds is the rules for the game, and there's nothing but the rules of the game that describes how it differs from its supertrope Stock Puzzle.

A question, by the way (and this is just meant as an honest question, not as a debate device): Game of Nim is obviously being used as a trope, but most other games are works, not tropes. What's the difference?

I can answer half of the question myself: Game of Nim does not have enough creative depth to be treated as a work. But the other half remains: since other games are works, they can't be listed as tropes. If a game requires you to play a game of poker to defeat an opponent, wouldn't that make Poker a trope by the same reasoning as Nim is a trope?

That's not what The Same, but More Specific means. This falls just as much under that as Our Monsters Are Different with all the various specific monster variations, or Deus ex Machina with regards to Ass Pull. Should we also just remove all those subtropes, because they're "The Same, but More Specific"?

Are you seriously arguing that this isn't specific enough to be a clearly defined subtrope? That there's no significant difference between this and for instance Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle?

The difference is how they're used. This is used as a trope. Works that are simple enough are often used as tropes. That's the case with many aesops, for instance, or other short stories.

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Really I think it's way too specific, just a general Math Based Puzzle trope would work better.

It has a page of examples. It's certainly not too specific to gather examples.

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On the other hand, it seems odd to single out Nim when every entry on Stock Puzzle is currently treated the same way.

I'm changing my position. Nim should be left as is unless and until we get a broader decision on the whole set of "tropes". In other words, my vote is to treat Nim the same we we treat the everything else in its category.

There's nothing special enough about it to suggest that it needs special treatment.

I suspect that Stock Puzzle is what should be in the repair shop for discussion, not Nim.

edited 8th Jan '17 9:43:30 AM by Xtifr

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I agree: Nim shouldn't be singled out, but all the various mathematical game subtropes of Stock Puzzle should be merged into one trope (probably Stock Puzzle itself) and the rules be turned into Useful Notes.

This, however, may be more work than it's worth, especially since the question doesn't seem to engage that many people.

As for the question what a trope is, I'll pass on that, since it seems that nowadays almost anything that's specific enough can be a "trope" on this wiki.

But on the specific question raised in this thread, I'd say that I really don't think the various games here (Nim, Towers of Hanoi, etc) are different enough from the perspective of how they are used in larger games - and that's what the entire Stock Puzzle trope is about.

My point is that if I'm playing a typical adventure game, and the author has decided to block my progress by forcing me to move soup cans around in the kitchen before a door can be opened, it typically doesn't matter one iota if the soupcan moving turns out to be the Towers of Hanoi or a game of Nim from the perspective of the adventure game.

Of course, Nim and Towers of Hanoi are distinct. That's not the point. It's as if the trope Cool Car had subtropes Cool Sports Car, Cool SUV and Cool Truck because sports cars, SUVs and trucks are very different vehicles. That would be very much TSBMS, and I say soemthing similar applies here.

edited 8th Jan '17 10:05:36 AM by GnomeTitan

Stock Puzzle is an index, not a trope. Which may be part of the problem.

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But that could surely be solved by turning it into a trope page with an index of various Useful Notes, couldn't it?

EDITED: Even if we keep the individual puzzles as tropes, we seem to have Stock Puzzle as a supertrope.

edited 8th Jan '17 10:08:40 AM by GnomeTitan

Yes. It doesn't even have to be exclusively for useful notes. Historical Domain Character serves as an index for both creators and useful notes.

But if we're going to do that, we should really have Stock Puzzle, rather than Nim, in the repair shop. At the very least, we want the little "This trope is in the repair shop" tag to appear on the right page.

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