To Every Thing, There is a Season ...

It's two and a half years now since Coldfoot sent me an email asking if I'd like to contribute to a new group boardgaming blog that he was putting together. I'll admit to being a bit passive aggressive about that initial invite, because I was feeling very busy at the time.

I was obsessively working on a CCG design for a game based on the Stargate: SG-1 TV show. It didn't end up going anywhere, but it sure took up a lot of my time in July and August of 2005. I was also writing scripts for some comic books (though actually the script that was on my desk that Summer was for Castle Marrach #2 which didn't get produced either, as my very reasonably priced and high-quality artist ended up too busy to make a longer term commitment).

Nonetheless, after sitting on Brian's email for a few weeks, I finally mailed him back--just in time, I suspect--and told him I'd be happy to be on board, but could only commit to writing every other week.

On August 1, 2005, Coldfoot announced the group and listed the initial lineup:
http://boredgamegeeks.blogspot.com/2005/08/welcome-to-gone-gaming.html

Blogger and game reviewer extraordinaire, Shannon Appelcline

Israeli blogger, game commentator and most recently game designer, Yehuda Berlinger

The gaming mom from America’s heartland, Mary Weisbeck (Sodaklady)

Game store owner and Gaming’s “Manly Man”, DW Tripp

Strategy guru and author of some of the most referenced game articles ever written, namely the Puerto Rico strategy guides, Alex Rockwell

The wargamer you either love or hate, but who will always leave you asking, “Did that make sense?” Robert Wesley (Grognads)

He doesn’t write a lot, but IMO he is the best game writer out there, Joe Gola

And, myself, the mildly-retarded blogger from Alaska.

Well, it's now December, 2007, and earlier this year, somewhat to my surprise, I realized that I was the final member of our initial group still blogging at Gone Gaming. It immediately put me into a thoughtful mood, considering all the other writers who had come and gone, and also made me wonder about what the future of the blog would be.

You see, the heart of Gone Gaming, to me at least, was Coldfoot and Yehuda--two of those original bloggers, now gone. I've been here the longest, and I hope I've written some articles that everyone enjoyed, but it's never been my baby. It was Coldfoot and Yehuda who put the initial organization into the blog, and who kept it rolling. In their absence--or perhaps just due to the passage of time--we've slowly been winding down.

Don't get me wrong. We still have terrific people posting now, and we all do what we can to keep the blog alive, not just with our own postings but also in finding guest bloggers and new blood. However no one's had that organizational zeal to go out and find an entire slate of writers--like Coldfoot did originally--and like I suspect Yehuda could have if he wanted to, given his organization of the Gone Gaming awards that we ran for two years.

It's not just us. There seems to be a general trend which has resulted in a lot of the gaming blogs disappearing over the last few years. I don't think it's because of any weakness in the core business of gaming--though the US economy is clearly weakening, and entertainment dollars often take the first hit. Instead, it seems to be a weakness in blogging itself. Some people have moved on to podcasts, while others have just disappeared altogether, perhaps because blogs no longer have that sparkle of newness that they once did. I miss the Gathering of Engineers and Chris Farrell's blog and the Best of Board Game blog, all of which have vanished in the last year or two.

And that brings us back to this blog. Through some combination of staff loss and general decline in board game blogging, Gone Gaming has shrunk too. We're still publishing regularly, but with more gaps in our schedule than ever before.

The Future of Gone Gaming

This is the point where you're probably expecting me to announce either my retirement or the retirement of Gone Gaming, and let me say ... not quite.

A week or so ago W. Eric Martin of Board Game News wrote us, noting that he too had lost some writing staff lately, and asking if we'd be interested in merging Gone Gaming into Board Game News.

I think we were all somewhat reluctant to let Gone Gaming go as an independent site. As I said in one of my letters, where before we had two sites, offering the potential for two new columns every day, now we'd have only one. But, honestly, we hadn't met that potential for a while. So we all talked, and we agreed: as of January 1, all of the remaining Gone Gaming writers will be moving over to Board Game News.

In a week or two's time, you'll find everything that you used to read here over there. We're going to port the old articles of the remaining authors, and Eric is also going to create a special Gone Gaming category, so that you can read just the GG blogs if you want. But BGN also features regular columns from other great writers, as well as the best interviews and industry news in the business, so hopefully you'll take a look at them too.

In the meantime, make sure that you stick around and read Gone Gaming through the end of the year, as we'll have return visits from as many of our departed columnists as we can get to write.

I'm really happy to have Gone Gaming go out as an independent site while we were still strong and full of regular, high-quality posts. Knowing that we're going to see the return of lots of old friends in the next couple of weeks makes me feel like I'm at the finale of a roleplaying campaign which ran its full course. In the end we get to tell our final stories and wrap up our lose ends, because we actually planned for an conclusion rather than just letting the game trail off.

(And even better, we've got part two of the campaign all ready to go, with a launch immediately thereafter.)

So that's the news on the future of Gone Gaming ...

My Year in Writing

Even before we got to talking about the BGN/GG merger, I'd been thinking about the 29 months that I've been writing for Gone Gaming, and wondering why I'm the last man standing from the original group. That was going to be my original topic for this column, a retrospective on the year and the blog.

In any case, for me personally, I'm still around because I'm a writer. I can't help it. I write. Constantly. Almost since I got on the net, I've contributed to it. In 1991 I began writing campaign logs for some of my roleplaying games. In 1994 I created an online 'zine called The Chaosium Digest, which as often as not was full of my own writing. In 2000 I began writing a column on computer game design. Last year I tried my hand at a history of the roleplaying industry. I suspect there's one or two million words worth of my writing publicly available on the Internet.

The question was thus never if I'd stop writing, but rather if something else would come along that interested me more that writing about board games.

I'm sure that'll happen in time, and it was actually a very serious threat this year, because it's been one of my most productive writing years ever. I expanded my history articles into an almost-complete manuscript of an RPG history book, before things fell through with my initial publisher (200,000 words). I simultaneously wrote a book on elfs for Mongoose Publishing's RuneQuest, which has since been published (60,000 words). I wrote 7 or 8 articles for Knucklebones magazine (20,000 words), a couple for Tradetalk magazine (5,000 words), four articles for Signs & Portents magazine (14,000 words), 25 articles here on Gone Gaming (50,000 words), and 50 reviews for RPGnet (100,000 words). In all, I suspect I flirted with a count of half-a-million words for the year.

It's been a busy year. Just like that year when Coldfoot first asked me if I wanted to write for his new blog.

Sounds like a pattern.

My Year in Gaming

Fortunately, I still found plenty of time to game amidst all that writing (though I'll admit to turning down some gaming opportunities early in the year, when I was going full-bore on two books intended for professional publication). I've logged 294 games to date this year, compared to 414 last year, and I've still got a few more game nights scheduled.

However, it's also been a year that's seen some changes in my gaming habits.

This is the year in which I decided that I didn't have to own every board game I liked. I think it's a milestone that every board game player eventually hits, as they glance through their shelves, realize how many of the games they never play and that playing a friend's copy of the newest hot game is probably good enough.

Notre Dame is the last game that I actively sought out a copy of (and couldn't get because it was out of print). I think On the Underground was the last game I actually bought. (Though, keep in mind that I still get some review copies, which helps to satisfy the new game urge.)

This is also the year in which I started getting rid of games that I actually like. They're just games that I like less and are less likely to play, so why should I have them continue to clutter up my house?

(Actually, I speak prematurely, because I haven't gotten rid of them yet. I've just packed them up in a box for an auction next Spring at EndGame.)

On the gaming front, there was very little that thrilled me for most of the year. The Pillars of the Earth is the only game from early this year or late last year which has had any staying power for me ... and that might be because I don't get to play it much. Notre Dame was the next game that really caught my attention, but I still haven't purchased a copy of it.

However, this fall has been looking better. Race for the Galaxy has gone onto my usually-want-to-play list, and I suspect that I'll be even more excited when and if the supplements come out. I initially said that I felt like I didn't need to own Race for the Galaxy because I already had San Juan and Glory to Rome, but I'd increasingly like to get a copy.

Brass and Cuba are two more games from this fall that I've liked quite a bit. They've only gotten one play each, and they're generally longer and more intricate than I tend to like in gaming ... but those single gameplays really got me thinking.

I'm really happy to see a few different games that get me excited again, because it tells me that spring was just a poor crop of games, not that I'm losing my interest in Eurogames in general.

My five and dime list isn't quite finished up for the year, because of those aforementioned remaining game nights, but generally it looks much as it has in previous years: pretty scant, because I'm much more likely to play a lot of different games than anything in depth.

Lost Cities (12 plays) was one of just two older game that I really kept playing this year, and that's primarily because my wife has had some renewed interest in the game. The other was Ingenious (5 plays), thanks to my dad buying me a copy last Christmas. (I've also played the computer version of it a ton, and should really review it.) My games of Magic: The Gathering (6 plays) were entirely so that I could write some reviews that required testing out a lot of decks. It's a fun game, but I doubt I'd go to the trouble of playing it otherwise.

New or new-to-me games took up the rest of my five-and-dime list.

Tichu (7 plays) is a game that I quickly came to adore, but it's no surprise because I really like card-climbing games. Gang of Four was a favorite long before I ever tried out Tichu.

Ubongo (6 plays) got all its attention early in the year, and seems to have died out since. My last nickel of the year should be Descent (5 plays), as we've got a game scheduled for Saturday. It's a bit surprising for such a long game to appear as a nickel, but it's because my roleplaying group likes it, so it's gotten some play there, especially when we were in-between campaigns this summer.

That's pretty much been my year in gaming.

And this is Shannon Appelcline, writer and gaming guy, signing off. I'll see you all next year in Gone Gaming at Board Game News. Have a terrific holiday, and make sure you stick around for all the great columns we've got scheduled before the end of the year.

(+2,232 words.)

Who Goes Next?

Who goes next?

In a mass-market game, that wasn't really much of a question, because in Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess, or any number of other traditionals, the answer was always obvious: the next player.

However, as games continue to evolve, adding on new levels of complexity, the answer is becoming more difficult, and the question of who goes next isn't always so obvious.

Starting with Card Games

I would suspect that card games were really the first ones to raise the "Who Goes Next?" question. This is because most card games divide up their play into tricks, where each player plays one card. This means that if you kept having the "next player" go next, then the same player would lead each hand, which would allow him to play to his strengths and win most of the time. Because of this large first-player advantage, card games developed two different answers for the "Who Goes Next?" question, based around their two core units of card play.

At the end of each trick (or each round of play, if you prefer), the player that wins the hand is usually the one that leads the next hand. This tends to offer two rewards to winning a trick: getting the cards of the trick and leading off the next one. Different games play this off in different ways. In most card games, from Bridge to Spades, taking the trick is crucially important, while winning the lead just lets you control what happens next, but in a game like Gang of Four there's no trick taking, and so all that's important is getting to lead the next time around--underlining the importance of this whole exercise.

At the end of each hand, the lead tends to shift around the table clockwise.

And that's how almost every card game answers the question of "Who Goes Next?". As we'll see, some board games have adopted these same answers, but more recently we're seeing a lot of variation as well, going beyond card games' staid solutions.

Back to Board Games

As I've already said, in Ye Olden Board Games, you just kept playing sequentially. There's still a lot of designers that use this model most of the time, including stand-outs like Reiner Knizia.

However, we're increasingly seeing games designed around limited choices and limited resources. These games also tend to divide up into rounds (or tricks, if you prefer), with the most common round giving each player one opportunity to play--though they're sometimes much longer. At the end of each round, a new player then gets the opportunity to be first.

Puerto Rico is one of the earliest notables in this area, but the style of play has really exploded in the last several years with more role-selection games and more scarcity games, all of which tend to make it really important when you go.

Puerto Rico took the old card play model of shifting the lead one to the right each round, which is a fine, simple method. It can also be incredibly painful when you go from first to last, because that increases the length between your turns. It's not a big deal in Puerto Rico because of the low down-time, and in fact becomes a core element of strategy. However, it drove me crazy in Eagle's Attack! (with expansion) because the down-time was high enough that you'd have over an hour in-between your first and last turns.

I'm somewhat fond of the retrograde turn order, where the first player goes counter-clockwise rather than clockwise. Thus, in the extreme case, rather than going from first to last, you instead go from last to first. However, it's more confusing, and can cause serious balance problems when a player gets two turns in a row.

Complexity in Ordering

It's been several years now that the number of round-based board games have been increasing, and I'm pretty pleased to see that the thought being given to the whole question of "Who Goes Next?" is increasing too.

After moving the first-player clockwise (or counterclockwise) I think the next easiest answer is to allow the player with the lowest score to go first (like Torres does), if being first is an advantage, or to make the player with the highest score go first, if being first is a disadvantage. Thus, you have a simple rule that doesn't continually advantage the same player and you have a catch-up mechanism, all in one simple rule.

Sweet.

However I like the board games that have integrated the whole question of "Who Goes Next?" into the game play even better. They treat it as yet another resource that you have to manage.

Caylus and Pillars of the Earth both made the first-player ability a resource that you can purchase, but at the cost of doing something else useful, which is an OK, but kind of in-your-face answer.

I prefer the solutions suggested by Phoenicia and Cuba. In the first you go first in the next round if you have the most victory points, but by doing so you're probably limiting your resource production. In the second you go first in the next round if you choose your roles in a specific order. In both cases you have to minorly disadvantage yourself in other ways to increase your probability of going next, which is generally a more nuanced and interesting answer than just choosing whether to take the first-player action or not.

Conclusion

I've thus far left out my favorite "Who Goes Next?" mechanism, which is that found in Thebes. Therein, every action you take costs time, and whoever has spent the least time overall goes next. This is neat in several ways, because it turns the "Who Goes Next?" question on its head, because there's no longer a guarantee of getting equal turns. Instead, turn management becomes pure resource management.

I suppose you could say it's another way of looking at an action-point system, in that you can take one big action or many small actions, but if so it's more clever and less likely to cause analysis paralysis than any action point system I've ever seen.

Thebes also suggests that we've just scratched the service of the "Who Goes Next?" question. As designer games continue to evolve, we may see lots of other solutions to this question that was taken totally for granted back when we just played Monopoly and Battleship.

Knizia-thon, Part Two: Obscurity & Palazzo

Last week I played my second game of Palazzo for the year. I own the game, but it very rarely makes it into my game night bag, hence the low play count. I couldn't really place my finger on why until last Wednesday's game.

The game ended like this:

I'd been doing kind of moderately well throughout the game: not best and not worst. On what was likely to be my last turn I had a pristine 5-story white-marble building with tons of windows, a mixed-material 3-story building and a mixed-material 2-story building.

Now in Palazzo, for those of you unfamiliar, you score points based on how tall your building is and what it's made out of. The core score for a 3-story building is the number of windows it contains, but there are bonuses of +3 and +6 when you reach 4 or 5 stories and those bonuses are doubled if the building is made of a single material.

The result is, unfortunately, very difficult to intuit, and this really showed in last Wednesday's game.

Given the choice between making a for-sure purchase of a single, one-window floor that I could add to my 2-story building and an auction for a couple of much better pieces, I took the latter. Unfortunately I didn't have the most money, lost the auction, didn't get another turn, and thus lost the game. However, what made the defeat especially ignoble was that if I'd instead just made the purchase that looked so much less good to me, I would have won by a couple of points.

The problem was that intuitive difficulty. Sure, I suppose I could have added up the two possible scores, then made a more knowledgeable risk-reward assessment based on the exact values, but that's generally not the way I roll. Worse, I think it would be disastrous in an ultra-light game like Palazzo.

So, instead, I went with my gut, and my gut said that singular one-window story was almost worthless, because my thumbnail way to try and assess the somewhat confusing valuations of Palazzo is to go with window count. Instead I should have remembered that there was a huge drop off in score from a 3-story building (value=windows) to a 2-story building (value=0).

But even when I remember that next time, and I bet I do, especially after writing this article, I suspect I'll be tripped up by something else. And that's really my core problem with Palazzo: not that it's light (though it is), and not that it's sort of Alhambra-like (which it's really not), but rather than the scoring is sufficiently obscure that it's often pretty hard to figure out the right thing to do.

The Benefits of Obscurity

Mind you, there are often great benefits to making scoring obscure in a game.

Hidden scoring is a terrific idea, even when you can see every point earned along the way. Tigris & Euphrates is a fine example of this. Sure someone could memorize every point earned, if they wanted, and thus have some advantage, but most people don't do that. And the flipside is that if all the scores were open then a huge analysis paralysis would start to settle on the players when they began to guess or second-guess all their info in light of the revealed scores. Quo Vadis and Through the Desert both do the exact same thing, with perhaps even more benefit.

The close companion to this idea is to have unscored scoring: valuations which aren't totally scored until the end. Genesis is an example of such a Knizia game, and even offers good reason for holding the scoring up to the end: because you don't know what everything's worth until the last piece is played because the size and ownership of herds of animals can change until the last move. Dead Man's Treasure is another example of game where the scoring isn't settled to the end.

So, I see reasons for making the score itself obscure, but not the scoring, and that's ultimately why I think Palazzo doesn't live up to some of Knizia's better mid-weight games. There's just too much formula in the scoring to allow you to intuitively know what to do.

Which is a pity, because I really enjoy the other aspects of the game.

Knizia-thon, Part One: Marco Polo Expedition v. Blue Moon City

As I've played an increasing number of German games, I've increasingly grown fond of those by Reiner Knizia. Sure, he's the big grand poobah of German gaming, and he designs more games than most small countries, but I've discovered that I like his games because they're just more fun for me than a lot of what I play.

To some extent this surprises me, because they're pretty analytical and pretty mathematical, neither of which matches my definition of fun, but of everything I play they're the ones I come back to the most.

I came to this realization late last year, so this year I've set out to play as much Knizia as a I can. I'd hope to have a pile of Knizian nickles by year's end, and though that hasn't come about, I've still managed quite a few plays.

To date my 2007 play list looks like this: Ingenious x5, Blue Moon City x4, Quo Vadis? x3, Through the Desert x3, Amun-Re x2, Colossal Arena x2, Dead Man's Treasure x2, Dragon Parade x2, Escalation! x2, Genesis x2, Great Wall of China x2, Hollywood Blockbuster x2, Marco Polo Expedition x2, Ra x2, Taj Mahal x2, Buy Low Sell High x1, Ivanhoe x1, Kingdoms x1, Knights of Charlemagne x1, Loot x1, Lord of the Rings x1, Palazzo x1, Relationship Tightrope x1, Rheinlander x1, Stephenson's Rocket x1, T&E Card Game x1, Too Many Cooks x1, Tutankhamen x1, Winner's Circle x1.

Which I suppose one really can't complain about, since I've been playing at least one Knizia game a week.

All this play of Knizian games has gotten me thinking a bit about his design, and thus I offer up the first of what will eventually be several articles on his games.

Marco Polo Expedition v. Blue Moon City

This week I want to talk about two of Knizia's games, Blue Moon City and Marco Polo Expedition.

Blue Moon City is one of his top-tier games, and even moreso one of his best rated games in recent years. It's currently #76 at BGG, with a rating of 7.46. Pretty much everyone I teach it to loves it.

Marco Polo Expedition is contrariwise one of his biggest disappointments according to the general public. It's currently #1270 at BGG, with a rating of 6.17. Most people I teach it to are pretty indifferent, and just last week I had someone who absolutely despised it on his first play. Personally, I think it's a fine game.

I offer up a comparison of these games not just because their ratings vary so widely--and not just because I've played them each in the last week--but also because I'm struck by their similarities.

Blue Moon City and Marco Polo Expedition are both ultimately card-collection games. I tend to call Blue Moon City resource-management and Marco Polo Expedition set-collection, but they tend to come down to the same thing. You decide to work toward the completion of certain spaces and thus you collect the cards that will allow for that.

Let me explain that a bit more for those not familiar with the games:

Marco Polo Expedition is a game of moving your camel along a set track, while trying to stay tight with the rest of your caravan. To move onto a space you must play cards which depict either caravan leaders (in five colors) or four types of goods (in those same five colors). Individual spaces require either matched goods, matched colors, sets of caravan leaders, a group of each of the four good types, or a group of each of the five colors. You get to jump over other camels, and thus you have to carefully track what other players are doing, to try and plan for spaces past where they end up--or else maintain a group of cards that will be viable for advancing onto multiple spaces.

Blue Moon City is a game of moving your pawn around a wide-open city, while trying to stay tight enough with other players to take advantage of synergy. Upon arriving at individual spaces you reconstruct the buildings there. To reconstruct a building you must play cards in six different colors, but cards can also be used orthogonally to generate special powers. Individual buildings require a grouped set of cards in the same color. Each building space can only be accomplished once, and thus you have to carefully track what other players are doing, to try and plan to build spaces which they won't complete before you--or else maintain a group of cards that will be viable for complete multiple spaces (which may largely be done by making good use of those special powers on the cards).

At the base level, there's really a lot of similarities between the two games. In both you manage cards, trying to stay a step ahead of opponents the whole time, but still in sync with them. So, why do their ratings vary so much? I can offer a few suggestions.

It's All About the Complexity

First, there's a dramatic difference in complexity between the two games. Fundamentally, Marco Polo Expedition is a pretty simple game: you have a single path to victory which you must assess. Conversely, while maintaining the same core ideals of gameplay, Blue Moon City adds a lot of complexity. This comes out in a few different ways.

One of them is openness. You really have a lot more choices in Blue Moon City, and if one opportunity closes up, you can always try another one: going to a different building site, collecting different cards, or even deciding to just grab victory points rather than building up your resources.

Another is color. Here again Blue Moon City offers a lot more than Marco Polo Expedition. In MPE the theming is very weak, borne out mainly by the mechanics of camels moving in a caravan, while in Blue Moon City it's very strong, with the cards all having different powers, and even the building spaces feeling very different--again, as opposed to Marco Polo Expedition where there's no real differentiation between the different spaces you can land on.

In their own way, each of Blue Moon City and Marco Polo Expedition are each quite different from what Knizia regularly designs, but in different directions.

In general Knizia games are pretty simple. He uses the bare minimum of mechanics necessary to pull off his design. If you look at most of his top-rated games, such as Through the Desert, Tigris & Euphrates, Samurai, and Ingenious, there's very little color there: the theming is mostly abstract and the mechanics mostly bare (though Blue Moon City is by no means the only game that offers some serious theming).

On the other hand, it's pretty rare for a Knizia game to offer as little openness as Marco Polo Expedition does. In all of those top games that I mentioned, you tend to have a whole board to play on, as opposed to Marco Polo Expedition where you're just looking forward a space or two.

Though not ever game can have the color of Blue Moon City, you can see part of the reason that Marco Polo Expedition might pale even against the Knizia norm when you consider the dearth of possible decisions.

Forgiving Games

However, I think there's a second way in which Marco Polo Expedition really differs itself from Blue Moon City: in its forgivingness.

In Blue Moon City you have a pretty powerful ability to cycle cards. Every turn you can toss out up to two cards, replacing them. Further, you can play cards for their powers if you don't need to use them to build, or you could move over to a different building if you can't get what you need for the building you really want. Still, through all this, you can sometimes get stuck and have to make non-optimal decisions.

Conversely Marco Polo Expedition can make it a lot harder to get rid of "wasted" cards, which tend to be generated when you build up for a space that someone else claims. The dual nature of all the cards--leader/good and color--helps prevent this somewhat, but you can still be set back multiple turns if you misjudge what your opponents are doing.

Further, there's a big difference in scoring visibility between these games.

In Marco Polo Expedition its really obvious when you're behind, because the most important measure--whether you're with the caravan or not--is clearly visible on the board. Further, when you get behind you usually have to sacrifice victory points to catch up (by dumping VP chests rather than playing extra cards).

Blue Moon City actually has a very similar catch-up mechanism, again underlying the similarity between the games: if you get behind in building the central monument, you have to pay more VPs to do so, which in the end is the same thing as sacrificing victory points in Marco Polo Expedition.

However, this sacrifice ends up behind much less obvious in Blue Moon City. Everyone's points are face-down, so you never know definitively until the last minute when someone will claim victory. I think the usefulness of hiding VPs in order to keep everyone interested until the last minute can't be underestimated, no matter how much grognards argue about open VPs becoming secret.

Also, I think there's a serious psychological difference between sacrificing VPs (as you do in Marco Polo Expedition) and paying extra (as you do in Blue Moon City), and that generally the former will make players unhappier than the latter.

Final Thoughts

Generally, I like Marco Polo Expedition, and I'm sad that it hasn't gotten better attention. However after writing through this I can better understand why.

Most directly, I think Marco Polo Expedition walks a hard line. On the one hand, it looks like a serious gamer's game, because of its release in a big, fairly expensive box. On the other hand, it looks like a family game because of its tightly constrained decision tree. On the third hand, it plays like a gamer's game because of its unforgiving nature and harsh-looking punishments.

With a game uncomfortably between all those extremes, it becomes a bit more clear why some are turned off the game after a first play.

Tie Breakers

Last week, when playing Thurn & Taxis, we momentarily thought we had a tie. (Momentarily, I say, because I added up my 21 points of chips and got 19, but that's neither here nor there.) This inevitably led us back to the rulebook for the perennial question, "What breaks ties?"

In Thurn & Taxis the first answer was, "the player who earned the 'game end' bonus tile'", which makes a lot of sense, because that's a definitive goal that players should usually be going for. However, the second tie-breaker, didn't make sense, because it was, "if [the person with the tile] was not among those tied, the player closest clockwise from this player who was tied with the most is the winner!"

So Thurn & Taxis, to offer a reminder, works like this: when a player goes out, play continues until all players have had an equal number of turns, and thus ends to the right of the start player. This means that unless the last player is the one who went out, the winner is a player who was advantaged because he had more of an opportunity to react to the game ending, which seemed to me to be the opposite of what the tie-breaker should have been. I suggested that going counter-clockwise from the ending player would have worked better, because that would have been a player more likely to be disadvantaged, which led me to a general pondering about how tie breakers should be written.

A Philosophy of Tie Breaking

So what makes a good tie-breaker? I have three criteria: it should be obvious, fair, and ideally unique.

Having a tie-breaker that is obvious is the most important criteria. Inevitably, if a part of the rules doesn't get explained when you're learning a new game, it's how ties are broken. So, you want a tie-breaker that feels obvious: in other words, even if you don't know what the tie-breaker is, when you find it out you want to be able to say, "That makes sense", because the opposite case, where you suddenly find after the fact that you should have been hoarding sheep (or whatever) for the tie-breaker can put a damper on a game.

Almost as importantly, a tie-breaker should be fair. My complaint about the secondary Thurn & Taxis tie-breaker is that it didn't seem fair to me. It would have seemed fair if it in some way either rewarded a player who was truly disadvantaged or else rewarded a player who had extra resources (which especially in a resource-to-victory-point game engine are essentially fractional victory points).

Finally, if possible a tie-breaker should be unique, which is to say something that can't result in yet another tie. Having the end-game marker in Thurn & Taxis is a pretty good example of this sort of thing, because it will usually be held by one of the winners; the designer just didn't think beyond that for the rare cases in which it turns out to be held by a loser.

Looking at Some Examples

So how do different games deal with tie-breakers? I've decided to offer up a few examples, each of which I've looked at by my criteria.

Primordial Soup; Torres: First, the Holy Grail of tie-breakers: games where you can't tie. This is a pretty rare game design element, but usually, I think, a good one. Torres and Primordial Soup are both good examples, because they're games where you literally can't have the same score as another player: instead, you skip over them.

This technique is often put to good use in any sort of game where you have some sort of absolute positional difference, offset in subsystems where ties are relevant. For example in Entdecker you place figures on jungle paths, and if there's a tie, the person who placed first wins; conversely in Patrician you place floors in towers, and if there's a tie, the person who placed last wins.

The Settlers of Catan: Settlers is a game which allows no ties, because you win by having the right number of points on your turn. This really shows the difference between games which go a set length of time, and thus allow ties, and games which just go until someone wins, and thus usually don't.

Ingenious; Tigris & Euphrates: These two Reiner Knizia games offer the next best thing to no ties: a tie-breaker that is so entirely obvious (and fair) that trying to reach it is just a standard part of your gameplay. In each game, you win based upon your worst score in multiple colors, and in case of tie you drop down to your second worst or third or fourth. Thus the entire schoring mechanism is an organic whole.

Havoc: The Hundred Years War: In this Poker-like game, the person who has won the more battles (hands) is the winner, and if there's still a tie, it goes to order of placement in the final battle, making it fair, relatively obvious, and with the second tie-breaker unique.

Ticket to Ride: This is a pretty standard game with good, but not great tie-breaker. The person with the most completed destination tickets wins ties. That strikes me as fair, but it's neither obvious or unique. I'd guessed that the tie-breaker would be the person who has the longest-route bonus, since that's usually unique, but I'm not unhappy with the actual rule.

Carcassonne; Caylus: These games have my least favorite tie-breaker. Either the game explicitly says there is no tie-breaker, or else just doesn't mention one. Besides being anticlimatic, it feels lazy on the part of the designer. I think some game designers feel like they can get away with it because you earn enough points that a tie is pretty unlikely ... but they will come up sometimes. For Carcassonne a potential tie-breaker is immediately obvious: a count of unused meeples. For Caylus a good tie-breaker is a bit more difficult because unused resources have already been valued with points. I'd be tempted to offer a tie-breaker based on total contributions to the castle, with earliest contribution being an additional tie-breaker, since building the castle is the theoretical purpose of the game. Alhambra and Coloretto were another few games that I found that had no tie breakers.

In looking through games, they generally did better than I expected ... other than those which didn't include a tie-breaker at all.

Adventure Games, Part Four: Talisman vs. Runebound

As we near the end of September, the release of the new, fourth edition of Talisman is just a few days away, and thus I've decided to take the opportunity to return to an old series of articles that I've written on adventure games, and compare how the old relates to the new.

A Brief History of Talisman

First, a brief history of Talisman. Although it was by no means the earliest adventure game--that accolade probably going to TSR's Dungeon! (1975)--it was the first that was really, greatly successful.

Talisman's first edition was released by Games Workshop in 1983. It was shortly thereafter followed by a better quality, but otherwise similar second edition. These games had the same core ideas: you played a unique character who you could improve by gaining Strength, Craft, and items. You tried to get enough power to make your way to the center of the board, then kill all the other players through the magical Crown of Command.

Talisman's success was probably most notable because of the fact that it was very well supplemented. First up were the Talisman Expansion Set (1986) and Talisman: The Adventure (1986). Many others expansions followed, offering up new characters, new boards, new cards, and generally new adventures.

However by the early 1990s Games Workshop had been sold by its original owners, with ownership going to miniatures manufacturer Citadel Games (through a somewhat more complicated series of shared ownerships that's beyond the scope of this article). Much of GW's focus was thus turned to Warhammer miniatures and other bigger money makers. GW tried to release Talisman in a much revised third edition (1994) which better fit the "cool" new image of the company, but that soon fizzled out.

Fast forward a decade and Games Workshop is now moving back toward the roleplaying and board game industries that they abandoned. Thus a new fourth edition of Talisman is scheduled to be fully released in a few days. It is built largely upon the second edition from over twenty years ago, without much effort to update it, and a result, Talisman now stands as a great example of how much adventure games have grown in that time.

Talisman v. Runebound

In the 1980s Talisman was the prime example of a competitive fantasy adventure game. However, while Games Workshop slumbered for the last decade, a new company usurped their adventure game crown: Fantasy Flight Games. Today FFG's Runebound is thus the prime example of a game in the same niche for competitive fantasy (as opposed to cooperative fantasy, like HeroQuest or Descent).

Thus, comparing the two games shows how the genre has changed over the years. It also offers some good fodder for what adventure game designers should be thinking about when they create.

Character Modeling: Characters in Talisman were modeled by three elements: strength, craft, and life. Conversely characters in Runebound are much more complex. They are have 3 combat stats, not 2, and each stat further has its own combat results. Characters can also have specific skills, and besides life also have fatigue.

Unlike the other elements I'll mention, I don't consider this a straight win for Runebound. There is something to be said for both simple and complex modeling, particularly for games that are seeking to appeal to different audiences.

Randomness: Every adventure game is random. Encounters are usually randomly determined, and the results of those--depending on some sort of task resolution system--are usually random as well. However Talisman really cranked that randomness up a few levels more.

First of all, movement was largely random. You rolled dice, and then you moved the appropriate number of spaces clockwise or counterclockwise around the board, meaning that you typically had two choices. Runebound offers an interesting contrast here, because again you roll dice, but a handful of Runebound dice determines what terrain you can walk on. It's the difference between randomness limiting you to but two choices and limiting you to a half-dozen or more, between whether you'll be equally limited next turn, or whether you're setting yourself up for future play.

Second, the encounters in Talisman are hugely random. You draw a card which can be anything from a wussy 1-point monster to a 7-point dragon to gold or treasure to a talisman that you need to win the game. Compare that to Runebound where instead monster power levels are differentiated by four different decks of cards, which in turn lead to appropriate levels of gold or items drawn from a separate deck.

Power Differentiation: This leads to the second way in which Runebound has dramatically grown beyond Talisman.

In Talisman there was very little differentiation between creature encounter level. Wherever you were on the board, you could encounter any monster. There were only two exceptions: a few spaces made all monster encounter harder; and some tough encounters were printed on the board instead of depending on card draw.

Compare that to Runebound where, as already noted, different levels of monster come from different decks of cards.

However I also think that Talisman has one thing to teach Runebound here: pre-printed encounters can really add to the story of a game. I'm surprised there hasn't been much of that in the newer game.

Time: One of the surprising elements in the evolution of adventure game design is that the time element hasn't changed a lot. Talisman was a 3-6 hour game, while Runebound is more like 45-60 minutes per player, which probably averages 3 or 4 hours. In my opnion, they're both too long, and it's the primary problem with Runebound.

Talisman, mind you, deals with its time issues even worse than its more recent brethren: because characters can get wiped out and restarted and because players can more easily stop leaders, you can have an endgame that goes back and forth for hours. Worse, you can end up with everyone back where they started a few hours into a game. Runebound's newer design has eliminated issues of player elimination and brutal beat-up-on-the-leader sufficiently to keep the game's length from becoming totally unbounded.

(Meanwhile Return of the Heroes has proven that adventure games can be played quickly.)

Background & Story: Neither game has really learned how to tell a meaningful story through a board game. Talisman tried to model it by the set spaces on the board telling a story as a player moved inward, while Runebound tried to model it through randomly drawn event cards and the increasing levels of monsters.

An interesting element of Talisman is that it manages to get away with a pretty straight high fantasy background. Runebound instead turns to a more unique background of dark fantasy with evil dragon lords. This seems pretty common for the more recent adventure games: they're more unique and differentiated with their backgrounds, but thus they also lose some of the easy recognizability of standard tropes.

Conclusion

After my recent plays of Talisman I have no doubt that Runebound is a far better game and that Talisman was greatly hurt by its refusal to be updated for 20 years of game design growth. I think the randomness and the lack of power differentiation are the biggest strikes against Talisman--unless you're specifically playing with a non-gaming crowd who doesn't want to have to think about their moves.

Not that Runebound is the greatest shakes, mind you. It suffers from long games and repetitive play, but it also shows off how much games have improved since the 1980s.

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If you'd like to see my earlier adventure game articles, click on the "adventure_games" label just below.

Card Games & Randomness

Recently my Thursday night gaming group has had the opportunity to play some top quality card games, among them Tichu and the German Doppelkopf. Comparing and talking about these games led to interesting discussions of the the element of randomness in card games, which I offer up here for additional thoughts and comments.

The Heart of Randomness

Our conversation got started with one of players saying that Doppelkopf was too random.

The thing is, however, that almost any card game is random. It's a necessary and implicit part of the process. You take 52 cards (or whatever) and divide them up among the players. For a standard 4-player game that represents 635,013,559,600 different possibilities. In other words, sometimes you're going to get a really bad hand and sometimes you're going to get a really good one.

That's life. Or at least a card game.

I know of a couple of games that try and modify this. The classic is Duplicate Bridge where multiple people all play the same hands of cards, and then how well they did is compared. Personally, I find this entirely at odds with how cards work: they're a purposefully arbitrary mechanism meant to divide resources in a random method. To make sure everyone has the same hands is not only tedious, but also suggests you're not using the right component.

Trump, Tricks, Game is a rare game that I saw that had a method to redistribute cards that wasn't random but that I actually respected. After the first round of play you play additional rounds with the cards that you won previously, thus creating an additional level of decisions in the game, where you must not just collect valuable cards, but also cards that will let you do well in future round.

Offsetting Randomness

Given that randomness is a core element of card games, the question then becomes how do you offset it to make the elements of skill more important than the randomness?

The best answer is time. A card game will best offset randomness through continued play of hand after hand. My general assessment is that games that allow for 10-15 hands of play are getting to point where the standard deviation is creeping down, and players have generally had the same amount of luck over a game.

(Though always there will be some games were someone's luck was just unbeatable.)

Regrettably, this is where a lot of Eurogames fall down. They've gotten so into the mindset of short, simple games that you have card games where you might only play one round, or at best a number of rounds equal to the number of players, and this just doesn't do it. If those games feel random, it's probably because they still are.

(And it should further be noted that a lot of Euro card games are light enough that they can't support more than that amount of play, meaning that the high randomness is unfortunately an implicit part of the game that can't be reasonably corrected.)

However the best classic card games have at least three other ways to offset randomness, and these are generally methods that Euro card games could learn from.

The first method is value assessment. This means looking at the hand of cards you were dealt and then determining how good it is. Most games like Bridge and Spades do this through bidding. Poker's betting accomplishes about the same purpose--at least absent bluffing, reading opponents, and other elements that confuse the core value assessment.

The second method is hand refinement. Games like Hearts and Tichu do this by passing and receiving cards from opponents. It's more meaningful in a game like Tichu where you're trying to create various card patterns then in a game like Hearts where you're mainly focusing on Hearts, Spades, and voids. The commercial game Havoc: The Hundred Year's War does it via card-drafting, as does the classic Coloretto.

The third method is card play. Or rather, good card play. If the way to play cards is obvious, you're not going to offset any randomness, but if a good card player can make much more clever use of his cards--even if it's just by quickly completing voids or learning to see how your cards can simultaneously match a few different patterns--then his skill will start to shine through, especially as more rounds of play occur.

Conclusion

Yes, card distribution is random, but good card games overcome that. You have to play more hands, and the game has to be deep enough to support it. However even beyond that I think you'll find that the very best card games offset randomness even more with card assessment, hand refinement, or some combination thereof.

Light Euro card games could learn well from these, and consider how these methods could be built into their own gameplay.

Arthur, Arthur!

Recently the folks over at Green Ronin Publishing published Hobby Games: The 100 Best, a book of essays about 100 top hobby games, be they RPGs, board games, card games, or wargames.

I was very pleased to have the editor, James Lowder, ask me to participate. I mean, any day when you get to write an essay for a book introduced by Reiner Knizia is a pretty good one. We talked a bit about what I'd write an essay on and we agreed upon King Arthur Pendragon, an Arthurian roleplaying game that's one of my favorites because of the veracity with which it represents the Malorian legends.

I highly encourage you all to check out the book via the link above. In the meantime, in honor of its publication, I've decided to dedicate this column to its publication by looking at the board game side of what I covered there: the Matter of Britain.

Generally the Arthurian legends were a big obsession for me throughout the 1990s. I gathered up whatever modern books I could find, from Jack Whyte to Bernard Cornwell. I struggled through the classics such as Mallory and The Vulgate. And, of course, I sought out board and card games about the legends.

Herein I'm going to talk about a handful of my favorites, a few of them classics that you haven't heard of. And then I'll list all the rest I've played.

A Few Top Arthurian Games

Excalibur (Wotan Games). This is an old game, long out of print. I think that the odds are high that I'll never play it again because it's a lengthy 1980s era wargame, but nonetheless if I did play this sort of thing, Excalibur would be one of my top choices.

The reason I like it is because the wargame system is overlaid with a serious economic system. Beehives, foresters, river reeves, and water mills can all increase income, which is further modified by who's at a manor and who collects taxes. There's also a written order system, a relatively rarity.

The Arthurian theming of the game is actually very poor. There are no real Arthurian elements here, except in the rules which say you're one of Arthur's knights. However the game offers up a great model of Middle Ages England, which is definitely an element of the Arthurian stories. (Wotan did at least one other Arthurian game which wasn't very good, but this one was a gem.)

Grade: B+.

King Arthur's Knights (Chaosium). This is a game truly from the dawn of the era of hobbyist games. You wander Britain on a beautiful full color map and have various encounters shown through a number of decks of cards. There's a lot of randomness in the game, but nonetheless it was colorful and felt Arthurian.

(The author, Greg Stafford, was also the author of the aforementioned King Arthur Pendragon RPG.)

On the modern market the components are terrible since most of them are hand-cut cardstock cards, so this is a game that I dearly wish someone would revise, redevelop, and reprint.

Grade: B-, but could be a B+ with modern components.

Shadows of Camelot (Days of Wonder). This is my favorite of the Arthurian games. It combines great components, great mechanics, and great theming. The game's all about collaborative play, and that creates a generally interesting gameplay element, even absent the possibility that one member of the Round Table is a traitor.

However, beyond that Shadows Over Camelot really feels like questing to me, as players sally forth from Camelot to defeat their foes, win prizes, and generally do knightly things.

Grade: A. Review.

Other Games in Brief

Other Arthurian games that I've played include:

Camelot Legends (Z-Man Games). Has the best color of any of these games, with tons of elements from Arthurian legends all printed with beautiful art. However I found some of the gameplay slow and/or methodical. Grade: B-. Review.

Im Auftrag des Konigs (Adlung Spiele). Another questing game, but this one with choices and variability minimized by a small deck. Overall, pretty successful, even if the theming is weaker than some others. Grade: B. Review.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (Wotan Games). First you quest, then you fight. It seems to have the right elements, but the game was tedious. Grade: C-.

Quest for the Grail (Stone Ring Games). An Arthurian CCG that made no lasting impression on me, other than the fact that I vaguely recall the cards being nice. Grade: C.

Quests of the Round Table (Gamewright). Tedious, interminable, and almost unplayable card game. I even hated it before I discovered the quick elegance of Eurogames. I think that this is the only Arthurian board or card game that I've actively expunged from my collection. Grade: F.

Tom Jolly's Camelot (Wingnut Games). Very lightly themed, since you have 4 Arthurs trying to recover Excalibur. Its main notable element is that its a speed game, with players moving as fast as they can, and here it succeeds very well. Grade: B-.

Final Thoughts

In writing this up, I came to think about what makes a good Arthurian game. I think the two biggest elements are a system of quests that you conquer and great color from the legends. A number of these game qualify on one or both of these elements, but still don't totally win me over because they miss a third criteria: great, deep mechanics.

Thus far Shadows Over Camelot is the closest, but I still hope that something more will someday arrive, combining the good points of a game like Shadows with a deeper and more meaningful look at the legends.

But hey, we've already waited 1500 years since Arthur pulled that sword out of that stone. What are a few more?

A Roleplaying Interlude

As I've written before in this column, my first love was always roleplaying games. Though I'm sure I played games like Stratego and Twixt before I ever touched an RPG, it's the roleplaying games that I really remember playing throughout my youth.

Dungeons & Dragons was the first, but there are many games beyond that, and even before I moved to Berkeley for college I played a decent share of them including the science-fiction game Traveller; Stormbringer and Hawkmoon, both based on the works of Michael Moorcock; and RuneQuest, a fantasy game that I found odd at the time, and that I've grown much more enamored of since.

In the last couple of years I've grown closer to roleplaying games again. My best friend and long-time gamemaster left the country, and so I stepped up to run a regular game, something I hadn't done in several years, and that rekindled an interest in me. Board and card games are still my largest recreation today, but RPGs are there every week, and they get an increasing amount of my enthusiasm.

So, with all those things said, I'm going to take a bit of time today and talk about RPGs--from the perspective of board gaming.

It's Not Just About Role-Playing

First I'd like to correct a misconception and say that roleplaying games don't entirely have to be about roleplaying(1). There can be as much chance for tactical and strategic depth in an RPG as in a board game. It all depends on what you play and in what style.

Roleplaying games, after all, did grow out of more strategic venues. Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax were both miniature wargamers when they designed Dungeons & Dragons; after playing with ideas of man-to-man battles they chanced upon the concept of each player playing an individual character. Thus their earliest dungeon delves were pure strategy that probably wasn't that different in feel from Fantasy Flight's modern Descent, with players moving their miniatures through dungeon maps.

After the release of D&D it was a while before companies could really define what was a roleplaying game and what wasn't. TSR, the publishers of D&D shortly thereafter released two more games of note: Boot Hill, a game of man-to-man Western combat, and Warriors of Mars, a miniatures war game set on Barsoom with some individual heroes. The first one is usually considered an RPG and the second not, but the difference is tenuous.

Admittedly, the roleplaying industry has changed a lot since the 1970s, and much of that growth centers on individualizing characters further and changing RPG adventures from dungeon delves into stories. In the 1980s these trends amped up even further with the advent of the "storytelling" branch of RPGs which really pushed ideas of collaborative storytelling over individual glory. But there are still strategic elements in many RPGs, while a few play them up notably.

Battletech is one such example. It's another game that I played quite a bit up through college. It was created by FASA, an early publisher in the RPG field, but it was a hybrid game. The core of the play was giant mecha combat on a hex grid, but there was also opportunity for pilots to improve from battle-to-battle and there was even an add-on RPG called Mechwarrior where you could have adventures outside of your mecha cockpit.

The modern edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which was published in 2000 then refined in 2003(2) is perhaps an even better example. I kicked off a new D&D campaign called The Savage Tide a few weekends ago and I'm playing it pretty precisely by the rules. That means all combat is done on a square grid with plenty of different maneuvers possible. It's a pure strategy game in the middle of a roleplaying game and I've been enjoying it quite a bit.

The Modern Market

Another interesting element of RPGs, when viewed from the board game side of things, is how different the market is.

With a board game you buy a game and you play it, and to experience something new you have to buy a new one. With a roleplaying game you can buy a game and play it pretty much forever if you're willing to come up with new ideas for stories or grids for combats (based on what sort of game you're playing). Granted there have been board games sold as "kits" like this, such as Icehouse, but I'm not aware of any that are large financial successes. Board gamers like to have their games handed them complete, which on the one hand makes sense in a more competitive environment, but also suggests a somewhat different clientèle.

Another interesting difference in the RPG market is the existence of virtual publishers. Since the turn of the century an increasing number of roleplaying publishers have put out professional products as PDFs, to the point where there are now a few different high-profile PDF e-stores in competition. Though I'm unconvinced that PDFs really grow the market because of their very small sales footprints, nonetheless it does seem that they've generated some new creative enthusiasm in the market. At the present this sort of thing is all but infeasible in the board game market, but it suggests that a virtual board tabletop, a concept that comes up every year or two, might provide some rapid growth in the industry.

Final Notes

There is, of course, a bridge between board games and RPGs: adventure games, of which I've written before, and which I'm going to touch upon again now that Talisman is back in print. Descent in particular is a pretty fine transition that's not too far removed from the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons. If you like that, don't be afraid to take the next step; ask if your local game store hosts roleplaying games too.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out RPGnet, which is the largest roleplaying site on the Internet other than industry leader Wizards of the Coast. It's full of forums, columns, reviews, and everything else you could want to read about RPGs, with a 10+ year history under its belt.

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1. Since I first drafted this entry, this weekend, Ryan Dancy wrote a blog entry about how we should change the name from "roleplaying" games to "storytelling" games, which misses the point even more. There are storytellers in the industry and roleplayers and strategists and tacticians too. It's a big tent.

2. As they say, the times, they are a'changing, and thus another update since I drafted this article. Last night rumors started leaking that Wizards of the Coast was planning on announcing a new, fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, for release starting next May. RPGnet's d20 forum is currently full of discussions on the topic.

Wiz-War Expansion Cards

This week I'm going to do something I haven't done before. I'm publishing an expansion for an existing game, Tom Jolly's Wiz-War.

As I've written elsewhere Wiz-War was a much beloved game of my 'tweens. I suspect it was the most played board game for my group throughout the later 1990s. As we played it more and more we also developed a rule: we added one new card every time we played a game. This was made possible thanks to Chessex putting out blank card packs.

So I offer you up all the bonus cards from my set, with no (or rather, few) comments on whether they're good or bad. I'll also offer the caveat that if you're going to add cards, you should put in more numbers too, to keep things balanced. Just follow the normal distribution from the base game. We also put in duplicates of some of the more common spells (which I hopefully didn't copy any of below).

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Amnesia. (Trap!) Lose a random card. PLAY IMMEDIATELY.

Beavis. (Neutral) Play this card out of turn when a fire attack is cast. Attack does damage to all wizards in game. Must chant, "Fire, fire, hehe, hehe." OR: you may discard this card to retrieve Butt-Head from the discard pile.

Brave New World. (Neutral) Adds a new sector to the playing boards, if any is available. This sector may be placed in any legal location.

Cone of Cold. (Attack/LOS) Does 3 points of magical damage to everything in a straight line within line of site. User cannot exclude any targets in path.

Create River. (Neutral/LOS) This spell creates a straight river between two points, both within the caster's LOS. The caster must declare the direction of the river's flow when it is created. Movement upstream costs 2/space, downstream costs .5/space.

Eye of God. (Neutral/LOS) Gives caster LOS to any square on the board for the purpose of casting 1 LOS spell during this round.

Fill Square with Glass. (Neutral/LOS) Fills one square with impenetrable glass. Can only be used on empty squares. Can't be cast on home bases. Does not block line of sight. Some schools of magic call it "ethereal poodle".

Fire Alarm. (Neutral) Player must make fire alarm noises, forcing other players to leave the room. The player can then move one token anywhere one space. The other players may now return to the room.

Fist of God. (Attack/LOS) Player strikes table with fist. Objects moved are placed as in Thumb of God. 1 point of damage per wizard that falls taken by player of card.

(We used to regularly play on a card table.)

Flame Burst. (Attack) Area affect flame spell does magical damage equal to NUMBER CARD played except to walls and doors. Each square away reduces damage by 1. Walls/doors stop, but it can go around corners.

Fog of War. (Neutral/LOS) No line of sight on the board on which this is cast. Duration equal to NUMBER CARD played.

Gelatinous Cube. (Attack/LOS) Creates a gelatinous cube with a move of 1. Always heads towards nearest item on floor. Destroys item if not chest, which it carries. Takes 4 physical damage to destroy. Blocks LOS and movement.

God Help Me. (Neutral) You may take as many "God" cards from the discard pile as you want. Must say "God Help Me."

Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. (Attack/LOS) Throw this grenade to a square within LOS. At the beginning of your next turn it explodes doing NUMBER CARD physical damage to everything in the sector except walls and doors.

Hot Potato. (Trap!/LOS) Player with potato takes 1 point of physical damage at end of round. Card may not be discarded or dropped. Can be used as an attack to pass to another player. They must catch it unless counteracted. If needed, they must discard other card. DISPLAY IMMEDIATELY.

Illusionary Treasure. (Neutral) When a player picks up one of your treasures you may play at that time (out of turn) this card on him. The treasure teleports to one of your treasure spaces.

Intermittent Door. (Neutral/LOS) Must say, "When is a door not a door." Door appears and then at the start of player's next turn it disappears for one turn. Each time it alternates.

(This sounds pretty annoying to keep track of.)

Last Ditch. (Attack/LOS) When played the caster does magical damage equal to his remaining life points to all wizard in his LOS (including himself).

Lead Chest. (Neutral/LOS) This spell transforms your wooden chest into a lead chest. When carrying this chest, movement is reduced by 2. The player must say, "All this gold is weighing me down!"

Lever of God. (Neutral/Counteraction/LOS) Players lifts one side of a board. Gravity pulls everything to the other side until a wall stops it, or it exits the board.

(The lifting can be figurative, not necessarily literal. The main point is that everything slides.)

Magic Armor. Reduces all damage by 2, except curses. Reduces movement by 1. DISPLAY IMMEDIATELY.

The Marvelous Merry-Go-Round. (Neutral) Each player moves his wizard to the position now taken by the player on his left. This card can be used 1D4 times. Hand the card to the player on your right for its next use. Counts as a card in your hand.

Meta-Phasic Shield Stone. (Stone) Stops all fire/heat damage. Protects all carried stones from destruction due to fireball.

Mistaken Identity. (Neutral/Counteraction) Next spell attack on you is redirected to a random wizard other than yourself.

Patch of Darkness. (Neutral/Counteraction/LOS) Fills a square with inky darkness which blocks line of sight, unless a 1 is rolled on a d4. Duration equals NUMBER CARD played.

Pet Goat. (Attack/LOS) This friendly goat can bite for 1 damage. It always stays in the same square as controller. It takes 3 points of damage to kill the goat. The pet goat likes to eat stones. Permanently add +1 HP and +1 damage per stone you feed the goat (from your hand).

Plague of God. (Attack/LOS) A dread disease descends upon all living things. All living things in play take damage equal to NUMBER CARD played, including caster.

Rightful King of the Island Marnon. (Attack) Randomly take as homage 1 card from each player.

Stone to Flesh. (Neutral/LOS) Turns a wall or solid square into bleeding flesh. Wall now has 5 hit points, solid flesh square has 15. Must say, "Eeewww, it's bleeding!" to work.

The TARDIS (Neutral/LOS) Your home sector is warped by time and space to become the TARDIS. Move home sector aside and it can only be entered and exited from the TARDIS.

(Probably too annoying to use.)

There's No Place Like Home. (Neutral/Counteraction) You teleport to your home base. If you have a treasure it remains in your previous square. May not move after playing.

Tommy Gun. (Attack/LOS) A magic wand that does 1d4 physical damage to all targets within 1 square. Number of bursts equals number card played.

Twister of God (Neutral/LOS) All boards rotate 90 degrees clockwise.

Ventriloquism. (Counteraction) Caster may replace opponent's spell with an attack from the caster's hand. Both attack cards are discarded. You are then affected by the card you gave away.

Wrath of God. (Play Now!!!) Every player must play or discard his entire hand on their next turn. He may draw up to seven cards when he is done. PLAY IMMEDIATELY. No counteractions.

Wrest Control. (Attack/LOS) This spell can only be cast on monsters. Control of that monster immediately turns over to the caster. The monster now moves and attacks on the caster's turn, starting this turn.

We also made changes to a few existing cards:

Butt-Head. (addendum) This card was amended with the text: "OR you may discard this card to retrieve Beavis from the discard pile."

Fire Imp. (addendum) It's noted that a river also destroys the imp.

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So those were the additions of my Berkeley gaming crew. I know Eric R., Dave S., Donald K., and Dave W. contributed to those, as I'm certain did other members of the group over the years.

Parlaying Success

A couple of months ago I played several hands of Parlay. This is a Poker/word-game that I reviewed last year. I thought it was excellent then, and even though I couldn't put together a decent word to save my life in this recent game, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

Parlay has a unique mechanism whereby you collect a hand of 7 cards from a normal 52-card deck, with each card also featuring a letter. Then you try and simultaneously put together a top-rate 5-card Poker hand and a good word of up to 7 letters.

After each player has assembled his final hand of cards, he then decides whether to stay (betting that he has a better total hand value than anyone else) or fold.

If a player folds he earns points equal to the value of the letters he used to form his word, and then he's out. If you have a decent ability to form words you can get 50 points a hand just by doing this.

If a player stays he must add up the total value of his hand. This is the value of the letters in his word, plus a length bonus for words of 5 or more letters. Then the players compare their Poker hands, and whoever had the best Poker hand gets to add the value of his letters again. But, this is an all or nothing affair: whoever stayed and had the highest total value gets all his points, while everyone else who stayed doesn't get anything, not even his letter points.

My review includes a picture of a nice example. One player formed the word "quirt", which is worth 55 points for its letter, plus another 15 for its length. He also had three 2s which won the Poker hand, giving him 55 more points for a total of 125. The other player formed the word "deposit", which earned 50 points for its letter, plus 100 for its length. His Poker hand was just a pair of Queens, so he didn't get the Poker bonus, but his 150 points still beat the other players 125.

Chaos, Risk, and Reward

In talking about our recent game, a few players opined that it was too "chaotic" or too "lucky". They felt like they couldn't accurately assess whether their hand was good enough to win or not, and thus whenever you decided to stay it was a crap shoot.

I disagreed. I don't find Parlay chaotic or lucky; I find it heavily dependent upon risk/reward. Players can stay in with a half-good hand because they hope it's good enough to win, but the lower the point value they stay in with, the higher the chance they lose out.

The "deposit" player that I mentioned above probably didn't have much doubt he was going to win. He could have hoped that his pair of Queens might win the Poker hand too, bringing him to a total of 200 points, but really he shouldn't have been counting on more than 150. Though the three 2s was a better hand, it wasn't necessarily a better winner. That player should have probably counted on earning 70 (word + length), with some probability of the full 125 (word + length + poker).

Continued experience could tell you which of these values was likely a winner and which not, just like it could tell you which of the Poker hands were likely to be a winner. Using that information is then exactly what turns a game of this sort into risk/reward and not a crapshoot.

Gotta Know When to Fold 'Em

Ironically I say that having "fold"ed every hand except my last-round-I-had-to-go-home-Hail-Mary. In other words, I never though the risk was low enough or the reward was high enough, so I just kept earning my 50 points a turn. Not being able to form a word of more than 4 letters helped keep me from being greedy (because it meant there was never a "word length bonus" that I'd only win if I stayed). Before that last round I was in second place out of five, suggesting my slow plodding way was winning out--mostly.

As I was packing up that night having finished up Parlay I came to realize that the game's play was actually very much like the gameplay of Texas Hold'em--whose success it was clearly meant to build upon.

In Texas Hold'em your standard turn is to look at your cards, assess their value, determine their value isn't high enough, then immediately fold. In a typical 10-player hand of Texas Hold'em the vast majority of people usually fold out, and an even higher number would if two players weren't forced to ante up, just to keep the game from breaking.

I suspect Parlay would seem less chaotic to some if they took the Texas Hold'em mindset: Assess the value, then fold, unless you've got a great hand.

(It should be noted that Parlay is a lot more fun, even when folding, since you still get to make a word, and thus earn points based on your cleverness.)

Alternative Bids

Part of the reason Parlay can seem chaotic is because of the blind-bidding. Sure, you might have an atrocious hand, but what if everyone else drops out? In that case your atrocious hand could win, and you effectively double your points thanks to the Poker bonus. Especially if people were moaning and groaning about their hands, shouldn't you take that chance?

The difference between sequential bids and blind bids can make huge differences in games of any sort, and I think this displays it well. So, I offer the following alternative:

Try Parlay with open selection of stay or fold sometime. Make sure you rotate the dealer, then when players are ready have them choose stay or fold clockwise from the dealer. I expect it'll make players a less likely to hope for a big win on nothing, and thus more likely to only stay in when they assess their hand as good.

Keeping players from taking a less viable strategy can often be a great way to reduce the apparent chaos of a game.

Economics, Technology, Philosophy, and Law

There's an old joke that goes like this:

"I'm running a store, but I lose money on every product I sell!!"
"So how do you stay in business?"
"Volume!"

This article is about gaming and all those things that appear in the header--economics, technology, philosophy, and law. It's more about the roleplaying industry, which is having a tough time in the modern market, but a lot of the discussion could apply to Eurogaming as well--particulaly the niche sort of Eurogaming that we're more likely to enjoy that's less family-oriented, more strategic, and thus less likely to appeal to the mass market.

So accept my caveat that they may not apply 100% to the normal topics of this column, but nonetheless I think it's related.

Economics: The Deep Discounters Appear

In the mid-1990s the Internet was opened up for commercial use. This ultimately created many new industries,from MMORPGs to downloadable movies, but it also created a largely unique business model that hadn't existed before: the deep discounter.

Before that if you wanted to sell things you usually had to open up a brick & mortar storefront. This required lots of costs, like rent, local taxes, and additional staff. But, it also offered unique advantages like visibility, human beings to talk to, and the ability to physically inspect products you were interested in buying.

After the commercialization of the Internet you could now open up a virtual storefront. You no longer needed a physical building in the town square; instead you could get by with an online website. A web of interconnectivity ensured that even with minimal advertising, you could get the word out. And in return you shed all of those extra costs. A deep discounter could now "flip" products, buying them from a distributor, then selling them for just a few percent more.

On the downside, he lost all those cool advantages too, and perhaps that would be OK if they weren't the exact sort of advantages that keep bring people into niche gaming industries.

Technology: It Changes Everything

This is ultimately a story about technology, and how it changes everything.

For years gaming companies--and this is why these topics are definitely more about the roleplaying industry than the Eurogame industry, because it's even less approachable--had depended on a specific economic model for success. In this model they could expect to pay a certain amount for marketing and expect to get a certain amount of free marketing from game stores and through those bring in enough new customers to offset the constant (and expected) outflow of old customers.

Deep discounters changed that model because they didn't bring in new customers in the same way. This essentially broke the old economics of game publishing, and it got worse over the years as online discounters increasingly proliferated and drove brick and mortar stores out of business. In a generally tough time this additional loss of replacement customers hurt the most niche companies the most, but I'd bet by 2007 everyone has seen some result of this, whether it be contraction or just reduced growth.

However you can't really blame the deep discounters. Some of them are fools who literally are losing money on every sale they make and are dragged hobbyist industries down with them in their ignorance. Others, however, are doubtless eking out a living, living a small-scale version of the capitalist dream.

Instead you need to blame technology, and this isn't the only time that technology has screwed up an economic model. Here it's a bit harder to see the cause and effect, but I'd instead point you to a model where what's going on is much more clear: television.

Several years ago the Tivo came out. It allowed you to watch television without watching commercials. The problem: most television is dependent upon commercials for its income. Just as with the advent of deep discounters an improvement in technology broke an old economic model creating a new reality that is totally unsustainable in the long-term, no matter how much consumers might enjoy the short-term benefit.

Philosophy: Dead White Men Predicted It
Though our generation has seen more technological innovation than the rest of history, nonetheless dead white men predicted a lot of these problems that technology is causing.

"The Tragedy of the Commons" derives from an 1833 parable by William Forster Lloyd, though it was actually popularized in the 1960s by Garrett Hardin. It suggests that unrestricted access to a finite resource generally destroys the resource. For example if you have a field where many shepherds graze their flocks, each shepherd gets a notable gain when he adds a single sheep, while any cost in damage to the field is divided among all the shepherds. Thus, no one individual is encouraged to reduce their usage of the resource.

A closely related issue that's even more relevant to the topic at hand is the "Free Rider Problem". This states that when something has a cost, but provides a common good, then some people will enjoy the good without having paid the cost, but that when too many people do so, then the common good won't appear in the first place. This problem is most frequently used in discussions of labor unions, but it equally applies to any social benefit, and is the reason that countries' tax systems aren't voluntary.

So take this back to the world of gaming: those game stores are providing the common good. They're improving the hobby's visibility and bringing new players in. Everyone receives the benefits whether they shop at a brick & mortar store or not. Their favorite manufacturers are able to stay in business, and thus they keep manufacturing new games which everyone can purchase. However some people "free ride" by purchasing instead at deep discounters, and thus don't contribute to the growth of their hobby--or even to its continued existence at a very fundamental level.

Thus: set economic models + new technologies (as understood by old philosophies) = doom + gloom.

Law: A New Option
The big problem here was that manufacturers couldn't do anything about this. They could know that deep discounters were devaluing their product and decreasing their opportunities for replacement customers, but if they tried to cut deep discounters out they could be charged with price fixing.

Some took the route of refusing sales to stores without a storefront, which solved part of the problem, but not for stores which also ran deep discount operations.

Last week the Supreme Court changed this with a 5-4 decision which will probably allow game companies to set minimum prices for their products, saying, for example, that stores couldn't sell their products for less than 80% of MSRP for 90 days after receiving it.

I'm pretty sure the roleplaying industry is going to take advantage of this. I don't know about board game manufacturers. They've had a rosier last several years, but from what I've seen no hobbyist gaming boom ever lasts. It's going to be a big deal in any case. It's also going to cause considerable upset among consumers who could see their spending power go down by 15% or 25% (if they previously bought at deep discounters).

Personally, I went over to buying from brick & mortar-only a few years ago, but I'll be honest: it wasn't because I was making a philosophical statement. I just wanted to support a top-notch local store. If it weren't for them, I'd still be a free rider, destroying the commons.

For whichever hobbyist industries are affected, it'll be a hard time for customers, but it'll also be an entirely required economic change. The old model was broken. It's been broken for at least ten years. A new one had to be created. We benefited from unfairly low prices for ten years, and now it's going to seem unfair when prices return to their normal levels.

But that's change, and in our world of technology, there's always a whole lot of it.

You can read more about the decision, and a lot of comments on it, some very erudite, some totally uninformed at Ryan Dancey's blog.