It's reaching the end of the year, and the traditional time for a geek to look at what games they played and reminisce. But rather than talk about what I played lots this year - I'm going to talk about what I didn't play. And my regrets.
Invariably (In my life), the shorter games get pulled out more. There was a year when I must have played Circus Flocati almost 20 times. Why? Because we'd always play it while waiting for everyone else to show up. We might have only finished the game 10 times, but it appeared on the table constantly. So at this time of year, when I lament what I didn't play, it's always the long difficult games. On with the show.
Roads and Boats
A perennial favorite of at least one group I play with, R&B got a ton of play for awhile, and has now declined to a measly one time in 2007. There's still the possibility of play left I think - but one or two, what's the difference there? There was a time when we picked scenarios purely based on not having played them yet. I'm sure there's one or two unplayed ones left...
18xx
This was the year of 1825. It got two plays, along with one Isle of Wight. No 1830, and I missed a chance to try 18CTC at Kublacon because I was working. Sigh. Work interfering with games? Foolishness! We talk constantly about trying to play more often, but 18xx doesn't make it out for evenings most of the time, even though there are several games that play in under 4 hours. So it gets relegated to weekend gaming, and hence more infrequent.
Magic Realm
Two measly plays. Two! More if you would count realmspeak or solo dithering, but I don't. I went to bgg.con with the avowed intention of getting in a game, even going so far as to bring my custom set, but I got distracted by the shiny and new, or the shiny and old.
That crazy Fan game
Speaking of bgg.con, this game makes the list purely because I failed entirely to ever knock the stupid little post off the wooden box. More practice at throwing fans is obviously needed. One play not enough (Though seeing how the game had like 5 copies made, and I don't own one, I doubt that will happen).
Great Battles of History
Well, taking the GBH series as a whole, I've actually played a fair bit. Multiple sessions of Alexander and Samurai, plus one-and-a-half sessions of Alesia. Alesia I don't need to play again, but I'm always up for another Alexander or Samurai game, and we never did get around to reading the rules for RAN (the 2nd half of samurai that was released this year). Overall this is probably the wargame series that I regret not playing more, though Flying Colors is always a contender as well.
Lords of the...
Phil Eklunds "Lords" series were finally attempted by myself this year (along with American Megafauna, and just recently Origins..) I find myself fully enamored of Phil's games, although they are not the easiest to comprehend. Multiple plays of Lords of the Spanish Main left me with nothing but a taste for more. I have yet to attempt either of the two earlier games (mostly due to component issues), but I am sad that I didn't get a chance to play more. The Lords series demands repeat play, not only because you need to learn how the game works, but also because you need to learn how to tweak the base rules to fit the play styles of your local group. To be blunt, the "big deck" problem rears it's ugly head, and for the group of war/euro gamers that I usually play with, a more normalized randomization is needed. That last sentence probably leaves you shaking your head in wonderment, but trust me, it makes sense. One of these days I'll write more about it. For now, trust me that I wish I had played these games more often.
So there's the short list. Of all the rest, the only other game that I feel regret is for poor unloved-in-2007 Fairy Tale. The game is short, I enjoy it immensely, and I used to play it quite a bit. In 2007? One lonely time. Ah well. So many games. I'm sure I'll come back to it.
---
Showing posts with label aaron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aaron. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Persistent Worlds
Long term games. Role-playing, 12 hour marathon sessions of such-and-such. This post is somewhat inspired by an upcoming (2008?) expansion to FFG's Descent, which adds a campaign system to the tactical dungeon crawl. And some of my recent experiences.
Board games are often beloved for their 'play and forget' aspects. You can start a boardgame quickly, and it makes no demands on your time before and after the game. This is a start contrast to other 'hobby' games. Miniatures demand time painting and sculpting. Collectibles demand time sorting, planning, and devising (deck-building/army building). Role-playing demands prep time from the GM, and require players to carry information from game session to game session.
As gamers age, add families and commitments, board games begin to appeal above other games because of this lack of commitment away from the table. But there still remains in some people the desire to build something lasting within their hobby. Online MMRPGs tap into this. Join World of Warcraft and you are immediately part of something large. The game goes on around you and you experience bits and pieces. Put the game down for a moment and when you return you find your position identical, but the environment has shifted - a living game.
There is obviously some desire to see this sort of persistence in board games. It's not for everyone. Some people bundle this desire into "theme", but it's a whole nut by itself, most often called 'campaign play' - the idea that each playing of a game impacts the next time the game comes out.
One of the best examples in my experience is the old GDW game Imperium. In this 1970's space wargame the two sides fight a short-lived strategic war. Generally the war ends when one or two planets or outposts change sides. One side wins the war - "game" over. But the game doesn't actually end there. You roll some dice and play a 5-10 minute mini-game of peace, and then the next border skirmish/war breaks out - with players in a similar position to the end of the last war, or game. Players can play two wars back-to-back, or keep track of holdings and continue to play the game with an ever shifting series of planets and fleets. Persistence.
Imperium is a good game, taken up to greatness because of the ease of what is often called 'campaign' play. Descent (as mentioned earlier) received some derision early on due to it's complete lack of 'campaign' play. The next expansion will change that, bringing persistence into the game.
An obvious inspiration for Descent is the Heroquest/Warhammer Quest line of games. These games have the same theme as Descent (fantasy dungeon crawls), but had campaign systems from the very beginning. Even granddaddy Magic Realm provided a campaign system.
But a persistent world doesn't need to be tied to a fantasy adventure game. We have yet to see a designer (probably an American or Italian, given their design tendencies) bring the idea of persistence into an economic game, or any genre of game using 'modern' design features.
Perhaps the oft-requested Civ-lite game should be a game that plays in 'mileposts'. Short 60-90 minute games that reach stopping points where one player is deemed the winner, but the game is set up again next game for the next age of the game. Players could even change.
The Lords of.. series approaches persistence in-game by suggesting that players can enter and leave the game as they wish - that the players have no need of being static, and it might be possible to even win the game by playing for the first or final third of the game.
I'm sure there are other persistent worlds built within boardgames. It's an interesting piece of the attraction of games in general - and probably the one that inspires the most loyalty1.
--
1Obligatory footnote. It's not a surprise that campaign systems inspire loyalty. Invest more time into a specific game and you will feel more invested in it. What a surprise eh?
2Second Obligatory footnote. The second impetus for writing this is a persistent browser game that I'm involved in called Imperium Nova. It's an economic/negotiation space empire game. Mostly inspired by board games, the main mechanics are economic. Even warfare carries a hefty monetary cost. But it really serves to illustrate how electronic(computer/console) games have fully embraced persistent worlds. It's a selling point of many of these games. The microchip takes care of the math and the note-taking, leaving the player free to remain involved in an ongoing game. Persistence is a strong selling point3.
3But it still hasn't been applied much outside the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Military genres.
Board games are often beloved for their 'play and forget' aspects. You can start a boardgame quickly, and it makes no demands on your time before and after the game. This is a start contrast to other 'hobby' games. Miniatures demand time painting and sculpting. Collectibles demand time sorting, planning, and devising (deck-building/army building). Role-playing demands prep time from the GM, and require players to carry information from game session to game session.
As gamers age, add families and commitments, board games begin to appeal above other games because of this lack of commitment away from the table. But there still remains in some people the desire to build something lasting within their hobby. Online MMRPGs tap into this. Join World of Warcraft and you are immediately part of something large. The game goes on around you and you experience bits and pieces. Put the game down for a moment and when you return you find your position identical, but the environment has shifted - a living game.
There is obviously some desire to see this sort of persistence in board games. It's not for everyone. Some people bundle this desire into "theme", but it's a whole nut by itself, most often called 'campaign play' - the idea that each playing of a game impacts the next time the game comes out.
One of the best examples in my experience is the old GDW game Imperium. In this 1970's space wargame the two sides fight a short-lived strategic war. Generally the war ends when one or two planets or outposts change sides. One side wins the war - "game" over. But the game doesn't actually end there. You roll some dice and play a 5-10 minute mini-game of peace, and then the next border skirmish/war breaks out - with players in a similar position to the end of the last war, or game. Players can play two wars back-to-back, or keep track of holdings and continue to play the game with an ever shifting series of planets and fleets. Persistence.
Imperium is a good game, taken up to greatness because of the ease of what is often called 'campaign' play. Descent (as mentioned earlier) received some derision early on due to it's complete lack of 'campaign' play. The next expansion will change that, bringing persistence into the game.
An obvious inspiration for Descent is the Heroquest/Warhammer Quest line of games. These games have the same theme as Descent (fantasy dungeon crawls), but had campaign systems from the very beginning. Even granddaddy Magic Realm provided a campaign system.
But a persistent world doesn't need to be tied to a fantasy adventure game. We have yet to see a designer (probably an American or Italian, given their design tendencies) bring the idea of persistence into an economic game, or any genre of game using 'modern' design features.
Perhaps the oft-requested Civ-lite game should be a game that plays in 'mileposts'. Short 60-90 minute games that reach stopping points where one player is deemed the winner, but the game is set up again next game for the next age of the game. Players could even change.
The Lords of.. series approaches persistence in-game by suggesting that players can enter and leave the game as they wish - that the players have no need of being static, and it might be possible to even win the game by playing for the first or final third of the game.
I'm sure there are other persistent worlds built within boardgames. It's an interesting piece of the attraction of games in general - and probably the one that inspires the most loyalty1.
--
1Obligatory footnote. It's not a surprise that campaign systems inspire loyalty. Invest more time into a specific game and you will feel more invested in it. What a surprise eh?
2Second Obligatory footnote. The second impetus for writing this is a persistent browser game that I'm involved in called Imperium Nova. It's an economic/negotiation space empire game. Mostly inspired by board games, the main mechanics are economic. Even warfare carries a hefty monetary cost. But it really serves to illustrate how electronic(computer/console) games have fully embraced persistent worlds. It's a selling point of many of these games. The microchip takes care of the math and the note-taking, leaving the player free to remain involved in an ongoing game. Persistence is a strong selling point3.
3But it still hasn't been applied much outside the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Military genres.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Collectibles on your game table
I am apparently one of a small group of people in this world who can play a collectible game without getting sucked in. I also have a tendency to be able to wander away from the games and then wander back. This is fine for me, but bad for getting a collectible/constructible game on the table, since my fickle nature has caused me to leave behind groups of players because I became less interested in the game (the only game) they played. I've wandered into and out of Magic: The Gathering multiple times since it's launch, and I still play it with my dad whenever I see him1.
I've played most of the good collectible games2 over the years, either when the came out, or once they were cheap. Here's some mini-reviews on some of my favorites, some of which are odd. I'd love to play these games more often, but the learning curve is high for almost all of them, so even keeping a set of playable decks around doesn't help get them on the table - you really need to commit to playing one game several times with the same group.
It should be noted that with a few exceptions collectible games require player elimination for victory, or encourage player elimination, so... if you didn't know, you've been warned.
Magic: Let's start with the original.
Good Stuff: Huge base of art and styles of play along with easy core concepts so you can get playing quickly. If you want to dabble, this is the game to do it with, since you can have a fun game after a 5-10 minute teaching session. Sadly since the game is older the newer cards require more attention to the rules, so the ease of the core concepts gets hidden by the newer complexities - but at heart it's a very easy game to play.
Bad Stuff: Two player. Multiplayer works okay, but it can bog down into the same traps that occur in multiplayer wargames - "Let's you and him fight so that I win". There's also some attitude in the greater tournament scene, but don't let that worry you. Just play with friends.
Over The Edge: Second/Third game I bought into.
Good Stuff: Quirky. Lots of fun theme3, alternate win conditions and some positional tactics. It's not just about attacking the other players (which is rare), so defensive tactics are possible. Also, dirt cheap these days.
Bad Stuff: Basically just a heavily modified Magic, it's a bit better for multiple players, but a bit more complex. The quirky art and theme isn't for everyone.
Jyhad/Vampire:Jyhad on release, so that's how I always think of it.
Good Stuff: Tied for best multi-player game. This one is all about negotiations and alliances, with a strong set of rules governing when and who you can hassle. A good feeling of running a family of characters (vampires) that then take actions on your behalf. Great costing mechanic that makes you more vulnerable to loss the more resources you put in play. Voting, attacking, etc.
Bad Stuff: Long. Lots of deals, promises and waiting for the most opportune moment (I love it, you may hate it). Very Very hard to teach, with lots of rules and sub-games within the game. I can't comment on the newer sets. At its best with four players.
Shadowfist:
Good Stuff: Other half of the multi-player tie. Theming is strong4, and winning doesn't require player elimination. As a second generation game5, it pulls mechanics from a bunch of sources, resulting in a more complex feeling than Magic. Less rules than Vampire though.
Bad Stuff: Lots of blowing stuff up. Oh wait, that's a good thing. Still fairly complex to teach, and can run a bit long. Not so great with two.
NetRunner:
Good Stuff: Very nifty two player. Feels more unlike other CCGs than most, and has asymmetrical play. Strong fan base among boardgamers.
Bad Stuff: Good Deckbuilding is really hard. It's still not easy to teach and can be very intimidating due to the asymmetrical play. Hard to find.
Guardians
Good Stuff: Funny. Tactical Board game style movement coupled with some of the best graphic design/art in the genre (That's design from a art perspective, not usability).
Bad Stuff: Light. Hard to find. Very odd.
Deadlands
Good Stuff: Great combat mechanics that use the playing card suit/rank that is built into each card. Good location/character based play that supports the theme (Weird West/Horror). Good for multi-player.
Bad Stuff: A bit overly complex, especially as expansions were added.
Mythos
Good Stuff: Different. More storytelling than any other collectible, though you still have to send monsters to the other players. Nicely done, and works well with a wide range of number of players. I'm surprised that more eurogamers don't try this game - it's got the blend of story/game that seems to appeal to many.
Bad Stuff: Specificity on the cards is a bit much, making building decks frustrating, if not difficult. There are certainly some solitaire elements to the game that don't always mesh well with the aggressive elements. And you have to like stories and Lovecraft.
As you can see, in general the basic drawback to most collectibles as games is that they are complex. Sometimes in the basic rules, always in the infinite combinations of cards.
I've mostly listed older games. I pay attention to the new games, but none have really grabbed me (and many of the recent ones have been launched on the basis of their tournament support). There's a couple games I left out of the list that deserve some note - Legend of the Five Rings, Game of Thrones, Pokemon - but they never really grabbed me (though I played L5R with a group for over a year)
Cheers.
--
1He got my cards the first time I wandered away from the game, and proceeded to grow them into a huge collection. He started me on Avalon Hill/SPI, and D&D. I repaid him in kind by introducing him to Magic.
2 Which were of course almost all cards until the appearance of pre-painted miniatures, which I've dabbled in, but since the prepainted games were basically just applying the concept of collectibility to an existing game genre, I was less excited.
3Based on an RPG called On the Edge about tiny Mediterranean island with about 60 different world-domination conspiracies vying for control. An RPG that was light years ahead of it's time.
4 Lots of conspiracies (again) vying for control over the world (again) by using time travel. Cyber-Monkeys with guns. Kung Fu. Think Big Trouble in little China squared.
5I'm generous with my CCG generations, using them to categorize games. In general 1st gen are the games from 1993-1995, while 2nd gen are from 1995-crash 1. Third gen games are clumped around the rise of Pokemon/Yu-gi-oh and stretch into modern times. I haven't decided if the games of the past 2-3 years are sufficiently different from the poke-era games to merit calling them 4th gen. In short: 1st Gen - Magic and games that imitate it directly. 2nd Gen - More complex CCGs, with more rules and targeting a 20+ gamer demographic. 3rd Gen - Simpler CCGs, using licenses and anime art to target a younger demographic. 4th Gen - ??? Some weird blend of the prior generations - I haven't really found a common trend that differs too much from early games. Perhaps the 4th gen is the retro gen.
I've played most of the good collectible games2 over the years, either when the came out, or once they were cheap. Here's some mini-reviews on some of my favorites, some of which are odd. I'd love to play these games more often, but the learning curve is high for almost all of them, so even keeping a set of playable decks around doesn't help get them on the table - you really need to commit to playing one game several times with the same group.
It should be noted that with a few exceptions collectible games require player elimination for victory, or encourage player elimination, so... if you didn't know, you've been warned.
Magic: Let's start with the original.
Good Stuff: Huge base of art and styles of play along with easy core concepts so you can get playing quickly. If you want to dabble, this is the game to do it with, since you can have a fun game after a 5-10 minute teaching session. Sadly since the game is older the newer cards require more attention to the rules, so the ease of the core concepts gets hidden by the newer complexities - but at heart it's a very easy game to play.
Bad Stuff: Two player. Multiplayer works okay, but it can bog down into the same traps that occur in multiplayer wargames - "Let's you and him fight so that I win". There's also some attitude in the greater tournament scene, but don't let that worry you. Just play with friends.
Over The Edge: Second/Third game I bought into.
Good Stuff: Quirky. Lots of fun theme3, alternate win conditions and some positional tactics. It's not just about attacking the other players (which is rare), so defensive tactics are possible. Also, dirt cheap these days.
Bad Stuff: Basically just a heavily modified Magic, it's a bit better for multiple players, but a bit more complex. The quirky art and theme isn't for everyone.
Jyhad/Vampire:Jyhad on release, so that's how I always think of it.
Good Stuff: Tied for best multi-player game. This one is all about negotiations and alliances, with a strong set of rules governing when and who you can hassle. A good feeling of running a family of characters (vampires) that then take actions on your behalf. Great costing mechanic that makes you more vulnerable to loss the more resources you put in play. Voting, attacking, etc.
Bad Stuff: Long. Lots of deals, promises and waiting for the most opportune moment (I love it, you may hate it). Very Very hard to teach, with lots of rules and sub-games within the game. I can't comment on the newer sets. At its best with four players.
Shadowfist:
Good Stuff: Other half of the multi-player tie. Theming is strong4, and winning doesn't require player elimination. As a second generation game5, it pulls mechanics from a bunch of sources, resulting in a more complex feeling than Magic. Less rules than Vampire though.
Bad Stuff: Lots of blowing stuff up. Oh wait, that's a good thing. Still fairly complex to teach, and can run a bit long. Not so great with two.
NetRunner:
Good Stuff: Very nifty two player. Feels more unlike other CCGs than most, and has asymmetrical play. Strong fan base among boardgamers.
Bad Stuff: Good Deckbuilding is really hard. It's still not easy to teach and can be very intimidating due to the asymmetrical play. Hard to find.
Guardians
Good Stuff: Funny. Tactical Board game style movement coupled with some of the best graphic design/art in the genre (That's design from a art perspective, not usability).
Bad Stuff: Light. Hard to find. Very odd.
Deadlands
Good Stuff: Great combat mechanics that use the playing card suit/rank that is built into each card. Good location/character based play that supports the theme (Weird West/Horror). Good for multi-player.
Bad Stuff: A bit overly complex, especially as expansions were added.
Mythos
Good Stuff: Different. More storytelling than any other collectible, though you still have to send monsters to the other players. Nicely done, and works well with a wide range of number of players. I'm surprised that more eurogamers don't try this game - it's got the blend of story/game that seems to appeal to many.
Bad Stuff: Specificity on the cards is a bit much, making building decks frustrating, if not difficult. There are certainly some solitaire elements to the game that don't always mesh well with the aggressive elements. And you have to like stories and Lovecraft.
As you can see, in general the basic drawback to most collectibles as games is that they are complex. Sometimes in the basic rules, always in the infinite combinations of cards.
I've mostly listed older games. I pay attention to the new games, but none have really grabbed me (and many of the recent ones have been launched on the basis of their tournament support). There's a couple games I left out of the list that deserve some note - Legend of the Five Rings, Game of Thrones, Pokemon - but they never really grabbed me (though I played L5R with a group for over a year)
Cheers.
--
1He got my cards the first time I wandered away from the game, and proceeded to grow them into a huge collection. He started me on Avalon Hill/SPI, and D&D. I repaid him in kind by introducing him to Magic.
2 Which were of course almost all cards until the appearance of pre-painted miniatures, which I've dabbled in, but since the prepainted games were basically just applying the concept of collectibility to an existing game genre, I was less excited.
3Based on an RPG called On the Edge about tiny Mediterranean island with about 60 different world-domination conspiracies vying for control. An RPG that was light years ahead of it's time.
4 Lots of conspiracies (again) vying for control over the world (again) by using time travel. Cyber-Monkeys with guns. Kung Fu. Think Big Trouble in little China squared.
5I'm generous with my CCG generations, using them to categorize games. In general 1st gen are the games from 1993-1995, while 2nd gen are from 1995-crash 1. Third gen games are clumped around the rise of Pokemon/Yu-gi-oh and stretch into modern times. I haven't decided if the games of the past 2-3 years are sufficiently different from the poke-era games to merit calling them 4th gen. In short: 1st Gen - Magic and games that imitate it directly. 2nd Gen - More complex CCGs, with more rules and targeting a 20+ gamer demographic. 3rd Gen - Simpler CCGs, using licenses and anime art to target a younger demographic. 4th Gen - ??? Some weird blend of the prior generations - I haven't really found a common trend that differs too much from early games. Perhaps the 4th gen is the retro gen.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Princess of Florence
I've always been a fan of Princes of Florence.
Over the years, it's proven to be an excellent game. It provides a little bit of lots of things, auctioning, planning, spatial layout, etc. All the different bits adding up to a complete package that has never struck me as painfully solitaire, scripted, or any of the other complaints I've heard. I enjoy the fact that the auction is very new-auction-person friendly because you must raise by exactly one step and the more you lose, the more likely you are to pay less money.
Over the years of many games of Princes, I've seen auction values solidify. The jesters are worth lots of money, the landscapes aren't. Building is a viable strategy, but only if the auction values are high. To sum up, there are several paths and choices to take in obtaining victory, and the best paths often depend on the auction value of jesters and recruiting cards. If those items are going cheaply to players who know what to do with them....
But that's the case with most games where an auction is used to balance disparate items. I've run through my thoughts in order to give you a background of where I'm coming from, since I've recently finished playing Princes of Florence with the "Princess and Muse" expansion1.
It was great. Easily the best expansion for a game I've played all year. I wish I didn't have to play with the printouts from BGG. Why was it great?
It changed the game. Princess and Muse adds another auction to the game. After the standard PoF auction, players then bid on character cards. There are six characters that are auctioned in a Amun-Re/Evo/Vegas Showdown style. This means that all characters are auctioned at once, players can win at most one character, by placing their markers next to the cards on the amount they want to bid, taking markers off when they are outbid. Once each player has a winning bid on a character (or has passed), players pay the current bid and get the character they won.
I won't detail the characters abilities here (files available at BGG), but the abilities of the characters throw all the traditional auction valuation of PoF into disarray. To underline this fact to regular PoF players - in our game one player obtained four jesters. He came in fifth. Several of the characters have abilities that provide greater competition for Best Work towards the end of the game. Landscapes become more valuable. Hanging back in Victory points becomes a valid strategy. More prestige/bonus cards can enter the game. It changes a lot of things. All interesting.
In summary, it opened up new ways to win the game, and strengthened some older risky strategies. By doing this, the stronger strategies were weakened. It also feels like it increased the scores - the winning scores were about 10-15 points higher than normal. But that's hard to state with just one play.
It fit. The addition of the characters didn't feel jarring, and it didn't feel like a leftover idea. It feels like a fully developed add-on to the game. This is important to me - all too often expansions feel like the leftovers of design or development - ideas that get published after being rejected for the initial design. Princess really feels like a further development of the game.
But I would be remiss to not mention the drawback. There's one, which you could probably see coming. It adds time to the game. With the addition of another auction phase, our game took about 1.5 times as long. Part of this was obviously learning the characters, but I doubt a game of PoF with this expansion could be done in 60 minutes - something that was theoretically possible for a group of experienced players. So I wouldn't recommend the expansion become a permanent part of PoF - especially when teaching new players.
Two big thumbs up for Princess and Muse. If you like PoF, I encourage you to grab the translations from BGG and give it a try. The files aren't the best of quality - but it's good enough to play the expansion.
Aaron
-
1 A recent republication of Princes in Dutch shipped with three expansions to the more common Alea/Rio Grande version. The changes are: Two-player rules, the "Princess and Muse", and "Cooperative Building". I'd also like to try the Cooperative building rules, but haven't yet2.
2 And these aren't actually the first expansions for PoF. They are simply the first published ones. Kramer (the designer) posted a series of tweaks and changes to the game on his website several years ago. These tweaks are obviously less developed than the Princess expansion - my guess is that the newer expansions came out of his tweaking the game. I've never used any of the tweaks, though we kept planning to do so3.
3 Okay, enough already! But I also felt I should mention that we do use one rule tweak in our games of PoF, and we have since the dawn of time(tm). That rule is as follows: "In a 4-5 player game of PoF, once there is only one profession card left in the deck, that card is turned face up next to the board. No player can buy this card, but it can be recruited as normal". This means that no player has an 'extra' profession card. Unless a player decides to forgo a profession card and another player snatches it. End of tiered footnotes.
Over the years, it's proven to be an excellent game. It provides a little bit of lots of things, auctioning, planning, spatial layout, etc. All the different bits adding up to a complete package that has never struck me as painfully solitaire, scripted, or any of the other complaints I've heard. I enjoy the fact that the auction is very new-auction-person friendly because you must raise by exactly one step and the more you lose, the more likely you are to pay less money.
Over the years of many games of Princes, I've seen auction values solidify. The jesters are worth lots of money, the landscapes aren't. Building is a viable strategy, but only if the auction values are high. To sum up, there are several paths and choices to take in obtaining victory, and the best paths often depend on the auction value of jesters and recruiting cards. If those items are going cheaply to players who know what to do with them....
But that's the case with most games where an auction is used to balance disparate items. I've run through my thoughts in order to give you a background of where I'm coming from, since I've recently finished playing Princes of Florence with the "Princess and Muse" expansion1.
It was great. Easily the best expansion for a game I've played all year. I wish I didn't have to play with the printouts from BGG. Why was it great?
It changed the game. Princess and Muse adds another auction to the game. After the standard PoF auction, players then bid on character cards. There are six characters that are auctioned in a Amun-Re/Evo/Vegas Showdown style. This means that all characters are auctioned at once, players can win at most one character, by placing their markers next to the cards on the amount they want to bid, taking markers off when they are outbid. Once each player has a winning bid on a character (or has passed), players pay the current bid and get the character they won.
I won't detail the characters abilities here (files available at BGG), but the abilities of the characters throw all the traditional auction valuation of PoF into disarray. To underline this fact to regular PoF players - in our game one player obtained four jesters. He came in fifth. Several of the characters have abilities that provide greater competition for Best Work towards the end of the game. Landscapes become more valuable. Hanging back in Victory points becomes a valid strategy. More prestige/bonus cards can enter the game. It changes a lot of things. All interesting.
In summary, it opened up new ways to win the game, and strengthened some older risky strategies. By doing this, the stronger strategies were weakened. It also feels like it increased the scores - the winning scores were about 10-15 points higher than normal. But that's hard to state with just one play.
It fit. The addition of the characters didn't feel jarring, and it didn't feel like a leftover idea. It feels like a fully developed add-on to the game. This is important to me - all too often expansions feel like the leftovers of design or development - ideas that get published after being rejected for the initial design. Princess really feels like a further development of the game.
But I would be remiss to not mention the drawback. There's one, which you could probably see coming. It adds time to the game. With the addition of another auction phase, our game took about 1.5 times as long. Part of this was obviously learning the characters, but I doubt a game of PoF with this expansion could be done in 60 minutes - something that was theoretically possible for a group of experienced players. So I wouldn't recommend the expansion become a permanent part of PoF - especially when teaching new players.
Two big thumbs up for Princess and Muse. If you like PoF, I encourage you to grab the translations from BGG and give it a try. The files aren't the best of quality - but it's good enough to play the expansion.
Aaron
-
1 A recent republication of Princes in Dutch shipped with three expansions to the more common Alea/Rio Grande version. The changes are: Two-player rules, the "Princess and Muse", and "Cooperative Building". I'd also like to try the Cooperative building rules, but haven't yet2.
2 And these aren't actually the first expansions for PoF. They are simply the first published ones. Kramer (the designer) posted a series of tweaks and changes to the game on his website several years ago. These tweaks are obviously less developed than the Princess expansion - my guess is that the newer expansions came out of his tweaking the game. I've never used any of the tweaks, though we kept planning to do so3.
3 Okay, enough already! But I also felt I should mention that we do use one rule tweak in our games of PoF, and we have since the dawn of time(tm). That rule is as follows: "In a 4-5 player game of PoF, once there is only one profession card left in the deck, that card is turned face up next to the board. No player can buy this card, but it can be recruited as normal". This means that no player has an 'extra' profession card. Unless a player decides to forgo a profession card and another player snatches it. End of tiered footnotes.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Wrestling with Long games
How do you approach a complex game? Continuing my thoughts from two weeks ago, I'm debating how you can get games of a more rambling nature onto the table. Rambling in this case defined as games longer than 2 hours - which seems to be the point at which players start saying no.
The big question in my mind is if it is worth having the first session be a 'teaching' game. basically a game with a strict time or turn limit, with the stated purpose of teaching the rules.
Many people seem to espouse this approach, but it's never really felt right to me.
1) If the game is long by nature, then a shortened version doesn't capture the game.
A game like revolution is only 5 turns - at roughly 1 turn an hour. A two turn game has missed two-thirds of the game, and much of the benefit of a longer game (long-term strategy) is aborted. I'd argue that one of the key selling points of a longer game is the ability to choose to play for the long term. Taking short turn hits to position/income/whatever with the expectation to do better farther into the game.1
2) Bringing the same players together for a second game is hard.
I consider myself lucky to have a smaller game group that's been meeting weekly for years. There's 5 of us, but with life being what it is, it is not uncommon for the group to be four. Invariably, if we play a longer game, one player isn't there. And the next time the game is brought out, they are. I can only imagine how much worse this would be with a large/more infrequent group. So, if rules will always be taught, why play an aborted game?
There are plenty of reasons for running a shortened game, but I've rarely managed to convince myself it is a good idea. This cropped up because last week I ran a shortened game of American Megafauna at EndGame. I wanted to try out third edition/SOS style play and AM is a game that is going to be at least 3 hours the first time you play. I decided to call the game after 2 hours of play, and ultimately it worked. American Megafauna2 is a game that doesn't really call for a specific game length, so 'artificially' making a game timer trigger then endgame wasn't a problem. So a shorter game worked. Yay!
But I still don't think that it is the solution for all longer games. Mostly, I think the first play of longer games require players to commit to not worrying about victory. Yes, someone is going to win3, but the goal in the first play is to see what the game is like, and learn what tactics can survive through the mid-game into the end, and which ones are dead ends.
Unfortunately, giving up on victory is a hard thing to do - especially for a game that lasts two or three times as long as other available games. But the reward... well, that's for me to have more people who know how to play longer games.
aaron
--
1Some shorter games manage this as well (usually the ones that last closer to 2 hours than one), but most shorter games are much more unforgiving of sacrificial ploys or delaying tactics. Some shorter games are good precisely because players must time everything 'just right' (ex. figuring out when to migrate from money to points in Puerto Rico) but don't permit players to play much beyond the current board position.
2Phil Eklund is the designer of American Megafauna. And the Lords of... series. His games are truly odd unweildy beasts, and I'll get back to you with my impressions of them eventually, but one interesting facet is that the games don't really have a specific endpoint. Sure, the rules tell you when to end the game, but then they also say "or when everyone agrees to stop".
3 And yes, the person who has read the rules/played the game has an advantage.
The big question in my mind is if it is worth having the first session be a 'teaching' game. basically a game with a strict time or turn limit, with the stated purpose of teaching the rules.
Many people seem to espouse this approach, but it's never really felt right to me.
1) If the game is long by nature, then a shortened version doesn't capture the game.
A game like revolution is only 5 turns - at roughly 1 turn an hour. A two turn game has missed two-thirds of the game, and much of the benefit of a longer game (long-term strategy) is aborted. I'd argue that one of the key selling points of a longer game is the ability to choose to play for the long term. Taking short turn hits to position/income/whatever with the expectation to do better farther into the game.1
2) Bringing the same players together for a second game is hard.
I consider myself lucky to have a smaller game group that's been meeting weekly for years. There's 5 of us, but with life being what it is, it is not uncommon for the group to be four. Invariably, if we play a longer game, one player isn't there. And the next time the game is brought out, they are. I can only imagine how much worse this would be with a large/more infrequent group. So, if rules will always be taught, why play an aborted game?
There are plenty of reasons for running a shortened game, but I've rarely managed to convince myself it is a good idea. This cropped up because last week I ran a shortened game of American Megafauna at EndGame. I wanted to try out third edition/SOS style play and AM is a game that is going to be at least 3 hours the first time you play. I decided to call the game after 2 hours of play, and ultimately it worked. American Megafauna2 is a game that doesn't really call for a specific game length, so 'artificially' making a game timer trigger then endgame wasn't a problem. So a shorter game worked. Yay!
But I still don't think that it is the solution for all longer games. Mostly, I think the first play of longer games require players to commit to not worrying about victory. Yes, someone is going to win3, but the goal in the first play is to see what the game is like, and learn what tactics can survive through the mid-game into the end, and which ones are dead ends.
Unfortunately, giving up on victory is a hard thing to do - especially for a game that lasts two or three times as long as other available games. But the reward... well, that's for me to have more people who know how to play longer games.
aaron
--
1Some shorter games manage this as well (usually the ones that last closer to 2 hours than one), but most shorter games are much more unforgiving of sacrificial ploys or delaying tactics. Some shorter games are good precisely because players must time everything 'just right' (ex. figuring out when to migrate from money to points in Puerto Rico) but don't permit players to play much beyond the current board position.
2Phil Eklund is the designer of American Megafauna. And the Lords of... series. His games are truly odd unweildy beasts, and I'll get back to you with my impressions of them eventually, but one interesting facet is that the games don't really have a specific endpoint. Sure, the rules tell you when to end the game, but then they also say "or when everyone agrees to stop".
3 And yes, the person who has read the rules/played the game has an advantage.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Investment in gaming...
It's been awhile since I managed a post. A short five-day vacation blossomed into illness and the requisite scrambling to catch up at work. It is often easy to ramble on, but I find the starting to be the hard part, and my posts just haven't been started recently.
I've had a gaming meta-question in my head for most of this year. I've come to no conclusions on it, but I'll take the time to ramble on the topic for awhile. Essentially -
"Are we (as gamers, specifically boardgamers) getting too passive in regards to our games?"
In a more wordy fashion - Are we too quick to discard games based on initial opinions? Are we playing too many different games? Have we lost the feeling of investment that seems to have been a hallmark of the early years of hobby boardgames? If lost, is that a bad thing, a thing to be expected, or what?
This ties into many other questions that pop up frequently, such as "Are there too many games coming out this year?" and in some ways ties into the American/European design differences.
Modern Hobby boardgames (as compared to Mass Boardgames1) have borrowed liberally from the boom of Mass board games in the first half of the 20th century, but have mostly grown out of 3M/Avalon Hill/SPI and the later boom of role-playing. As such, board games have a number of different inclinations depending where they draw their primariy historical inspiration. The Role-playing and Wargame ancestors required serious investment of time. The Mass ancestors don't. In general, a best of breed game draws from both lines of development.
The generally accepted "Best of Breed" traits seem to have become brevity2, ease of learning3, strategic4, and component quality. These characteristics encourage owning and regularly playing multiple titles. Early in the history of Hobby games many designs (especially on the wargame/roleplaying side) required extensive rules review and games lasted two+ times as long as the average game does today. As such, gamers owned fewer games (and yes, there were fewer titles produced), and individual titles received more plays.
I'm placing the label investment onto the amount of time and attention that a game requires. Roleplaying games require a maximum of investment. A packaged party game like Taboo requires a minimum of investment.
As the past few years of game design have been pursuing the above "Best of Breed" traits in board games, I think we've seen a secondary effect of reducing investment in individual titles. Truly special titles (PR, Ticket to Ride) have managed to gain investment5, but they are exceptions to the general trend. This reduction of investment in individual titles has aided the adoption of a gaming culture of 'newest'.
In counterpoint, there's been a recent swelling of interest in games that do require investment. Much of the successful Fantasy Flight lineup requires significantly more investment than other games, with Descent being the poster child of a game that rewards players who choose to play it repeatedly. Interest in longer wargames has also risen, with bridge-games (Twilight Struggle, Command and Colors, A Victory Lost) gaining traction with a wider audience. So while I think overall investment is decreasing throughout hobby boardgames, the growing knowledge of this change is causing a backlash of players who search out games that deliberately break the style molds that have developed over the past several years.
Finally: Is this decrease in investment a bad thing? While investment in individual titles has declined, investment in the hobby of boardgames as a genre of entertainment has risen. No longer compromised of ASL players, or Cosmic Encounter Players, boardgamers have gelled into a hobby genre that is larger than individual titles. This is in contrast to other forms of hobby gaming. Miniatures, Roleplayers, and Collectible gamers are still fastened together by individual games, with much less investment in the overall type of game than the specifics.
So. That's about where I am right now on this subject. I mourn the gradual loss of investment in titles while I enjoy the greater choice of game style, theme, and mechanic. And I enjoy a larger pool of players to draw from - players who weren't gamers when the only choices of titles required much more investment.
In the early years of this decade (and the prior decades) I would play the same game many times, while now I struggle to play more than several games multiple times (2007 = 390+ games played, 222 titles) And the more frequent titles represent casual fast games - not titles that require more investment to appreciate.
So it's my own little crusade to force clunky odd games onto our game table. Games that break the current "Best of Breed" stereotype. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But always different.
aaron
--
1 If it needs to be clarified: Mass boardgames are generally published by Hasbro/Milton Bradley, but also by Pressman, Cranium, Cardinal, etc. Think the game section at Target and Toys'rus.
2 Defined as: Playable by a group of new players in under 90 minutes.
3 Defined as: Playable by new players while reading rules for the first time, or with only one player having prior exposure to the rules. Rules should not be over 10 pages.
4 Defined as: Progress within the game is determined primarily by choices that are entirely within control of the player and are not blazingly obvious. i.e. Having meaningful choices.
5But most of this investment has come from services like BSW or the DOW Ticket to Ride website. I'd wager that the majority of the super high playcounts on Puerto Rico and Caylus has come out of BSW. Has anyone really played any single game in-person over 100 times in a year?
I've had a gaming meta-question in my head for most of this year. I've come to no conclusions on it, but I'll take the time to ramble on the topic for awhile. Essentially -
"Are we (as gamers, specifically boardgamers) getting too passive in regards to our games?"
In a more wordy fashion - Are we too quick to discard games based on initial opinions? Are we playing too many different games? Have we lost the feeling of investment that seems to have been a hallmark of the early years of hobby boardgames? If lost, is that a bad thing, a thing to be expected, or what?
This ties into many other questions that pop up frequently, such as "Are there too many games coming out this year?" and in some ways ties into the American/European design differences.
Modern Hobby boardgames (as compared to Mass Boardgames1) have borrowed liberally from the boom of Mass board games in the first half of the 20th century, but have mostly grown out of 3M/Avalon Hill/SPI and the later boom of role-playing. As such, board games have a number of different inclinations depending where they draw their primariy historical inspiration. The Role-playing and Wargame ancestors required serious investment of time. The Mass ancestors don't. In general, a best of breed game draws from both lines of development.
The generally accepted "Best of Breed" traits seem to have become brevity2, ease of learning3, strategic4
I'm placing the label investment onto the amount of time and attention that a game requires. Roleplaying games require a maximum of investment. A packaged party game like Taboo requires a minimum of investment.
As the past few years of game design have been pursuing the above "Best of Breed" traits in board games, I think we've seen a secondary effect of reducing investment in individual titles. Truly special titles (PR, Ticket to Ride) have managed to gain investment5, but they are exceptions to the general trend. This reduction of investment in individual titles has aided the adoption of a gaming culture of 'newest'.
In counterpoint, there's been a recent swelling of interest in games that do require investment. Much of the successful Fantasy Flight lineup requires significantly more investment than other games, with Descent being the poster child of a game that rewards players who choose to play it repeatedly. Interest in longer wargames has also risen, with bridge-games (Twilight Struggle, Command and Colors, A Victory Lost) gaining traction with a wider audience. So while I think overall investment is decreasing throughout hobby boardgames, the growing knowledge of this change is causing a backlash of players who search out games that deliberately break the style molds that have developed over the past several years.
Finally: Is this decrease in investment a bad thing? While investment in individual titles has declined, investment in the hobby of boardgames as a genre of entertainment has risen. No longer compromised of ASL players, or Cosmic Encounter Players, boardgamers have gelled into a hobby genre that is larger than individual titles. This is in contrast to other forms of hobby gaming. Miniatures, Roleplayers, and Collectible gamers are still fastened together by individual games, with much less investment in the overall type of game than the specifics.
So. That's about where I am right now on this subject. I mourn the gradual loss of investment in titles while I enjoy the greater choice of game style, theme, and mechanic. And I enjoy a larger pool of players to draw from - players who weren't gamers when the only choices of titles required much more investment.
In the early years of this decade (and the prior decades) I would play the same game many times, while now I struggle to play more than several games multiple times (2007 = 390+ games played, 222 titles) And the more frequent titles represent casual fast games - not titles that require more investment to appreciate.
So it's my own little crusade to force clunky odd games onto our game table. Games that break the current "Best of Breed" stereotype. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But always different.
aaron
--
1 If it needs to be clarified: Mass boardgames are generally published by Hasbro/Milton Bradley, but also by Pressman, Cranium, Cardinal, etc. Think the game section at Target and Toys'rus.
2 Defined as: Playable by a group of new players in under 90 minutes.
3 Defined as: Playable by new players while reading rules for the first time, or with only one player having prior exposure to the rules. Rules should not be over 10 pages.
4 Defined as: Progress within the game is determined primarily by choices that are entirely within control of the player and are not blazingly obvious. i.e. Having meaningful choices.
5But most of this investment has come from services like BSW or the DOW Ticket to Ride website. I'd wager that the majority of the super high playcounts on Puerto Rico and Caylus has come out of BSW. Has anyone really played any single game in-person over 100 times in a year?
Monday, July 30, 2007
Hated Questions
Ah, retail. Everyone has horror stories, or glory stories, or something. I have my hated questions. Questions that I hate to hear. They aren't bad questions - in fact, they are good questions, but they're asked by the wrong people, or at the wrong time.
Let's tackle the first one. Person walks into the store, looks around a bit, perhaps a bit of initial banter betwixt me and they confirming that yes, indeed this is a game store and we sell games. Perhaps a bit of clarification about the lack of video games. Then it comes.
"What's the hot game?"
ah. If only there was a proper answer to this1. An honest answer that I could feel good about. But let's run through the real problems with this question. You refers to the person mentioned above. Not you, the Gone Gaming Reader.
1. There are about 4-8 major categories of games in this shop2. Different people shop for different games. Do you want the Hot Roleplaying game? Probably not. So which type of game do you care about?
2. The "Hot" game isn't necessarily the game you (the asker) want to be shown. Case in point - Spring of 2006. Caylus hit US shores in December of 2005. Supply was short and wouldn't even out until May of 2006. It was in demand. No one could deny that Caylus was the "Hot" Strategy game. And I would never mention it to anyone who didn't already understand the words "Settlers" "Ticket to Ride" and "Puerto Rico". So you probably don't want to know the hawt newness.
3. Really, you are probably asking what the newest FAD is. You've heard about Pokemon and Yugioh. You remember Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. Perhaps you want to be ahead of the curve with "What the Kids are playing these days". Unfortunately, most of the time, the newest fad isn't a game. Games made great fads when manufactured party games broke into the mainstream, but that was twenty years ago. Sadly. And the days of fad CCGs are over3. Thankfully.
So really, there's no answer that is satisfactory. I can make a couple snap judgments and talk about Pokemon making a comeback, or talk up Ticket or Carc or Settlers, or mention that Dungeons and Dragons is still around. Toss around the big names. But ultimately, there's no really good answer. Maybe you leave impressed with the variety and ingenuity of games these days. Often you leave wondering why there isn't a new Trivial Pursuit4. So I'm left to rant.
Another question.
This one is situational, and mostly down to my own preferences, because it is:
"What's your favorite game?"
Oh how I cringe. First, see item one above. I'm blessed and cursed to have played and enjoyed multiple games in many genres. Can I really compare a role-playing game to a board game to toy soliders?
Second, I'm not usually asked this by a seasoned gamer. It's usually someone to whom I'm currently explaining Ticket to Ride or Warhammer or Settlers. Segueing from Ticket into an 18xx game isn't really the best idea. Not only will I probably lose all chance of 'making a sale', but I'll probably also lose any chance of 'making a gamer'. All from a perfectly reasonable question5
Finally, I personally fail royally at naming a 'favorite game'. I'm constantly amazed that 'geeks can make Top 10 lists without major qualifications. Oddly enough, this is related to my inability to rate games. This year I took myself to task and have managed to start rating games under the special aaron scale - Great, Good, Okay, and Horrible. Even that is hard for me. My list of great games is long. My list of Horrible games is short. So even when qualified properly - i.e. "What's your favorite Ticket to Ride game?" I wind up dithering between Marklin and America+1910. Sigh. I'm such a failure.
Of course these questions follow me outside the store as well. I'll be at a party and when the inevitable query about jobs cycles to me6, these are the two most common follow-up questions. Even harder to answer when you are sitting outside and trying to not think about selling games. Probably just as hard to answer if I didn't sell games! To continue beating my analogy to death, it's much faster to explain my 'favorite' game Ticket to Ride than my 'favorite' game 1830. At least there's no chance of 1830 being the 'hot' game.
Ah. Ranting.
--
1Don't get the wrong idea about this - I've got nice pat answers to these questions, developed through extensive testing (uh, yeah). Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So in some respect, I've found the proper answer. But I still like to rant about it.
2Depending how much you want to break "board games" down. I usually break it into Kids, Strategy, Party, and Classic, which sort of covers the different type of people that might be looking for a game. (Miniatures, RPG, Collectibles, and Puzzles are the others).
3Except for some foolish insanity about the World of Warcraft CCG last fall. But thankfully it went away quickly. Very quickly. Barely even counted as a fad.
4A side note. This year has been the year of suck for trivial pursuit. Hasbro usually issues a new edition every 2-3 years. We've been stuck with 6 for a couple years (plus all the mostly-bad decade editions). This year, Hasbro not only did not release a new basic set, they discontinued shipping on Edition 6 and have announced the release of "The Best of Trivial Pursuit". Wow. What a lame edition. "We couldn't come up with any new Trivia, so we're recycling old questions"! And the retailer is left with no Trivial Pursuit to sell for most of 2007.
5At this point I usually rephrase the question into "oh, between Settlers and Ticket I like Ticket better!"
6And it's clear that these same questions would pop up if asked what my hobby was, or some other way. But it's far more frequent to be asked what your job is than what you do in your spare time.
Let's tackle the first one. Person walks into the store, looks around a bit, perhaps a bit of initial banter betwixt me and they confirming that yes, indeed this is a game store and we sell games. Perhaps a bit of clarification about the lack of video games. Then it comes.
"What's the hot game?"
ah. If only there was a proper answer to this1. An honest answer that I could feel good about. But let's run through the real problems with this question. You refers to the person mentioned above. Not you, the Gone Gaming Reader.
1. There are about 4-8 major categories of games in this shop2. Different people shop for different games. Do you want the Hot Roleplaying game? Probably not. So which type of game do you care about?
2. The "Hot" game isn't necessarily the game you (the asker) want to be shown. Case in point - Spring of 2006. Caylus hit US shores in December of 2005. Supply was short and wouldn't even out until May of 2006. It was in demand. No one could deny that Caylus was the "Hot" Strategy game. And I would never mention it to anyone who didn't already understand the words "Settlers" "Ticket to Ride" and "Puerto Rico". So you probably don't want to know the hawt newness.
3. Really, you are probably asking what the newest FAD is. You've heard about Pokemon and Yugioh. You remember Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. Perhaps you want to be ahead of the curve with "What the Kids are playing these days". Unfortunately, most of the time, the newest fad isn't a game. Games made great fads when manufactured party games broke into the mainstream, but that was twenty years ago. Sadly. And the days of fad CCGs are over3. Thankfully.
So really, there's no answer that is satisfactory. I can make a couple snap judgments and talk about Pokemon making a comeback, or talk up Ticket or Carc or Settlers, or mention that Dungeons and Dragons is still around. Toss around the big names. But ultimately, there's no really good answer. Maybe you leave impressed with the variety and ingenuity of games these days. Often you leave wondering why there isn't a new Trivial Pursuit4. So I'm left to rant.
Another question.
This one is situational, and mostly down to my own preferences, because it is:
"What's your favorite game?"
Oh how I cringe. First, see item one above. I'm blessed and cursed to have played and enjoyed multiple games in many genres. Can I really compare a role-playing game to a board game to toy soliders?
Second, I'm not usually asked this by a seasoned gamer. It's usually someone to whom I'm currently explaining Ticket to Ride or Warhammer or Settlers. Segueing from Ticket into an 18xx game isn't really the best idea. Not only will I probably lose all chance of 'making a sale', but I'll probably also lose any chance of 'making a gamer'. All from a perfectly reasonable question5
Finally, I personally fail royally at naming a 'favorite game'. I'm constantly amazed that 'geeks can make Top 10 lists without major qualifications. Oddly enough, this is related to my inability to rate games. This year I took myself to task and have managed to start rating games under the special aaron scale - Great, Good, Okay, and Horrible. Even that is hard for me. My list of great games is long. My list of Horrible games is short. So even when qualified properly - i.e. "What's your favorite Ticket to Ride game?" I wind up dithering between Marklin and America+1910. Sigh. I'm such a failure.
Of course these questions follow me outside the store as well. I'll be at a party and when the inevitable query about jobs cycles to me6, these are the two most common follow-up questions. Even harder to answer when you are sitting outside and trying to not think about selling games. Probably just as hard to answer if I didn't sell games! To continue beating my analogy to death, it's much faster to explain my 'favorite' game Ticket to Ride than my 'favorite' game 1830. At least there's no chance of 1830 being the 'hot' game.
Ah. Ranting.
--
1Don't get the wrong idea about this - I've got nice pat answers to these questions, developed through extensive testing (uh, yeah). Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So in some respect, I've found the proper answer. But I still like to rant about it.
2Depending how much you want to break "board games" down. I usually break it into Kids, Strategy, Party, and Classic, which sort of covers the different type of people that might be looking for a game. (Miniatures, RPG, Collectibles, and Puzzles are the others).
3Except for some foolish insanity about the World of Warcraft CCG last fall. But thankfully it went away quickly. Very quickly. Barely even counted as a fad.
4A side note. This year has been the year of suck for trivial pursuit. Hasbro usually issues a new edition every 2-3 years. We've been stuck with 6 for a couple years (plus all the mostly-bad decade editions). This year, Hasbro not only did not release a new basic set, they discontinued shipping on Edition 6 and have announced the release of "The Best of Trivial Pursuit". Wow. What a lame edition. "We couldn't come up with any new Trivia, so we're recycling old questions"! And the retailer is left with no Trivial Pursuit to sell for most of 2007.
5At this point I usually rephrase the question into "oh, between Settlers and Ticket I like Ticket better!"
6And it's clear that these same questions would pop up if asked what my hobby was, or some other way. But it's far more frequent to be asked what your job is than what you do in your spare time.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
: The Card Game
Settlers of Catan.
Puerto Rico.
Caylus.
Tigris and Euphrates.
Four giants of the euro explosion. Tied together by all being twisted into a card game form, which is exciting, since four games is almost a genre.1
What is most interesting to me is how each game justifies it's existence. Why was it developed? Simply to make great wads of cash for the manufacturer? Perhaps. But there must be some reason for existence that will spur consumers to part from their carefully horded monies.
When I think of 'card games' versus 'board games' I usually come up with Portability and Speed. That is - a card game is smaller physically than a board game, and it takes less time2 to play. Secondly, card games have a slight tendency to be simpler and easier to explain3.
So i'll mimic Shannon for a day, and do my own meager analysis of these card games.
Catan: the Card Game
Two Players.
That explains almost everything about Catan: The Card Game. Since Settlers just doesn't work with fewer than three people, there was definitely a need to develop a game that provided the Settlers experience for two people. The game does a good job of migrating the core features of Settlers into two players. The game stands on its own, and even earned expansions that don't connect to the original game at all4.
Overall, I think Catan: The Card Game succeeds. It's a fine two player game that evokes all the core building and development of Settlers. But it completely fails all of my initial impressions of Card vs. Board. It's not shorter than Settlers, it's not simpler, and while it does pack into a smaller box, it takes up just as much space on the table as Settlers.
Ultimately, Catan: the Card Game is a new game in the Catan series.
San Juan
I'm not quite sure what the thought process was behind the development of San Juan. The need for a two player game for Puerto Rico fans is the obvious choice, but I rarely see San Juan played as a two player game5. Perhaps Alea wanted to bring the success of Puerto Rico to a wider audience and wanted a simpler game.
Like Catan:CG, San Juan takes the core concepts from the parent game and develops into a new game. It certainly feels different yet similar (probably due to the input of several different designers throughout the process). San Juan does fill most of my initial expectations for a card game - it's a bit simpler than Puerto Rico, it plays faster, and takes up less space on the table and gamebag.
Tigris and Euphrates: The Card Game
The most poorly regarded of the lot, T&E:CG seems to me to be hampered by being almost exactly like the board game. It succeeds at being more portable than the original, but it almost all other factors it plays so closely to the original that I think it's garnered alot of scorn because it seems to lack a reason for existence. Why was this game made if not just to cash in on a brand? It doesn't play much faster, it doesn't play much simpler, and it doesn't twist the core concepts of T&E in a new way. I actually find the game fine - I certainly don't dislike it - but it really doesn't succeed in proving it's need to exist.
Caylus: Magna Carta
Finally we come to the newest one on the list, that on first appearance seems to suffer from the same faults as T&E. But following my first play, I found that the subtle changes that were made to the game have resulted in a game that is different from the original in many subtle ways. While San Juan and Catan:CG require players to learn a new game, Caylus:MG is more about learning the new strategies that a bunch of small changes have created.
I'm not sure if it's actually easier to teach the card game than the board game. I've only taught it to one person who hasn't played Caylus, and he tends to catch on to new games quickly. It's definitely more portable, though it still takes a bit of table space. Game time has been reduced, but not to the extent of San Juan. Caylus:MG is still a mid-to-heavy game, but overall a shorter one than the original
I think there are a couple more board-to-card conversions out there. I'm told Great Wall of China is Samurai the Card game, but I haven't played it myself, so I didn't comment on it.
Overall, I think that a card game edition has to fundamentally change something from the board game6 to really succeed. I'm surprised by Caylus:Magna Carta, because it manages to change the game via strategic choices without messing with the core mechanics of the game. San Juan and Catan both change by putting new mechanics around old concepts.
I'll close by saying that back in the day, Avalon Hill suckered me in and I bought Titan: The Arena thinking that it was the card game version of Titan. Completely not true, and a name alone cannot cause a game to be related to another... but I never regretted buying Titan: the Arena, so I guess I'm glad they named it such.
--
1Three more games and Zooleretto will have a genre. Card games developed into board games!
2This is obviously a false assumption. I've played 'games' of Tichu that lasted longer than 3 hours. But since each hand is relatively quick, the impression of speed and ease of completion is still present. After all, we can always stop after any hand. But not this one. The next. or the next?
3Again, an unfounded belief. Perhaps this should be a blog on the myths of card games...
4 Wizards of Catan!
5But it works with two, so that goal was met...
6Other than getting rid of the board.
Puerto Rico.
Caylus.
Tigris and Euphrates.
Four giants of the euro explosion. Tied together by all being twisted into a card game form, which is exciting, since four games is almost a genre.1
What is most interesting to me is how each game justifies it's existence. Why was it developed? Simply to make great wads of cash for the manufacturer? Perhaps. But there must be some reason for existence that will spur consumers to part from their carefully horded monies.
When I think of 'card games' versus 'board games' I usually come up with Portability and Speed. That is - a card game is smaller physically than a board game, and it takes less time2 to play. Secondly, card games have a slight tendency to be simpler and easier to explain3.
So i'll mimic Shannon for a day, and do my own meager analysis of these card games.
Catan: the Card Game
Two Players.
That explains almost everything about Catan: The Card Game. Since Settlers just doesn't work with fewer than three people, there was definitely a need to develop a game that provided the Settlers experience for two people. The game does a good job of migrating the core features of Settlers into two players. The game stands on its own, and even earned expansions that don't connect to the original game at all4.
Overall, I think Catan: The Card Game succeeds. It's a fine two player game that evokes all the core building and development of Settlers. But it completely fails all of my initial impressions of Card vs. Board. It's not shorter than Settlers, it's not simpler, and while it does pack into a smaller box, it takes up just as much space on the table as Settlers.
Ultimately, Catan: the Card Game is a new game in the Catan series.
San Juan
I'm not quite sure what the thought process was behind the development of San Juan. The need for a two player game for Puerto Rico fans is the obvious choice, but I rarely see San Juan played as a two player game5. Perhaps Alea wanted to bring the success of Puerto Rico to a wider audience and wanted a simpler game.
Like Catan:CG, San Juan takes the core concepts from the parent game and develops into a new game. It certainly feels different yet similar (probably due to the input of several different designers throughout the process). San Juan does fill most of my initial expectations for a card game - it's a bit simpler than Puerto Rico, it plays faster, and takes up less space on the table and gamebag.
Tigris and Euphrates: The Card Game
The most poorly regarded of the lot, T&E:CG seems to me to be hampered by being almost exactly like the board game. It succeeds at being more portable than the original, but it almost all other factors it plays so closely to the original that I think it's garnered alot of scorn because it seems to lack a reason for existence. Why was this game made if not just to cash in on a brand? It doesn't play much faster, it doesn't play much simpler, and it doesn't twist the core concepts of T&E in a new way. I actually find the game fine - I certainly don't dislike it - but it really doesn't succeed in proving it's need to exist.
Caylus: Magna Carta
Finally we come to the newest one on the list, that on first appearance seems to suffer from the same faults as T&E. But following my first play, I found that the subtle changes that were made to the game have resulted in a game that is different from the original in many subtle ways. While San Juan and Catan:CG require players to learn a new game, Caylus:MG is more about learning the new strategies that a bunch of small changes have created.
I'm not sure if it's actually easier to teach the card game than the board game. I've only taught it to one person who hasn't played Caylus, and he tends to catch on to new games quickly. It's definitely more portable, though it still takes a bit of table space. Game time has been reduced, but not to the extent of San Juan. Caylus:MG is still a mid-to-heavy game, but overall a shorter one than the original
I think there are a couple more board-to-card conversions out there. I'm told Great Wall of China is Samurai the Card game, but I haven't played it myself, so I didn't comment on it.
Overall, I think that a card game edition has to fundamentally change something from the board game6 to really succeed. I'm surprised by Caylus:Magna Carta, because it manages to change the game via strategic choices without messing with the core mechanics of the game. San Juan and Catan both change by putting new mechanics around old concepts.
I'll close by saying that back in the day, Avalon Hill suckered me in and I bought Titan: The Arena thinking that it was the card game version of Titan. Completely not true, and a name alone cannot cause a game to be related to another... but I never regretted buying Titan: the Arena, so I guess I'm glad they named it such.
--
1Three more games and Zooleretto will have a genre. Card games developed into board games!
2This is obviously a false assumption. I've played 'games' of Tichu that lasted longer than 3 hours. But since each hand is relatively quick, the impression of speed and ease of completion is still present. After all, we can always stop after any hand. But not this one. The next. or the next?
3Again, an unfounded belief. Perhaps this should be a blog on the myths of card games...
4 Wizards of Catan!
5But it works with two, so that goal was met...
6Other than getting rid of the board.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Short Game thoughts
There's been a flood of new games1 recently. Too many to play all of them, and all too many of them have turned out to be sizable time commitments. I've been spoiled by Taluva, Ur, Yspahan and the like. Bring back my one hour game!
So here's my thoughts on recent games. Not really reviews. Just impressions and thoughts.
Tide of Iron
Unplayed. Not sure if I'll actually get around to it. A couple of customers like it though.
Notre Dame
I love drafting cards. Years spent drafting Magic: The gathering have left me with a passion for "choose one and pass the rest" I'm glad that this design space is being explored. Notre Dame is pretty good, and also probably the shortest of the latest crop. I think experienced players could play it in under 45 minutes. I still haven't figured out if one of the seven actions is just completely underpowered, or if there's some way to exploit it. Not going to blow anyone away, but a fun game.
Ran
Do you like the Great Battles of History series? No? Move along.2
Colosseum
An interesting game with lots of neat bits (both bits and bitz), slick execution, two ways to play... and about 45 minutes too much game. At 75 minutes this would be great. At the 120 minutes it's taken to play 5 turns, I've been dissapointed. High points involve collecting chariot riding poets, some decent auctioning (using the variant rules), and a very constricted build tree. Low points involve a trading phase that can drag and those extra 45 minutes. Sadly I don't know how I could speed it up.
Age of Empires III3
Glenn Drover has really found his place in the world of game design. He takes other peoples ideas and respins them into a form that is identifiable, but uniquely his. It's not just the excess of sculpted plastic pieces, but something else that links his games together. Drawing heavily on the action selection mechanisms of Caylus, AoE brings special worker pieces, action tiles, and some area control into the mix. Unfortunately, it hasn't fixed the only real complaint I have about Caylus - the time it takes for beginners to play the game. We can often get through 3-4 games in an evening, but AoE took 3.5 hours for the first game. Obviously it would speed up a bit with play, but it is definitely too long. Otherwise I enjoyed it. Is it worth the extra money for the plastic bitz? No. A smaller box and cheaper pieces would have been a better game.
Stack Market
I'm excited, but every game group since this appeared has been five players. Bring me four players! Bring me tall stacks of cubical corporations!
And then there's the faceless rest that are waiting for me to play. Several that I don't think I'll get to play for a while, and some that are on my short list. Many of them also cap out at 4 players, so are suffering just like Stack Market. Oh well.
Aaron
--
1at least new-to-domestic games. While I'm always happy to play imports, specifically post essen, or what have you, I tend to consider a game 'unavailable' until it gets a domestic release, or the European publisher will return my emails. Of course it's the retailer in me - tracking the 'newness' of a game by when it shows up on my shelves. But it does often come down to exposure. Even if it is easy to find the game at a FOGS - if it needs a rules translation and people can't pick it up off the shelf, it really isn't 'available'. It's just available to the fanatics who do crazy things like blog about games. Sheesh.
2I don't move along. Samurai plus GBH? yay!
3Ah, such an improvement over Age of Empires II, this returns the series to it's roots and reminds us all of how much we loved the original.
So here's my thoughts on recent games. Not really reviews. Just impressions and thoughts.
Tide of Iron
Unplayed. Not sure if I'll actually get around to it. A couple of customers like it though.
Notre Dame
I love drafting cards. Years spent drafting Magic: The gathering have left me with a passion for "choose one and pass the rest" I'm glad that this design space is being explored. Notre Dame is pretty good, and also probably the shortest of the latest crop. I think experienced players could play it in under 45 minutes. I still haven't figured out if one of the seven actions is just completely underpowered, or if there's some way to exploit it. Not going to blow anyone away, but a fun game.
Ran
Do you like the Great Battles of History series? No? Move along.2
Colosseum
An interesting game with lots of neat bits (both bits and bitz), slick execution, two ways to play... and about 45 minutes too much game. At 75 minutes this would be great. At the 120 minutes it's taken to play 5 turns, I've been dissapointed. High points involve collecting chariot riding poets, some decent auctioning (using the variant rules), and a very constricted build tree. Low points involve a trading phase that can drag and those extra 45 minutes. Sadly I don't know how I could speed it up.
Age of Empires III3
Glenn Drover has really found his place in the world of game design. He takes other peoples ideas and respins them into a form that is identifiable, but uniquely his. It's not just the excess of sculpted plastic pieces, but something else that links his games together. Drawing heavily on the action selection mechanisms of Caylus, AoE brings special worker pieces, action tiles, and some area control into the mix. Unfortunately, it hasn't fixed the only real complaint I have about Caylus - the time it takes for beginners to play the game. We can often get through 3-4 games in an evening, but AoE took 3.5 hours for the first game. Obviously it would speed up a bit with play, but it is definitely too long. Otherwise I enjoyed it. Is it worth the extra money for the plastic bitz? No. A smaller box and cheaper pieces would have been a better game.
Stack Market
I'm excited, but every game group since this appeared has been five players. Bring me four players! Bring me tall stacks of cubical corporations!
And then there's the faceless rest that are waiting for me to play. Several that I don't think I'll get to play for a while, and some that are on my short list. Many of them also cap out at 4 players, so are suffering just like Stack Market. Oh well.
Aaron
--
1at least new-to-domestic games. While I'm always happy to play imports, specifically post essen, or what have you, I tend to consider a game 'unavailable' until it gets a domestic release, or the European publisher will return my emails. Of course it's the retailer in me - tracking the 'newness' of a game by when it shows up on my shelves. But it does often come down to exposure. Even if it is easy to find the game at a FOGS - if it needs a rules translation and people can't pick it up off the shelf, it really isn't 'available'. It's just available to the fanatics who do crazy things like blog about games. Sheesh.
2I don't move along. Samurai plus GBH? yay!
3Ah, such an improvement over Age of Empires II, this returns the series to it's roots and reminds us all of how much we loved the original.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Puzzles - Games
Wanderings and Musings on Games, Puzzles and Teamwork
My small game group was lightly attended last night1 because three of us are in the last throes of planning a two day puzzle race. I'm not one of the three, though I have been conscripted to help with the actual event this weekend2. The last member of the group is wisely uninvolved.
Puzzles and games are closely linked. Some games are obviously based around puzzles, and at a certain point even puzzles morph into games. The SF bay area has a fairly large puzzle-loving community - and a fairly large boardgame community - but the two communities are largely separate. Sure, there are a couple people who cross over here and there, but as a rule the groups don't often mix.
It probably comes down to time. The puzzle races or puzzle nights that the die hard puzzlers enjoy suck up time just like a marathon session of 18xx. The upcoming race3 will take the whole weekend for the 15+ teams of players. Teams will be 4-6 puzzlers each, which brings me to what might be the biggest distinction between the communities of gamers and puzzlers - teamwork.
Puzzle races/nights4 are solved by teams of puzzlers working both cooperatively and independently. Some gamers cry foul when a game promotes cooperation or teamwork - but for a puzzle team, it's all part of the hobby. The closest games to a puzzle race would be cooperative games like Shadows over Camelot (without a traitor) or Reiner's Lord of the Rings5. But these games are often derided as being exercises in group think, or boring because the game is 'led' by one or two experienced players. This seems to be a fairly important distinction between the two communities. Puzzlers enjoy working cooperatively, while gamers have a tendency to want to work solo.
Within the teamwork of a puzzle team, or a game of LoTR, there is plenty of opportunity for individual choice and achievement, which keeps the game or puzzle experience fresh. Ultimately, a good team game should require discussion and group choice, but also enforce personal decisions. This seems to result in rules that feel clunky - like the "no showing anyone your cards" or "No mentioning cards specifically" rules that Shadows and LoTR have. I'm not sure how necessary these rules are, but I presume that playtesting must have shown some need for them7.
Obviously, puzzle races and cooperative games aren't for every gamer - just like Ticket to Ride isn't the best option for a dedicated crossword solver, but it's very interesting to see just how much, and how little, the two communities intermingle.
aaron
--
1 I subscribe to the theory that a small game group should number 5 people. Many many games are playable at five. When someone is missing then you can play the four player games and even two missing people provide you with an opportunity to play Logistico or On the Undergound. And on the odd occasion when a regular wants to bring someone new to the party, then there are a number of games that play six. All in all, five is a nice happy number.
2Pleading "small business owner" is surprisingly useful. I'd be more happy about its effectiveness if it wasn't so true.
3 Gratuitous information link here.
4 Also called treasure hunts.
5 Which we finally won again Sunday night after at least a two year streak of failures. Woo Hoo! 6
6 Three hobbits out of Five Alive at the end (the other two died only three spaces from Mount Doom). Friends and Foes used. Sauron at 15.
7 Yes, I know I'm presuming a lot.
Recently played: Canal Grande, Caylus, ChiZo Rising, Fjords, Lord of the Rings
My small game group was lightly attended last night1 because three of us are in the last throes of planning a two day puzzle race. I'm not one of the three, though I have been conscripted to help with the actual event this weekend2. The last member of the group is wisely uninvolved.
Puzzles and games are closely linked. Some games are obviously based around puzzles, and at a certain point even puzzles morph into games. The SF bay area has a fairly large puzzle-loving community - and a fairly large boardgame community - but the two communities are largely separate. Sure, there are a couple people who cross over here and there, but as a rule the groups don't often mix.
It probably comes down to time. The puzzle races or puzzle nights that the die hard puzzlers enjoy suck up time just like a marathon session of 18xx. The upcoming race3 will take the whole weekend for the 15+ teams of players. Teams will be 4-6 puzzlers each, which brings me to what might be the biggest distinction between the communities of gamers and puzzlers - teamwork.
Puzzle races/nights4 are solved by teams of puzzlers working both cooperatively and independently. Some gamers cry foul when a game promotes cooperation or teamwork - but for a puzzle team, it's all part of the hobby. The closest games to a puzzle race would be cooperative games like Shadows over Camelot (without a traitor) or Reiner's Lord of the Rings5. But these games are often derided as being exercises in group think, or boring because the game is 'led' by one or two experienced players. This seems to be a fairly important distinction between the two communities. Puzzlers enjoy working cooperatively, while gamers have a tendency to want to work solo.
Within the teamwork of a puzzle team, or a game of LoTR, there is plenty of opportunity for individual choice and achievement, which keeps the game or puzzle experience fresh. Ultimately, a good team game should require discussion and group choice, but also enforce personal decisions. This seems to result in rules that feel clunky - like the "no showing anyone your cards" or "No mentioning cards specifically" rules that Shadows and LoTR have. I'm not sure how necessary these rules are, but I presume that playtesting must have shown some need for them7.
Obviously, puzzle races and cooperative games aren't for every gamer - just like Ticket to Ride isn't the best option for a dedicated crossword solver, but it's very interesting to see just how much, and how little, the two communities intermingle.
aaron
--
1 I subscribe to the theory that a small game group should number 5 people. Many many games are playable at five. When someone is missing then you can play the four player games and even two missing people provide you with an opportunity to play Logistico or On the Undergound. And on the odd occasion when a regular wants to bring someone new to the party, then there are a number of games that play six. All in all, five is a nice happy number.
2Pleading "small business owner" is surprisingly useful. I'd be more happy about its effectiveness if it wasn't so true.
3 Gratuitous information link here.
4 Also called treasure hunts.
5 Which we finally won again Sunday night after at least a two year streak of failures. Woo Hoo! 6
6 Three hobbits out of Five Alive at the end (the other two died only three spaces from Mount Doom). Friends and Foes used. Sauron at 15.
7 Yes, I know I'm presuming a lot.
Recently played: Canal Grande, Caylus, ChiZo Rising, Fjords, Lord of the Rings
Monday, May 21, 2007
Heads down, heads up.
I finished a game of Through the Ages recently, and in the post-game debriefing, one of the players said that they thought that they were done with the game because TtA was too much of a 'heads down' game. Where time seems to spin and warp, resulting in a feeling of disconnection - not only with the outside world, but also with the other players.1
At first I was taken aback - you mean that's a bad thing? But the longer 2 I thought about it, the more I can see where he was coming from. If a game draws you into your personal planning too much - it can cease being a game and become more like a puzzle - at which point the non-puzzle inclined will enjoy the game less.
A common complaint about some of the longer, more detailed games is the propensity for solitare play. Not outright solitare, but an odd mutated form of solitare where interaction with the other players occurs, but ultimately doesn't have as much an impact on your play as your own strategy and long-term planning.
A game I highly enjoy - Roads and Boats, epitomizes part of this complaint. There is plenty of interaction in Roads and Boats 3, but ultimately your own optimization of routes, deliveries, and production will have a greater effect on the final standings than interplayer decisions and contests.
Back over to TtA 4, this game also relies on personal optimization and decisionmaking - with a small bit of player-smacking to keep players honest. Ultimately this reliance on personal optimization does create a game that encourages 'heads down' play.
So we have 'heads down' play.
At the other extreme is 'heads up' play - perhaps epitomized by Modern Art - where every playing is constantly engaged with the other players. 5
Heads up play often isn't very contemplative. You don't have time to puzzle out a tricky valuation, or internally debate the relative merits of a temple placed in hex A or hex B. You might think you have time to decide, but often the game, or players won't allow it.
Of course, like life, most games fall halfway in-between the heads up and heads down spectrum. Wolfgang Kramer's action point games reward both personal planning as well as reactionary defense and attack moves against other player's pieces.
Mostly, I think it's important not to confuse the concept of heads up/down with game weight.
Heads down appeals more to puzzlers, and Heads up to players who find the optimization distracting enough to stop them from watching what the other players are doing. This is probably the biggest complaint about a 'solitare' game - that the game causes players to miss what the other players are doing, which takes away from the group dynamic.
I've used heads down and heads up because that's what started me thinking about this spectrum of games. Perhaps a better set of terms would be internal/external.
That is all.
aaron
--
1 I am actually paraphrasing here.
2 Days, almost a week, not seconds. Sometimes I'm not a quick thinker.
3 Enough interaction to foster long term grudges, and frantic wall building and blockading. Roads and Boats must not only undergo labels such as "multi-player solitare", but also can fall squarely into the "let's you and him fight so that I win" camp.
4 Where player interaction is entirely focused on smacking the player with the least military. Which is often the player who is doing best in non-military, point-generating, game winning stuff, but not always.
5 In modern art, tracking not only the current painting up for auction, bidding on said painting, tracking who is bidding on said painting, what people are willing to pay for said painting, and what players have purchased so far this round. Personal strategy loses to groupthink and interplayer reactivity every single time. except for the 'I'm not buying anything strategy'. Which just loses.
Recently played: Himalaya, Drive, Tichu, Starship Troopers, Hansa
At first I was taken aback - you mean that's a bad thing? But the longer 2 I thought about it, the more I can see where he was coming from. If a game draws you into your personal planning too much - it can cease being a game and become more like a puzzle - at which point the non-puzzle inclined will enjoy the game less.
A common complaint about some of the longer, more detailed games is the propensity for solitare play. Not outright solitare, but an odd mutated form of solitare where interaction with the other players occurs, but ultimately doesn't have as much an impact on your play as your own strategy and long-term planning.
A game I highly enjoy - Roads and Boats, epitomizes part of this complaint. There is plenty of interaction in Roads and Boats 3, but ultimately your own optimization of routes, deliveries, and production will have a greater effect on the final standings than interplayer decisions and contests.
Back over to TtA 4, this game also relies on personal optimization and decisionmaking - with a small bit of player-smacking to keep players honest. Ultimately this reliance on personal optimization does create a game that encourages 'heads down' play.
So we have 'heads down' play.
At the other extreme is 'heads up' play - perhaps epitomized by Modern Art - where every playing is constantly engaged with the other players. 5
Heads up play often isn't very contemplative. You don't have time to puzzle out a tricky valuation, or internally debate the relative merits of a temple placed in hex A or hex B. You might think you have time to decide, but often the game, or players won't allow it.
Of course, like life, most games fall halfway in-between the heads up and heads down spectrum. Wolfgang Kramer's action point games reward both personal planning as well as reactionary defense and attack moves against other player's pieces.
Mostly, I think it's important not to confuse the concept of heads up/down with game weight.
Heads down appeals more to puzzlers, and Heads up to players who find the optimization distracting enough to stop them from watching what the other players are doing. This is probably the biggest complaint about a 'solitare' game - that the game causes players to miss what the other players are doing, which takes away from the group dynamic.
I've used heads down and heads up because that's what started me thinking about this spectrum of games. Perhaps a better set of terms would be internal/external.
That is all.
aaron
--
1 I am actually paraphrasing here.
2 Days, almost a week, not seconds. Sometimes I'm not a quick thinker.
3 Enough interaction to foster long term grudges, and frantic wall building and blockading. Roads and Boats must not only undergo labels such as "multi-player solitare", but also can fall squarely into the "let's you and him fight so that I win" camp.
4 Where player interaction is entirely focused on smacking the player with the least military. Which is often the player who is doing best in non-military, point-generating, game winning stuff, but not always.
5 In modern art, tracking not only the current painting up for auction, bidding on said painting, tracking who is bidding on said painting, what people are willing to pay for said painting, and what players have purchased so far this round. Personal strategy loses to groupthink and interplayer reactivity every single time. except for the 'I'm not buying anything strategy'. Which just loses.
Recently played: Himalaya, Drive, Tichu, Starship Troopers, Hansa
Monday, May 07, 2007
Current trends
I spent half of last night playing the 1830's PA map of age of steam. I solidered on to the end, but some early decisions left me clinging valiently to solvency, only to drop negative in the final turn. A crushing defeat, but the map was interesting enough to pique my interest in another go1. But certainly not right away.
This is in stark contrast to another recent game, Rutger Dorn's Arkadia, which we finished after a little over an hour and immediately jumped back in for a second game. This brings me around to what I wanted to point out - The current trend towards shorter heavy games. 2007 domestic2 releases have highlighted a number of strong 60 minuteish games that pack a fair amount of weight into their shorter game length. Compared directly to the heavier releases of the past couple of years, there are more options for heavy 60 minute games than there were last year at this time.
I'm not one to shy away from game length. I like 2-3 hour games. Caylus was only too long the first time played3. Age of steam remains a favorite, with a plethora of map options, most weighing in under 3 hours. But the fact remains that the majority of games that allow for strong development and long-term planning are 90+ minutes.
Arkadia, tasting somewhat reminiscent of Acquire, excited me because of the quick decision to "play it again". That hasn't happened for quite awhile in any of my gaming circles4, so it's nice to see a game that not only inspires immediate interest, but also *allows* for immediate replay without overstaying its welcome. Taluva and Ur are two other recent releases that have a similar time/strategy feel. Ticket to Ride5 can also sometimes muster up the challenge and enjoyment for "just one more game"...
I like the mighty awe that epic games6 inspire, but the fevered desire to try a game again - immediately - is also inspiring. Here's hoping that these games continue to crop up...
aaron
--
1 Something that isn't as true for the other side of the map, Northern California, which is also a harsh tight map, which left me panting and not actually wanting to play the map again for a long long time. I appreciated it, especially since it represents my home environs, but it wasn't inspiring.
2 By domestic, I mean the US, in my very US-centric fashion. Sorry Australia.
3 Though Caylus quickly went from a 2-4 hour game to a 1-2 hour game, which makes a big difference.
4 Ah, years of gaming bring on the jaded gamers. We all remember early on, when we first found a game we really loved - be it Settlers, or Tigris, or Acquire, or Talisman, or Cosmic, or... and you just had to play it again, and again. It's been a reoccurring theme for me over the past 12 months - the lack of group drive to really dive deeply into a complex game, play it repeatedly, and make it give up all its secrets.
5 Which certainly doesn't qualify as an old game in my book. It's barely three years old. A newbie! But it established itself so completely and so strongly, that now it qualifies as a classic. But it's really still a youngster. Barely into it's twenties. er. fours.
6Whatever your definition of Epic. Choose one that fits.
This is in stark contrast to another recent game, Rutger Dorn's Arkadia, which we finished after a little over an hour and immediately jumped back in for a second game. This brings me around to what I wanted to point out - The current trend towards shorter heavy games. 2007 domestic2 releases have highlighted a number of strong 60 minuteish games that pack a fair amount of weight into their shorter game length. Compared directly to the heavier releases of the past couple of years, there are more options for heavy 60 minute games than there were last year at this time.
I'm not one to shy away from game length. I like 2-3 hour games. Caylus was only too long the first time played3. Age of steam remains a favorite, with a plethora of map options, most weighing in under 3 hours. But the fact remains that the majority of games that allow for strong development and long-term planning are 90+ minutes.
Arkadia, tasting somewhat reminiscent of Acquire, excited me because of the quick decision to "play it again". That hasn't happened for quite awhile in any of my gaming circles4, so it's nice to see a game that not only inspires immediate interest, but also *allows* for immediate replay without overstaying its welcome. Taluva and Ur are two other recent releases that have a similar time/strategy feel. Ticket to Ride5 can also sometimes muster up the challenge and enjoyment for "just one more game"...
I like the mighty awe that epic games6 inspire, but the fevered desire to try a game again - immediately - is also inspiring. Here's hoping that these games continue to crop up...
aaron
--
1 Something that isn't as true for the other side of the map, Northern California, which is also a harsh tight map, which left me panting and not actually wanting to play the map again for a long long time. I appreciated it, especially since it represents my home environs, but it wasn't inspiring.
2 By domestic, I mean the US, in my very US-centric fashion. Sorry Australia.
3 Though Caylus quickly went from a 2-4 hour game to a 1-2 hour game, which makes a big difference.
4 Ah, years of gaming bring on the jaded gamers. We all remember early on, when we first found a game we really loved - be it Settlers, or Tigris, or Acquire, or Talisman, or Cosmic, or... and you just had to play it again, and again. It's been a reoccurring theme for me over the past 12 months - the lack of group drive to really dive deeply into a complex game, play it repeatedly, and make it give up all its secrets.
5 Which certainly doesn't qualify as an old game in my book. It's barely three years old. A newbie! But it established itself so completely and so strongly, that now it qualifies as a classic. But it's really still a youngster. Barely into it's twenties. er. fours.
6Whatever your definition of Epic. Choose one that fits.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Two Thoughts from the past week.
Riffing on other writers
I feel forced to announce my own membership in the Effete Euro-gamer Game-Balance Wimps Association, despite never playing a game of War of the Ring1. I was driven by Kris founding the Association to go look over the arguments against game balance and was suitably unimpressed.
Like Kris, I came to the current crop of boardgames from a Avalon Hill, SPI wargame background2. Historical games are often replicating some of the most unbalanced situations ever. While I have never had the desire to play out the Zulu wars, there are plenty of games that allow one player to throw hordes of native africans against the guns of colonials in a vain attempt to not be completely destroyed. Eastern Front World War two is also a good example of unbalanced situations - The sheer power of the Germans in the initial invasion, and eventually the sheer numbers of Russians as they pushed back the German front lines.
But games representing unbalanced situations are poor games if the -game- is imbalanced. Historic games often deal with this by setting victory conditions with the expectations that one side will get crushed (i.e. the Zulus win if they have more than 2 warriors survive, etc. etc.) By doing this, the game designer creates a balanced game while retaining all the flavor of an unbalanced situation. The contention that a game must reflect an imbalance via win/loss ratio to be true to the source material strikes me as an excuse for poor game design. And poor game design should not be excused.
The Forgotten.
I sell games3. Once a year we hold an auction where gamers bring in games that are then sold via auction. It's a fun event for me and most people concerned. One of the side benefits is getting to see the truly wide range of games ever produced, both the exciting, rare, lame, or overly common4. This year, what struck me most was the beloved failures...5
Merlin's Maze
This was a strange 2D Backgammon-style game that was printed on a vinyl mat with wooden laminated pieces. Not listed on BGG. The method of play involved matching mediocre screen printed designs between the pieces and the board.
Clever Endeavor
A Party Game with Clever Clues (and other capitalized terms)
Both these games were obviously well-loved by their creators. Clever Endeavor even held long-term submission contests for game content. Clue creators had their signatures on every card. A massive effort was obviously involved in assembling the clues from hundreds of sources and publishing the game. Only to fall into obscurity, and like Merlin's Maze, perhaps not even listed in the largest database of boardgames.
It's always hard to see products that were loved bomb or trickle away into nothingness. It's easy for me to ignore bad art, or bad writing, but a bad game always draws my attention. Perhaps it's because I've seen so many, or perhaps it is some intellectual desire to figure out what is wrong - as if that could be quantified6.
I'm rather glib about these games during the auction, because it's hard not to laugh at how many games have pirates in them, or why anyone would think that publishing another backgammon variant is the best, most original idea ever. But I always take the time to actually notice those games. Someone should remember them. If only to not repeat their mistakes. But I don't think I'll play them. 7
aaron
--
1 Not because I don't want to. It looks like a great game. But those times when it is just me and one other person looking for a game are often monopolized by games published by GMT, or Multiman, or -gasp- games that feature collectible cardboard. There are a large number of very interesting looking longer 2 player hybrid games that remain unplayed by me. It saddens me. And speaks volumes about my priorities.
2 Well, okay, also plenty of Roleplaying. And the influx of 80's party games (pictionary, trivial pursuit) and Ravensburger. But also wargames.
3 I've owned a retail game store for about 6 years now. Maybe I'll write about it again. Maybe not. www.endgameoakland.com
4 Only four Harry Potter games this year! Woot!
5 I should now contradict the impression that our 2007 auction was full of lame games nobody wanted. We had one of the best sets of games we've seen. I got to practically give away a copy of Advance Civilization. We had numerous releases from the past five years, several mid-level rarities, and a big stack of all the early Eagle games releases, which I haven't seen for quite awhile. Good stuff was had cheap.
6 Can 'good' games be quantified? With artwork or writing, there isn't much to evaluate outside subjectivity. But is that true of games? I feel like I differentiate between games that are not fun for me (but have some merit), and games that should never have been published.
7 But I did play Clever Endeavor. At least the clues part. We didn't use the board. It betrayed the true problem of taking submissions from hundreds of people. Some of the clues were great, most of them were pretty bad.
I feel forced to announce my own membership in the Effete Euro-gamer Game-Balance Wimps Association, despite never playing a game of War of the Ring1. I was driven by Kris founding the Association to go look over the arguments against game balance and was suitably unimpressed.
Like Kris, I came to the current crop of boardgames from a Avalon Hill, SPI wargame background2. Historical games are often replicating some of the most unbalanced situations ever. While I have never had the desire to play out the Zulu wars, there are plenty of games that allow one player to throw hordes of native africans against the guns of colonials in a vain attempt to not be completely destroyed. Eastern Front World War two is also a good example of unbalanced situations - The sheer power of the Germans in the initial invasion, and eventually the sheer numbers of Russians as they pushed back the German front lines.
But games representing unbalanced situations are poor games if the -game- is imbalanced. Historic games often deal with this by setting victory conditions with the expectations that one side will get crushed (i.e. the Zulus win if they have more than 2 warriors survive, etc. etc.) By doing this, the game designer creates a balanced game while retaining all the flavor of an unbalanced situation. The contention that a game must reflect an imbalance via win/loss ratio to be true to the source material strikes me as an excuse for poor game design. And poor game design should not be excused.
The Forgotten.
I sell games3. Once a year we hold an auction where gamers bring in games that are then sold via auction. It's a fun event for me and most people concerned. One of the side benefits is getting to see the truly wide range of games ever produced, both the exciting, rare, lame, or overly common4. This year, what struck me most was the beloved failures...5
Merlin's Maze
This was a strange 2D Backgammon-style game that was printed on a vinyl mat with wooden laminated pieces. Not listed on BGG. The method of play involved matching mediocre screen printed designs between the pieces and the board.
Clever Endeavor
A Party Game with Clever Clues (and other capitalized terms)
Both these games were obviously well-loved by their creators. Clever Endeavor even held long-term submission contests for game content. Clue creators had their signatures on every card. A massive effort was obviously involved in assembling the clues from hundreds of sources and publishing the game. Only to fall into obscurity, and like Merlin's Maze, perhaps not even listed in the largest database of boardgames.
It's always hard to see products that were loved bomb or trickle away into nothingness. It's easy for me to ignore bad art, or bad writing, but a bad game always draws my attention. Perhaps it's because I've seen so many, or perhaps it is some intellectual desire to figure out what is wrong - as if that could be quantified6.
I'm rather glib about these games during the auction, because it's hard not to laugh at how many games have pirates in them, or why anyone would think that publishing another backgammon variant is the best, most original idea ever. But I always take the time to actually notice those games. Someone should remember them. If only to not repeat their mistakes. But I don't think I'll play them. 7
aaron
--
1 Not because I don't want to. It looks like a great game. But those times when it is just me and one other person looking for a game are often monopolized by games published by GMT, or Multiman, or -gasp- games that feature collectible cardboard. There are a large number of very interesting looking longer 2 player hybrid games that remain unplayed by me. It saddens me. And speaks volumes about my priorities.
2 Well, okay, also plenty of Roleplaying. And the influx of 80's party games (pictionary, trivial pursuit) and Ravensburger. But also wargames.
3 I've owned a retail game store for about 6 years now. Maybe I'll write about it again. Maybe not. www.endgameoakland.com
4 Only four Harry Potter games this year! Woot!
5 I should now contradict the impression that our 2007 auction was full of lame games nobody wanted. We had one of the best sets of games we've seen. I got to practically give away a copy of Advance Civilization. We had numerous releases from the past five years, several mid-level rarities, and a big stack of all the early Eagle games releases, which I haven't seen for quite awhile. Good stuff was had cheap.
6 Can 'good' games be quantified? With artwork or writing, there isn't much to evaluate outside subjectivity. But is that true of games? I feel like I differentiate between games that are not fun for me (but have some merit), and games that should never have been published.
7 But I did play Clever Endeavor. At least the clues part. We didn't use the board. It betrayed the true problem of taking submissions from hundreds of people. Some of the clues were great, most of them were pretty bad.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Magic Realm Part Two
First off, let me apologize for doing a two part article with my normal two week delay. It seems like a bit too long to wait to post the second half. Oh well, I'm still figuring these things out. If Part one is missing from your memory jump back two weeks and take a look.
So, with all the interesting parts of Magic Realm demanding that it be played - how does the game fail? I'm going to leave the epic rulebook out of this and presume you have someone to teach you the game or you're willing to undertake the learning of the rules.
Interestingly, many of the biggest drawbacks to Magic Realm are linked to the reasons that I like the game. I've tried to keep them in a similar order.
1) Many people required. Because of the interested cooperative/competitive nature of the game, a two player game simply isn't as interesting as an 8 player game would be1. This isn't to say that the game is unplayable with less people. I've played mostly with two or three players (plus solo play via Realmspeak). It works, but much of the interesting character interactions aren't as possible.
2) Deterministic Combat. Yes, I listed this as a benefit, but it's also a drawback. When combat is predetermined, some decisions becomes rote. The best example is that the two fastest characters in the game can run away from 95% of all monsters. For these characters, the game can turn into an exercise in running away. Obviously, this could be quite unsatisfactory2
3) Magic spells are weak. After learning the intricate and interesting system of casting spells, I looked at the spell lists and immediately thought "Wow, 3/4 of these are lame!". Many of the spells simply don't do very much, or don't last long enough to justify the in-game resources you will have to expend to cast the spell. The other 1/4 are blatantly the best spells in the game. This drawback is actually strongly linked to the next one, and if you change the general theme/goals of the game some of the marginal spells will become much more useful.
4a) Magic Realm is all Loot and Kill. Despite the detail put into the civilized lands, and the point based victory conditions, your goal upon starting a game of Magic Realm is to either a) go kill some monsters/humans or b) Find a treasure site and get all the treasure you can. Optionally, you can do both. For those who know the game, there is a poor Quest/Adventure system that offers some potential, but ultimately fails3. This focus on Loot and Kill (which isn't unique to Magic Realm) is particularly apparent due to all the detail lavished upon the spell lists and the civilized tiles. Magic Realm has a complete set of human dwellings and factions and the most you can do is trade goods and hire them to go kill and loot things with you4.
5) Finally, Too many optional systems. With such a rich and long history behind it, Magic Realm has plenty of official and unofficial options, variants, and more. Most of these are directly related to the drawbacks I've listed prior...
Here's the short list: Official Optional Combat rules (brings more die rolling and less determinism), Alternate Official Optional Combat rules (changes some percentages in the Official Optional Combat rules), Unofficial Book of Quests (changes victory conditions to a quest based system5, Official Optional Character Balance Changes, Unofficial Character Balance changes, Optional Weather rules, Unofficial Expansions6
That's too much. I just want to play the game, I don't want to have to play it six times in order to determine which optional rules are the best ones for me!
For myself, the optional rules are the worst drawback to Magic Realm. I'm forever wondering if I should implement the alternate combat rules, or the alternate character balance changes or what-have-you. It's especially bad because over half of the optional rules are in the main rulebook!
Ultimately, while optional rules are fine, they should be entirely optional modules (the weather system is a good example of this), not outright replacements of core game systems. The combat rules and the character balance changes are the core offenders here. I believe that when the third edition ruleset was put together they should have made the tough decisions to integrate and trim. As Magic Realm stands now, a newcomer faces almost thirty years of variants and options, many of which are present in the core rulebook.
For the record, I haven't used any of the optional rules. I still consider the Official Alternate optional combat rules, but no decision yet.
There you go. Personally, wrapping up the package that is Magic Realm, I'm still impressed. There are reasons that it is still interesting thirty years later, but many drawbacks that will keep it off of high-rotation in most game groups. I'm still committed to playing more games, but with less fervor than I felt three months ago.
I guess that means I'm not obsessed any longer.
I hear Call to Arms is coming out soon, I should break out Battlelore again...
aaron
--
1 No, I haven't played an 8 player game. I'd like to. I think. As always, when you get into a larger game, the chance of adding a very slow player to the game increases, plus, it's very hard to learn a game while playing with so many other people. First I must teach the game to 7 other people. Then I must get them all into one place at the same time.
2 and because this running away is sometimes exactly what a player wants to do, then it's a benefit. It's an odd situation. Sometimes deterministic combat/fleeing is great - at other times it feels boring and staid. I personally lean a little bit towards the "deterministic=benefit" argument, but convincing me otherwise wouldn't be too hard.
3 Some explanation: There are two 'quests' in the game, some people who desperately need some beer (take them to the inn) and some people who desperately need religion (take them to the chapel). These two quests are okay in concept, but provide minimal rewards, and (more importantly) rarely show up in the game. There is less than a one in six chance that they will show up each turn. First you must roll a six on the monster die, and then be located on the correct tile. With a larger game they would appear more often, but I've never had them show up in my smaller games.
The second "Adventures" consist of conflict between civilized groups - where the characters can take sides, earning the friendship of one or two groups of people in return for attacking other groups. These have exactly the same problems as the quests. They rarely appear, the rewards for undertaking the adventure is questionable, and finally, how heroic is it to take part in a war?
4 Or kill them and take their stuff.
5 I thought this had potential, but I was disappointed. While the .pdf of the Book of Quests is very well put together and obviously has a ton of love behind it, it is a sprawling epic of one game group's house rules over many many years. The quests start out interesting, but the later quests add up to three pages of setup, rules, and procedures that are specific to that quest only! And you are supposed to choose a different quest for each player! While the Books of Quests is an interesting jumping off point, it ultimately isn't unified enough to be easy to implement.
6 Whoops, that wasn't very short, was it?
So, with all the interesting parts of Magic Realm demanding that it be played - how does the game fail? I'm going to leave the epic rulebook out of this and presume you have someone to teach you the game or you're willing to undertake the learning of the rules.
Interestingly, many of the biggest drawbacks to Magic Realm are linked to the reasons that I like the game. I've tried to keep them in a similar order.
1) Many people required. Because of the interested cooperative/competitive nature of the game, a two player game simply isn't as interesting as an 8 player game would be1. This isn't to say that the game is unplayable with less people. I've played mostly with two or three players (plus solo play via Realmspeak). It works, but much of the interesting character interactions aren't as possible.
2) Deterministic Combat. Yes, I listed this as a benefit, but it's also a drawback. When combat is predetermined, some decisions becomes rote. The best example is that the two fastest characters in the game can run away from 95% of all monsters. For these characters, the game can turn into an exercise in running away. Obviously, this could be quite unsatisfactory2
3) Magic spells are weak. After learning the intricate and interesting system of casting spells, I looked at the spell lists and immediately thought "Wow, 3/4 of these are lame!". Many of the spells simply don't do very much, or don't last long enough to justify the in-game resources you will have to expend to cast the spell. The other 1/4 are blatantly the best spells in the game. This drawback is actually strongly linked to the next one, and if you change the general theme/goals of the game some of the marginal spells will become much more useful.
4a) Magic Realm is all Loot and Kill. Despite the detail put into the civilized lands, and the point based victory conditions, your goal upon starting a game of Magic Realm is to either a) go kill some monsters/humans or b) Find a treasure site and get all the treasure you can. Optionally, you can do both. For those who know the game, there is a poor Quest/Adventure system that offers some potential, but ultimately fails3. This focus on Loot and Kill (which isn't unique to Magic Realm) is particularly apparent due to all the detail lavished upon the spell lists and the civilized tiles. Magic Realm has a complete set of human dwellings and factions and the most you can do is trade goods and hire them to go kill and loot things with you4.
5) Finally, Too many optional systems. With such a rich and long history behind it, Magic Realm has plenty of official and unofficial options, variants, and more. Most of these are directly related to the drawbacks I've listed prior...
Here's the short list: Official Optional Combat rules (brings more die rolling and less determinism), Alternate Official Optional Combat rules (changes some percentages in the Official Optional Combat rules), Unofficial Book of Quests (changes victory conditions to a quest based system5, Official Optional Character Balance Changes, Unofficial Character Balance changes, Optional Weather rules, Unofficial Expansions6
That's too much. I just want to play the game, I don't want to have to play it six times in order to determine which optional rules are the best ones for me!
For myself, the optional rules are the worst drawback to Magic Realm. I'm forever wondering if I should implement the alternate combat rules, or the alternate character balance changes or what-have-you. It's especially bad because over half of the optional rules are in the main rulebook!
Ultimately, while optional rules are fine, they should be entirely optional modules (the weather system is a good example of this), not outright replacements of core game systems. The combat rules and the character balance changes are the core offenders here. I believe that when the third edition ruleset was put together they should have made the tough decisions to integrate and trim. As Magic Realm stands now, a newcomer faces almost thirty years of variants and options, many of which are present in the core rulebook.
For the record, I haven't used any of the optional rules. I still consider the Official Alternate optional combat rules, but no decision yet.
There you go. Personally, wrapping up the package that is Magic Realm, I'm still impressed. There are reasons that it is still interesting thirty years later, but many drawbacks that will keep it off of high-rotation in most game groups. I'm still committed to playing more games, but with less fervor than I felt three months ago.
I guess that means I'm not obsessed any longer.
I hear Call to Arms is coming out soon, I should break out Battlelore again...
aaron
--
1 No, I haven't played an 8 player game. I'd like to. I think. As always, when you get into a larger game, the chance of adding a very slow player to the game increases, plus, it's very hard to learn a game while playing with so many other people. First I must teach the game to 7 other people. Then I must get them all into one place at the same time.
2 and because this running away is sometimes exactly what a player wants to do, then it's a benefit. It's an odd situation. Sometimes deterministic combat/fleeing is great - at other times it feels boring and staid. I personally lean a little bit towards the "deterministic=benefit" argument, but convincing me otherwise wouldn't be too hard.
3 Some explanation: There are two 'quests' in the game, some people who desperately need some beer (take them to the inn) and some people who desperately need religion (take them to the chapel). These two quests are okay in concept, but provide minimal rewards, and (more importantly) rarely show up in the game. There is less than a one in six chance that they will show up each turn. First you must roll a six on the monster die, and then be located on the correct tile. With a larger game they would appear more often, but I've never had them show up in my smaller games.
The second "Adventures" consist of conflict between civilized groups - where the characters can take sides, earning the friendship of one or two groups of people in return for attacking other groups. These have exactly the same problems as the quests. They rarely appear, the rewards for undertaking the adventure is questionable, and finally, how heroic is it to take part in a war?
4 Or kill them and take their stuff.
5 I thought this had potential, but I was disappointed. While the .pdf of the Book of Quests is very well put together and obviously has a ton of love behind it, it is a sprawling epic of one game group's house rules over many many years. The quests start out interesting, but the later quests add up to three pages of setup, rules, and procedures that are specific to that quest only! And you are supposed to choose a different quest for each player! While the Books of Quests is an interesting jumping off point, it ultimately isn't unified enough to be easy to implement.
6 Whoops, that wasn't very short, was it?
Monday, March 26, 2007
Magic Realm Part one - Why?
Following up on my theme of games that promote obsession1, I am left to recount the past two months2 of time spent with an old Avalon Hill flatbox. This flatbox happens to be Magic Realm.
I've broken my thoughts into two parts - this one covers why I remain interested in this game, and why i spent two months learning how to play (again note, that is learning -how- to play. Not actually playing.)
Awe-inspiring is the third edition rulebook. Over 100 pages (including index and reference sheets), this tome will consume not only your printer, but your mind. I spent at least a week pouring over the rules, trying to give myself a solid foundation in the rules. While I eventually succeeded, I am still incapable of finding the answer to a question quickly. The index is not as stellar as it needs to be.
So, why should anyone bother with Magic Realm now4?
Magic Realm is one of the first adventure boardgames release in the late 70s. It took on an Epic status early, primarily due to the incomprehensible first edition rulebook, later redone in a 50% better version known as second edition. The seventies had seen the rise of Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic Realm was Avalon Hill's response for a complex fantasy themed game. As a historical period piece, it is very interesting. But that's probably not enough to convince you to plow through a 100 page rulebook and then coerce your friends into a game.
Magic Realm has several features that are noticeably absent from most other adventure boardgames.
1) It has a wide range of truly different characters to play. Characters can be divided into four general groups - light armor, heavy armor, light magic, and heavy magic. While each character demands different approaches to the game, the differences between the general groups is particularly dramatic.
This is a strong contrast with games that followed. Most other games have only superficial differences between the characters, and each player will follow a very similar path towards the end of the game.
2) Cooperation and Conflict between players is open-ended. Players can cooperate to their mutual benefit, or choose to go on a spree of player killing. There are no game mechanics that enforce cooperation or conflict (like newcomers Descent or World of Warcraft), but the game system supports choice in player interactions.
3) Combat has a strong Deterministic component5. In most adventure games combat is directly tied to a die roll. In Magic Realm, depending on your character, you can predict the exact outcomes of a one-on-one fight prior to the encounter. For example, the swordsman (thief-type) can automatically run away from almost any enemy, but successfully kill very few.
4) As much detail is placed on Civilization as the Wilderness. In addition to the requisite wilderness filled with beasties and treasure, there are 'dwellings' and
'native groups', or factions of knights, rogues, wandering mercenaries and more. Players can attempt to hire or fight these Civilized enemies. Some of the characters are actually best utilized to fight natives, not monsters!
5) Extensive Magic system. Lots of spells, and a system of casting rituals, colored mana and more. A level of detail that you would expect out of an RPG, not a boardgame.
6) Random setup A full set of hex tiles and a slightly complex setup that allows for the semi-random distribution of monsters and locations. Good stuff, promising extended replayability. This is probably the least unique feature, with mention going out to Return of the Heroes for a similar concept.
--
If all these ideas have intrigues you, let's tease you some more. Here are what I consider the big myths of Magic Realm.
1) The game (or Setup) takes forever. Certainly not true for multiple playings, what really takes forever is the first person learning the rules. Gameplay itself moves at a good clip. Setup is complex, but is comparable to setting up all the different card decks in a game of FFG's Arkham Horror. However, compared to a modern boardgame, this game is not playable 15 minutes after the box is opened. I believe that this myth comes about from people attempting to sit down and play Magic Realm with only a passing familiarity with the game, or none at all. I have never successfully consulted the rulebook in under two minutes. In total, the two fully face-to-face games I played both ended after about 3 hours (including setup and rules)
2) The game is Hard. Actually, the game is easy. Again, it is learning the game from the rules that is hard. It's hard to define why. Here's a number of reasons that might be true: Poor rules, Complex non-intuitive rules, multiple subsystems, Poor graphic design (more on this later). Ultimately, Magic Realm played with one person who knows the game is fairly easy to grasp and play.
--
There's one item that I don't think enough is said about - and this is where my obsession breaks down and betrays me. The Counters. Magic Realm has a large number of counters, and when I sat down to inventory my copy of the game, I found that it was in fact First edition. Which meant that the errata for the counter manifest is about a page long. There's a recommendation in the rulebook to simply toss your counters and buy ones from Second Edition.
Instead of doing that, I tracked down a set of redesigned counters (easy enough - linked off the 'geek) and set about recreating the game of magic realm in cardboard and color printing. I'm not completely finished, but by the end of my second game, I was never so glad I spent hours on a craft project.
The redesigned counters take about a hundred pounds of rules weight off the players. I would not recommend playing this game without the new counters - they are simply that much better than the original avalon hill ones. Why?
1) The new counters contain all the information necessary for the monsters. Using the old avalon hill counters you are missing about 3-5 pieces of data about each monster, which you will have to look up in the rulebook.
2) The second thing they do requires some rules knowledge - which I've been avoiding because it's easy to find rules recaps elsewhere. In Magic Realm, when your character moves into an unexplored tile, they find either a site or a sound chit (or both). This chit determines what monsters could be present in the tile. On the original AH counters, the chit might say 'smoke'. When you roll for monsters, you will cross reference your die roll with a chart, look down the row for any instance of the word 'smoke', check back onto the board to see if you are on a mountain or Cave tile, then get the right monster.
The New counters say 'smoke [2] Dragons' When you roll for monsters, you look at your tile, and if the number you rolled matches the number on the chit, you grab the next available monster of that type. It's easier, more intuitive, and it lets relatively new players predict what is about to happen in the game.
If you are going to play Magic Realm, Get the counters. Make them. They improve the game.
Next week I'll get into what might stop you from playing Magic Realm, and how the age of the game presents some barriers to play these days.
ciao
aaron
--
1 To recap - games that suggest, or even demand repeat play to fully enjoy. The reason behind this can vary from deep strategy, incomprehensible rules, complex rules, or sheer fast and furious play. Magic Realm itself promotes obsession at first through incomprehensible rules, passing briefly through complex rules, and eventually settling into the new category - one million variants.
2 Two months, two face-to-face games. 3 Ouch. Ratio of play to obsession time is quite low here...
3 Okay, this is the requisite mention of RealmSpeak. RealmSpeak is a Java based implementation of Magic Realm. It turns the above boardgame into a computer game, either for a single player, or networked for multiple players. There are some incomplete sections (certain spells, etc), but for all intents and purposes it is fully playable.
I have played a large number of solo RealmSpeak games in the past two months. First to help figure out how Natives worked in combat, and then later to try to quantify the various parts of the game. It is kind of like playing Ticket to Ride online. It's tons faster than the board version, but ultimately leaves the player without a real understanding of how the game is played. I find this to be a general failing of computer implementation of games. Without the actual rules knowledge, some decision making becomes compromised (more true with Magic Realm than with Ticket to Ride).
RealmSpeak is okay. It is both better than the tabletop game, and much worse. Worse, because when sped up, Magic Realm becomes more pedestrian and sterile. It is better because it does all the work for you. Ultimately, I have to ask myself why I am playing RealmSpeak. Is it because I can't get anyone to play Magic Realm with me? then fine. If it is because I want to play a solitaire computer game for awhile, then there are probably better options...
4I actually found that MR had more buzz online than I expected. I think much of it is due to RealmSpeak (see 3).
5 For those 'in the know' I'm referring to the base combat rules, not the optional combat rules, which I'll eventually address.
I've broken my thoughts into two parts - this one covers why I remain interested in this game, and why i spent two months learning how to play (again note, that is learning -how- to play. Not actually playing.)
Awe-inspiring is the third edition rulebook. Over 100 pages (including index and reference sheets), this tome will consume not only your printer, but your mind. I spent at least a week pouring over the rules, trying to give myself a solid foundation in the rules. While I eventually succeeded, I am still incapable of finding the answer to a question quickly. The index is not as stellar as it needs to be.
So, why should anyone bother with Magic Realm now4?
Magic Realm is one of the first adventure boardgames release in the late 70s. It took on an Epic status early, primarily due to the incomprehensible first edition rulebook, later redone in a 50% better version known as second edition. The seventies had seen the rise of Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic Realm was Avalon Hill's response for a complex fantasy themed game. As a historical period piece, it is very interesting. But that's probably not enough to convince you to plow through a 100 page rulebook and then coerce your friends into a game.
Magic Realm has several features that are noticeably absent from most other adventure boardgames.
1) It has a wide range of truly different characters to play. Characters can be divided into four general groups - light armor, heavy armor, light magic, and heavy magic. While each character demands different approaches to the game, the differences between the general groups is particularly dramatic.
This is a strong contrast with games that followed. Most other games have only superficial differences between the characters, and each player will follow a very similar path towards the end of the game.
2) Cooperation and Conflict between players is open-ended. Players can cooperate to their mutual benefit, or choose to go on a spree of player killing. There are no game mechanics that enforce cooperation or conflict (like newcomers Descent or World of Warcraft), but the game system supports choice in player interactions.
3) Combat has a strong Deterministic component5. In most adventure games combat is directly tied to a die roll. In Magic Realm, depending on your character, you can predict the exact outcomes of a one-on-one fight prior to the encounter. For example, the swordsman (thief-type) can automatically run away from almost any enemy, but successfully kill very few.
4) As much detail is placed on Civilization as the Wilderness. In addition to the requisite wilderness filled with beasties and treasure, there are 'dwellings' and
'native groups', or factions of knights, rogues, wandering mercenaries and more. Players can attempt to hire or fight these Civilized enemies. Some of the characters are actually best utilized to fight natives, not monsters!
5) Extensive Magic system. Lots of spells, and a system of casting rituals, colored mana and more. A level of detail that you would expect out of an RPG, not a boardgame.
6) Random setup A full set of hex tiles and a slightly complex setup that allows for the semi-random distribution of monsters and locations. Good stuff, promising extended replayability. This is probably the least unique feature, with mention going out to Return of the Heroes for a similar concept.
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If all these ideas have intrigues you, let's tease you some more. Here are what I consider the big myths of Magic Realm.
1) The game (or Setup) takes forever. Certainly not true for multiple playings, what really takes forever is the first person learning the rules. Gameplay itself moves at a good clip. Setup is complex, but is comparable to setting up all the different card decks in a game of FFG's Arkham Horror. However, compared to a modern boardgame, this game is not playable 15 minutes after the box is opened. I believe that this myth comes about from people attempting to sit down and play Magic Realm with only a passing familiarity with the game, or none at all. I have never successfully consulted the rulebook in under two minutes. In total, the two fully face-to-face games I played both ended after about 3 hours (including setup and rules)
2) The game is Hard. Actually, the game is easy. Again, it is learning the game from the rules that is hard. It's hard to define why. Here's a number of reasons that might be true: Poor rules, Complex non-intuitive rules, multiple subsystems, Poor graphic design (more on this later). Ultimately, Magic Realm played with one person who knows the game is fairly easy to grasp and play.
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There's one item that I don't think enough is said about - and this is where my obsession breaks down and betrays me. The Counters. Magic Realm has a large number of counters, and when I sat down to inventory my copy of the game, I found that it was in fact First edition. Which meant that the errata for the counter manifest is about a page long. There's a recommendation in the rulebook to simply toss your counters and buy ones from Second Edition.
Instead of doing that, I tracked down a set of redesigned counters (easy enough - linked off the 'geek) and set about recreating the game of magic realm in cardboard and color printing. I'm not completely finished, but by the end of my second game, I was never so glad I spent hours on a craft project.
The redesigned counters take about a hundred pounds of rules weight off the players. I would not recommend playing this game without the new counters - they are simply that much better than the original avalon hill ones. Why?
1) The new counters contain all the information necessary for the monsters. Using the old avalon hill counters you are missing about 3-5 pieces of data about each monster, which you will have to look up in the rulebook.
2) The second thing they do requires some rules knowledge - which I've been avoiding because it's easy to find rules recaps elsewhere. In Magic Realm, when your character moves into an unexplored tile, they find either a site or a sound chit (or both). This chit determines what monsters could be present in the tile. On the original AH counters, the chit might say 'smoke'. When you roll for monsters, you will cross reference your die roll with a chart, look down the row for any instance of the word 'smoke', check back onto the board to see if you are on a mountain or Cave tile, then get the right monster.
The New counters say 'smoke [2] Dragons' When you roll for monsters, you look at your tile, and if the number you rolled matches the number on the chit, you grab the next available monster of that type. It's easier, more intuitive, and it lets relatively new players predict what is about to happen in the game.
If you are going to play Magic Realm, Get the counters. Make them. They improve the game.
Next week I'll get into what might stop you from playing Magic Realm, and how the age of the game presents some barriers to play these days.
ciao
aaron
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1 To recap - games that suggest, or even demand repeat play to fully enjoy. The reason behind this can vary from deep strategy, incomprehensible rules, complex rules, or sheer fast and furious play. Magic Realm itself promotes obsession at first through incomprehensible rules, passing briefly through complex rules, and eventually settling into the new category - one million variants.
2 Two months, two face-to-face games. 3 Ouch. Ratio of play to obsession time is quite low here...
3 Okay, this is the requisite mention of RealmSpeak. RealmSpeak is a Java based implementation of Magic Realm. It turns the above boardgame into a computer game, either for a single player, or networked for multiple players. There are some incomplete sections (certain spells, etc), but for all intents and purposes it is fully playable.
I have played a large number of solo RealmSpeak games in the past two months. First to help figure out how Natives worked in combat, and then later to try to quantify the various parts of the game. It is kind of like playing Ticket to Ride online. It's tons faster than the board version, but ultimately leaves the player without a real understanding of how the game is played. I find this to be a general failing of computer implementation of games. Without the actual rules knowledge, some decision making becomes compromised (more true with Magic Realm than with Ticket to Ride).
RealmSpeak is okay. It is both better than the tabletop game, and much worse. Worse, because when sped up, Magic Realm becomes more pedestrian and sterile. It is better because it does all the work for you. Ultimately, I have to ask myself why I am playing RealmSpeak. Is it because I can't get anyone to play Magic Realm with me? then fine. If it is because I want to play a solitaire computer game for awhile, then there are probably better options...
4I actually found that MR had more buzz online than I expected. I think much of it is due to RealmSpeak (see 3).
5 For those 'in the know' I'm referring to the base combat rules, not the optional combat rules, which I'll eventually address.
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