Week 1: What a battle system is

The first of the course's two lectures — why a battle system is readable at all, and what the other eleven weeks do with that

22 February 2027

The course runs two lectures and ten working sessions. This is the first, and it exists to make one argument: a battle system is a small, finite, mostly deterministic thing, and the reason it doesn’t feel that way is presentation.

Forty minutes, three parts.

What we mean by a system#

An animation, a damage number and a turn order are three views of the same handful of rules. We take one fight apart on the screen and put the rules on the board — nothing you couldn’t do yourself with a pause button and patience, which is the point.

Why spreadsheets#

Because a spreadsheet forces you to say what depends on what, and because a model you can step forward one tick at a time is a model you can be wrong in public with. Every week of this course ends in one.

What you owe, and when#

The three small items and the design document, with dates. Bring questions about the marking to this lecture rather than to week 11.