Category: Tabletop Tuesday

Mechanics, Flavor Text, and Warmongering

In Seven Wonders, the blue cards are civic structures like aqueducts and temples. They do nothing during the game but are worth victory points at the end, like victory point cards in Dominion. The red cards are military structures. At the end of each era, players compare how many “shields” of military power they and their neighbors have, and victory points are awarded accordingly (simulating battles). You see the same dynamic that you see in Civilization, where aggressive players go for red cards and compete, while others hoard blue and green (science) cards in self-contained path.

You can build a functionally identical system but change player behavior by changing the flavor text. Keep the mechanics the same but flip the names: that barracks is now a theater that produces “scrolls,” and at the end of each era players compare how much cultural influence they and their neighbors have, and victory points are awarded accordingly (simulating immigration). The former civic structure cards now all have military names, and military prowess does nothing during the game but is worth victory points at the end (which is just as coherent as having aqueducts and courthouses do nothing during the game while they could be given a mechanic showing that they promote health and justice). Better yet, let’s do a three-way trade: now science works like the civics cards did (points per scientific discovery at the end of the game) but the military works like science did; the symbols are now archery, infantry, and cavalry, and you get points for either or both of having one really strong or a complete set of combined forces.

In all those cases, the mechanics are identical. We are just changing names and colors on the cards. But I’m willing to bet that warmongers will still accumulate legions of infantry in that last example, while more peaceful players like me will gleefully compete with their neighbors culturally. It is what I loved about Civilization IV: using cultural imperialism to have enemy cities riot until they could join my empire. You can see the same thing in modded games: take the necromancer, have it summon unicorns and rainbow friendship friends instead of ghosts and demonic worms, and suddenly you have a whole new class that appeals to a different demographic. Tanto Cuore is Dominion re-skinned as a game about Japanese maids, which made it an instant must-buy for one of my friends but drove away other friends who are happy to play Dominion.

: Zubon

Strategy in the Smallest Things

Do you ever lose track of which units/buildings/whatever in the game are yours? Lately, I have gotten into the habit of intentionally picking the least desired color so that there is less cognitive load from trying to remember which color I have this time. My friends argue over who gets red or black this game, but no one fights me for these Cheetos-orange pieces. Bonus points if you get your own set of meeples and use those for board games so yours are always distinct.

: Zubon

Codename: Morningstar

I saw Codename: Morningstar at Gen Con. That was a beta/demo for the digital tools for D&D 5th Edition. It was pretty okay. The developers were in the unenviable position of supporting a set of rules that had not been finished yet. Several things were noted as “we just got the rules for that this week, so we’ll add that soon.” My main worry was their business model, which did not exist at that point (also under negotiations).

Since then, you may have heard, it was officially announced as Dungeonscape and then cancelled. Perhaps something went wrong in all those negotiations.

They are Kickstarting retooling the software for Pathfinder. I thought some of you might be interested, even if seems unlikely to be funded given its current backing level. Also, there’s a “business of games” story behind those links, for folks interested in that.

: Zubon

[TT] Seven Wonders

The latest board game at our house is Seven Wonders. It is good. I may need more players to keep the game interesting over time.

In Seven Wonders, you control an ancient city. The basic play is: play a card (signifying building a building) and pass your hand to the next player. This happens 18 times and you’re done. That sounds kind of dull when you put it that way, why is this fun? Continue reading [TT] Seven Wonders

[TT] Board Game Apps

I was pretty intrigued by Zubon’s discussion of Kingdom Builder. Zubon had already made me a fan of Zaccarino’s Dominion game, and I wanted to check Kingdom Builder out as well. Well, there’s an app for that.

I was on a trip down to the Gulf for a wedding, and I decided that $5 wasn’t too much for a couple hours of board game playing. The Kingdom Builder app is pretty good, with the exception of not being able to take back token placement. More importantly, I have already learned plenty of strategy from the AI, at least enough that I could wander in to a convention game and not make a fool of myself.  The $40+ dead tree version is on my Christmas wish list now.

Ticket to Ride dead tree version is also on my wish list, but straight up having never played it on app or the analogue world. I know it is an excellent game, and one touted by many as being a great Board Game entry for younger kin. I plan on getting the app this month so that if Santa Claus puts the board game box under the tree for me I will be in a place to teach others how to play.

My five year old also has been wanting to learn to play chess, and I’ve found that using Chance Chess (free online) to narrow down the moves has been an incredible teaching tool. We also taught her (and my 8yo) Monopoly last night. It was still shrink-wrapped… as a wedding gift of ours 10 years ago. That’s lasting worth, and who would’ve thought ten years ago that I’d have the beginnings of a board game family.

–Ravious

[TT] Kingdom Builder (First Impressions)

I have played my first few games of Kingdom Builder. My first impressions are very favorable, but I have not played enough to speak comprehensively. I also have not tried any of the expansion content. My “big box” came with two expansions and three mini-expansions, so I have a lot to explore.

Kingdom Builder is the Spiel des Jahres “Game of the Year” from 2012, designed by Donald Vaccarino, who also won it in 2009 for Dominion. Like Dominion, this is a simple-to-learn game that you can play with non-gamers, with components that vary by game to extend replayability and reduce the extent to which the game has a single, solvable “best” way to play.

Gameplay is the same for each game, but the board changes as does how you score points. That last is important: scoring rules change each game, 3 rules drawn from a deck of 10, so in one game you want to build a big kingdom by the water and in another you want a long horizontal row that borders a mountain range. There are 120 possible combinations of scoring rules, although that exaggerates the variation because some rules are similar (miners/fisherman give points for building next to water/mountains). The board changes because you pick 4 maps (from 8 in the base set, 2 orientations to each) and combine them to build the board, which gives you 26,880 potential boards, but again that overstates the variation because it counts different sets of 4 as well as different arrangements, and ABCD probably plays a lot like ABDC (ignoring arrangement gives you 70 boards). Each board has a unique location, so farms let you build more on plains while oases let you build more in the desert (again, templated variation). By the most generous counting, the base game comes with 3,225,600 different game configurations, but even a really stingy counting will put you in 4 digits, and running out of variation after a few thousand hours is not a bad payoff for a board game. And expansions come with more boards and scoring rules.

That variation is there for you, the dedicated repeat player. For casual folks who will play maybe once or twice, the important thing is that the rules can be explained in a couple of minutes. Basic gameplay: draw a terrain card, place three settlements in that terrain, bordering your existing kingdom if possible; if you built next to one of those unique locations, you now have an optional ability each turn (place or move settlements). When someone places his/her last settlement, the game ends after everyone has an equal number of turns. That’s pretty much it. A new player needs to learn a few simple rules, the four optional abilities, and the three scoring rules.

I am always on the lookout for good games I can play with people who would not self-identify as “gamers.” My first games were fun, and non-gamers were willing to play again.

: Zubon

“Contested”

I’m typing this while listening to David Sirlin’s new podcast. Around 20:12 he discusses “contested” skills, which I think is a good term and one I may start using. This reaches back to a comments discussion from 2012, where we had a brief exchange about the fundamental nature of PvP. I think “contested” is the distinction we were looking for, and preferences for or against contested actions determine many opinions about gameplay.

For those not listening, “contested” means that actions are brought into direct conflict and you must react to opponents’ actions to be successful. SynCaine’s apt term contrasting competitive PvE from PvP is “PvE with a leaderboard.” Golf and bowling are non-contested sports. Football of either sort is contested. Golf and bowling are competitive, but your game does not vary at all based on who you are competing with. Games with less interactivity are less contested, so many Eurogames try to have relatively few contested elements. A game of Dominion with no attacks is almost perfectly uncontested (although someone else could buy out the cards you want).

Some players, like David Sirlin, really like contested skill competitions. That is the heart of gaming for them. These are PvP enthusiasts. They want skills to be brought into opposition. Some people favor engaging in non-contested activities. The heart of the activity for them is individual excellence, developing a skill and seeing how well they can do, where they would consider reacting to an opponent to be a distraction from the core activity. Later in the podcast, David refers to winning by best exploiting their opponents, not by playing optimally. In a contested game, reacting and exploiting opponents is vitally important. But if “optimize” has a better emotional valence for you than “exploit,” you might be more interested in something like less contested like running or Freecell.

: Zubon

Best Player Wins?

A friend recently speculated that he was having trouble getting people to play Hyperborea because the best player tends to win. Hyperborea has some variability between games but a very small amount of uncontrolled randomness. It is not as pure a strategy game as chess or go, but it is far to that side of the continuum even for a Eurogame. If someone is significantly better than you, you lose.

I can see why that would not be fun. I frequently object to games where it is unknown whether victory is even possible. This is the opposite case: victory is known to be possible just exceedingly unlikely. All your decisions are meaningful, but the outcome is still pretty certain because you do not (yet – growth mindset!) know how to make better decisions. Instead of the frustration of an unavoidable loss that is out of your control, this is an unavoidable loss that is entirely your fault. You can still have Theory of Fun fun in learning to play better, but many people are not excited about diving into a lost cause.

This is a frequent theme in skill-based PvP games. In a fair fight, half the players will be below average, and the average skill of your opponent tends to increase as s/he plays more and the worse players quit. Even if everyone is friendly, polite, and supportive of you as a learning player rather than cursing you as a newb, the average player would rather be a wolf than a sheep.

For tabletop games, this is often less a worry because you are playing with your friends, which is usually the point of playing. Rivalry is friendly, and more casual players can use how much they lost by as a measure of progress (serious but poor players are harder to satisfy there). Another player I know counts herself as “not losing” so long as she is not in last place. In friendly games, the stronger player might take a handicap or provide advice to competitors.

Players want a chance to win. If that means devolving the game to almost pure chance, so be it. I am reminded of children who like to play ridiculous variations on existing games, partly because kids will try most anything as a game but partly because it nullifies others’ experience with the standard game. A work event at a bowling alley included three “fun frames” whose main purpose was to keep the serious bowlers from getting too far ahead; if you have trouble bowling 100, bowling between your legs or with your off-hand won’t make you do much worse, but it forces the pros down to the novice level again. Randomness helps the weaker party.

Personally, I find little satisfaction in winning through no merit of my own, although it can still be nice to win. I don’t have a reference handy, but I recall that many (most?) people would happily trade getting credit for their merits so long as they did not get blame for their faults. It seems an even easier trade to say you’d rather win through no merit than lose by your own fault.

: Zubon

[TT] Tiny Epic Kingdoms

Having played only a few games, Tiny Epic Kingdoms strikes me as Hyperborea writ small: tiny box, fewer pieces, fewer mechanics, shorter playing time, but still a game of building and territorial control with a strong strategic element. I could never play Hyperborea with my non-gamer wife, but she would be happy to play TEK again, and I can happily play it with gamer friends.

In TEK, each player gets a faction (race) and a home territory card. The factions differ only in their tech tree: “magic” you unlock by spending the mana resource, so constructs are stronger in the mountains while merfolk are stronger around water. Each territory card has five territories, and you have frequent opportunities to move around your board or send meeples (pawns) to other boards. There are three resources (food, mana, ore) and four ways to score points (food -> more meeples, mana -> more magic, ore -> tower, meeples -> territorial control). Each turn you choose one of six actions from a board, everyone else either does that or collects resources (based on territorial control), and you cannot repeat actions until the action board resets (after five have been chosen). Battle is handled by sealed bids, high bid wins. There are no random elements beyond selecting territories, but there are unpredictable elements as multiple players are making choices on the same battlefield.

There is some strategic depth in this simple game. You have three methods of building, one of which helps you build faster, one of which gives you more abilities, and one that is worth more points. You are juggling development and expansion, attacking or defending against enemies, and preparing for a late game that starts early. The territories do not seem to affect strategy much (a few details around the edges), but your race does affect your strategy. Things get more complicated with more players because one strong attack or defense leaves you vulnerable to everyone else on the table.

With 16 factions, I would be shocked if the game were really balanced. Some are obviously better with more or fewer players, such as the halflings’ bonuses to alliances (no alliances in the 2-player game) or the goblins’ ability go gain food whenever anyone gets a new meeple. But with 16 factions, there is probably at least one that fits your playstyle, which is often more important than precise balance, because that mathematical advantage does not help you much if you don’t have the playstyle to use it.

Pretty easy to teach with variety and a bit of depth. It’s a nice, small package.