tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-213100572024-03-07T19:07:53.765-08:00Journal of Boardgame DesignAnalysis and appreciation of board games.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-46338031930975858162008-12-06T14:59:00.000-08:002008-12-13T13:59:39.886-08:00Essen 2008 Unwrapped: Part 3 - Cavum<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw6lZqdmLI/AAAAAAAAATQ/-dKLhbDxVO4/s1600-h/Cavum+cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 209px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw6lZqdmLI/AAAAAAAAATQ/-dKLhbDxVO4/s320/Cavum+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277157277589936306" border="0" /></a>Cavum<br />by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling<br /><br />In Kramer and Kiesling's new "Cavum ", the designers offer a new "gamer's game" that reflects the unique sensibilities which have given us games from "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/88">Torres</a>" to "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9440">Maharaja</a>". As is typical of this team, they present us with a wide ranging menu of choices each turn and enormous freedom to manage our strategies. For some, this freedom lets players fully manage complex strategies, while for others, the freedom only means confusion and headaches. What is especially interesting is how the designers' style is expressed in a new way - disguised but still unmistakably Kramer and Kiesling.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw7olGfgqI/AAAAAAAAATY/Zo7358xGDH8/s1600-h/Tikal+Reference.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 127px; height: 189px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw7olGfgqI/AAAAAAAAATY/Zo7358xGDH8/s200/Tikal+Reference.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277158431711527586" border="0" /></a>Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling have been working together as co-designers since 1995, but they came to the attention of many gamers with the release of <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/54">Tikal </a>and Torres<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw77ei9o2I/AAAAAAAAATg/knVLVUX-X0w/s1600-h/Mexica+Reference.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 121px; height: 192px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw77ei9o2I/AAAAAAAAATg/knVLVUX-X0w/s200/Mexica+Reference.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277158756369408866" border="0" /></a> in 1999. In both of these games, players had free form turns in which they could choose from a menu of actions - moving, building, exploring, creating new pawns - each of which required the expenditure of some number of "Action Points" which were limited every turn. Tikal was followed by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/855">Java </a>in 2000 and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2955-Mexica">Mexica </a>in 2002, and these games are regarded as a trilogy - for their obvious use of this shared system, for the use of masks on their box cover art, and also for the graphic design used in the games by artist Franz Vohwinkel. Depending on how you felt about these games, the "AP" trilogy either referred to "Action Points" or "Analysis Paralysis" because such freedom could lead players to get stuck managing the details of each game turn.<br /><br />With some subsequent games such as "Maharaja", "Australia", "Bison", and even "Sunken City", this system got stretched in different directions, but what remained constant was the use of a menu of potential choices confronting players that allows them to manage their turns with great flexibility.<br /><br />Cavum is a relatively complex tile laying, track building game in which the designers place their stamp in a new way. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw-nQhwkiI/AAAAAAAAATo/D1YboVrvWzk/s1600-h/Cavum+actions.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 346px; height: 138px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STw-nQhwkiI/AAAAAAAAATo/D1YboVrvWzk/s400/Cavum+actions.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277161707543761442" border="0" /></a>At the beginning of the "phase", players fill their player mats with the 12 assets shown above. Each represents an action he'll be able to take once. Four of them are ordinary tiles to lay, although each one has a different amount of track (or in this case, "tunnel") One has a piece of track with a big ol' piece of dynamite on it. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STxBg-LN26I/AAAAAAAAATw/d1j5hkFylMs/s1600-h/Cavum+path.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 177px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STxBg-LN26I/AAAAAAAAATw/d1j5hkFylMs/s320/Cavum+path.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277164898073041826" border="0" /></a>The three cubes are stations - and these are the only pieces that a player truly owns. They will serve as starting and ending points for paths the player will trace in an effort to claim gems, and they will also block other players' paths. The gray tile with stones on it represents a "vein" which the player may place and "discover" - and will be a source from which all players claim gems. Then there are two wild tiles which may substitute for any of the above, and finally the symbol for prospecting. This will always be the player's last action in the turn, when he traces a path between any two of his stations, crossing through any quantity of tunnels, in an attempt to pass through previously placed veins, and pick up as many gems as possible.<br /><br />Here is where I think the designers really show their true colors. During a phase, a player is going to engage in all twelve of his actions. However, the phase is broken up into any number of turns. During a player turn, he must select between one and four of his actions to perform before passing his turn. So these twelve actions might be distributed among as many as twelve and as few as three player turns per phase. Each phase always culminates in the prospecting action. So one player might choose to rush with his actions, to ensure that gems are still on the board when it's time to prospect. Another might proceed very slowly, forcing all players to take their actions so that he may use all the resources out there when he finally prospects.<br /><br />With such flexibility, it is easy to see why this is very much a gamer's game - and one which can succumb to Analysis Paralysis in the wrong hands.<br /><br />I wonder to what degree Kramer and Kiesling were inspired by Martin Wallace's "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4098">Age of Steam</a>", as they seem to have created a sort of negative image of the Wallace classic. In Age of Steam, players are tracing paths with cities as the end points, running through as many towns as possible. In this case, players own the tracks and the cities are public. In Cavum, things are reversed. The paths are public but the end points - the stations - are what is owned by the players. In Age of Steam, goods begin on cities and get removed as they are used. In Cavum, the goods that are removed appear on the veins - which are the equivalent of Age of Steam's "towns".<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/ST9iSaORvNI/AAAAAAAAAT4/RuwMmIWwEnY/s1600-h/Age+of+Steam+paths.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 215px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/ST9iSaORvNI/AAAAAAAAAT4/RuwMmIWwEnY/s400/Age+of+Steam+paths.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278045356717882578" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Age of Steam paths colored for clarity</span></span><br /></div><br /><br />There is an important consequence of having players share all the "track" in Cavum. They need to be interconnected with lots of junctions so that one player can trace from his stations, through various veins, and back to another of his stations, while another player can use much of the same track, use many of the same veins, but return to his own station. In Age of Steam, where players own each piece of track exclusively, the paths don't interconnect as much and tend to be simpler.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/ST9j5qwYTuI/AAAAAAAAAUI/g3Ap7_m7dg8/s1600-h/Cavum+board+setup.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 382px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/ST9j5qwYTuI/AAAAAAAAAUI/g3Ap7_m7dg8/s400/Cavum+board+setup.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278047130682412770" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Can you connect a path between any two blue stations (cubes) that pass through as many gems as possible without passing through any red or yellow stations? Can you do it before other players get impatient?<br /></span></span></div><br />This tangled web is what can make Cavum more than a little brain-burning.<br /><br />What about that dynamite? Each turn a player <span style="font-style: italic;">must</span> place at least one tile with dynamite on it. It is possible to cover up those pieces with normal tunnels in order to delay their destruction, but at the end of the turn, all exposed dynamite tiles get removed - and also take out all top tiles in the six adjacent spaces. In a four player game, it's possible for 28 tiles to go to heaven! Some have characterized this aspect of the game as very nasty. Incredible as it sounds, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/ST9nYot2odI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/6vWVKg1jR1s/s1600-h/Cavum+tile+promotion.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 163px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/ST9nYot2odI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/6vWVKg1jR1s/s400/Cavum+tile+promotion.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278050961245774290" border="0" /></a>I don't think this rule is there especially to add a "take that" element to the game, and in my playing it didn't come off as mean. Rather, the board can get so dense and locked in, I think that the designers put in the dynamite in order to insure that the board continues to change after each phase. The game is not that nasty because once a player has created a path, it is difficult to obstruct that path until after he has collected his gems. The dynamite doesn't blow until the very end of the phase. Additionally, although stations block other players' paths, they can't be played on existing track. Even if someone places a track tile in your way, you may be able to promote it by placing another tile on it - as long as the new tile has more connections. The only way I know of to to mess with an existing path is to promote it with a new tile that changes its connections. Note that unlike Age of Steam, all existing connections <span style="font-style: italic;">do not</span> need to be preserved.<br /><br />The way that the designers stray from their Action Point menu and instead specify the particular actions a player must allocate during each phase is a very clever way of directing game play. If this game were from the AP trilogy, it is possible that each action would have had its own cost. A simple tile might cost 2 AP, one with all connections might cost 6 AP, tiles with dynamite could have their own cost, as would stations. The game would have been even more free form, perhaps more strategic, and certainly more maddening. Instead, each player gets a series of 2/3/4/6 branch tiles and they all must be used. Any tile may promote any other tile with fewer branches. There becomes a natural flow and strategy to the phase. Try to start out with the simplest tile possible, and as opponents mess with you, hold back the more complex tiles to play on top and rescue yourself. Or else, use your six early on, secure a complex path - but leave yourself vulnerable if another tile you were relying on gets rerouted. I think that with this method, Kramer and Kiesling have struck a nice balance between freedom and structure in their use of an action menu.<br /><br />Where things seemed to spin out of control was in the paths themselves, which need to be twisty and often difficult to visualize. Indeed, all players tend to be creating paths which all cross over the same terrain, and it seemed difficult to create a master plan that brilliantly snatched lots of gems. Rather, you're more likely to feel like an idiot if you <span style="font-style: italic;">don't</span> get lots of gems. I suspect that experienced players will learn to visualize the board better, make more strategic use of stations, and reduce the apparent chaos. But in my playing, understanding the board was a little like tracking a single strand of spaghetti as it winds its way around the meatballs.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUIG5umg8NI/AAAAAAAAAUg/33RQ4BGtVvQ/s1600-h/Cavum+order.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 143px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUIG5umg8NI/AAAAAAAAAUg/33RQ4BGtVvQ/s200/Cavum+order.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278789302063526098" border="0" /></a>If the game were just about laying tunnels and grabbing gems, it wouldn't be a Kramer / Kiesling game. On top of all this, there is a modest economic system to value the gems that you do get. At the beginning of each phase, you can take order tiles. It's exactly what you think. Taking the one pictured is a commitment to acquire and trade a light blue, a dark blue, a green and a red for 26 points. Fail to do so, and you lose 2 points. The risks aren't great, but neither are the rewards because you can still sell gems back to the market - potentially doing even better. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUIIe-koddI/AAAAAAAAAUo/OudMsvm-HqU/s1600-h/Cavum+gem+track.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 70px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUIIe-koddI/AAAAAAAAAUo/OudMsvm-HqU/s320/Cavum+gem+track.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278791041517385170" border="0" /></a> In the example here, eight of the yellow gems are either still on the board or in people's hands. A reverse auction is held starting at "8" and going down, and the lowest bidding player could sell as many yellow gems as he owns at his bid price. So there are two ways to collect points for your gems, and which is better will depend on how many players own a given color and how aggressive the bidding gets.<br /><br />The ability to sell gems either to the market or by completing orders struck some of us in our session as a little odd. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUQvA3xswtI/AAAAAAAAAUw/qf-oIuJR4TY/s1600-h/Ticket+to+ride+destination.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 238px; height: 153px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUQvA3xswtI/AAAAAAAAAUw/qf-oIuJR4TY/s400/Ticket+to+ride+destination.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279396355203973842" border="0" /></a> It watered down the tension. If players must complete orders, then a player has pressure to get the right combination, knowing that not getting the last gem is a big loss of potential points. Such high stakes would provide a natural <a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory2.shtml">bomb </a>in the game as it does in Alan Moon's <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209">Ticket to Ride</a>. Alternately, forcing players into the market would have created a more economically oriented games in which players must monitor which gems are valuable, jockey for those, and close opponents out of them. By providing both alternatives, players are most likely to go for orders - but relax knowing that the market provides something of a safety net if plans go awry. Perhaps the "all or nothing" game created too much chaos, but this is so obviously a gamer's game, it is surprising to see it made a little more family friendly. I'd love to speak with the designers to learn what they were thinking.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUQv0u8048I/AAAAAAAAAU4/Kh7lqrNXIdI/s1600-h/Cavum+box+back.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 176px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/SUQv0u8048I/AAAAAAAAAU4/Kh7lqrNXIdI/s200/Cavum+box+back.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279397246187922370" border="0" /></a>I enjoy path laying games and I especially enjoy the complexity that Kramer and Kiesling bring to their best gamer's games. Given the history of such games, I am not convinced that paths laid by Cavum make the most satisfying use of the choices the genre has to offer. The use of actions in the menu in which players may order and group their 12 actions in any way they like - seems to have enormous potential and I hope to see it in a future game. The actual tile and path creation seemed overly involved and counterintuitive. I look forward to future playings to see if I'm able to wrap my brain around this game, or whether the game proves to be the stronger and wraps itself around me.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-10588839189451066402008-12-04T23:08:00.000-08:002008-12-09T20:36:09.280-08:00Essen 2008 Unwrapped: Part 2 - Dominion<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STI69J1FJ5I/AAAAAAAAASI/PIQfe78J97M/s1600-h/Dominion+cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 184px; height: 184px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STI69J1FJ5I/AAAAAAAAASI/PIQfe78J97M/s200/Dominion+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274342935889258386" border="0" /></a>DOMINION<br />by Donald X. Vaccarino<br /><br />If Sylla was a blend of old wines in a new bottle, Dominion is a tasty young wine which seems unlikely to mature greatly.<br /><br />Dominion has become an overnight hit, and so many readers have already played it to death since its recent release. I've played it only once, but what stands out about it is its originality despite its simplicity.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY4ssXEdfI/AAAAAAAAASQ/SC0wKaB69T0/s1600-h/dominion+vps.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 103px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY4ssXEdfI/AAAAAAAAASQ/SC0wKaB69T0/s320/dominion+vps.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275466353984435698" border="0" /></a>The goal is to collect the most and best victory point cards into your deck. Each player has his own deck of ten cards - seven with (1) gold and three with (1) VP. He draws five cards from his deck and can use the gold cards to buy either more gold, more VP's or any one of ten special power cards ("kingdom cards") which are arranged in a display. Cards so purchased are placed into his deck for future draws. After the player has used a power from one of his special cards and purchased a card using his gold, then both used and unused cards from his hand are placed in his discard pile - to be recycled when his draw deck has been used up. In this way, players are consistently drawing five cards, taking actions, buying new cards, and then drawing more. Cards used - or not - are continually being recycled, but at a slower pace as his deck grows in size. When sufficient cards have been purchased, the game ends and the player with the most points in VP cards wins.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY5JcCwNQI/AAAAAAAAASY/8pKhKbHg8F0/s1600-h/Dominion+five+card+hand.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 146px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY5JcCwNQI/AAAAAAAAASY/8pKhKbHg8F0/s320/Dominion+five+card+hand.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275466847820461314" border="0" /></a>This feature of continually drawing and renewing one's own deck, and building that deck on the fly is very original and the game plays like no other Eurogame. Because a player must, as a default, draw exactly five cards a turn and work with only those cards at any given time, the game requires a player not to maximize his assets with the most extensive display of powers possible. Instead, the game is about concentration. How can a player build a deck such that a random assortment of any five cards at a time be most powerful most consistently? What we see is that the cost of adding gold cards to his hand is disproportionately high with higher values of gold. Gold ca<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY5g_cu-wI/AAAAAAAAASg/VKrQX8zFAsc/s1600-h/Dominion+money.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 118px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY5g_cu-wI/AAAAAAAAASg/VKrQX8zFAsc/s320/Dominion+money.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275467252461665026" border="0" /></a>rds valued at (1) have no cost; those valued at (2) cost three, and those valued at (3) cost six. This seems counterintuitive until you realize that normally a deck consisting of all (1) value gold cards could never buy anything costing more than five (and then only rarely), while a deck of (3) value gold cards can much more easily accumulate brawny values used to purchase big VP cards or strong powers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY6qtYnamI/AAAAAAAAAS4/OStTg_Zd-a0/s1600-h/Dominion+3+cards.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 165px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY6qtYnamI/AAAAAAAAAS4/OStTg_Zd-a0/s320/Dominion+3+cards.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275468518922873442" border="0" /></a>In any given game, there are ten different kingdom cards to choose from, but the game comes with 25 unique decks, so that the smorgasboard of choices may be different with each game. Examples of powers in the set I used were ones that gave players extra actions and/or extra opportunities to buy cards. There were powers which allowed a player to add three cards into his hand (remember, they all recycle, so this is an alternative way of concentrating your hand), and ones which permitted gold cards to be upgraded to the next higher level.<br /><br />Player interaction is very limited and from what I saw came in two forms. One is that there are a few cards which enable a player to "attack" others, for example by forcing them to discard down to three cards, and other cards which enabled players to defend against such attacks. In my game, these were used sparingly because they don't really help you advance your agenda, and even a defensive card needs to "just happen to be" in your hand at the time of an attack for it to do any good. The other form of player interaction concerns the pace of the game. A strategy which relies on gradually building up a killer hand and then collecting VP's can be counteracted by a strategy which attempts to buy lots of cheap cards and end the game quickly. In practice, I don't believe that players gain from building up large decks because their powers are not cumulative. You're still drawing only five cards at a time. The value of a large powerful deck is that it is less diluted by VP cards. But an opponent cannot surprise you by ending the game. If other players switch into "collecting VP cards" mode, you can shift gears quickly.<br /><br />Certainly, the dynamic deck building of Dominion is original. Adding to the freshness of the game is the way that 25 distinct decks of kingdom cards can be mixed and matched to create unique situations for the players. However, many players have compared this game with Tom Lehmann's "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143">Race for the Galaxy</a>"- with many fans stating their preference for the latter. If Dominion is unique - is the comparison reasonable? Looking at the ways that each game works sheds some light on what makes each game special - and also how very different mechanisms can be brothers under the skin.<br /><br />Like "Race for the Galaxy" and its predecessor "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8217">San Juan</a>" by Andreas Seyfarth, Dominion is an economic game based entirely in cards. Each player collects cards which enable him to buy yet other cards, which add to a player's collection, giving him new powers and more victory points. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY8tB6a0KI/AAAAAAAAATA/Gk-E9P7B1Dg/s1600-h/RftG+tableau.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STY8tB6a0KI/AAAAAAAAATA/Gk-E9P7B1Dg/s400/RftG+tableau.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5275470757816357026" border="0" /></a>One glaring difference which drives different approaches in each game is that in Race for the Galaxy, players are purchasing cards for a permanent display in front of them, while in Dominion, purchased cards simply enter a player's deck. The Race for the Galaxy player has assets which are continually growing, as each purchased card accumulates powers on top of those already present. Every new asset is a good thing. In Dominion, only a few cards are operating at any one time, and then they are quickly recycled and the player moves on to another set. It's good to have lots of kingdom cards because a hand dominated by VP's can't purchase anything new. It is also possible to select a variety of cards which are likely to interact in productive ways when they show up together. But the effectiveness of any deck is going to max out quickly as the best you can do is to get a handful of productive interactions and then move on to the next draw. Dominion requires a new kind of thinking - one in which more isn't always better.<br /><br />In Dominion, players begin the game by selecting ten different decks of power cards and those become the fixed choices throughout the game. In Race for the Galaxy, there is a single deck used in all games, but players must make choices from the cards they randomly draw throughout the game. The argument for replayability in Dominion is that with<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STjSlWeCNQI/AAAAAAAAATI/s0psOL3OmRQ/s1600-h/RftG+hand.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 228px; height: 237px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STjSlWeCNQI/AAAAAAAAATI/s0psOL3OmRQ/s400/RftG+hand.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5276198502593082626" border="0" /></a> ten out of twenty five possible cards being used in a game, there are 3.3 million different possible combination. In Race for the Galaxy, there's only one. Yet Dominion has a hidden weakness. It lacks sufficient ability to surprise the players and force them to react to unanticipated challenges and opportunities. When a game forces a player to keep on his toes and potentially change his strategy substantially, I call it a <a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory4.shtml">Nervous System</a>. In Dominion, the experienced player can survey the available cards, map out his strategy, and execute it. The degree to which cards interact in his hand will force tactical decisions, but not generally a rethinking of the plan. In comparison, Race for the Galaxy has only about 100 cards, but they are all (or nearly all) different, and their appearance at any time is entirely unpredictable. A player can set off down a particular path... and discover opportunities in his cards which tickle him into straying down a new path. Furthermore, because the player's actions depend both on his own choices and those of his opponents, he may find himself with unexpected opportunities to exploit.<br /><br />Dominion is a sufficiently short game that it isn't crippled by the lack of surprise. You can lay out a set of ten cards to start with - and for the next thirty minutes, maybe that's all the surprise you need. But it is a limitation that's in the game's structure. Like a mechanical dog which has dozens of interchangable parts, there is lots of potential variety, but after a while I suspect that players may find that underneath it all, it still always barks to the same cues. Time will tell.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-11752240147895464752008-11-28T21:32:00.000-08:002008-11-30T21:26:35.862-08:00Essen 2008 Unwrapped: Part 1 - Introduction and Sylla<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It's been a long time since I've contributed to this Journal; the last article appeared over six months ago. That's just wrong. </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I have been working on an article - about the "Frustration Factor" in games. However, work and writer's anxiety have been pushing it out and out and... It's a tricky thing to create an article about types of game mechanisms because the subject is so vague. Worse, any given topic seems to be so br</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">oad that I keep writing when I ought to just wrap it up. So in an effort to get the train moving again, I'm offering a sort of article that I've specifically avoided in the past. Game reviews.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">OK - This is not your father's game review. It's not even Schloesser or Vasel's game review. It's a game review JBD style.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />1) The focus is on the game mechanics. Expect little or no discussion about the theme or components.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />2) Game mechanics are described in their most essential form. There will be no rehash of all the rules, but instead a focus on the handful of mechanisms that drive the game and the decisions they offer.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">3) I may provide only a passing mention of whether I think the game is good. Don't expect a buyer's guide. More emphasis will be placed on what mechanics are innovative or effective and why. In most cases I only had a chance to play the game once.<br /></span> <a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDZYnFwPhI/AAAAAAAAAQg/Q1_KPMqO1oM/s1600-h/BGG.con.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 49px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDZYnFwPhI/AAAAAAAAAQg/Q1_KPMqO1oM/s400/BGG.con.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273954180484054546" border="0" /></a> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">One reason I've avoided writing reviews in the past is that there are so many of them out there already. Tossing another one onto the net seems redundant. However, I had the good fortune to attend BoardGameGeek.con and had a chance to play many new games which I know there's lots of curiosity about.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I'm going to limit each post to a single review. This will hopefully make it easier for people searching for information about a given game to find it, and will also keep each post to a manageable length. My hope is to publish a new review every three or four days. </span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Here goes....</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35761"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></a><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35761"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 107px; height: 150px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDcJ9dzTJI/AAAAAAAAAQo/j6ADQFk8Dpc/s400/Sylla+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273957227327343762" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35761"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">SYLLA</span> </a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">by Dominque Ehrhard</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br />Ehrhard used to be a </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">considerable force in </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Eurogame design, but he hasn’t been on the gamer’s game radar for a while. When they came out, I had great enthusiasm for both <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/112">Condottiere </a>and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/232">Serenissima</a>, but those are over ten years old. Sylla is released by Ystari, and it has their fingerpri</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">nts all over it. It appeals to gamers, and has oodles of features that feel familiar – competing auctions, income generating tokens, food shortages- and it offers situations where scarce resources must be carefully allocated among competing needs. </span><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDckiaoA1I/AAAAAAAAAQw/AFz31jQ-d4o/s1600-h/Sylla+cards.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 205px; height: 285px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDckiaoA1I/AAAAAAAAAQw/AFz31jQ-d4o/s400/Sylla+cards.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273957683922731858" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The driving mechanism is that players each start with</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> several character cards, and will get to add another to their hand in each game turn. </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Each character has one to three colored symbols (red/blue/yellow) and potentially an additional special power. After adding a n<span style="font-size:100%;">ew character at the beginning of each game turn, players may use thes</span>e in any of several auctions for tiles which grant benefits. Each auction is color coded, so a character with a red symbol m</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">ay only be used in a “red” auction, while a character with all three may be used in any of them (but may only be “spent” once) – the three c</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">olors make him three times more flexible but not three times more valuable.</span></p> <p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDdmAKiYkI/AAAAAAAAARA/MePmBwtKagg/s1600-h/Sylla+discs.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 166px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDdmAKiYkI/AAAAAAAAARA/MePmBwtKagg/s200/Sylla+discs.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273958808599814722" border="0" /></a>Among the other assets that players take – each turn and also potentially from winning auctions – are disks in any of three colors. These disks will have varying values at the end of the game. Players also earn money every game turn and also take income from certain tiles and from one of the characters.</p> <p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></p> <p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></p><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDgS7VWUHI/AAAAAAAAARY/4e_nskJPFis/s1600-h/Sylla+event1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 158px; height: 115px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDgS7VWUHI/AAAAAAAAARY/4e_nskJPFis/s200/Sylla+event1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273961779420352626" border="0" /></a>The most original phase comes in the election to suppress bad events. Four events are dealt out, and two of them will occur each turn. Now, unspent cards with the appropriate special power (the soldier in the upper left, and the rather matriarchal looking "vestal virgin" in the upper right) may contribute to influence these events. (The first event card, on the right, may receive votes from both soldiers and Virgins, the one below it only accepts votes from Virgins.<br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDgYZeURHI/AAAAAAAAARg/UVkklHdSpmM/s1600-h/Sylla+event2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 157px; height: 114px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDgYZeURHI/AAAAAAAAARg/UVkklHdSpmM/s200/Sylla+event2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273961873410376818" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The two events receiving the fewest suppressing votes are the ones that occur, and these may cause the values of certain chips to drop, or may cause a certain type of character card to become out of play for several turns. Finally, players may convert money into VP’s. Sometimes this is through an auction and sometimes at a fixed price. </span><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">From the description you’ll see that there is nothing glaringly innovative here. There are auctions in multiple “currencies”. The auction to control events is similar to that found in Rieneck and Stadler's "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30380">Cuba</a>". In Cuba though, a single player selects the “laws” while in Sylla the votes are aggregated among players. The varying values of the colored chips is similarly a commonly found market mechanism. </span><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">In spite of this, I found Sylla to be greater than the sum of its parts. There are A LOT of mechanisms in play each game turn, but all are reasonably familiar so the game is easy to learn. One aspect of the game I appreciated is the fact that a given character typically can either be spent in the auction for tiles OR provide income OR be applied to a subsequent voting process. So many different sorts of needs are competing for the attention of your very limited resources. Since the special powers differ from card to card, the selection of characters becomes a strategic consideration. It is not the same as having a bunch of money and many places tospend it. Every card has only select places where it can be used. An urgent need to come up with another red dot may force you to spend a card you were hoping to hold back – for yet another urgent need.</p><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDhu5tYqvI/AAAAAAAAARw/yfogLAuUmi0/s1600-h/Sylla+tiles.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 72px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STDhu5tYqvI/AAAAAAAAARw/yfogLAuUmi0/s400/Sylla+tiles.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273963359532264178" border="0" /></a></p> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Example of six tiles up for auction in a given turn. Note that the first two only accept "red" cards, the next two only "yellow" and the last only "blue". The winner of each auction chooses the tile to auction next.</span><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STHgibCH8wI/AAAAAAAAASA/r4WVIZ3jnlE/s1600-h/Sylla+Christian+Senator.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 166px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STHgibCH8wI/AAAAAAAAASA/r4WVIZ3jnlE/s200/Sylla+Christian+Senator.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274243520604402434" border="0" /></a></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Sylla's variety of character types and colors, its pricing mechanisms for colored discs, and its </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >multiple distinct phases create plenty of opportunities to let players try out different strategies. Does one concentrate in order to maintain strength, or diversify in order to have flexibility? If you focus on earning lots of tiles, you may earn many discs - </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >but if you ignore the events, then other players may drive the value of your discs way down. Another strategic decision lies in how many of your characters should be "Christian" as symbolized by the fish symbol. At the end game, all Christian cards gain bonus VP's. The down side is that certain events can cause your Christians to remain out of play for one or more game turns. An over reliance on such cards can cripple your play indefinitely.<br /><br /><br /><br />There are also good situational issues that arise. You might expect to win a valuable tile by committing two cards. If forced to bid three, do you commit a card that you wanted to use in the event phase?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STHen5g4QqI/AAAAAAAAAR4/wLOhaFndmmc/s1600-h/Sylla+legion.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 167px; height: 182px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/STHen5g4QqI/AAAAAAAAAR4/wLOhaFndmmc/s320/Sylla+legion.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274241415662551714" border="0" /></a></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Every game turn has seven phases with perhaps ten individual auctions, but the game doesn't come off as a repetitive auction fest. For one, the types of things being auctioned tend to vary throughout the turn, and so do the m</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >ethods used. The auction for tiles is a traditional sequential auction, while the bid to control events is more of a majority control type of play. Additionally, the various "currencies" are in short supply, so auctions don't overstay their welcome. Players might have at most four red cards to compete in a red tile auction, and all assets are public. </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >The auction plays out tactically. Do I want to commit everything to guarantee getting what I want - or do I hold back a smidgen to at least drive the price up and maybe get a bargain? Each auction is over quickly and there is little downtime.<br /><br /><br />I enjoyed my one play of Sylla. The play was certainly very familiar, but while the game may have lacked focus, the variety of arenas to compete in kept the game changing and engaging. Players who have appreciated the rock solid reliability and Euro-ishness of other Ystari games such as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/29934">Amyitis </a>and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18602">Caylus </a>are likely to welcome another recognizable member of the family.<br /><br /></span></div></div><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></p>Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-88444589259683873692008-03-01T11:38:00.000-08:002008-03-22T14:13:39.126-07:00What is this board game about?<span style="font-size:78%;"><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-is-this-board-game-about.html">Printer friendly</a></span><br /><br />"So what is this game about?" is the natural first question you might ask when someone brings out a new board game for you to try. That question can have one of two answers, depending on the angle you look at the game from: theme or mechanics.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7Es21EISPI/AAAAAAAAAJE/gN5rn2c-3TM/s1600-h/Ra+god+portrait.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165959568039626994" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7Es21EISPI/AAAAAAAAAJE/gN5rn2c-3TM/s200/Ra+god+portrait.JPG" border="0" /></a>"The game spans 1500 years of Egyptian history. You goal is to influence Pharoahs, build monuments, farm on the Nile, and advance the culture of the people in an attempt to appease the god of the Sun."<br /><br /><br /><br />"Okay, but what is the game about?"<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7EtEVEISQI/AAAAAAAAAJM/RwFYwVliRaE/s1600-h/Ra+in+play.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165959799967860994" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7EtEVEISQI/AAAAAAAAAJM/RwFYwVliRaE/s200/Ra+in+play.jpg" border="0" /></a>"It is a set collecting and auction game. There is a wide variety of tiles that you'll collect, which combine in myriad ways to score points. On your turn, you'll decide whether to add one more tile to the pool, or to auction off the ones already there. Your goal is to collect those tiles which will be most valuable to you, prevent your opponents from getting too many tiles valuable to them.<span style="font-size:100%;">"<br /><br /><br />Either of the above is a reasonable description of <a href="http://www.knizia.de/">Reiner Knizia's</a> "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12">Ra</a>". Since this is the Journal of Boardgame Design, I'm interested almost 100% in the latter. Either description could reasonably be called the game's "theme", but in practice "theme" has come to mean the historical context in which the game supposedly takes place. The designer drapes a bunch of mechanisms around the theme, and he has a game. Maybe the mechanisms are closely tied to the theme and often, in Eurogames, they aren't.<br /><br />A game, at its best, is more than a bunch of mechanisms. It is a coherent system of mechanisms with a theme of its own. Let's call this theme that summarizes the system of mechanisms the <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italic">game concept</span>. There is nothing to prevent a game built from a bunch of connected mechanisms from being lots of fun, but I think that having a strong game concept takes the game up a level. It helps to focus the players' goals. It adds meaning to the game apart from the theme. It defines the game.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7EtfFEISRI/AAAAAAAAAJU/rRBGHxfX6x4/s1600-h/Notre+Dame+Play.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165960259529361682" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7EtfFEISRI/AAAAAAAAAJU/rRBGHxfX6x4/s200/Notre+Dame+Play.jpg" border="0" /></a>"Players choose among a series of actions which help them to score points, gain resources, or avoid catastrophes. The more you are able to take the same action during the game, the more valuable it becomes. The trick is that in each turn, a player is presented with three possible actions, and he must decide which one to play, and which ones to make available to the players to his left."<br /><br />-<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/25554">Notre Dame</a><br /><br /></span>I enjoy explaining game rules, and I always introduce the game by first describing the game concept. Every rule has a role in supporting the game concept. If players can wrap the whole idea of the game around their heads, then all the individual rules ought make sense. Players can sit down and get to work at trying to win. If they can't get the game concept, then most likely you'll see the "deer in the headlights" look. "Okay, you explained the game to me but... what am I supposed to do?"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7EtzFEISSI/AAAAAAAAAJc/r-xvwOB4Fec/s1600-h/Amyitis+board.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165960603126745378" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7EtzFEISSI/AAAAAAAAAJc/r-xvwOB4Fec/s200/Amyitis+board.jpg" border="0" /></a>The issue of game concept surfaced when I recently first played "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/29934">Amyitis</a>" by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/4009">Cyril Demaegd</a>. On any given turn, a player will take one of five different actions. The Merchant and Peasant each give you distinct types of resources. The Engineer gives you immediate points and a shot at a majority battle, for more points, on the main part of the board. The Priest lets you take part in a different majority battle in a small part of the board, which help you win more points or resources depending on where you choose to play. Finally you may move the caravan - in which you spend the resources you earned elsewhere to earn: points from cards, income, faster caravan movement, or the ability to earn points on the main board, which in turn is limited by choices made by players who chose the Engineer earlier in the game.<br /><br /><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%">Deep breath.<br /><br /></span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%">So the game Amyitis is about... I'm not sure.<br /><br /></span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%">Cyril Demaegd has a <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/1950299#1950299">defense of the structure of Amyitis</a> which is worth reading. He described it as having a "star structure" rather than a "line structure". I think I understand his point. Some games, ones with a linear structure, have their elements lined up like dominoes. The first one effects the next one, and so on down, until the last mechanism which affects the victory conditions.</span> "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2651">Power Grid</a>" by <a href="http://www.2f-spiele.de/index_eng.htm">Friedmann Friese</a> is an example of this. You buy power plants, which give you capacity to use fuel. You buy fuel that fills your plants, and together they can power your cities. You extend your network of cities, which when powered give you victory points, as well as income that feeds the entire cycle for the next game turn.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R8m2i4X4TuI/AAAAAAAAALU/91Nopqrr-68/s1600-h/Power+Grid+Structure.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5172866357376077538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R8m2i4X4TuI/AAAAAAAAALU/91Nopqrr-68/s400/Power+Grid+Structure.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />What I think is meant by a "star structure" might correspond to what Americans call a "wagon wheel" or "hub and spoke" structure. There is a core mechanism and several secondary mechanisms. The secondary mechanisms may be independent, but they all affect the core mechanism.<br /><a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FGw1EISVI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/0l2ItnW7Kog/s1600-h/Wagon+wheel+structure.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165988052262734162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FGw1EISVI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/0l2ItnW7Kog/s320/Wagon+wheel+structure.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />The problem is that there is no core mechanism in Amyitis. The garden, which does take up the most physical space on the game board, really turns out to be just another way of scoring points that is not obviously more important than any other. Here's my picture of the Amyitis structure, which looks more like the floor plan from a spy movie than a wagon wheel.<br /><div><br /><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FHBVEISWI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/RvdZEA10Z9k/s1600-h/Amyitis+Structure.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165988335730575714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FHBVEISWI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/RvdZEA10Z9k/s320/Amyitis+Structure.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br />From all this, it may come as a surprise when I say that I think Amyitis is a hell of a lot of fun. There are some very clever mechanisms in the game, and notwithstanding the nightmare diagram above, the interrelationships play well. However, playing Amyitis is a little like playing with sand. It can be lots of fun, but there is nothing to hold on to. A strong game concept doesn't make a game good. It makes a good game more substantial and more satisfying, and it serves a similar role that a good theme does.<br /><br />Sometimes having one strong central mechanism that ties the others together can provide a game concept. The hub and spoke diagram above shows a game with many mechanisms which all affect a central one, which in turn provides the victory conditions.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FJEFEISZI/AAAAAAAAAKU/SRdlz25p5JI/s1600-h/Caylus+board.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165990581998471570" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 161px; HEIGHT: 212px" height="270" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FJEFEISZI/AAAAAAAAAKU/SRdlz25p5JI/s320/Caylus+board.jpg" width="195" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18602">"Caylus"</a>, by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/5629">William Attia</a>, does this, but works the other way as well. The central mechanism is the road, which players build upon and which provides the actions players must choose from. The road is also where the "provost" moves, and he can wipe out some players' actions depending on where they lie on the road.<br /><br />"Players take actions on the road which gives them commodities, and then they use those commodities to create more buildings on the road (as well as the castle) to earn victory points." That's the whole game summed up in 32 words. Unless you're writing copy for the game box, being able to sum up a game in 32 words or less is no particular virtue. However, it shows that the game is well focused, with a strong game concept that ultimately ties together many mechanisms into a cohesive game. Players sit down to a game of Caylus with a strong sense of what they are doing, purely in terms of the game's mechanics.<br /><br /><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FKaFEISaI/AAAAAAAAAKc/F1v4Z4ZjGQQ/s1600-h/stephensons+rocket+play.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165992059467221410" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FKaFEISaI/AAAAAAAAAKc/F1v4Z4ZjGQQ/s320/stephensons+rocket+play.jpg" border="0" /></a>A game can seem more complicated than it is when its game concept is weak. Many people regard Reiner Knizia's "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/204">Stephensons Rocket</a>" as a complex game in spite of the fact that its rules are remarkably compact. Its rail building theme is pretty good - but what exactly are you trying to do with those railroads? You want to control them of course. But that only pays off at the end. Meanwhile, you want to run them in to cities, but only after you build stations that you ran the railroads into first. You also want to control the cities that you run the railroads into, and you want to control the commodities that each city produces. Finally, you want to merge the railroads in a way that insures you control the really big railroads at the end of the game. Whew.<br /><br />In a public appearance, Reiner Knizia once said that scoring and victory conditions are good things to manipulate to get the players to do what you want. In the case of Stephensons Rocket, he took his own advice too well. He made the game work by tinkering with the scoring mechanisms at the cost of maintaining a strong game concept. The final product is a good game, but at times it seems to be a runaway train that is in constant danger of running off its rails.<br /><br />Conversely, even a complex game can be held together with a combination of strong game concept and theme. <a href="http://hjem.get2net.dk/Svellov/Bio5.html">Karl Heinz Schmiel's</a> "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1">Die Macher</a>" holds together remarkably well despite being one of the most baroque of all German games. It takes about 45 minutes to teach the rules for Die Macher, and each turn has 13 phases. I don't think too many players would tolerate that sort of complexity if its mechanisms didn't tie so well to its election theme. When a theme is strong, the theme merges with the game <a href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FLN1EISbI/AAAAAAAAAKk/jD-ddyV7sXA/s1600-h/macher.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5165992948525451698" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7FLN1EISbI/AAAAAAAAAKk/jD-ddyV7sXA/s320/macher.jpg" border="0" /></a>concept. "Players represent political parties, each trying to get as many votes in regional elections as possible, which earns you points. You'll attempt to manipulate your party's policies and public opinion in order to get votes in those regional elections. Success in those elections in turn enables you to control the national agenda, which scores you more points." Along with Die Macher's strong theme, and the way it successfully bonds its mechanics to its theme, Die Macher has a strong central mechanism which gives it a strong game concept. Everything flows in and out of the regional elections. You manipulate policies, you buy media, you place party markers, and you manipulate your local popularity all in an effort to gain influence in the local elections. After you've scored your points there, the regional elections affect the national board which gives you money and points for the endgame scoring. Die Macher holds rather well to the spoke and hub model, with somes spokes pointing in to the hub, and others pointing out from it.<br /><br />Die Macher benefits from both a strong theme and a reasonably central mechanism to maintain some conceptual unity. As games move along the spectrum from "Eurogame" to to "Simulation", the mechanics tend to blossom around the need to recreate reality rather than to maintain any conceptual unity. When a game is primarily a simulation, then the theme becomes the game concept. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7aIslEIScI/AAAAAAAAAKs/jS74Ghb8zxg/s1600-h/War+of+the+Ring+Board.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5167467921899276738" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7aIslEIScI/AAAAAAAAAKs/jS74Ghb8zxg/s400/War+of+the+Ring+Board.jpg" border="0" /></a>Imagine "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/243">Squad Leader</a>" or "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9609">War of the Ring</a>" as an abstract game and the rules would make no sense. Why create all these special exceptions and unique units? How can anyone possibly understand what is supposed to be going on? Once you realize that you are simulating small unit fighting or the battle for Middle Earth, everything comes together. The games remain complicated, but every mechanic serves the basic concept of the real world (or fantasy world) simulation. As long as the players understand what is being simulated, the mechanics hang together conceptually.<br /><br />Games most often build their game concept around a central dominating mechanism which all others relate to. Are the other mechanisms truly secondary, or do they take on a life of their own? If those secondary mechanisms become significantly complex, the game can lose its focus. Compare Caylus with <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22545">Age of Empires III</a> by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/1115">Glenn Drover</a>. Both use a similar action selection mechanism, but Caylus is a more straightforward, focused game, while Age of Empires III adds a lot of extra stuff behind each possible selection and is a more baroque design.<br /><br />In Caylus, actions taken on the road generally give a player resources or allow him to spend resources on a building. The entire game is about acquiring and spending resources effectively. There are other choices in the beginning of the road - and these create a little metagame around the use of the road: they control items such as turn order, the cost of an action, and which actions on the road will actually occur this turn.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7aJZ1EISdI/AAAAAAAAAK0/HmrWDK7Mzc8/s1600-h/Age+of+Empires+Board.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5167468699288357330" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R7aJZ1EISdI/AAAAAAAAAK0/HmrWDK7Mzc8/s400/Age+of+Empires+Board.jpg" border="0" /></a>In Age of Empires III one feels as though he is playing four games at once There is the entire colonization battle for majority control off on the side - but one need not participate in that game wholeheartedly. There is a separate module dealing with collecting trade goods. There is the "discovery" game which sets the stage for the colonization game, but has its own set of goals and victory points. Then there is the action selection game which determines how many resources you bring to bear in the other three games. These games-in-a-game all intersect and collide but without truly building upon each other. The theme of colonization just barely stitches this patchwork together.<br /><br />"<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3076">Puerto Rico</a>" by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/117">Andreas Seyfarth</a> may be the great enigma when it comes to the notion of game concept. There are many facets to the mechanics. Each one is essential and none seems to dominate. Is the game about the role selection? The selection of roles is a central and original concept, but I think it dominates the game much less than does the road and the selection of actions in Caylus. The specifics of the actions - which building to buy, where to put your colonists, your choice of plantations, trading and shipping - are all critical, balanced, and tightly woven. What is the game about? Well, it's an engine building game, of course, but it's about the whole package. To the new player, Puerto Rico is sort of a fascinating mess. To the experienced player, the game is its own concept.<br /><br />Puerto Rico is relatively complex for a Eurogame, and it cannot be summarized by a simple game concept. Still, its structure is not especially convoluted as the diagram below shows. While all of its mechanics may be harder to describe than for Amyitis, the entire system is conceptually more compact. Compare the diagram for Puerto Rico, below, with the one above for Amyitis.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R8OpDFEISgI/AAAAAAAAALM/RnybCvIAG7E/s1600-h/Puerto+Rico+Structure.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171162667515660802" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/R8OpDFEISgI/AAAAAAAAALM/RnybCvIAG7E/s400/Puerto+Rico+Structure.JPG" border="0" /></a>This diagram does simplify some things. There are ways of getting doubloons besides trading goods, and the various buildings can affect all of the game functions. However the basic engine is all there, and it makes for a pretty neat package. Puerto Rico's game concept may not be easily broken into its parts, but taken as a whole it is manageable.<br /><br />This seems to be the nature of most "engine" based games. Games such as Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Goa, and Settlers of Catan cannot readily be understood in terms of their component mechanisms nor summarized by a central mechanism that drives all others. The cogs of each mechanism are too tightly meshed. The game concept is the total effect. The challenge is to create a structure that is complex enough to satisfy the designer's ambitions, but simple enough to be comprehensible. Anyone who has taught Puerto Rico to a newbie knows that even the simple structure pictured above starts to push the limits of comprehensibility for most people.<br /><br />I think that this is the sort of structure that Cyril Damaegd had in mind when he spoke of a "line structure". Neither Power Grid nor Puerto Rico have structures which are simple lines, but both have a chain of causes and effects which takes place over several steps to yield victory points. Understanding the game requires understanding the chain.<br /><br />When people ask "what is this game about?" they are most frequently asking about the theme. Unless the theme is well integrated with the mechanics - not a hallmark of many Eurogames - then knowing the theme doesn't really answer the question. For many of the best games - including ones with strong themes - a game is about its game concept. The game concept may be a strong central mechanism that the others all relate to, like the road in Caylus. It may be a dominant mechanism which virtually defines the entire game, like varied set collection rules of Ra. It may be the historical theme, as in a simulation game. It may be a tightly interwoven set of causal relationships as in Puerto Rico. Whatever it is, it brings the entire system together so that the player knows just what... the game is about. Without a game concept, what's inside the box can still be fun, but it may just be six mechanics in search of a game. </div>Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-36148499151788826272007-07-18T12:40:00.000-07:002007-07-18T13:01:14.052-07:00Look me in the eyes before you do that to me!<a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2007/07/look-me-in-eyes-before-you-do-that-to.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Printer friendly</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">How do board game designers make gaming more social?</span><br /><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibdG64hsQ0jZ977fXhWlkMApD2TWotXB2wu6O2VP1ycOaY4wJ9FME3qVKv_wAY4JmfREBdcJUFnv2HF0NFMre0oHohXWeRcnVh6Zm04TM7R_Uj8BUzfWBZx05nNBVah1BLyhA4NA/s1600-h/Wildlife+Boardgame+Socal.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibdG64hsQ0jZ977fXhWlkMApD2TWotXB2wu6O2VP1ycOaY4wJ9FME3qVKv_wAY4JmfREBdcJUFnv2HF0NFMre0oHohXWeRcnVh6Zm04TM7R_Uj8BUzfWBZx05nNBVah1BLyhA4NA/s400/Wildlife+Boardgame+Socal.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083061602898141746" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The author avoiding paparazzi while enjoying "Wildlife".</span><br /><br /></span>I greatly prefer playing games live to playing them over the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">internet</span>. This is despite the fact that I'm not an especially extroverted guy. Some who speak to the advantages of board games over electronic games speak to the benefits of just being with people and having the opportunity to socialize. When I play game, I tend to focus on the <span style="font-style: italic;">game</span> and not the social interaction. So why do I prefer gaming in a social setting?<br /><br />An important aspect of playing a game is the feeling that you are playing with and against <span style="font-style: italic;">people.</span> Some games bring that spirit out and some games bury it. To some degree, I can understand when players complain of a game having little interaction, even when, objectively, players absolutely can affect each other. The question begins to become - how much of the game is personal and how much of it is purely about the game mechanics? Sometimes the interactions in a game are like the interactions of a pinball against the bumpers - lively but impersonal. The greatest gaming interaction brings out the players' personalities and lets you feel that you are playing with and against the people at your table, and not just managing a bunch of battling wooden cubes.<br /><br />In the question of interaction, one of the more controversial games is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Seyfarth's</span> "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3076"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Puerto</span> Rico</a>", which some people feel has little interaction and which others say has plenty of interaction. I find there to be plenty of interaction in the game, but the naysayers have a good point. The interaction in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Puerto</span> Rico tends<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RnBYmLA6p2I/AAAAAAAAAFs/U0Si3zjbLFg/s1600-h/Puerto+Rico+Mat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RnBYmLA6p2I/AAAAAAAAAFs/U0Si3zjbLFg/s400/Puerto+Rico+Mat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5075654192861456226" border="0" /></a> to be impersonal. Players must, for example, consider when to produce and when to ship, and these choices can have substantial impact upon opponents. Players will often <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">strategize</span> in a way to avoid producing the same key commodity as their right hand neighbor in order to avoid getting shut out in a trading round. But look at how that is couched: avoid mirroring your <span style="font-style: italic;">right </span><span style="font-style: italic;">hand</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> neighbor</span> as opposed to, say, avoid mirroring <span style="font-style: italic;">a very aggressive player.</span> When making tactical decisions in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Puerto</span> Rico, the consideration is overwhelmingly based on the way that decision affects the complicated interactions of player positions - who is a strong producer, who is vulnerable to having goods thrown overboard, etc. These decisions generally play out in a clear and predictable manner once you understand the game. The interactions in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Puerto</span> Rico are important but generally impersonal. Players keep their eyes on the playing mats as they ponder the next best move. A game with greater interaction gets players to also look not only at their opponents positions, but into their eyes as well.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RnBYXbA6p1I/AAAAAAAAAFk/ZfdPkefZeno/s1600-h/Louis+XIV+Layout.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RnBYXbA6p1I/AAAAAAAAAFk/ZfdPkefZeno/s320/Louis+XIV+Layout.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5075653939458385746" border="0" /></a>Compare <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Puerto</span> Rico with a game like "<a href="http://http//www.boardgamegeek.com/game/13642">Louis XIV</a>" by Rudiger <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Dorn</span>. Louis XIV is a majority-control game in which many contested areas have a "do-or-die" element. "I really-really-really need a helmet to insure that I can complete one of my missions this turn. I think I can take it by putting two units on the Dauphin - but what is Bryan going to do? It looks as though he'd be better off spreading his units across several nearby characters, but Bryan is the sort of guy who likes to play defensively and smack people down when they look like a threat. But I'd really like to place my third unit on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Louvois</span>, where I think I can pick up an easy influence card..."<br /><br />In both Louis XIV and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Puerto</span> Rico players can have an important effect on their opponents. In Louis, though, there is a much greater degree to which a player naturally considers the motivations and alternatives of his opponents. I'll call the player interaction in Louis XIV "warm" and the interaction in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Puerto</span> Rico "cold". It is warm interaction in which you have a great awareness not only of your opponent's positions, but of your opponents <span style="font-style: italic;">as people</span> and are likely to interact with them as such. Play styles differ - and a game of Louis XIV might take place without any table talk, but a player of Louis XIV is much more likely to want to look into the eyes of his opponents when playing.<br /><br />There are lots of different mechanics that generate player interaction. I'll break them into two large categories: interference and trade. Hurting and helping.<br /><br />Interference is the more common. It involves any way that an opponent interferes with your effort to achieve your goals. The most obvious is attacking: In a military game, I use my assets to destroy yours. In <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Eurogames</span>, interference most commonly takes the form of a challenge for control of a resource, or challenge for dominance.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoqvFrwr4lI/AAAAAAAAAG8/Qe-y9qq5eWk/s1600-h/Caylus+board+game+design.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoqvFrwr4lI/AAAAAAAAAG8/Qe-y9qq5eWk/s400/Caylus+board+game+design.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083067641622159954" border="0" /></a>Challenges for control of a resource take place in games ranging from Power Grid to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Caylus</span> to Age of Steam. In Power Grid, only one of us is going to get into that nearby city, and if I can get there before you, I force you to expand into a more expensive city - or none at all. In <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18602"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Caylus</span></a>, all players are competing for the benefits on the tiles, and with the use of the provost, I can even insure that <span style="font-style: italic;">nobody</span> gets the use of certain tiles. There is also the competition for the extra favor provided by building the castle, which only one player can get each turn. In Age of Steam, I am challenging you for control of key routes, and also threatening to deliver goods and deprive you of them.<br /><br />Every auction is a challenge for control of a resource. I'm going to be the high bidder or else you are. Someone is going to deprive someone else.<br /><br />A challenge for dominance typically takes place in the form of a majority fight. I want to put more units on a personality in Louis XIV than you have, so that I can reap the benefits. In <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3">Samurai</a>, I try to put more points around the Buddha so that I can snatch it away. A challenge for dominance is really just a challenge for control of a resource. The distinction is just that it is more strategic than tactical: it might take place over the course of several turns, it would typically involve investment of other scarce resources like tiles, cubes, or game turn actions, and winning the challenge is often an end in itself (victory conditions) rather than a means to securing some future benefit.<br /><br />Games with trading naturally have warm player interaction because they require communication and subjective valuation. In <a href="http://http//www.boardgamegeek.com/game/13">Settlers of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Catan</span></a>, when I offer wood for sheep, my potential trading partner can "just say no", even if on the surface the trade might benefit him. He must consider whether it disproportionately benefits me. He must consider whether he might be able to extract another card out of me. He might hold off, hoping to get the card on the next roll of the dice, or from another player. Once we open our mouths and negotiate we are dealing with each other as people and not just impartial players.<br /><br />Apart from games that involve direct trade or other negotiation, how do designers create games that make player interaction warmer? A key element is that a player is given choices over whether or not to interact and with whom. If an opponent has a meaningful decision over whether or not to mess with you, <span style="font-style: italic;">you </span>take on an active stake in <span style="font-style: italic;">his </span>game.<br /><br />Two good examples of games which provide warm interaction over common resources are "Ticket <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rnbrf7A6p4I/AAAAAAAAAF8/ST1kY6Jd9mU/s1600-h/Through+the+Desert.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rnbrf7A6p4I/AAAAAAAAAF8/ST1kY6Jd9mU/s400/Through+the+Desert.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077504563556820866" border="0" /></a>to Ride" and "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/503">Through the Desert</a>". In each case, players are expanding their reach over the map knowing that, at any given time, only one person can stake a claim to certain assets - whether it is a route or a water hole. What makes it especially warm is the degree of uncertainty in your opponent's move. How long can I continue to draw cards before Albert would take one of my key routes away from me? I'd like to make a move toward that oasis - but will Kelly take the two point watering hole I wanted, or will she leave me alone and take the one near Jason?<br /><br />What makes it tense is that <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> have to make a critical choice whose outcome depends on what <span style="font-style: italic;">other</span> players might want to do. Our motivations and our fates are intertwined. Can I see into Kelly's mind? When she does take my water hole away, I take it a little personally. She knew that it was <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span> she cut off. She could have hit Jason. I see Kelly as a person and not just a machine-player.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rnbu1LA6p5I/AAAAAAAAAGE/l7kpPX2tFw0/s1600-h/T%26T+Green.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rnbu1LA6p5I/AAAAAAAAAGE/l7kpPX2tFw0/s400/T%26T+Green.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5077508227163924370" border="0" /></a>There is some debate over how much Andreas <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Seyfarth's</span> "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/21790"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Thurn</span> & Taxis</a>" is too much of a solitaire game. One element of player interaction in the game is the fact that players are racing to pick up scoring bonuses. The sooner you fill up the green area (for example), the more points you score for it. Your decision to fill up the green area is very dependent on what cards are coming up - and the same holds true for your opponent. Most of the time, either of you are going to create a route that fills in an area whenever it works best for you given other considerations. How many stations can I play if I extend the route? What cards came up? Rarely is a player going to try to anticipate the motivations of his opponent to make competing choices. Opponents seem like impartial movers who make the best tactical decisions based on circumstance.<br /><br />Let's look at some ways that designers make the interaction in their games hotter.<br /><br />As discussed earlier, the element of player choice is key. How much can a player control whether to directly challenge an opponent and choose the opponent? In many games there is the "Why me?" effect. "Why did you have to go against ME when you could have gone against Peter?!" This pops up consistently in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Reiner</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Knizia's</span> "Through the Desert". In the earlier example, my best choice of move depends on whether Kelly is going to challenge me or Jason for the scoring opportunities that are close within reach. When Kelly decides to move against me, she's not just playing against the game. She perceives me as the stronger threat - whether because I'm leading or because my position threatens her more, or just because she knows I'm the sort of S.O.B. who is more likely to hit her next turn. Either way, I take it personally.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoLHm7wr4gI/AAAAAAAAAGU/4HTTlTHvz_I/s1600-h/Shogun+board+game.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoLHm7wr4gI/AAAAAAAAAGU/4HTTlTHvz_I/s320/Shogun+board+game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5080842801318191618" border="0" /></a>The "Why me?" effect is what can make <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">multiplayer</span> war games so much more contentious than two player war games. You can't exactly get ticked-off when your Memoir '44 opponent takes out one of your tanks. That's his job! But when he kicks you out of a region in Shogun/Wallenstein - well that's NOT his job! His job is to pick on the <span style="font-style: italic;">other </span>guy, and leave <span style="font-style: italic;">you </span>alone, right? When you're in that position, the choice to attack Aaron versus Erin isn't totally strategic. You're also going to consider what their reactions will be - both emotionally and strategically. Aaron tends to blow up and immediately counterattack, but he's better off going south and hitting Ryan. Erin is cooler, but she's in a corner and has no one to hit except for you. How do you choose? Your answer depends on the players, not just the game.<br /><br />Bruno <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Faidutti</span> had some very amusing things to say on this subject when interviewed here about his design for Silk Road. <a href="http://jbdgames.blogspot.com/2007/01/designers-mind-silk-road.html">He talked about specifically introducing features that caused players to "snivel". </a> "Don't use the thief against me! Use it on Sean! He' doesn't <span style="font-style: italic;">look</span> like he's winning, but he's got the stronger long range position!" <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Faidutti</span> loves putting in "take that" elements into his games, and by giving his players a reason to snivel, he is introducing more human interaction.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rola87wr4hI/AAAAAAAAAGc/JU47LnPsl0c/s1600-h/Intrigue+board+game.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rola87wr4hI/AAAAAAAAAGc/JU47LnPsl0c/s400/Intrigue+board+game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5082693657344860690" border="0" /></a>The "why me?" effect isn't for everyone because it can create bad feelings in a game. I think that those bad feelings are strongest when the choice of who gets picked-on is most capricious, and it is weaker when there is some tactical excuse behind the decision. The perfect balance is a matter of taste. At one end of the spectrum is a game like Stefan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Dorra's</span> "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/265">Intrigue</a>". In this game, players are doling out financially advantageous favors to selected players - based partly on bribes but ultimately selected out of whim. You just offered me $4,000, Mike just offered me $2,000; I keep both of your bribes and I give the position to... Mike. Somewhere toward the other end of the spectrum is a game like Kramer and Ulrich's "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/93">El <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Grande</span></a>". In this game of majority controlled regions, I might have the opportunity to either take control of Valencia away from you or to take control of Old Castle away from Richard. The choice is entirely mine, but when I choose to attack you, it may be because I can better defend Valencia, and not just that I chose to pick on you.<br /><br />Hidden information has the ability to enhance player interaction. When a player's assets are entirely public, the game becomes more purely strategic. I know exactly what the effects of my actions are going to be, and I know what Alan can do in response on his next turn. If, on the other hand, Alan is hiding something from me - the difference between what I know and what I don't know is hidden in Alan's brain. How can I read his mind? <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoquGrwr4kI/AAAAAAAAAG0/plxotw9hxXQ/s1600-h/tigris+and+euphrates+board+game.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoquGrwr4kI/AAAAAAAAAG0/plxotw9hxXQ/s400/tigris+and+euphrates+board+game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083066559290401346" border="0" /></a><br />We are playing <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/42">Euphrates and Tigris</a>, and the black leader on my monument is vulnerable. Alan chooses not to try taking control of it. Why? Is he lacking the red tiles that are needed to boot a leader? Is it because he doesn't see the move? Is it because he doesn't need more black points? If I think Alan is a conservative player, he'll probably only attack if he has lots of red tiles. But if he tends to take risks and still doesn't attack my juicy monument - maybe he's really low on red tiles, and I ought to try attacking his blue leader. The element of uncertainty forces me to go beyond what is purely on the board and begin to enter my opponent's mind. I'm playing the player.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoqyG7wr4mI/AAAAAAAAAHE/VO2zyPdxYoM/s1600-h/liar%27s+dice+board+game.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RoqyG7wr4mI/AAAAAAAAAHE/VO2zyPdxYoM/s400/liar%27s+dice+board+game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083070961631879778" border="0" /></a><br />The extreme case is in a game such as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/45">Liar's Dice</a>, where psyching out your opponents is the main appeal of the game. Not only does the intrigue of the game come from trying to bluff your opponents and to decipher their own bluffs, but the moment when dice are revealed is very satisfying because it pits the challenger and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">challengee</span> up against each other in such a personal way. Paul jumped bid to nine "6's". Do I really think he has more than one or two? I challenge. Everyone at the table has their eyes on Paul, and when he reveals his dice... he's got five 6's! Paul suckered me in! The groans and laughter at the table make it clear that this game is about Paul and me - not about dice.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpPnW7wr4nI/AAAAAAAAAHM/fHnBgtci3ZI/s1600-h/top+secret+spies+board+game.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpPnW7wr4nI/AAAAAAAAAHM/fHnBgtci3ZI/s400/top+secret+spies+board+game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085662785416454770" border="0" /></a>There is an important case where hidden information <span style="font-style: italic;">destroys</span> warm player interaction. It is when you don't know which player controls which pieces. This is a mechanic I strongly dislike. It is seen in games such as "Clans", "Top Secret Spies", and "Drunter & Druber". In these games, players are dealt a card, face down, indicating which color pieces they control. During the game, they may make moves which might benefit any color - with the purpose of advancing their own position, but not in so obvious a way that would tip off other players as to which color they control. At the end of the game, when "red" wins, players reveal their cards to see who was playing red.<br /><br />By its nature, this mechanic hinders the personal relationship between players. I try hurting "blue". But who is "blue"? My relationship focuses on the innocent little pieces of wood. Even the moment of victory is anti-climactic as it requires another step to reveal which player won. To some degree, the player interaction takes the form of trying to guess who is behind each color based on the players' actions. Even so, the fact that you can't reveal what you think you know means that players play in a very sheltered manner hidden behind poker faces.<br /><br />The components of a game can even contribute to making the interaction in a game warmer. To the degree that players are all competing in the same physical space, and to the degree that these conflicts are graphically evident, players tend to feel the competition more directly.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpfiAeKAx_I/AAAAAAAAAHc/4MoP28Tc4WU/s1600-h/thurn+and+taxis+game+with+cards.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpfiAeKAx_I/AAAAAAAAAHc/4MoP28Tc4WU/s400/thurn+and+taxis+game+with+cards.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086782801861199858" border="0" /></a>This is a shortcoming of Thurn & Taxis. A part of the competition in this game involves taking cards away from opponents who might otherwise need them. However, it's a pretty abstract and indirect process to visualize this. I need to look at the route of area cards that my left-hand opponent is collecting, check the board to see what areas are adjacent to his route, then check the card display to see if any of those areas are currently available, and finally check my own card display to see if I can use the card that I'd like to take away from my opponent.<br /><br />Usually, I'm too lazy to do this on a regular basis. For me, the physical layout of the components encourages a more solitaire play.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpfhgOKAx-I/AAAAAAAAAHU/HwFJA5SLiTs/s1600-h/thurn+and+taxis+board+game.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpfhgOKAx-I/AAAAAAAAAHU/HwFJA5SLiTs/s400/thurn+and+taxis+board+game.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5086782247810418658" border="0" /></a>Imagine how differently the game would feel if the six available areas on the board had a black pawn on them. As a player takes a pawn (instead of a card), he puts down a marker to indicate that it is part of the chain he is building. (Note that this would not conform to the actual rules of Thurn & Taxis because in the game, players do not immediately add cards taken to their route but instead take them into their hand for later play.) In this scenario, players are all engaged together in the same space. I can see exactly where you need to go and I can see exactly where you <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> go. By playing in the same space, players have a greater awareness of their relationships with one another and will naturally play more actively against each other. This sort of scenario is closer in spirit to "Ticket to Ride", where everyone's position, and their potential to block, is right out there. It's one reason that I prefer "Ticket to Ride" over "Thurn & Taxis".<br /><br />Mike Doyle, the artist who has contributed new designs to games such as Caylus and the upcoming El Capitan, recognized the value of having players share the same space when he created an alternative version of Puerto Rico, which uses a central board rather than individual player mats.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpvJpuKAyAI/AAAAAAAAAHk/1bkcL8fle-g/s1600-h/puerto+rico+game+board+doyle.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RpvJpuKAyAI/AAAAAAAAAHk/1bkcL8fle-g/s400/puerto+rico+game+board+doyle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087881922646951938" border="0" /></a>Doyle talks at greater length about what he wanted to achieve with this design on his <a href="http://mdoyle2.blogspot.com/2006/07/puerto-rico-ii.html">site,</a><br />and also created a <a href="http://www.michaeldoyle.com/PRege/LaCiudad.html">mini-site</a> in which he provides detailed graphics and instructions for the player who might want to try creating his own map and playing Puerto Rico this way.<br /><br />As we've seen, player interaction in a game is more than just the ability to affect your opponents. The interaction becomes hotter when the game is designed to force people to come out from behind their wooden cubes and relate to the people at the table. The most significant way that designers do this is by giving players choice in whether and when to interact, and with whom. Similarly, when a player's strategy is dependent on the whims of others, it forces him to look away from the board and into the minds of his opponents. All these things bring out the social nature of gaming and help to insure that each session we play is as unique as the people playing.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-37636444646624911602007-04-02T22:20:00.000-07:002007-04-02T22:27:50.888-07:00A Gamer's Journal: Board Game Designers Are Alive and Well and Living In Utah<a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2007/04/gamers-journal-board-game-designers-are.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Printer friendly version</span></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rg7uGCBLsiI/AAAAAAAAAE0/FWyWQTRneDM/s1600-h/Utah+map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rg7uGCBLsiI/AAAAAAAAAE0/FWyWQTRneDM/s320/Utah+map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048234019717362210" border="0" /></a>Being raised in New York and currently living in Los Angeles, I tend to think that the nexus of all civilized activity occurs in the big cities on the coasts. There is nothing better than actually getting away from the supposed center of things to open your eyes up to what the rest of the world is really capable of.<br /><br />I recently had the occasion to travel to Salt Lake City (pop. 182,000, 5% of Los Angeles) on business and, being a gamer, part of my travel plans included locating a local games group. Some SLC expatriates directed me to the Friendly Local Game Store "Game Night Games".<br /><br />I googled them and was immediately impressed with the website. Not only did they have the expected game search feature, plus an obvious focus on Eurogames, but also a detailed calendar of events, and even a forum for local gamers to communicate with each other. I knew I'd probably be free on the 15th. When I checked the calendar I saw the night was reserved for... the Board Game Designers Club of Utah.<br /><br />Double take.<br /><br />How many Board Game Designers can there possibly be in Utah?<br /><br />When I arrived in town I called the store, and the man at the desk told me that, yes, I was welcome to just show up as long as I understood that I'd be playing prototypes but that "some of these games are actually pretty good." I was a little dubious, but the guy behind the desk seemed genuine. Any way, who cares. I was out in a new place and I HAD TO PLAY GAMES.<br /><br />I arrived a teensy bit after the eight o' clock start. The front door said "closed" but the place was lit up and filled with about a dozen board game designers of Utah, and the door proved to be unlocked. Inside I was immediately impressed. The store was small enough to be cozy, but fastidiously organized, and entirely inviting. Shelves of games were carefully lined up and obviously dominated by Euros. The selection, it turned out ran really deep. There were of course the expected Settlers games and Tickets to Ride, and Puerto Ricos. This being Salt Lake City, I took a look over by the Settlers section and sure enough saw a sizable stack of the Mormon-themed "Settlers of Zarahelma". But in addition to the obvious choices, the catalog ran deep - into the old catalog of games like "Doge", a lone copy of "Himalaya", SEVERAL copies of "Canal Mania", and way on the top, a proudly displayed copy of "Roads & Boats"!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rg7ZLiBLshI/AAAAAAAAAEs/SrxeeZL1gWs/s1600-h/gamenightgamesfront.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Rg7ZLiBLshI/AAAAAAAAAEs/SrxeeZL1gWs/s400/gamenightgamesfront.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048211024462459410" border="0" /></a>The store being cozy, I was quickly in the middle of the meeting being held. The dozen people were seated around on some nice, sturdy wooden tables in a section of the store clearly reserved for playing. From the warmth of the wood and the comfortable poses of the guests, any visitor might easily think he'd just walked into a coffee house - not a Starbucks, but rather one that encourages you to relax, sip leisurely, and stay a while. One club member was laying down the law - literally - to the other members, telling them about how they could go about submitting games to publishers. He talked about trust, legal copyrights, "poor man's copyrights", costs, and even the option of patenting. He also made a discouraging assertion to the effect that one reason not to worry about having your brilliantly original idea get ripped off is that it probably isn't all that original. Publishers get <span style="font-style: italic;">so many</span> submissions that the chances are they've seen something pretty close to it already. He further warned his audience to expect waiting a <span style="font-style: italic;">long time, </span>like six months, before hearing anything from a publisher.<br /><br />The audience listened, asked questions, and offered their own perspectives. There seemed to me to be a fair amount of realism in the room. Everyone of course wanted that golden opportunity to be published, but there was no one there (I <span style="font-style: italic;">think!) </span>with fantasies of getting rich, selling their home, quitting their jobs, and pursuing their game design dreams for the next twenty years (for <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> story, try seeing the story of Marc Griffin and "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOw2yWMSfk">Bulletball</a>", and bring your hanky.)<br /><br />Then another individual opened his laptop and discussed a new website he'd designed for prospective game developers. Actually, he'd developed it for himself - as a way to present his own works - but he was presenting the site as something that could be shared by anyone else who was willing to help with the expenses. He was open to many ideas - one might post rules, or rules summaries, descriptions, pictures of components - whatever. It would be a way to give possible publishers a taste of your prototype and a way to introduce yourself. People seemed interested, but no one said "sign me up", at least not yet. It happened that this idea was remarkably similar to something I had been cooking up in my mind, and I said so. It seemed to me that maybe a site like this can be used as a way to find a large network of playtesters - people with a taste for new games who could download the rules and some basic components, try out the games, and share their comments with the designers and with other playtesters. A sort of Proto-geek. This was one of many ideas shared by the group, and the designer took note of the ideas as he considered where next to take his new web site.<br /><br />All this time, I'm seated at a table with one other person who has got his prototype nicely boxed up and ready to go. While everyone is talking, I'm eying the first page of the rules book, which is formatted <span style="font-style: italic;">exactly</span> like a typical rule book for a Eurogame. The components are all described and illustrated. There is an introductory paragraph about the setting and theme. It seems to take place in Africa, with elephants transporting different types of fruit, each of varying values, to sundry places. Players have "baskets" and there even seem to be some sort of baskets that the "chief" controls.<br /><br />Of course, just glancing at the cover page of the rules, there is no way of telling whether the game is any good - but I'm immediately impressed. The thing seems to look, eat, and breathe just like a "real" Eurogame. The components stir up Eurogame feelings in me. Most telling - I want to play this game. I'm waiting for the group to end their administrative and educational schmoozing so that we can finally break into groups, and I can say: "I'm playing <span style="font-style: italic;">this."<br /><br /></span>The group doesn't seem in a hurry to get on with the playtesting. I'm getting nervous. Did I come all this way just to attend an administrative meeting? How much time have we burned? In time though, someone says exactly what I was waiting to hear. "Hey, why don't we get started playing soon?" A few more friendly grumbles get voiced. "Yeah, let's play." The people who have been running the meeting up to this point realize that their time is through. Bring on the games.<br /><br />"Well, I'd be happy to try this game here", I quickly volunteer. Of course, since everyone knows that the evening is all about playing prototypes, everyone is shopping around for a game to play. To my surprise, there seems to be a good balance between people who have brought their own games, and people who just want to play something. I had expected twelve people, each with their own game, fighting it out to see whose games get played, but there seems to be no such problem. Several people swing over to my table and comment on how this is a good game and they'd like to try it again. Another player unfurls an impressive game that seems to be a wargame-Euro-chess hybrid. It has oversized hexes with no terrain detail and gorgeous illustrations of special powers - knights and dukes and other stuff - and everyone who sees the board and its illustrations "oohs" over the slick presentation.<br /><br />The creator of the African-themed game that I've volunteered for introduces himself as "Alf", and he seems surprised that people want to play the game tonight. He was fully prepared to play something new, but as long as I've publicly volunteered, others soon come to join us, and we have four ready players available in a matter of seconds. The name of the game is "Tembo", which I'm told means "elephant" in Swahili. I've got high expectations, but also high doubts. From a glance at the rules and the overall presentation, everything looks authentically Euro. So it talks the talk, but can the game walk the walk?<br /><br />The game has a lot of walking - most of it done by elephants. Tembo uses three hefty little elephant figurines, each of which has a colored platform on its back. All of the components are the sort of things Eurogamers love - squat, colored wooden cylinders signify different types of fruit that players are trying to collect; they are placing larger wooden disks of their color both to control the movement of the elephants and to claim the little fruit nuggets. My opponents and I are all trying to both control the direction and timing of the elephants in order to get the best fruit most quickly. A characteristic feature is that players may place their wooden disks either on the board, to direct the elephants, or onto the elephants, in order to capture fruit - and a series of rules make these alternatives nicely balanced and suitably "agonizing".<br /><br />I think I'm doing pretty well right off the bat, being the first to snag a valuable coconut, but the guy opposite me seems to be getting lots of everything. A majority battle which I thought I had sewn up is getting threatened, and finally trumped when he makes one of those killer moves that ends the game. We can all see that this guy is king of the jungle. When we add up our scores, I come in third. Alf, the game's inventor, pulled ahead of me by focusing on a long term strategy of securing the most valuable majority fight. The player to my right came in last, a victim of more than his share of screwage - he picked up too much spoiled fruit.<br /><br />Once the post-mortem begins, everyone offers some very specific criticism to Alf. Not too surprisingly, the fourth place player is not too keen on that spoiled fruit rule. Although I also was a victim of that rule, I want it to stay. It gives players that "do or die" moment when they know that they must control the game situation so as to avoid getting the dud.<br /><br />What is apparent to all of us, though, is that the game absolutely works. All of our recommendations are intended to tweak and jazz up the game, not to fix it. My own opinion is that the game is in its "Geek Rating 6.5" stage, and the goal is to bump it into the "Geek Rating 7.5" stage that makes people not just want to play it, but to want to buy it - and play it a lot.<br /><br />So how unusual is it to find such a solidly designed game coming from an unknown, unpublished board game designer, in a town that is barely on the map in terms of Eurogames? It turns out that Alf is not your typical unpublished game designer. While talking with him, I learn that he has had as many as three games appear as finalist entries in the international <a href="http://www.hippodice.de/index.html">Hippodice </a>games competition. In 2005, Alf Seegert had two games on the recommended list: "Ziggurat" and "Troll Bridge". In 2004, his game "The Vapors of Delphi" took second place, right behind "Harem" (later published as "Emira"). One prominent German game company had expressed serious interest in publishing it, but eventually balked due to internal problems, and perhaps also because "Vapors" was a two player game.<br /><br />In 2007 - well, Alf tells me that the winners of the 2007 contest will be announced in just a few days, so anything can happen with his new entry "Mont Saint Michel". How often does lightning strike twice - much less four times - in the same place? It seems to me that one can always look back and find someone who has had a strong showing in any given contest, including Hippodice. The interesting question, to borrow a phrase from the world of mutual funds, is whether past performance is an indicator of future results.<br /><br />Meanwhile, I have time to kill, and so I circulate around the store a little. The player to my right, Mike, has brought a prototype this evening that didn't get played, and so I ask him about it. He's not at all shy about pulling it out of the box and giving me a very full and enthusiastic explanation. He's playtested it something like a hundred times - many of them solitaire, but perhaps twenty five times with a full group. Another gamer walks over to hear the latter half of the explanation and he's hooked. They agree to try to pull in a couple of more players this evening to try it, but it's past ten o' clock, and I can't stay too much longer.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RhA35SBLslI/AAAAAAAAAFM/bZQsTb8_rjo/s1600-h/gamenightgameslogo.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RhA35SBLslI/AAAAAAAAAFM/bZQsTb8_rjo/s400/gamenightgameslogo.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048596639511196242" border="0" /></a>Before leaving, I get into a conversation with Gregory, a manager at <a href="http://www.gamenightgames.com/">Game Night Games</a>. What is the secret of their success? Gregory tells me that the owners have full time jobs, including one who runs an advertising agency. The sharp look of the store, the appealing logo, and many other aesthetic touches are made possible because of the owner's own design talents. The store has been open for two and a half years, and its survival is possible because the owners do not rely on it as a source of income. During this time, the store has maintained ties with its customers, remarketing to them with discounts and special events throughout the year. The advertising agency knowledge helps the owners identify good advertising opportunities as they arise. Somehow it seems to be working, but it will take more time to determine whether this is just a beautiful avocation or a profitable business.<br /><br />It turns out that, besides Alf and myself, the two other players at my table are both employees of the store. Their enthusiasm for games is evident, and so it is just as evident that any prospective customer coming off the street into this particular FLGS will benefit from the one service that such stores ought to be able to provide: helpful, knowledgeable (and cheerful) advice. I doubt that any of the "employees" were being paid for their overtime this evening. They were just game lovers like the rest of us.<br /><br />Looking around the room, I see several boxes of prototypes. Some have been<br />played this evening; some will have to wait their turn. Some have very impressive art; some were just put together functionally. On one table, I see a stack of "parts" boxes - the sort used to hold hardware, only these are loaded with wooden bits for sale. There is a box chock full of meeples for 30 cents each, another box has settlers houses and roads in a variety of colors, elsewhere are the ubiquitous wooden cubes, as well as cylinders, and other familiar wooden shapes. The owner of Game Night Games obviously has enough interest in encouraging local designers that he has made available all manner of wooden pieces to support the development of quality prototypes.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bfracMpqq-Bf-cU0M3H9Kfjxru_rHZYyqbV1T51XPvXan4oICV-CMOJx3M-aVu9YvROCJoPV6XOHm7y_Czzz4mroEgFFmpLynVoZ6szHxjxhmNxxu4Me7CQur1ONTuHxRQyI2g/s1600-h/SaltLakeCitySkyline.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7bfracMpqq-Bf-cU0M3H9Kfjxru_rHZYyqbV1T51XPvXan4oICV-CMOJx3M-aVu9YvROCJoPV6XOHm7y_Czzz4mroEgFFmpLynVoZ6szHxjxhmNxxu4Me7CQur1ONTuHxRQyI2g/s320/SaltLakeCitySkyline.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5048238391994069570" border="0" /></a><br />This is what strikes me so forcefully about my evening spent with the Board Game Designers Club of Utah and Game Night Games. There is such a wonderful infrastructure in place to support their efforts. While many new board game designers fly around the country to meet once a year at Protospiel, or google the internet in search of a source of purple meeples, or set up websites and blogs to display their developments, here is a group of a dozen people in a city of 182,000, who all have the opportunity to get together every month to play each others' games, swap ideas, create and share websites, buy meeples and barrels and cubes, and to do it all in a comfortable and supportive setting. The best prototype of all the ones on display in Salt Lake City may be the club and game store itself - an encouraging prototype for future communities of new board game designers which may some day be replicated in cities from Boston to Los Angeles, and which could benefit everyone involved.<br /><br />Post script: On Friday night I return to Los Angeles and on Monday I'm back at my desk at work. I do a routine check of <a href="http://www.boardgamenews.com/">Boardgamenews</a> and see that the top story is an announcement of the 2007 Hippodice contest winners. Hey! I know someone with an entry! I click through to see if Alf's name is on the list and it turns out that his game Mont Saint Michel did not make it to the finalists, but did make it onto the Recommended List. So out of maybe 150 - 200 entries, Alf's game was in the top 15. Not neccessarily what anyone wants - but still impressive, especially considering his ability to so consistently place in the top tier.<br /><br />I write to Alf and he tells me that he's still pretty happy with the results, and knew that the game needed more revisions - which he's begun. He's also developing the game that took second place a few years ago into something that can support four players, for wider appeal.<br /><br />So for now, all we can do is keep our eyes open and wait.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-18518510359648594322007-01-18T13:17:00.000-08:002007-01-22T22:18:32.624-08:00The Designer's Mind: Silk Road<div align="left"><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_li-igjyI/AAAAAAAAAAM/ak5CqKq0Kxg/s1600-h/Silk+Road+Box+Cover.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021484498607443746" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 166px; height: 166px;" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_li-igjyI/AAAAAAAAAAM/ak5CqKq0Kxg/s400/Silk+Road+Box+Cover.jpg" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>THE DESIGNER’S MIND: SILK ROAD<br /></strong></span><br /><br /><br /><em>The development of Ted Cheatham and Bruno Faidutti’s “Silk Road” from conception to publication</em>.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2007/01/designers-mind-silk-road-development-of.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Printer friendly</span></a><br /><br /></div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">I love to pick apart a game and see what makes it tick. Behind every finished product is a story of how that game came to be.<br /><br />This month I’m delighted to be able to bring the story of the complete development of Silk Road in the words of its designers, Ted Cheatham and Bruno Faidutti, as well as its publisher Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games.<br /><br />Silk Road started out as an abstract game, and I got to play a very early version of it in 1999, when Ted was its sole designer and the game was known as “Valencia”. In the intervening years, Ted developed it, shelved it, then got Bruno Faidutti involved, and in late 2006 a very different but still recognizable game, “Silk Road” was published by Z-Man Games. Along the way, the game evolved from an abstract, to a fantasy theme, up into a science fiction game, and ultimately to its current historical setting in Southern Asia.<br /><br />It is my hope that “The Designer’s Mind” will be the first of a series of articles to profile the development of a single game in great depth.<br /><br /><br /></div><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_mCOigjzI/AAAAAAAAAAU/UZfdfMEmxCY/s1600-h/Silk+Road+Map.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021485035478355762" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_mCOigjzI/AAAAAAAAAAU/UZfdfMEmxCY/s400/Silk+Road+Map.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Silk Road is a “pick up and deliver” game – in which all players share the same caravan, which moves each turn further west from its starting point in Changan, China. With each move, players must bid for the right to control which direction the caravan will move. Once it arrives at its new city, the high bidder gets to choose which of the actions available in that city he will take for himself. Then it is he who decides which player gets second choice of action, and so on, until the last player who gets… no action.<br /><br />In the first half of the game, players are investing in goods, and in the last half they are selling off the goods they collected previously. However, if a player cannot direct the caravan in a way to sell off what he has collected, he will receive little or nothing for it at the end of the game.<br /><br /><em><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">JBD: Well, let’s get started learning about Silk Road by asking about the very first idea that started it. I’ll gladly fall the into cliché trap and ask “which came first – the theme or the mechanisms?”<br /></span></em><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtVU1utU6e0IGTrfk4OKzCKMOq8RGcbs9ury8hJ4K6R-tQ-XWAo6ZtQppsTO4GXC__4kmtuWrkcebq8Zpfm_Z28ejcu71heSzBjPZUZR0nIzZEPatmHANydCUDwKI45HrX_jYrBw/s1600-h/Ted+Headshot.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021486568781680450" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtVU1utU6e0IGTrfk4OKzCKMOq8RGcbs9ury8hJ4K6R-tQ-XWAo6ZtQppsTO4GXC__4kmtuWrkcebq8Zpfm_Z28ejcu71heSzBjPZUZR0nIzZEPatmHANydCUDwKI45HrX_jYrBw/s400/Ted+Headshot.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Ted Cheatham: Silk Road definitely came from mechanisms first. I decided it was time to try my hand at a game when I was in Mississippi (around) 1997.<br /><br />Auction games always have a trade off of bidding for what you need at the cost of letting another player get the thing that he needs most. The initial premise I had was, let's make an auction more important as things leave the board since people will have less to choose from and in many cases not get anything at all. What if there were circumstances where only one or two people would benefit by winning an auction and the other players got screwed over? So, with 4 players, if the first player moved and made a play that only lets one other player have an action, it is critical to be second or first. Anyway, that was what drove the idea of the game initially.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><em>Commentary: This basic idea does make it into the final product – but with a twist. The winner of the auction gets control of the pawn and gets first choice of the spoils. However, instead of the second choice going to the next highest bidder, the high bidder gets to choose who goes next, and so on. </em></span></blockquote><br />Ted: The first cut was a grid with no real theme at this point. The base part was a set collecting game.<br /><br />A player would bid to place a leader pawn on a spot on the grid. (He) could then take that tile or any tiles around the spot where the leader pawn was placed. It was a true auction where you auctioned 1st, 2nd , 3rd and 4th place player (one auction with most money first, second money second, etc).<br /><br /><br />So after the first turn, the board may look like this after 4 players played. The shaded spaces represent tiles taken.<br /><br /><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_o6uigj1I/AAAAAAAAAAk/8W0QOlhXkAg/s1600-h/Valencia+Grid.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021488205164220242" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_o6uigj1I/AAAAAAAAAAk/8W0QOlhXkAg/s400/Valencia+Grid.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />The “1” shows where the pawn is. For the next round after bidding, if a player who won the bid moved the leader pawn to ”2”, only that player would get a tile since there are no longer tiles adjacent to it. This was the value of the bid and the screwage factor as I like to think of it. And, remember other players paid money for the follow on places...more screwage.<br /><br />As the game develops and tiles are taken, the bid winner forces the tiles that are available for other players to take. And, with the right play, (he) can keep follow on players from getting any tiles at all.<br /><br />Anyway, that was my goal and this game seemed to accomplish it. The game played four bidding rounds as a turn. By that time, enough tiles were gone and the scoring occurred.<br /><br />Here was another point I was after. I wanted players to have a challenge in choosing which items to hold for the best score and which items to sell in order to raise needed cash. Starting capital was limited to only get you through a round or so. I thought that the pain of going last at auction was so bad that people needed to manage their money well and insure they could get into at least a couple of auctions. This was carried over to the next version of the game as well.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><em>Commentary: Ted Cheatham is making the game really hard on players! He’s setting players up to get shorted out of winning any goods if they bid too low, AND he’s adding tight money management. I can easily imagine a player getting shut out of the game early. In Silk Road, there is a further complication. Not only do you want money to bid for control, but then you need money to buy goods in the first part of the game. You can’t sell your goods until the later half of the game. However, there is enough money so that players aren’t likely to get shut out of the action.<br /></em></span></blockquote><br />As is the case with the next version of the game, sets were valuable, and players needed to win auctions to insure they could complete sets.<br /><br /><p><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><em><span style="font-family:georgia;">JBD: How did playtesting go?</span></em> </span></span></p><br /><p>Ted: Reaction was favorable. My game groups have been pretty good about play testing for me and letting me know their comments. In recent cases one guy in our group has made both of these comments after playing prototypes several times:<br /><br />"Ted, this one is ready, just send it off to someone" and "Ted, I have played it three times and it doesn't work...put it away".<br /><br /><em><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">JBD: Did you have a written version of the rules at that point, or did you just teach it verbally? Did that present any problems? </span></em></p><br /><p>Ted: I probably didn’t have written rules at this point. I jot down the essential items on a piece of paper to make sure I remember the basic rules and any special items. At my first play tests I assume something will have to change. Only after a "solid" play test to I try to upgrade components and add rules.<br /><br />The next logical step for me was an external play test. Fortunately, I had the venue. In those days, Greg Schloesser and few other friends would meet at least once per quarter. We used to call it the "Gathering in the Woods". I decided to take the game there and ask them to try it out. They were willing.<br /><br />Responses were that it was a good game that fell in the "7" rating category. Well, I found this encouraging since I have seen many games published that rate well below a "7". I don't recall any recommended changes so I decided a few more play tests would be in order.<br /><br /><em><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">JBD: I would have been afraid that I was getting biased comments because they came from people I knew. That a "5" to anyone else would have been a "7" to friends. What made you feel that you were getting the unvarnished truth? </span></em><br /><br />Ted: You never know here. I try not to wear my heart on my sleeve. A part of this again is that I do play a lot of games and I have a feel for what I like and don't like, and a little feel for what other gamers may like. If I cannot get one of my games to work, I stop forcing it on people until I can make it better. There is some bias at work with friends, I am sure, but even today I can tell by comments what is working and not working in my prototypes. Today, BTW, I do what I call "blind play testing". My blind testers won't let me play with them and they won't let me answer any questions about the game unless something is very, very confusing.<br /><br />At this point, I asked a group to try it without me and give me comments. The real change came from Frank Branham. Frank is a fine designer in his own right and has vast experience in game play.<br /><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" ></span></p><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Frank Branham is the original and offbeat designer of "Warhamster Rally" and "Dia de los Muertos".</span></blockquote>Ted: Frank was concerned it was just too abstract and plain and needed a theme and a feel. He recommended and suggested that I could accomplish the same goals by perhaps putting the game onto an island with limited areas. This was the major take away I got from this play test session.<br /><br />I worked to adopt the island idea. I spent a bit of time pondering how the island should lay out and what the sections should be. There were important parts of the earlier game that I wanted to keep. The bidding had to be important and would be motivated by the fact that tiles are leaving the board, causing some players to lose actions. To me this was a major goal of the game.<br /><br />So, I laid out what I thought was a good mix on the island sections to force some tough decisions. I put in harbors to let people move to other areas of the board so the game would not get locked into a corner. The island of Valencia was born.<br /><br />Now I felt I needed a theme. So far, the game was purely about its mechanisms and I was like Reiner Knizia in search of a theme. My theme was clearly pasted on.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Ironically, Knizia has said that he often starts with theme. However, the way Knizia approaches theme and spins it into a set of mechanisms is sufficiently abstract that many people feel that the theme is pasted on.<br /></span></blockquote>Ted: I thought about it for quite a bit and took the easy road of sci fi and fantasy to invent a world and why in the heck people would want to collect things.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://sacredchao.cc/wvag/VALENCIA/valencianewrulesfinal.doc">Full rules and fantasy story of Valencia</a></span><br /><br /><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em>JBD: It's a pretty thorough backstory - one that seems more like it came with an American-style, simulation-heavy fantasy game than a modern Euro. Even though it was "pasted on", did it direct your design in any way? </em></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em><br /></em></span></p>Ted: Not really.<br /><br />Now, I had an island lay out and I felt to get the game to the next level, I needed some nice art and a board, etc. By sheer fluke in discussing this with Greg one day, it turn out that his wife, Gail, was a nice artist and like drawing. She agreed to take a crack at the board and pieces. I think she did a wonderful job and just what I asked for. If you look at the board, you will see some areas where I cut and pasted some grass over some paths. This is where later play testing showed my original map needed to be changed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBTpuigj9I/AAAAAAAAACE/N7jXH2SwUkg/s1600-h/Valencia+Combined+Board.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021605560850616274" style="width: 374px; cursor: pointer; height: 441px;" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBTpuigj9I/AAAAAAAAACE/N7jXH2SwUkg/s400/Valencia+Combined+Board.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBU4OigkBI/AAAAAAAAACk/2M6w_GMsQ5s/s1600-h/Red+tile+3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021606909470347282" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; width: 140px; cursor: pointer; height: 163px;" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBU4OigkBI/AAAAAAAAACk/2M6w_GMsQ5s/s200/Red+tile+3.jpg" border="0" /></a>As for the tiles, Gail sent these to me in black and white. I went into MS Paint and added color to make four sets of different colored tiles. That is what you see today. But, the art is just what I asked for!<br /><br /><br /><p><br /></p><br /><p><br /><span style="font-size:0;"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:85%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBXbOigkCI/AAAAAAAAACs/HH-dFE-T9a0/s1600-h/Blue+tile+steal.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021609709789024290" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 148px; cursor: pointer; height: 162px;" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBXbOigkCI/AAAAAAAAACs/HH-dFE-T9a0/s200/Blue+tile+steal.jpg" border="0" /></a></span></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >With a game that has been well received by its playtesters and a set of attractive components, Ted submits it to the experts at the international </span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Hippodice competition. </span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Hippodice regularly receives over a hundred new game submissions. Some are from new designers like Ted Cheatham, and many are from seasoned professionals such as Michael Schacht. Judges include board game enthusiasts from the Hippodice club as well as professionals from game publishing. Games to have emerged from the Hippodice competition include Spiel des Jarhres winner “Mississippi Queen” and “Chinatown”.</span><br /></p><br /><br /><p><br />Ted: 2001. I decide to send my creation to the Hippodice competition. This will tell me how good the game is.<br /><br />Well, the game made it to round two...which was promising but never what you hope for. </p><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_37-igj2I/AAAAAAAAAA8/5fsSmj1qFHI/s1600-h/Silk+Road+Hippodice+letter.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021504719313473378" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_37-igj2I/AAAAAAAAAA8/5fsSmj1qFHI/s400/Silk+Road+Hippodice+letter.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:78%;" >The notice from Hippodice Authors Competition telling Ted Cheatham that Valencia advanced to round two, but not the final round. It includes comments from playtesters criticising the game for being too "dry", lacking tension during rounds, and being too long for what it is. They are definitely encouraging, though - are they also encouraging with games that did not make it into round two?</span><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Ted: I always listen to comments...even if I don't necessarily believe. But, I took these to heart. </span></p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:85%;" ><br /><br /></span></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:85%;" ><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Getting an honorable mention may not be what Ted Cheatham hoped for, but the competition at Hippodice is pretty stiff! Buoyed by this encouragement, Ted continues to develop the game… but suffers a big setback in morale.</span></blockquote></span><br /><br /><p><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Ted: OK, more play testing. The next big play test with changes was at the Gathering. I asked Alan Moon (who I greatly respect as a designer) to take a look. We got in a 4 player game in which I did not play.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Alan's comments were that the theme was really pasted on and the game was too dry.</span> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Ok, here is a guy who knows success and knows what sells, Spiel des Jahres winner. My walk away, this game does not stand a chance, it is time to put it on the shelf.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em>JBD: Did he really come across as flat-out discouraging? Was it that you weren't sure how to take the criticism and turn it into an improvement? Or were you just at a point where you needed something positive to keep going? </em></span></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em><br /></em></span></p></span><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em></em></span>Ted: I think Alan was being fair and honest in his opinion. I think he understands the game industry and he understands what sells. I think I was discouraged because at this point, I really did not know what to do. Maybe I had just invested too much in the game and saw the things I liked in it and saw as working. The bottom line is that I was out of ideas. I really did not know how to fix this problem and liven the game up without taking out the key ideas that I originally wanted in the game.<br /><br /><em><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">JBD: I can see that being a tough crossroads. As you say, the game does what was intended. F</span></em><em><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">inished. But on the other hand, it is not really successful. But does this mean you're at a dead end? Was your goal then to try to make it into something OTHER than what was intended? </span></em><em><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><br /><br /></span></em><br />Ted: At this point, I think I resigned myself to give up. Let's face it, I had a career at the time, family, etc. I play a lot of games and enjoy them and that is what gaming is about. I am not a designer. I gave it a good college try. At this point, I felt that the game did what I intended it to do. I think I decided to just give up the game design thing and spend my gaming time playing good games. It is a lot of work to put together prototypes, rules and then continue to play test and tweak little things.<br /><br />Life is just too short to push an issue that is a losing point and of no real significance.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">Ted “officially” gave up on his game at this point, but we know that the story has a happy ending! It shows how game development, like fairy tales, can take unexpected turns – if the hero is willing to fight! </span></span><br /></blockquote><br /><p>Ted: After a few months I decided that there really is a decent game in there. And, there are some ideas that I really have not seen in any other game. Maybe I just need some help to get this to the next level and bring some excitement into this pasted on theme, dry game.<br /><br /><em><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">JBD: OK, so how did Bruno Faidutti get involved?</span></em><br /><br />Ted: Well, I was true to my word. I put Valencia on the shelf. And, there it stayed for a couple of years. Although I had game ideas pop up now and again, I did not act on them.<br /><br />Some time later, my friend Ty Douds had his first game, "Victory and Honor", published. This is of significance as both Ty and I were play testing our games at Gulf Games II. At the time, we all thought “Victory and Honor” was a great game idea, but that it was too long and complex. Over time, Ty did a wonderful job of streamlining an excellent idea into the game that was eventually published.<br /><br />Right after Victory and Honor came out, Greg Schloesser asked me how Valencia was coming. I mentioned it was dead.... on the shelf. Greg was ever encouraging and said, it takes time and ideas...there are some nice ideas there and you should not let it die.<br /><br />Now my thoughts changed. I thought, "you know, Valencia is not a bad game. At its heart, it does work and has some unique ideas. It just needs help." I still did not know how to fix it. It was time to turn to someone else and ask for help. And, at this point, the idea was to get it published and I felt, selfishly, I should get the help from a published designer because that would add some credibility to the game. My thought process here was this was like book publishing. An unknown author has a heck of a time getting a break. I was a nobody and needed help from a professional. The real question was, who?<br /><br />To me the choice was obvious. My first choice was Bruno Faidutti. He had worked with a lot of people and had so many different style games. </p><br /><p>I had never met Bruno. I went to his web site to find his email address and sent him an email. Basically, I told him I had a game that had done well in Hippodice and it was just dry and not that fun, but...it worked. Would he be interested in working with me to spice it up. Thankfully, he said yes. I sent him the files and we were on our way!<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em>JBD: Wow! I would never have guessed that you didn't know Bruno Faidutti when you invited him to contribute to the game. That's an awful lot of guts - to just contact a well-known designer on that basis.<br /></em></span><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em>So, what were the first issues you addressed with Bruno? </em></span><br /><br />Ted: I sent the email and waited patiently. Bruno responded with something like “let me see what you have and I will let you know”. An objective person would say that he is hedging his bets. Be nice, take a look and one can easily get out of this saying they are busy with other projects. Not me! I am thinking and telling my wife, “ Bruno is going to look at my game!”<br />In hindsight, you wonder why Bruno would be interested at all. Since I did not know him and he had probably never heard of me, he was taking a big chance. Maybe it was the fact that I mentioned Hippodice to him that made a difference. Maybe he was just interested in looking at something new. As he says to this day, the timing was just right. I am very glad it was and that he took the time to look at a game from an “unknown”. </p><br /><p><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><em>JBD: Well, Bruno, what was your reaction when you got the invitation from Ted to contribute to the development of Valencia? Had you gotten "cold" invitations like that before?</em></span><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBXbOigkCI/AAAAAAAAACs/HH-dFE-T9a0/s1600-h/Blue+tile+steal.jpg"></a><p><br /><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_8iOigj4I/AAAAAAAAABQ/rymDDebg0M4/s1600-h/Bruno+cool.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021509774489980802" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 213px; height: 279px;" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_8iOigj4I/AAAAAAAAABQ/rymDDebg0M4/s320/Bruno+cool.jpg" border="0" /></a>Bruno Faidutti: I regularly receive proposals from game designers, usually wannabees but sometimes also well known designers, asking me to help them on a design and make it a collaboration. I get three or four such requests every month, and necessarily decline most of them.<br /><br />From time to time, there's one where I feel both that there is something interesting and that I could add something else which is also interesting. And even when I accept, it doesn't necessarily mean that we will succeed. I think I went on with Valencia because I had heard a bit about Ted on gaming mailing lists and he seemed to be a nice guy, and because the core collecting and trading system sounded interesting. Also, from his email, it seemed he was really open to dramatic changes to the game, which is necessary. My few bad experiences with such requests were usually when we tried to keep too close to the original idea of the original designer, so I always ask "are you ready to change almost everything and end up with something that may look completely different?" It seemed this was clearly the case with Ted, so I decided to try it.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: At what point did you decide to commit to the project?</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbK_TOigkII/AAAAAAAAAEQ/kMZDkH4DwGs/s1600-h/Green+tile+2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5022286871512780930" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbK_TOigkII/AAAAAAAAAEQ/kMZDkH4DwGs/s200/Green+tile+2.jpg" border="0" /></a>Bruno: I told Ted I was ready to try, and he sent me the files for Valencia. I made a copy, playtested it with some friends, and discussed it with them. We all felt there was great potential in the game. I emailed back to Ted, probably with already a few ideas concerning the mechanics and the theme based on our first play of the game.<br /></p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Did you feel that it was close to completion, or that this was really just the beginning?</span><br /></p><p>Bruno: I was sure it was the beginning, since Valencia worked as a game, but had a theme problem, and my experience is that when you change the theme of a game, it leads to many more changes in the systems. My first take on Valencia was to try to find a setting that would make more sense, and see what implications it has for the game.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Ted, I recall you saying earlier that the one core distinct mechanism in the game was the bidding in which one player gets left out. Ted, were you ready to change this mechanism if Bruno suggested it? Because then, I could imagine you feeling that the game may become a good game - but is no longer the one you had a passion to develop.</span><br /><br />Ted: This idea of passing the start player was the one change that I had come up with when I went to Bruno, as was the fact that someone got left out of an action. I think these were two core ideas that were unique in the game, at least to me. But, I really was open to ideas and I think if the ideas are good enough you can convince the other designer of the merit. This process took on a give and take and exchange of ideas. It was like “let’s try this” and we would. We would then get back together to discuss what we liked and didn’t. Over time I think we both kept the two main ideas of the game that I wanted.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Bruno, apart from a general sense that "there is a game here", what did you see as being the essential mechanism that you wanted to build your changes around?</span><br /><br />Bruno: I don't remember exactly now how Valencia played, and exactly what I liked in it, but [the mechanism in which players bid to avoid getting shut out of a turn] is probably one of the ideas I really liked and didn't want to change. And I also felt it did fit very well in a commodity trading game, which was a kind of game I liked and had never designed so far.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: I'll add that I can see the similarities - but also the distinct differences between Valencia and Silk Road. In Silk Road, there is a bid for control - and one player does get left out. But in Silk Road, the player left out is not the lowest bidder. The high bidder passes the turn to any player of his choice, who then does the same, and so on - until there is one player left who gets no action. That’s very different. Also, in Silk Road, being left out is not so bad because you get the proceeds of the following auction. This mechanism I see as the key similarity – and also the key difference - between Valencia and Silk Road. As you mention, Bruno, another key difference is that the game has now a track, and goes from a starting place to an end, which was not the case in Valencia.</span><br /></p><p>Bruno: Yes - Valencia was kind of free form, like a normal map. The high bidder has control of the movement pawn, gets the first choice of adjacent spaces and it goes anywhere adjacent from there.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: I thought that the track was the single freshest idea that was added to the original design. It definitely gives the game a story line as players begin accumulating goods and then hustle to try to sell them off at the most advantageous price. </span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">Bruno, what were some of the very first things you changed?</span><br /><br />Bruno: The first version we made together with Ted was called Nebula's Hoard, and had a science fiction setting. The game worked well, well enough to present it to some publishers, and we still have some hope to have it published, since it feels quite different from Silk Road, with different actions and a very different scoring system. The game was about getting ore from different planets, with all the players taking part of the same expedition in the same big spaceship. I think that the idea of having everything visible from the beginning on a track gave the idea for the Silk Road theme, and then it went quite fast. There have been, if I remember well, fewer versions of Silk Road than of Nebula's Hoard, and this probably means the game was better. Also, the theme feels much stronger.<br /><br />Ted: Bruno did manage to keep the original feel of Valencia. He now used Suns and the system of planets around it similar to the sections of the board in Valencia and he kept the trading and set collecting idea. Also, with limited cubes or planets around the solar system, he kept the "somebody does not get an action" that we both really liked. Additionally, he added some event cards. This game went through three or four variations and lots of play testing with various cube selections, planet powers, and planet mixes.<br /><br />Why did we stop with Nebula's Hoard? My push back was that in this version it was a little too random for my tastes, space games don't sell, and there were some rather large scoring swings. I have heard a similar complaint from Silk Road that the scores can be very out of line. And, I have seen it happen. However, if people are paying attention and involved, the game will be very close. When you play a game and everyone at the table says to a player, "How could you let him have a turn now???!!!! You know what action he will take!" You know that you have a player that is not paying attention.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBnVOigkEI/AAAAAAAAADg/Csy7bt85E5w/s1600-h/Silk+Road+Tiles+on+Board.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021627198895853634" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBnVOigkEI/AAAAAAAAADg/Csy7bt85E5w/s400/Silk+Road+Tiles+on+Board.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The next step was Bruno suggesting tiles much like you find today in Silk Road, and a setting in the desert with a caravan type theme.<br /><br />First the tiles - we played with a mix of characters that eventually became the final ones in the game...Grand Vizier, Thief, etc. But, the original cube tile mix remained fairly constant throughout the design from this point.<br /><br />Bruno suggested a board that looked somewhat like an Elfenland board where you would move from city to city collecting goods and selling goods. I suggested we take the board to a linear model much like you see in Silk Road. This proved to be the design we kept. Also, this is where it went into two colors of tile mix, the Orange and Purple. Basically, you are acquiring as you move along first and then selling in the second half.<br /><br />Next, Bruno who is extremely quick, put together the final tile set and board layout in a nice graphic and we were off to play testing. BTW, Bruno's prototypes were far superior to mine....you can tell he is a professional.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBoC-igkFI/AAAAAAAAADo/p67WDSoe8fc/s1600-h/Ted+and+Bruno+Playing+Silk+Road.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021627984874868818" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbBoC-igkFI/AAAAAAAAADo/p67WDSoe8fc/s320/Ted+and+Bruno+Playing+Silk+Road.jpg" border="0" /></a>Now comes the cool part! Shortly after all this occurred, I met Bruno for the first time at the Gathering of Friends and we played the prototype together !!! My guess is this was April 2004. At this point, we decided it was ready and decided to look for a publisher. We got our contract on February 9, 2005.</p><br /><br /><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Ted, Bruno and Rick Thornquist playing Silk Road together for the first time</span></span><br /></p><br /><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: It seems that the game transitioned from being more of a set collecting game - where players score based on what they've collected - to a trading game - where you try to buy low and sell high. Selling in Silk Road is key, and being able to sell is one of the critical goals you work toward. How did that change come about?</span><br /><br />Ted: This one, to me, just evolved naturally. When Bruno suggested the desert theme and the tiles, it just happened and seemed to work very well. I will give Bruno all the credit for this one.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: The idea of having each player choose the next player to take an action is, as far as I can tell, unique to Silk Road. Why did you move to that, and away from the more obvious choice of high bid goes first, then next high, etc. Were there distinct playtesting problems there that you had to work out?</span><br /><br />Bruno: This is an idea I had long time ago, and thought it could be used some day in some game, but never found the right occasion. Then someday when thinking on Nebula's Hoard / Silk Road it came back to me and I thought that it might well fit there - and it did.<br /><br />Ted: I am glad Bruno was supportive and it stayed in the final version and in my opinion it is key to making the game work.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Do you remember any particular ideas from playtesters that made it into the game?</span><br /></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Ted: Actually, at this point, people played and there were not a lot of suggestions from my playtest groups. This is really why I thought we had hit the mark.</span><br /><br />Bruno: I'm sure the idea of dividing the tiles into two series, for the first and second half of the game, came during playtesting. At one time I even thought of three different parts. but it was not necessary.</p><p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: By the time you were submitting the game, what was your opinion of the game? What were you going through during this time?</p><p>Ted: Once the game was ready, my frustrations were the same as my early frustrations with Valencia. I felt we had a solid game that really should be printed and fit into the family/gamer market as a strong 45-60 minute game. I felt (and still do) the rating for the game should have been 6 - 9 out of 10. We found in pitching the game that this game was not for everyone. Some people really will not like the passing of the start player mechanism which is a core part of the game. Some people will not like the fact that someone will not get and action every turn. Early on, I felt the game could be very mean if you pick on one player. As a matter of fact, this is one of the few games that my wife never played in play testing because she is not a fan of "in your face" type games. Realistically, the game is nicely balanced to compensate players for not getting an action. The other thing we encountered was a company or two said the scores were too wild. Again, if you play this and pay attention it will be a very close game all the way around.<br /></p><p>The real bonus was finding Zev. I had taken a prototype with me to GenCon to show around. He volunteered to look at it and had enough interest to take a copy with him. To Zev's credit, he likes new ideas. Silk Road was right up that alley because it had some unique ideas that worked very well together. And, after playtesting, he knew he liked it and he had several ideas to spiff it up.</p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: One key criticism of Valencia that Ted mentioned was that it was too "dry". This is a criticism I see levelled at many games, and it seems to be the most vague and most difficult to address. If someone said of a game, "it is too chaotic" or "there are not enough decisions", or "there is too much down time", I can imagine specific ways to address that. But how do you make a game less dry?<br /></span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;"></span>Bruno: Well, you could say that dryness can be thematic in desert games, but yes, I did feel this. I even think the game still is a bit dry, with few rules and a rather pedestrian basic system of just swap and sell. However, a more plausible setting, a story arc, and some fun tiles with effects that are a bit out of the main system, such as the thief and the great vizier, are all ways to reduce this "dryness". I also have troubles defining exactly what dryness is in a game, though I have no problems feeling it in a game.<br /></p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: When you playtested, did you encourage negotiation, discourage it, or say nothing? Do you know what people did in practice? I can see this being a game that plays very differently depending on how players interact.</span><br /><br />Bruno: I think this is less about real negotiation than about sniveling, and I always felt that games where you could snivel and try to explain your opponents were fun - as long as it didn't become the heart of the game, which it doesn't in Silk Road. I've never seen players play Silk Road really seriously, remembering every cube taken by every opponent, but I've always seen it played seriously enough so that you can try to explain other players why you were losing. And, of course, there can be some petty vengeance, the thief being very useful for this.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Zev, generally, what do you recall your subjective reactions were once you read the rules?</span> </p><br /><p><a href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_99uigj5I/AAAAAAAAABY/yj_2ugwWLxQ/s1600-h/Zev+headshot.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021511346448011154" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/Ra_99uigj5I/AAAAAAAAABY/yj_2ugwWLxQ/s400/Zev+headshot.jpg" border="0" /></a>Zev Shlasinger: I liked the simplicity of the rules, knowing that the actions were where the complexity lies. The rules also seemed pretty clear.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Did playing the game tend to confirm your initial opinions, or open up a very different set of opinions?</span><br /><br />Zev: Pretty much the game confirmed my initial opinions. The most surprising thing was the short length of play.<br /><br />JBD: What immediate changes did you propose and why?<br /><br />Zev: I believe the main change was disallowing some of the tiles in the last cities because they were useless there. We also added permanent tiles to some cities, solidified the rule to play the game from West to East, etc.<br /></p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: There is, I'm sure, a very big line between "really liking" a game and seeing something that makes you want to put your money on the line and publish it. Where is that line generally, and how did it apply to Silk Road?</span><br /><br />Zev: It's hard to draw a line - it's subjective and differs with each game. I might have a business reason for doing a game or vanity one or a prestige one. Of course I always look for good, but of course my "good" can be different from other's value of "good". In Silk Road, I really like the mechanic of choosing who goes next. I thought that was unique and really had me take notice. I confess I also wanted to do a game with Bruno's name: he has a fan base, is known in the industry, and thought this would be a good opportunity to form a relationship.</p><p>Bruno: And it worked – now we know that we are in the same hotel in Essen, and Zev had a few other prototypes of mine in test.</p><p>Ted: The addition of Zev to the process was very helpful. Zev came up with the idea to add permanent tokens to the board.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: These are bonus actions that the high bidding player gets to take in addition to getting first pick of the regular actions.</span><br /><br />Ted: I thought this made very good sense especially to put them into the choke points where the caravan was forced to move there anyway. This was a very nice incentive to keep the bids up.<br /><br />The next discussion from Zev was the strength and the powers of the various character tokens. Oddly enough, the one that had the most discussion was the “thief” token. We all had ideas and we play tested a few to include things like, take money instead of cubes, look at cubes and pick one of your choice, etc. Of all of the items that we talked about, this one got the most traffic. In the end, we kept the original power of the thief!<br /><br />Also, the end game scoring was initiated by Zev. (This gives points for having majorities in each color of unsold cubes that you have at the end.) After various point allocations in play testing we settled on the rules as they are today. This was a nice addition to give some additional points to players who could not get their cubes sold earlier.</p><p style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Tell us about the finishing touches - adding the historical material and the design of the game board art.<br /></p><p>Ted: This part became a research project. Zev said, ok Silk Road what period? What are the cities? We need artwork to match the time frame. Well, I just had a game board with lines and circles….now I had to figure this out.<br /><br />One of the maps I got looked very much like our board. So, I took that year as the general time frame. Next, I worked very hard combining several Silk Road maps to put actual city names in about the same area as the circles on the board. Some cities on the maps had to be omitted, but generally, you have actual cities on the Silk Road in about the right location on the game board.<br /></p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021858220891738210" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_xBKrsikQqoI/RbE5ceigkGI/AAAAAAAAAD8/ms0qCqxzKUE/s400/SilkRoad-mockup-1.jpg" border="0" /></p><p align="center"><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >Early board art for Silk Road</span></p><p>The board design graphics were next. What came from Zev was a board background without the roads and cities that looked great. However, when the roads and cities got added, it just did not work for us. Although it was functional, Bruno and I both did not care for it. I scanned a section of the Elfenland board and sent it to Zev as an example of how we thought it might look better and more functional. Thanks to Zev who took the time to start over and give us the great looking board we have today.<br /><br />Bruno: I'm also impressed by the graphic work - it's light, discreet, but looks wonderful and fits the game perfectly. </p><p>Ted: Then Zev commissioned the cover art that has remained the same and it is wonderful.<br /><br />Next we wrote a blurb for the back of the box, and with the help of Patrick Korner and Henning Kroepke, we got some German rules.<br /></p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">JBD: Please offer some thoughts on the final product. I'm especially interested in not just hearing that you like it, but any thoughts on how it compares with your vision of the game - and what it might become - when you first got involved. If it's better, missing something, or just different - in what ways is that the case?</span><br /><br />Bruno: My main surprise when receiving my set was how similar the functional design was with my prototype - but after all, it probably means that my prototype was well made. I really liked the added printed tiles as chief of the caravan bonus, which bring some more variety in the game; but unfortunately I didn't playtest enough the other last minute addition, the two points bonus for color majority. If I had, I would have noticed that it didn't add anything to the game.</p><p><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">J<span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">BD</span>: Also - I've seen that some players have complained about the turn-passing mechanism. Some seem to feel that it can be too arbitrary, that it can freeze a player out. So please feel encouraged to talk about that mechanism and what in your opinion makes it "just right".</span><br /><br />Bruno: I think it's exactly the opposite - it's a balancing mechanism, since you are usually given your turn at the best times when you are behind - or perceived as being behind, which brings back the sniveling issue...<br /></p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Ted: Silk Road definitely would not have happened without Bruno who is just incredible to work with. I hope that we can do another project together one day. And, it would not have happened without Zev who was also wonderful to work with. He showed us everything at every step, he involved us in all decisions. I just want to say thanks to Zev, Bruno and the West Virginia Appalachian Gamers who put up with all of the playtesting and gave me encouragement.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">JBD: I've played Silk Road several times and what always strikes me is how such an effective game comes out of so simple a set of rules. The reaction to the rules is invariably "That's it?" It soon becomes apparent that these few mechanisms - bidding for control, picking an action, and choosing the next player - deliver exactly what is needed.<br /><br />With such a simple rule set, it might even seem as though the entire game was created in a day. As is the case when playing Silk Road, getting it right is a matter of choosing the winning path from many alternatives, of selecting the one action that pays off best, and of knowing whom to trust with the next decision.<br /></span></span></span>Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-6591691849382733602006-11-06T13:34:00.000-08:002007-01-20T21:22:48.067-08:00Are Game Designers Auteurs?<a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2006/11/are-game-designers-auteurs.html"><span style="font-size:78%;">Printable version<br /></span></a><br />When I created The Journal of Boardgame Design, one of my goals was to pull the nature of board game writing up a notch, beyond game reviews that were intended to be buyer's recommendations and into the level of critical analysis. Treat games as an artform that could be analyzed in the same ways that music, painting, literature and film are treated. If this seems to raise game design to a level that isn't warranted, we should remember that there were times when dance and film were regarded as merely recreation and entertainment. As game design has become more ambitious, so should its criticism.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Truffaut.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: right;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Truffaut.jpg" border="0" /></a>In the 1950's, Francois Truffaut advocated looking at film in a new way which became known as "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory">Auteur Theory</a>". According to Wikipedia:<br /><br /><em>"The auteur theory holds that a film, or an entire body of work, by a director (or, less commonly, a producer) reflects the personal vision and preoccupations of that director, as if she or he were the work's primary "author" (auteur).<br /><br />"Truffaut's theory maintains that all good directors (and many bad ones) have such a distinctive style or consistent theme that their influence is unmistakable in the body of their work."</em><br /><br />For a time, <span style="font-style: italic;">auteur theory</span> was of interest only to academics and intellectuals, while ordinary filmgoers could care less about who the director of a film was. Your grandparents probably never talked about seeing the latest Billy Wilder movie (though they might have been aware of the latest Alfred Hitchcock movie.) Still, public awareness of the role of directors became widespread through movie critics who promoted the latest foreign film directors (including Truffaut), and in the 1980's the earth cracked open when names like Stephen Spielberg and Martin Scorcese became part of our daily vocabulary.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/knizia%20portrait.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/knizia%20portrait.jpg" border="0" /></a>It seems as though we are coming in to a time when game designers are beginning to have the same visibility that film directors began to have thirty years ago. As in the 1970's, the talk is mostly among devotees, and mostly about Europeans. As once film had it's Truffaut, Bergman and Fassbinder, today boardgaming has its Teuber, Kramer and Knizia. Once there was a reawakened appreciation of Howard Hawks and today we rediscover the groundbreaking work of Sid Sackson.<br /><br />Before we elevate game designers from being artisans to being auteurs we ought to ask: does this comparison really make sense? Is there really a basis in comparing games to films, music or literature? Can one really look at the body of work of a game designer and make out a distinctive style or consistent theme? To the extent that it is possible - is it of any consequence?<br /><br />I didn't initially set out to write an article that questioned the value of examining the collected works of game designers. I set out to find a game designer whose body of work I could analyze, hoping to create a series around this. I soon hit a wall. It is difficult to identify a meaningfully consistent style in most designers. Even Reiner Knizia, who tended to create perfect efficient miniatures early in his career with games such as "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/46">Medici</a>", "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/118">Modern Art</a>", and "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/300">Tutankamen</a>", soon moved on to create sprawling (by Eurogame standards) games such as "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/42">Euphrates & Tigris</a>" and "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/204">Stephensons Rocket</a>", which seem to have sprung out of an entirely different mind.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/traders%20of%20genoa.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/traders%20of%20genoa.jpg" border="0" /></a>Then there is the question of what merit there is in the exercise. Take Rudiger Dorn. We could look at his three best games and indeed see a pattern. In "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1345">Traders of Genoa</a>", "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9216">Goa</a>", and "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/13642">Louis XIV</a>", Dorn uses a common mechanism to limit the choices that a player has. In each case, choices are laid out on an orthogonal board and players place markers on locations along a path (Call it the "poop dropping" mechanism). It's a nifty way to structure player choices, and best of all, it's a pattern! We've successfully applied <span style="font-style: italic;">auteur theory</span> to game design!<br /><br />Okay, so let's compare that observation with one that film critic Peter Rainer makes about director Brian De Palma in a <a href="http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-ca-depalma24sep24,0,6512079.story">recent Los Angeles Times essay</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Despite the super-sophistication of his technique, in essence De Palma's movies express, at least for men in the audience, how sex was experienced as an adolescent. ... They capture the rage and mortification, the guilt, the tingle of voyeurism.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"One of the most unnerving things about De Palma's films, even more than their eruptive, gargoyle terror, is the suggestion that these adolescent anxieties are naggingly ever-present. The tyranny of sexual desire, woman as the Other — for most men, these fears still fly."</span><br /><br />In contrast with Rainer's observations about Brian De Palma as an auteur, our own observations about Rudiger Dorn seem pretty lame.<br /><br />The comparison, you might say, is unfair. A movie has a story; it has characters. It is meant to express something - whether it is the wonders of childhood, the anxieties of adolescence, or the alienation of adulthood. A game can't be expected to do all that or any of that. After all, it's just... a game. It's just a bunch of mechanisms.<br /><br />Perhaps a game designer may not be able to express anything of consequence through his mechanisms, but what about his choice of theme?<br /><br />The importance of theme no doubt varies across designers. Generally, being a game designer is a poor choice of occupation if theme is your intended means of expression.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/struggle%20of%20empires.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/struggle%20of%20empires.jpg" border="0" /></a>Martin Wallace has chosen to maintain a high level of control in his games. He publishes mostly through companies such as Winsome and Warfrog, which he has close relations with, and which have either published his games directly or through licenses with companies that do not change his games. His game mechanisms tend to be closely related to the themes in his games. In a game such as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9625">Struggle of Empires</a>, Wallace has chosen to express his thoughts on the drivers behind imperialism, and these thoughts are very clear in the game play.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/wongar%20men.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/wongar%20men.jpg" border="0" /></a>Most designers, however, find their themes to be controlled at the whim of publishers. Alan Moon and Richard Borg created a game which aimed to capture the spirit of combat in feudal Japan. By the time it was presented by Goldsieber as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/566">Wongar</a>, the game was changed by its publisher to be about aboriginal Australian rituals!<br /><br />In an interview in <a href="http://gametable.blogspot.com/2006/04/reiner-knizia-by-numbers.html">The Game Table</a>, Reiner Knizia spoke of the relative lack of importance that theme has for for German publishers.<br /><br /><em>"In America, the theme is seen as the game where as in the European the game mechanics and the game system are seen as the game." Knizia tells a story about when he took a game prototype to America. It had an Egyptian theme and when an American publisher saw the theme they said, "We are not interested in this game, we have a game about Egypt and we don't need another." ... A few weeks later he ... showed the same game to a German publisher. "Oh, we are just in preparation of an Egyptian-themed game, so the Egyptian theme wouldn't work for us. But let's see the game first and then we can see what we'll do about the theme."<br /></em><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/mark%20twain.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/mark%20twain.jpg" border="0" /></a>Imagine Mark Twain's editor reviewing "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and telling him: "We loved the book and we'd like to publish it. We've kept the basic story about a trip down a river on a raft, only now we've set it in China, and it's about a spice trader who leaves his company to join a local man on a search for a ruby studded statue of Buddha that can make them both rich."<br /><br />Twain would probably have taken up another profession - something more honest and less prone to meddling, like accounting. Game designers carry on, unfazed.<br /><br />So if a game's mechanisms don't express anything meaningful, and a game designer can't even control the theme of his game, what is left?<br /><br />Reiner Knizia does believe that a game designer expresses his personal vision through his work. In his interview for The Game Table, he says:<br /><br />"I think that every designer has his own handwriting. I am a scientist and that influences my character and how I see the world. So maybe my games have more of the analytical side stressed, not because I am doing this in awareness but more because that's who I am and that's how my world looks like. My approach is that the game should have very simple rules and depth of play comes out of these simple and unified rules. "<br /><br />Knizia describes here not just a sort of mechanism, or a technique, but rather a guiding philosophy that indeed does reflect his personal vision. I emphasize the word "personal". Why should the rules be simple and unified? Do they make for a better game? Knizia offers no explanation, nor need he offer one. These principles are simply an expression of his personality.<br /><br />A game with many rules designed to encourage players to explore the nooks and crannies in its mechanisms can be an excellent game - but it would not likely be a Knizia game. Reiner Knizia would of course never have invented a game like "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/26">Age of Renaissance</a>", but I think that even "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2651">Power Grid</a>" would have looked very different if designed by Knizia. Power Grid has relatively involved rules concerning the changes that occur every time the game enters a new "Phase"as the power plant market gets manipulated and supplies of commodities change. Specific rules create handicaps for leading players. Power Grid has been approached like a work of engineering in which a mechanism may be added to solve a specific problem. Knizia describes himself as a scientist - which along with his stated approach to game design implies that he believes function is more of a consequence of natural laws than an active attempt to manipulate them.<br /><br />Game designers become auteurs when their style reflects not just a frequently used mechanism but rather an entire approach to gaming, and implies what they believe a game ought to be. In the case of Knizia the scientist, games manifest the complex possibilities that emerge from relatively simple natural laws. If Reiner Knizia - the game designer - is indeed a scientist, he is probably a physicist.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/faidutti%20characature.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/faidutti%20characature.gif" border="0" /></a>The games of Bruno Faidutti have sometimes been criticized for having too many chance and chaotic elements in them. I imagine his response would be: "guilty, proud of it." Faidutti seems to revel in unpredictibility, and wants his players to share in the fun. He pretty much declared his attitude to the world in one of his earliest published designs: "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/227">Knightmare Chess</a>". That game starts with the great Western classic game, but gives players cards which allow them to muck around with the rules in unpredictible ways.<br /><br />To add unpredictibility to chess is a little like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It takes a certain kind of person to do that. More than anything, it tells you a little about what his idea of "fun" is.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/citadels%20diplomat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/citadels%20diplomat.jpg" border="0" /></a>In "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/478">Citadels</a>", Faidutti's most successful and celebrated game, players target each other with their special powers but in a highly unpredictible way. For example, a player who has taken the role of the "thief" can choose a <em>character</em> whom he plans to rob - but can only make a hunch as to which player he is actually robbing because players choose their characters secretly. This can lead to a lot of grumbling both from the thief, who may have targeted a player who has nothing to steal, and especially from a player who was trailing and became the unintended target (and especially when I'm that player!).<br /><br />Faidutti's games are often described as being "chaotic" and it's rarely intended as a compliment. The pattern in his games are however so unmistakable that it is clear that Bruno Faidutti revels in the chaos, builds it into the games intentionally, and regards unpredictibility as an essential part of the fun in gaming. I think that the only way to properly appreciate many of his games is to play them in the spirit intended - partly as a battle of wits, but equally as a wild ride. Climb onto the bull and hold on!<br /><br />This attitude toward finding the fun in a game can manifest itself even into the simplest things - like whether a card game should have a player draw his card before or after his turn. On his <a href="http://www.faidutti.com/">website</a>, Faidutti <a href="http://www.faidutti.com/index.php?Module=divers&id=446">describes the difference</a>:<br /><br /><em>"The 'draw a card, then play a card' rule ... strengthens the surprise and fun aspect of the game, to the detriment of deep thought and strategy. During opponents’ turns, one will try to think of what one will do next, but will also day-dream of the card one could draw when one’s turn comes. This card, when drawn, may cause some impulsive reaction, and may be sometimes a bad move – <strong>but that’s an important part of the game fun</strong>. The 'play a card, then draw a card' rule emphasizes on strategic planning. It means one can think of all the possible moves, and check their possible effects, before one’s turn comes. "</em><br /><br />From everything we've seen about Bruno Faidutti so far, his preference should be no surprise:<br /><br /><em>"(Play a card, draw a card) sure makes the game deeper and more challenging, but it also makes it feel less fun and less natural."</em><br /><br />Reiner Knizia and Bruno Faidutti are two of the most stylistically assertive auteurs in the game world. You may or may not like their games, but the reasoning behind your opinion is likely to be closely related to the difference between what you find to be fun and what each designer believes to be so. This strong design philosophy is what separates game auteurs from journeymen whose designs lack personal style.<br /><br />It is really a strong design philosophy and not particular mechanics that define the auteur. When evaluating a designer, the interesting question is: "What effect does he want to achieve?" and not "What technique does he tend to rely on?"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Union%20Pacific%20Cards.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Union%20Pacific%20Cards.jpg" border="0" /></a>Compare <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/9">Alan Moon</a> and the team of <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/7">Wolfgang Kramer</a> and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/42">Michael Kiesling</a>. In many of Alan Moon's games, players draw cards from a face-up selection (<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/10">Elfenland</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/94">Union Pacific</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9209">Ticket to Ride</a>). Often players are given from one to three actions in a turn (draw cards or use cards in both Union Pacific and Ticket to Ride, the limited actions in Reibach/Get the Goods or Andromeda). On the other hand, Kramer & Kiesling have frequently used action point mechanisms where players get from 6-10 AP in a turn with myriad possibilities on how to spend them (<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/88">Torres</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/54">Tikal</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/855">Java</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2955">Mexica</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/21287">Bison</a>). The obvious reason that each designer tends to reuse his mechanisms is that the mechanism works, is reliable, and is flexible enough to solve certain design problems in many games.<br /><br />Apart from that, each technique reflects a different philosophy. By presenting users with three or four card choices, Alan Moon is pushing some unpredictibility into the lap of his players and forcing them to choose between some very limited options. The chance and unpredictibility of the choices forces the user to adapt to the unexpected, and those key basic alternatives ("play a card or draw a card?" are the essence of the "<a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory3.shtml">Agonizing Decision</a>". In contrast, Kramer & Kiesling prefer to be far more open ended. Their gamers' games challenge a player by dumping a large quantity of resources into his lap, presenting him with decision trees that have an intricate network of branches, and demand that the player builds a strategy which uses these resources most effectively.<br /><br />Alan Moon seems to see the greatest joy in gaming as confronting hard decisions. Kramer and Kiesling see the joy come from the challenge of managing resources and exploiting opportunities.<br />That pattern has more meaning if it can be applied to other games which don't use the same mechanisms as card drafts or action points. For example, in <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1041">San Marco</a>, Alan Moon gives players limited hard decisions - but with an entirely different mechanism. He gives one player a series of selected action cards and challenges him to divide them into stacks which his opponents may choose from. Then he gives the remaining players the very limited - but no less agonizing - responsibility to choose the one stack with the most useful actions and least painful penalties.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Hacienda%20cards.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: left; cursor: pointer;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Hacienda%20cards.jpg" border="0" /></a>When Wolfgang Kramer created "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/19100">Hacienda</a>", he used a card drafting mechanism similar to that found in games such as "Union Pacific" and Ticket to Ride, but he puts these cards to a much more open ended use than is typically seen in Alan Moon's games. In Moon's "Union Pacific" the cards a player draws are fairly passive assets. You draw them, you play them in front of you, and hopefully you score with them. Even in "Ticket to Ride", players have very specific paths that they are trying to take, and they draw cards they need in order to complete those paths. The tension comes from deciding when to draw, when to play, and from dealing with the need to make detours. It is usually self evident where a particular set of cards needs to be placed for a player to achieve his goals. On the other hand, the cards in Hacienda are open ended resources which can often be placed in many different places. Having a set of any cards is just the beginning of the challenge to the player who needs to construct a plan on how to use them most effectively.<br /><br />Two designers take a similar mechanism - a multiple choice card draft - but treat the use of the cards in entirely different ways. Each use reflects what its respective designer regards to be the interesting challenge in a game.<br /><br />How, then, are we to interpret games such as Kramer's "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/17240">That's Life</a>", a family game which offers players very limited choices? How does such a simple game fit in as a part of the designer's stylistic signature? I think that the most honest answer is: "it doesn't." Game designers, especially professionals, need to develop a large number of games every year to be economically viable. All of them will to some degree reflect the designer's values, but many will still be journeymen games that are principally created just to meet the needs of publishers and the public.<br /><br />Another reason a designer may venture outside his style is just to experiment and mix it up a little. So from Reiner Knizia we'll see a game like "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9446">Blue Moon</a>", which has lots of different cards<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/warrior%20knights%20board.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/warrior%20knights%20board.jpg" border="0" /></a> with different powers, and seems a little elaborate for a Knizia game (although its rules are, true to form, very simple.) It seemed very out-of-character when Bruno Faidutti worked on the redevelopment of "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22038">Warrior Knights</a>", a long and relatively complex war game, but there it is. Of course, sometimes experimentation is also a way of moving on to something new permanently. We may never again see Reiner Knizia offer up more minimalist masterpieces in the mold of "Modern Art" and "Medici" again (I swear - that run of "M's" was NOT intentional!).<br /><br />Finally, sometimes an auteur's fingerprints may be a little hidden. The task of decoding and understanding the art of game designers is in its infancy, and in time, as the hobby grows and more people become fascinated with this issue, new minds will discover patterns that are overlooked today. "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/204">Stephensons' Rocket"</a> is often regarded as uncharacteristically involved for a Reiner Knizia game. Yet it has only four pages of rules and takes about thirty paragraphs to explain. Compare that with Kramer and Kiesling's "Mexica", which was described as "family friendly" when it came out, and yet has ten pages of rules and about ninety paragraphs. Knizia really does stick to his word when he talks of creating games with "simple and unified rules" even when he slips to the complex side of the spectrum. Switching to film again, there may have been a time when it seemed only coincidental that movies such as "Sunset Boulevard", "Some Like It Hot" and "The Apartment" sprung from the same mind, that of Billy Wilder, but in time admirers have come to see the sexual cynicism that unites them all.<br /><br />Indeed there is a Catch-22 that impedes our ability to comfortably see the auteur behind the game designer. In order for a designer to really establish his stylistic handwriting, he needs to design and publish many games. But any designer who does so must increasingly design some of his games for purely economic reasons, to satisfy the tastes of a large public audience. Those tastes may or may not coincide with what especially interests the designer.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/attia.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/attia.jpg" border="0" /></a>Some of the most highly rated games to have been published in recent years are not from the great well-established auteurs we've mentioned above, but instead are games from new designers with little or no track record which we can examine for trends. What will the fifth, sixth or tenth game by William Attia, designer of <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18602">Caylus</a>, be like? Future games will hold new secrets to unlock. Some designers will develop strong styles in their games, while others may produce excellent games but without developing a strong personal style. For many of us players, the joy comes not only from the playing but also from the appreciation of the person behind the game.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-40316046127250952952006-10-09T12:52:00.000-07:002006-10-09T13:20:42.404-07:00The Well Constructed Game - Reader's CommentsThere were two people who responded publicly to "The Well Constructed Game", along with a few private emails.<br /><br />One theme that came up a few times questioned my experience with Oasis. In my playing, I've never found the threat of being closed out on the game board to be very consequential. That's not to say it never happened at all, but it was infrequent and tended to have a marginal effect on the players. People who wrote in had different experiences with the game, finding that the board had a very significant effect.<br /><br />I mention this just to hedge my own opinions. I've only played the game a few times (because, after all, my experience wasn't favorable). However, I don't feel that uncomfortable with my criticism because:<br /><br />1) The game has lots of other problems (most especially, the auction mechanism in which you neither know what you're bidding with nor what you're bidding for.)<br /><br />2) The point was just to illustrate how if a game board isn't constructed well, and doesn't sufficiently threaten to close off a player's options, the effect is to create a boring superfluous mechanism.<br /><br />3) Hey, even a "review" is typically based on just a few playings and is similarly limited.<br /><br />I always feel a great responsibility to be fair to a game I criticize, though.<br /><br />Richard Abrams questioned whether my (modest) complaint with Caylus, that it has inferior privelege tracks, can't be mitigated by players tweaking the rules.<br /><br /><em>"...what's stopping us from re-doing the favor track to make each of the tracks approx. equal in value? ... Tweaking the favor track should be easy, and would allow players to choose the track that best fit into the strategy they were pursuing."</em><br /><br />It's not easy. It requires playtesting (in a 3 hour game) to properly balance. And that's the job of the designers. Yes, any game's problem can theoretically be solved by the players, but then it's a different game. I think it's fair to say that a Well Constructed Game doesn't need to be stamped "Assembly Required".<br /><br />Markmist agrees that the hard work comes in playtesting:<br /><br /><em>"To design a "well constructed game" is an exhaustive process - one in which you need to constantly be analyzing playtests (looking for what works and what doesn't work)."</em><br /><br />Markmist writes as though he himself is a designer. Are you?<br /><br />He also agrees that Caylus makes much better use of the different commodity types (cube colors) than does Keythedral:<br /><br /><em>"I played Caylus first and then played Keythedral and I felt that Keythedral was the vastly inferior game based on the points you mentioned. The color of the cubes in Keythedral seemed inconsequential and arbitary compared to Caylus."</em><br /><br />Perhaps I'm too cautious, but I feel more comfortable praising a well rated game (on the Boardgamegeek) and criticizing one with a mediocre rating. But Keythedral, with its 7.5 rating, is a game in which I feel that the Emperor has no clothes. I can see the appeal: the whole way of building cottages and claiming resources is really <em>fascinating</em>. However, every time I played it, I found that there seemed to be little cause and effect going on in that system. You can bid for control and get totally screwed. You can hang back and see things just fall into your lap.<br /><br />I also agree with Markmist that Through the Desert is an exceptionally Well Constructed Game, and one of my favorites. See my article on Story Arc for more details.<br /><br />Coming attractions:<br />My next article will examine how possible it is to identify a specific style in the works of any given game designer. I am trying (foolishly!) to get it out within a reasonable time - hopefully within about a month of my last article.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-51099011689108197822006-09-25T13:58:00.000-07:002007-01-20T21:05:30.749-08:00The Well Constructed Game<span style="font-size:78%;"><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2006/09/well-constructed-game.html">Printable Version</a></span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Dealers%20choice%20car.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Dealers%20choice%20car.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Some board games seem constructed like a Mercedes and some seem contructed like a Yugo. Some games respond actively to every touch of the pedal and hug the road on every twist of the wheel, while some have trouble shifting and then bang around noisily from all the loose connections.<br /><br />In game terms I mean that some games have all of their mechanisms tightly tuned, where every rule presents an agonizing decision, and every decision affects your game, while some games are thrown together, with rules that hardly matter and frequent decisions that are barely relevant.<br /><br />Even if the latter game "basically works" it lacks the thrill of the feeling you get when a game has been trimmed and tuned. That's what The Well Constructed Game is: one which is not only fun, but which has all of its mechanisms tied together, effective, and purposeful. In this sense, The Well Constructed Game truly is a work of art - it has an aesthetic thrill that goes beyond its basic function of entertainment and competition. This artistry is very difficult to pull off and is the mark of a great designer.<br /><br />I want to talk here about compactness and elegance in a game design - deliberately avoiding what neccessarily makes it "fun". In admiring The Well Constructed Game, I don't want to imply that this characteristic is either neccessary nor sufficient for a game to be good. But we can certainly admire it when we see it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Modern%20Art%20Card.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/400/Modern%20Art%20Card.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>For much of his early career, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/2">Reiner Knizia</a> was especially admired for how much good game he got out of some incredibly simple designs. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/118">Modern Art</a> is a terrific example of a very simple and Well Constructed Game from this era. The basic structure of the game requires players to maximize their income both when they sell works of art (cards) to other players, and then later when they sell the art back to the bank. What drives the game so wonderfully is the scoring mechanism which creates a spectrum of implications for the players. Basically, the cards auctioned off come in one of five suits ("artists"), and the artist whose works have been most auctioned in that round pays the most. Players therefore have motivations to promote the auction of artists whose cards they hold in their hands - knowing that this will make them fetch a higher price - and they have motivation to auction off cards by artists they've already bought in the round - thereby bolstering their value at pay off time. Additionally, Knizia incorporates an excellent scoring bomb by having the values of paintings accumulate each turn - but still paying zero if that artist isn't in one of the top three positions. With just an auction and a well designed scoring mechanism, Knizia creates a very tense and engaging game. Every element in the scoring mechanism has a way of working to create strategic decisions for the players.<br /><br />Actually, one could fairly argue that there is a supefluous mechanism in the game. There are 4 different ways that a card may be auctioned, and each card specifies how that card is auctioned. It might be through an open outcry, or a closed bid auction for example. These alternatives definitely add color to the game, but are they neccessary? I think that they're a little fiddly, and they detract from the game's basic elegance - but I love 'em anyway. I suppose that this shows that being Well Constructed is a nice thing - but it's not everything.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/El%20Grande%20setup.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/400/El%20Grande%20setup.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The Well Constructed Game is efficient but it need not be simple. It is not important that there are very few rules - only that every rule contributes significantly to the game play. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/7">Wolfgang Kramer</a> and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/8">Richard Ulrich</a> created a miraculous design in "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/93">El Grande</a>". In El Grande, players place wooden cubes from their "court" supply onto any of nine regions on the board, in an attempt to get first, second or third place leadership positions during the game's three scoring rounds. Essentially, three mechanisms drive the game, and each one is a doozy. The first is that players must bid for turn order in each turn- which is key because early players have their choice of "Action Cards" which can give great advantages. Gnashing against this, is the fact that the higher your bid to go first in the round, the fewer "caballeros" (wood cubes) you'll have in your supply to place on the board. Finally - Kramer and Ulrich create an extremely effective tool to govern where players may place their cubes at any moment - they must be into a region adjacent to the "king", but not in the same region as the king itself. Moreover, the king is moved each turn - with the right to control his placement governed by the player who earlier bid for that right. As anyone who has played El Grande knows, this simple rule governing the king and his placement creates a spectrum of tactical decisions for the players.<br /><br />Notice also how these three mechanisms mesh with each other. You want to control the king to place your caballeros in the best position. To do that, you need to bid high for that right. But the higher you bid, the fewer caballeros you make available to yourself. The interaction of its mechanisms, the dramatic effect each mechanism has on game play, and the agonizing decisions they place on players all combine to make El Grande a supremely Well Constructed Game.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Garden%20Competition.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Garden%20Competition.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>I first noticed the value of a Well Constructed Game when I was playing a game I found to be poorly constructed: the self-published <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12188">Garden Competition</a> by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/3838">Ken Stevens</a>. Garden Competition is by no means a bad game, but what struck me was just how many different rules and mechanisms seemed to not achieve their intended effect. For example, a key aspect of the game is the fact that players must decide which flowers to plant. Of the dozen or so different types, only certain ones are worth points at the end of the game. There is an elaborate system in which each player has slightly different information on which flowers - or colors of flowers - will score. Players are expected to deduce which flowers are valuable by observing their opponent's behavior. The problem is that deduction is either trivial or unneeded. If an opponent plants a rose, it means either "red" or "rose" is worth points. If you can get a rose - plant it. If not... well then there are so many *other* flowers to focus on, you may as well just ignore it.<br /><br />This looseness and clutteredness in design shows up in the work of seasoned designers as well. If a Well Constructed Game is one with no excess baggage, then it's easier to appreciate tight design by looking at games by otherwise excellent and respected designers that seem burdened by superfluous mechanisms and inconsequential game play. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9027">Oasis </a>by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/9">Alan Moon</a> and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/235">Aaron Weisblum</a> and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/4099">Keythedral </a>by <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/134">Richard Breese</a> are examples of designs with rules and mechanisms that have a disproportionately low consequence on game play and strategy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Oasis.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Oasis.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Oasis is an unfortunate example of a boardgame where nothing that happens on the board is all that interesting. Players collect tiles in 3 different land types, trying to gain large clusters of adjacent tiles. But unlike a similar mechanism in <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/531">Merchants of Amsterdam</a> by Reiner Knizia, it is rare to find oneself threatened with being cut off or enclosed. Oasis tends tco have fairly large areas to play one's tiles, and there are no tactical objectives besides getting a lot of them all together. In contrast, Merchants of Amsterdam requires players to lay adjacent clusters of tiles in the sections of the city, but the grid is narrow (2xn), and littered with strategic points (bridges) which encourage players to play tiles where they otherwise wouldn't want to. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Merchants%20of%20Amsterdam.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Merchants%20of%20Amsterdam.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The effect in Oasis is a feeling of pointlessness and disappointment. Here is this evocative board with placement rules and the promise of interesting strategy. Eventually players find that their choices aren't all that important, that it is unlikely that they will be cramped in, and that the feeling of tension was false.<br /><br />In no way does this break the game. It remains entirely playable. But by having its board not finely tuned, the game ends up feeling a little limp and disappointing. Players have a sense of putting tiles on the board for little purpose.<br /><br />Keythedral suffers from the problem of having needless distinctions for its commodities. Keythedral is a little like Settlers of Catan in the way that players collect five different types of resources by having cottages and workers on tiles which produce goods each turn. Collecting certain combinations are important at the beginning of the game in order your upgrade cottage or to build fences which help you defensively. However, soon into the game the primary use of resources is to spend them in particular combinations in order to buy tiles which are worth victory points. As the game progresses, larger quantities of resources are needed to buy bigger tiles worth even more VP's.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Keythedral.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Keythedral.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Pretty cool until you start to realize that this entire mechanism barely matters. There are so many tiles that will come available in so many different combinations that any player has no urgency to take any particular resource type. Nor is there much need to rush to take that perfect tile when it comes up. If you just hold on, you'll find the tile you need for whatever resource cubes you have. (A limit on the number of cubes you can hold would have been effective.) Furthermore, the amount of VP's you get per cube doesn't really change throughout the game. Early on you get few VP's for few cubes, and later you get lots of VP's for lots of cubes - but the value is pretty much proportional. There is neither much incentive to spend your cubes early nor to save them for later. What seems to be a series of tactical choices for the players aren't really choices at all because they hardly make any difference. Only in the last game turn or two, when future VP tiles become limited, does the urgency to manage your purchases become tense - and suddenly the game picks up a little.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/1600/Caylus%20tiles.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2665/2601/400/Caylus%20tiles.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Compare this to the <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/5629">William Attia</a> game <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18602">Caylus</a>, which also uses different types of commodity cubes, but far more effectively. In Caylus, players have many different uses for their commodities - to buy tiles, to help construct the castle, or for special features such as the "joust". In fact, commodity cubes used in the castle have great flexibility as well: the only restriction is that of three cubes, one is "food" and that all three cubes are different colors. With such flexibility, you would expect that players would be unconcerned about which particular color of cube they pick up. In fact, the distinction among colors works extremely well. For one thing, although castles tend to need food, jousts need cloth, and tiles are hungry for wood and stone, each choice has different strategic implications. So while a player may almost always be able to find a use for his cubes, he needs to manage his production in order to achieve the particular strategic goals he has set for himself. Furthermore, any of these uses - tiles, castle, or joust - can't be chosen at will. The ability to joust or to build tiles is in short supply for each turn, and there are tactical reasons that a player may want to contribute to the castle ALOT on this turn, but not at all on the next turn. Finally, while a player who gets shut out of his choices can always accumulate cubes for another day, timing is much more important in Caylus than it is in Keythedral. A tile built this turn has greater opportunity to earn VP's. The need to delay a castle contribution can mean missing out on getting a bonus or stealing the majority favor from another player. In practice, players find that they need to plan carefully to take and spend the right combinations of cubes - and they need to desperately create alternative plans when their original plan doesn't go as expected.<br /><br />The one thing that holds me back from calling Caylus a Well Constructed Game is that annoying matter of the unbalanced favor table. In Caylus, a player will occasionally earn "favors" and he has a choice of four different types to take. Of these, one type (commodity cubes) seems so weak that players hardly ever pick it, and one (money) is sufficiently underpowered that players typically use it only as a fall back or occasional choice. How much tighter and more satisfying the game would have been had each favor created its own strategic path! Fortunately, this doesn't hurt the game that much. You can always ignore those paths and they are not a major part of the game. This is very different from the case with Oasis where players must use the board constantly only to feel that they are spinning their wheels whenever they do so.<br /><br />I am not a board game designer, but my belief is that playtesting is the most important contribution to a Well Constructed Game. Designers need to brainstorm. They need to come up with lots of creative ideas, and in many cases, there is little way to distinguish between what is working and what is superfluous without seeing the mechanism in action. Is the board too big to force players into <a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/gametheory3.shtml">Agonizing Decisions</a>? How often are people using all the options presented to them (and how often do they win with the less popular ones?) When I wrote my series of Game Theory 101 articles for The Games Journal, all of the ideas I had were addititve in nature. What do designers put in a game that cause its complexion to change and create a <a href="http://thegamesjournal.com/articles/gametheory1.shtml">Story Arc</a>? Where are the <a href="http://thegamesjournal/articles/gametheory2.com">bombs </a>that place players in do-or-die situations? What <a href="http://thegamesjournal/articles/gametheory4.com">conditions </a>can be imposed to force players to constantly reevaluate their positions? The Well Constructed Game is the product of a reductive process. What stuff was added to the game that isn't making a difference? What decisions <span style="font-style: italic;">aren't</span> agonizing - and can they simply be eliminated?<br /><br />I've spoken here about the value of a game having no superfluous elements. Of course, a game succeeds on the basis of what it <span style="font-style: italic;">does</span> have and not what it doesn't have. So appreciating a Well Constructed Game is mostly a matter of aesthetics. It is an opportunity for us game-lovers to simply admire the perfection in a board game design above and beyond the hours we spend immersed playing it.<br /><br />This is what I am hoping to achieve in this journal with every article. A greater pleasure in the love of The Game.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-8626351656420616012006-09-08T13:17:00.000-07:002006-09-08T13:20:57.658-07:00Taking Care of Business Games - Readers' Comments<p class="MsoNormal">The comments on “Taking Care of Business Games” mostly focused on games I had omitted from the discussion.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">My goal was to look at a certain kind of business game and examine the mechanisms found in it.<span style=""> </span>I wanted to see how different games in the genre deal with some of the problems that are specific to that genre.<span style=""> </span>I also wanted to show the breadth of games, themes, and mechanisms that I believe still share common links.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>Unlike my series on scoring mechanisms, I decided to identify four games and stick with them for the entire article.<span style=""> </span>The idea was to show just how games can share common mechanisms, face common design issues, and still be very different.<span style=""> </span>I didn’t want to just look at a bunch of mechanisms – I wanted to look at the whole game.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For every angle, I wanted to compare *every* game in my list, if possible.<span style=""> </span>That meant keeping the list down.<span style=""> </span>If I had six games instead of four, the article would have been 50% longer, and it was quite long enough.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The need to limit the games I examined and the desire to look at the whole game meant that some excellent and relevant games wouldn’t make the cut.<span style=""> </span>The most significant of these were the 18xx series and Age of Steam.<span style=""> </span>In both cases, I felt that these games had so much more going on than just “production”.<span style=""> </span>The rail-building aspect of the games, and the stock aspect of 18xx dominate a player’s decisions.<span style=""> </span>So while it is true that in Age of Steam, players invest in rail lines, reap income from them, and reinvest the proceeds in more lines, I couldn’t fairly examine that game without getting into the specific issues that occur on the game board<span style=""> </span>- which were outside the scope of my article.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Martin Sz said:<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>“... what about Acquire? An all- time classic, and possibly the best pure business game ever. Lord knows I love both Power Grid and Settlers, but to focus on these to the exclusion of Acquire in an article centerd on business and eco-dev games is perhaps a serious oversight, in my opinion at least.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style=""> </span>To a lesser extent, </i><st1:place><i>Puerto Rico</i></st1:place><i> merits a mention as well.”<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Regarding the omission of Acquire, adiamant nailed it when he responded:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style=""> </span>I don't think Acquire actually fits the mold here... Jonathan is talking about production oriented business games, while Acquire isn't that. Puerto Rico certainly fits and is indeed mentioned in the article, even if not analyzed thoroughly.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>Yes!<span style=""> </span>I wanted to focus specifically on games where players build up some sort of production mechanism that grows and pays off ever more as the game develops.<span style=""> </span>Acquire is more a game of stock speculation.<span style=""> </span>Players owning shares in an Acquire hotel aren’t getting income from it.<span style=""> </span>They might get a big payoff if it gets acquired, but that creates entirely different strategies than the ones found in the four games I focused on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Adiamant also said:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span><i>Civilization games are probably more similar to the production business games. AH Civilization was what came to mind as an example of producing a variety of goods then using them to buy future production capability, but the way it's used is more circuitous, less direct.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p>I agree with this.<span style=""> </span>In games like Civilization or Antike your “factories” take the form of population or cities on the board.<span style=""> </span>But like Age of Steam, what’s happening on the board dominates the game in a way that would have taken the discussion in a different direction.<span style=""> </span><st1:place>Puerto Rico</st1:place> also takes its inspiration from Civilization.<span style=""> </span>I excluded it similarly because it has so many mechanisms outside the basic invest-produce-reinvest structure. Also in <st1:place>Puerto Rico</st1:place> players don’t invest in plantations, they just get them as a result of certain actions.<o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Anonymous took us beyond the realm of games and into the dismal science:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style=""> </span>You seem to come from the bigger is better school of economics, but bigger is not always better. Economies of scale apply only to a point, depending on business; and after that, the top of the organizational pyramid is just an extra cost.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style=""> </span>So, bringing this back to gaming, the diminishing returns of Power Grid may be quite appropriate.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, it is true that I advocate increasing returns to scale – but this is from a game perspective; it has nothing to do with reality.<span style=""> </span>I point out in my article on The Art of Scoring, that games often use and benefit from a scoring system that escalates progressively – such as 1,3,6,10,15…<span style=""> </span>Power Grid’s payoff does the opposite.<span style=""> </span>In this sort of game, it is appropriate and needed to help slow down a runaway leader.<span style=""> </span>I think that this regressive payoff scale is a good, integral way of slowing down a runaway leader, whereas I think that all the other benefits given to trailing players are pasted on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">[What follows may cause those of you who haven’t taken Econ 101 to glaze over.]</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In terms of economic reality, Power Grid’s payoff scale does follow the “law of diminishing returns” and in this sense is entirely consistent with classical economic theory.<span style=""> </span>Now the law of diminishing returns mostly applies in the short run.<span style=""> </span>The idea is that if you try to produce more with your existing factory you have to pay your workers overtime, you use methods which aren’t the best, and so on.<span style=""> </span>Power Grid arguably simulates more of a long run environment, where the standard assumption is that you can always at least reproduce your production abilities, and possibly improve on them.<span style=""> </span>Anonymous argues that this isn’t always the case – that as you get bigger, you end up with more bureaucracy and can run less efficiently.<span style=""> </span>One could also make the case that what Power Grid simulates in its use of a declining payoff is running down the demand curve.<span style=""> </span>The more you produce, the lower your price needs to be in order for you to sell of all of your inventory.<span style=""> </span>Now in Power Grid, it doesn’t matter if you’re the only person selling into a given city, or whether you share it with two other competitors.<span style=""> </span>Try Medieval Merchant if you’d like a game where that mechanism is used.<span style=""> </span>Maybe Power Grid uses the declining payoff to simulate this effect in the easiest way possible.<span style=""> </span>Or maybe… it’s just a game.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">More business analysis from Anonymous:<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style=""> </span>(To comment on Acquire, what drives anyone with business knowledge crazy about the game is that you want to be the loser, the acquired company, not the big company in the game. A good game, but far from a simulation!)<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now here I disagree.<span style=""> </span>All of us who have been through the dotcom wars know that it’s often best to be the acquired company.<span style=""> </span>The larger company will pay a premium over the market share price to get a controlling interest, and the shareholders of the acquired company benefit.<span style=""> </span>In fact, there have been academic papers showing that when a merger is announced, the acquired company’s share price typically rises, while the acquiring company’s share price will, on average, stay the same.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thanks to everyone who read and appreciated <i>Taking Care of Business Games</i>.<span style=""> </span>I’m busy at work on my next piece which I promise will be SHORTER THAN AVERAGE!<span style=""> </span>We’re going to be looking at “The Well Constructed Game”.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I also invite comments on the format and nature of the blog as well.<span style=""> </span>My articles tend to be a lot longer than most of what’s out there.<span style=""> </span>Some have commented that they are “really long”, while others have said that it’s nice to read material that’s so different in scope from most of what else is out there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">My articles also tend to be pretty technical.<span style=""> </span>Do you feel that you’re getting something that really increases your appreciation of the hobby?<span style=""> </span>That’s my goal – I want to elevate writing in this hobby to look at games almost like an art form.<span style=""> </span>But man, sometimes I think it would be easier, and probably better appreciated, to write about how to choose what game to play, and which Settlers expansion is best, and… REVIEWS!<span style=""> </span>People love reviews, and I’d get some freebies!<br /><o:p></o:p><br />While I’m on the subject of game writing that is out of the norm – I’ll put in a plug for a guy who I regard to be a sort of soulmate on the other side of the country.<span style=""> </span>Mike Doyle is a graphic designer with a special interest in the physical design of games.<span style=""> </span>He frequently will completely redesign a game and present it on his website: <a href="http://mdoyle.blogspot.com/">http://mdoyle.blogspot.com/</a></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is very refreshing to see someone examine games from a genuinely original angle – with such creativity and talent!<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p>Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-1146082595008127862006-04-26T12:32:00.000-07:002007-01-20T21:30:01.150-08:00Taking Care of Business Games<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;" ><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2006/08/taking-care-of-business-games.html">Printer friendly</a></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Big%20Business.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Big%20Business.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />In the introduction to this blog, I state that what I really care about in a game is its mechanisms, not its theme. And that's true. To a point. Some popular Eurogame themes tell you nothing about the mechanisms involved: Ancient Egypt, Renaissance Italy, Pirates. There are some themes, though, that do imply <em>something</em> about the mechanism involved. Offhand, these include racing games, railroad games, and business games.<br /><br />Business games are my personal favorite genre. It's a natural for me, since my graduate degree is in finance, and my career is in business planning. I like the idea of building things that make money, and reinvesting the proceeds to build even larger things that make even more money. I prefer the challenge of competition to that of conquest - and so I prefer my escapades to come from playing a business game rather than an empire building game.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Schoko.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Schoko.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>But not all business games are about economic development in the way I described. Some, like <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/47">Chinatown</a>, are about trading. Some are about buying and selling at a profit. This would include many "Pick up and deliver" games like Eurorails, as well as speculation games such as "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/146">Buy Low, Sell High</a>", and operational business games like <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/57">Schoko & Co</a>.<br /><br />But what really gets my juices flowing is the idea of building a commercial empire - investing in capital, reaping the profits, and reinvesting. This doesn't truly even need to take the form of a "business" game. It can have any darned theme. I'm going to call these "economic development" games, and I'd like to pull a few of my favorites apart to see what makes them work.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Power%20Grid%201.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Power%20Grid%201.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The games I'm going to examine are, in many respects quite different from one another. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2651">Power Grid</a>, by Friedmann Friese, is probably the most obvious and pure form of this genre. It's modern. It's literally about business. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9216">Goa</a>, by Rudiger Dorn is themed as more of a trading game, but players don't trade with each other or with the environment in any real sense. The heart of the game is gaining resources - spices, ships, and money - and reinvesting them in a way that increases your future output. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/13">Settlers of Catan </a>, by Klaus Teuber, is themed as more of a community building game, but it is a game of economic development in the truest sense. Finally, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/13884">The Scepter of Zavandor </a>, by Jens Droegemueller, avoids the theme of economics entirely and instead cloaks itself as a fantasy game of collecting magical gems - but who's kidding whom? The game is adapted from the Sci-Fi economic development game, James Hlavaty's <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1491">Outpost</a>, and plays like a business game. Zavandor is familiar to the fewest readers, so I'll explain its mechanics, later, in more detail. It is expected to be released in an English language edition later in 2006.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Power%20Grid%20Payoff.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Power%20Grid%20Payoff.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>By my own standards, games of economic development come handicapped. They tend not to involve majority control, and so it is more difficult to create "bombs" that provide disproportionate rewards. Indeed, by their nature, they tend to be rather incremental. In the case of Power Grid, the rewards for maintaining larger systems are actually *less* than proportional. For example a size "4" grid pays off 46, whereas a size "8" grid pays off 74 - less than double. So one challenge in making such a game successful is in creating that "do or die" tension in other ways.<br /><br />Conversely, another pitfall is in avoiding the runaway leader problem. Economic development games can be low on player interaction. If four players are each building up their empires independently, without getting in each other's hair, how can a player in fourth place ever hope to catch up with the leader? The leader presumably has all the advantages - not only more money (perhaps) but also a superior infrastructure that guarantees him the future advantages.<br /><br />Finally, these games may or may not suffer from a lack of Story Arc. If all a player is doing is building, reaping rewards, and reinvesting - there is a danger that the end of the game may feel exactly like the beginning of the game - only bigger. There needs to be something that causes game play to turn a corner and become slightly different in character as it proceeds.<br /><br />Some of the games I've mentioned have these problems. Some deal with them well; others not so well. But I love 'em all. I don't think it's quite like the case of the French chef who has a hankering for Big Macs. Rather, I think that these games have some other things that make them special - and I'm hoping to examine and discover that. In the process we'll look at some of the problems and mechanisms they share and how each game approaches them.<br /><br />The basic mechanism in any of these games is that players control assets which will periodically pay off, and then have those proceeds reinvested. The basic challenge is in keeping this from being totally generic - like a bank account that just pays interest. What's the catch? Where's the competition? What wrinkles create <a style="" href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory3.shtml">agonizing decisions </a>for the players?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Zavandor%20gem%20cards.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Zavandor%20gem%20cards.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Scepter of Zavandor is probably the most straightforward of all the four games in its mechanisms. There is only one currency/commodity: "energy". There are five different types of gems (read: factories) that produce "energy" (money), but each one is just like the others only bigger. So sapphires produce about 5 units a turn, emeralds about 7.5, diamonds about 10, and rubies about 15. Players earn magic each turn, and then reinvest it in more gems and bigger gems, gradually increasing their production each turn. So far, it sounds like about as much fun as investing in certificates of deposit. The key wrinkle here is that players face severe limits to growth. They may only have up to five gems producing on any turn, and they may buy nothing bigger than a sapphire. Maximum production: about 25 magic units a turn. There are, however, three ways around that:<br />1) Get more spaces to put gems<br />2) Get the right to buy bigger and better gems<br />3) Get special cards that act like bigger gems, but require no spaces.<br /><br />The most critical strategic decision players face is in how to break through the glass ceiling that limits their production. Each of the approaches above has, in turn, different ways to go about it. The right to buy emeralds and diamonds come from cards that are in short supply, which are expensive and must be purchased at auction. The right to buy rubies, on the other hand, is a special power which requires long term investment which is in itself expensive, and which doesn't pay off for up to four turns. While it's certainly possible to develop a plan that enables you to buy all types of gems, such a plan is expensive and redundant. At what point do you skip a level - and for how long can you tolerate producing at a suboptimal rate?<br /><br />Similarly, there are alternative ways to get more spaces to put your gems - also limited and expensive. Which is the best path and when do you switch over? More gems? Or bigger better ones? Or both?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Settlers%20houses.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Settlers%20houses.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Settlers of Catan turns out to use this mechanism as well - although it shows up in a very different way. In Settlers, players are also confronted with the alternative of building bigger production facilities, in the form of cities, or more of them. As in Zavandor, the additional challenge of being able to build more production facilities is finding the place to put them - by building roads and expanding your network. Both games provide players with scarce resources and competition for these additional sites - although in Zavandor a player does have the ability to create up to two additional sites with no competition - by buying advances. I think that the race for spaces on the board in Settlers is the more interesting challenge - precisely because it is more competitive - but I do admit that in Zavandor, a player does face some agonizing decisions in the choice of which of the six advances to purchase in any given turn. Each of them is, in its own way, so important - and you can only buy one per turn!<br /><br />Power Grid makes the question of expansion intriguing by <strong>not</strong> permitting players to grow the number of sites they have. Players may own 3 power plants at any given time, and can never grow beyond that. Any further plants must displace one already owned. By cutting off one avenue of growth, designer Friedemann Friese creates a distinct strategic dilemma.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/PowerGrid%20Factories.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/PowerGrid%20Factories.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>"To what degree is this new plant even worth owning? It's expensive. If I don't buy it, I'm limiting my growth until a newer better one becomes available. But if I do buy it, there is an (often severe) opportunity cost of possibly having to let it become obsolete at a later turn, and passing up a more attractive plant that could show up in a turn or two." For me, the choices around which power plant to buy, and when, and how much to pay are the most appealing aspects of Power Grid. It is a great example of how lopping off certain player choices can make what's left so much more challenging. If players were able to own any number of power plants, each one would, to a greater degree, just be scaled up versions of one another. A plant that fires up 4 cities could be directly compared to a similar one that fires up 2 cities - after adjusting for the cost of fuel. But in Power Grid, that's not the case. The smaller plant will prevent you from reaching victory conditions, which require you to fire up a certain number of cities using only three power plants. It has built in obsolescence which must be considered.<br /><br />The limitation on the number of plants in Power Grid helps to prevent them from being perfectly scalable. If they were, then their values could be more objectively calculated, and the whole game would be less interesting. The productive ability of the different gems in Scepter of Zavandor is scalable - but while it is possible to either get better gems, or more places to put them, each option has a cost, and this cost helps make the game resist analysis and keep it interesting. In Settlers, production has only limited scalability (you can't grow past a city), and the fact that turning settlements into cities requires entirely different resources than does building roads and new settlements gives the tradeoff its own unique characteristics. So does the fact that expanding your network of roads has it's own challenges. But all three games offer the same basic challenges to the players: how do you grow your production network when there are both limits to the size of the "factories" and limits on the quantity that you may own.<br /><br />Some games of economic development rely on one basic type of currency which is produced and spent, and others use distinct commodities that need to be collected, managed, and combined. Again, Zavandor is clearly the most straightforward: everything is measured in "energy", and the only difference among the gems is how much of it they produce in a turn. Although Power Grid involves different types of fuel for energy, your network produces money and requires money to fund it. The different types of fuel are all comparable - and the only real difference between them is the fact that some will be more expensive and some will be cheaper (although shortages can also play a role sometimes.)<br /><br />Settlers of Catan was a groundbreaking game in the way it uses<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Catan%20commodities.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Catan%20commodities.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> five different commodities, combined in different ways, for a player to reinvest and build his production abilities. Settlers was not strictly the first game in which players produced different commodities. Other games, however, could not come up with a way to use this differentiation effectively, especially for economic development. Pick up and deliver games such as the "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/168">Empire Builder</a>" series, by Darwin Bromley and Bill Fawcett, just used different commodities as a way to determine which cities could deliver to which other cities. In 1977 SPI published "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5475">After the Holocaust</a>" by Redmond Simonson and Terry Hardy, a game of economic development, which mostly just required players to build their capacities up equally in each commodity. It packed a lot of rules into mechanics which were ultimately less detailed than those found in Settlers of Catan (but, for example, required much calculation any time a player wished to consummate a trade).<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Goa%20Commodities.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Goa%20Commodities.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Goa also uses the feature of different commodities, but in a manner that creates very different consequences for game play. In Goa, the ability to improve your production in any of five categories requires the expenditure of an equal combination of "ships" and "spices". The ships come in one flavor (uh... "ships") , but the spices come in five flavors (ginger, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, cloves). Regardless of the production track you are trying to improve, going from a level "1" to a level "2", eg, will require two ships and two spices - but the specific spices needed will vary. And I really mean vary. As the game unfolds, the particular spices that a player needs will be constantly shifting. What makes this especially challenging is that unlike in Settlers, there are "no substitutions". Players cannot trade and they cannot substitute multiple copies of one spice for another. The only flexibility a player has is that some of his plantations are wild cards and can produce any type of spice. Players will typically be strong in producing certain spices and weak in others.<br /><br />The limited flexibility in the use of differing commodities in Settlers and in Goa ends up causing that mechanic to have entirely different game consequences. In Settlers, a player may be somewhat neutral in the decision to build a settlement or a city at any given moment ("it's all good"). In Goa, the order of building is extremely important - every action depends on the prior ones.<br /><br />Moreover, in Goa much more than in Settlers, a player has very specific plans which he is trying to execute in a specific order. Rudiger Dorn has used the differentiation of the spices to limit each player's options and thereby force them to develop long term plans. He uses the unpredictibility of the auctions for tiles to muck those plans up a little - presenting unexpected opportunities. The tightness of the need to get ships and specific spices, along with the unpredictibility of the auction phase injects a <a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory4.shtml">Nervous System</a> into the game which forces players to constantly reevaluate their plans. In this sense, Goa has a lot in common with <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/555">Princes of Florence</a>. Both are games of intense planning where very specific assets need to be acquired, often in a specific order, for a player to maximize his score. Perhaps it is no coincidence that both games alternate fairly controlled purchase phases with more chaotic auction phases to work so effectively.<br /><br />What we see is that designers use differentiation of commodities in differing doses to restrict a player's options, make a game more "gamey", and require more planning. In Goa, the differing spices needed to build to new levels force a player to plan carefully and go down paths that are not the most direct ones to easy growth. Settlers of Catan doesn't require or permit the same degree of planning because of the luck involved in getting any given commodity, and because players may substitute commodities by trading with each other or at the ports. Scepter of Zavandor is even more business-y and less gamey because the primary production commodity is the fully fungible "energy". However, players are heavily restricted in their ability to purchase the more valuable gems that produce more energy, and so this differentiation creates obstacles to growth. In Power Grid, the need for differing types of fuel mostly just affects cost, and only occasionally will block a player's growth. Power Grid is the most realistic business game of the four and it has the fewest artificial restrictions that are introduced primarily to enhance game play.<br /><br />One problem in any game in which players build a production empire is the potential for a runaway leader to emerge early on. In these sorts of games, if a player emerges as a leader, not only does he have more victory points, he also has superior assets with which to get even more victory points. So the argument goes that an early lead can be unstoppable and the game can be flawed or even broken.<br /><br />As a general rule, this can be the case if the leader is able to mimic the moves of those players who trail him. If I have all the assets you have - and then some - then literally, anything you can do I can do better. And I will. So for a game in this genre to avoid breaking down, it has to insure that trailing players have options which the leader won't neccessarily have and which can be better than the ones he does have.<br /><br />There is an obvious way to handle this problem. Unfortunately, it is also an unsatisfying way. That is, to just provide special bonuses to trailing players and handicaps to leading players. Two of the games we're looking at use this mechanism. In Scepter of Zavandor, players are able to acquire certain assets - artifacts (special power cards) and sentinels (bonus scoring tiles) more cheaply just by virtue of being a trailing player. Power Grid goes even further, providing benefits to trailing players and handicaps to leading players in nearly every phase of the game turn. In Power Grid, trailing players can buy fuel more cheaply, they get the jump on advancing into new cities, and they have much greater flexibility in putting up new power plants for auction and bidding on them. In fact, the benefits awarded to trailing players in Power Grid are so great that a key aspect to strategy in the game is knowing when to hang back, deliberately underperforming, in order to maintain a competitive edge on opponents.<br /><br />For my money, handicapping is a cheap designer's trick that distorts the core game design. It's a cheap trick because it is an artificial add-on. It's really more of a remedy than a core game mechanism. Games, at their best, shouldn't need special rules to fix them. It is like selling a car with a flawed design that causes it to accellerate uncontrollably, and fixing it by putting a piece of wood under the gas pedal. Handicapping distorts the core game design because it encourages players to try to win by underperforming. This is a business game! <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/reifembreite%20cyclists.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/reifembreite%20cyclists.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Show me a business executive who would rather be sixth in his market than first, and I'll show you someone on the way out. This is not the same as holding back in order to manage limited resources. Nor is it comparable to the situation in other game genres. In a racing game, it is reasonable for players to benefit by slipstreaming. But please leave those strategies to the next Lance Armstrong - not to the next Bill Gates. Bill Gates does not try to be #6 *in anything*.<br /><br />I wouldn't deny that both Power Grid and Scepter of Zavandor could suffer from a runaway leader problem if it were not specificially remedied, however neither game is structurally guaranteed to prevent a trailing player from catching up. The key is that any trailing player <span style="font-style: italic;">might</span> have certain assets which would benefit him more in the endgame than they had up to any given point in the game. For example, in Zavandor, as we discussed, a player has many limits to growth: the size of gem he is capable of buying, the number of spaces he can use to activate gems. A leading player might have more gems that are providing a greater income, but the trailing player might have invested in assets which make it possible to expand more rapidly in the future.<br /><br />It doesn't always - or often - happen that way, and so designer Jens Droegenmueller added the catch up rules to James Hlavaty's original "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1491">Outpost</a>" design. But there are other ways that designers have dealt with this - which may or may not have been appropriate to the game. For example, a key way of getting more gem spaces is by buying certain advances. These advances are available to everyone. Had they been in limited quantity, then a player might be faced with investing in them early on, knowing it will slow his growth, on the knowledge that it will help his endgame position. Indeed, keeping assets scarce is a general way that designers force players into tradeoffs such that the short term leader may not have the best long term position.<br /><br />And of course, sometimes in a game, one player will have it all. He'll have more money, more production assets, and more growth potential. At best, a game should have been designed to make that an unlikely occurrence. But sometimes, there's been one player who has just cleaned up - in which case the best thing that the game can do is to have endgame rules that recognize it as soon as possible, declare him the winner, and put everyone else out of their misery.<br /><br />To some degree, a game is only going to have a runaway leader problem if the leader can concoct a plan and follow it faithfully. Another factor will be if a game tends to have a single path to victory. After all, if there is only one way to victory, trailing players will pretty much have to follow in the leader's footsteps to advance. While there is a lot of good gaming in Power Grid and Scepter of Zavandor, it is true that there are limited ways for a trailing player to circumvent the leader without the built in handicaps. In Power Grid, a trailing player would need to have power plants that use differing fuel than the ones the leader uses - on the hope of saving enough money to more than compensate for the additional income that the leader is generating. Possibly he may be in a better position to enter cities more cheaply. But typically, a player that has fallen behind has no better access to cities nor resources, and any advantage that he may have can be minimal.<br /><br />Both above games, not coincidentally, use single commodities, money and energy respectively, as their medium of exchange. This fact will tend to exacerbate a "single path to victory" situation and pave the way for a runaway leader.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Catan%20Dice.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/400/Catan%20Dice.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Settlers of Catan has many tools to alleviate the problem. The most basic is luck. A trailing player just might get the die rolls he needs. Usually, though, by midgame, the influence of luck lessens because all players - especially the leader - have spread out to cover a greater variety of numbers. The "take that" mechanism of the robber can certainly slow the leader down. But in Settlers, there just tends to be more player interaction, and this is helped by the fact that the game uses five different commodities. In addition to encouraging the use of trade (which a leader can be frozen out of), the varying commodities and competing uses for them will tend to put players on differing paths. A leader may be strong in wood and bricks, helping him to build his network and develop settlements - but then become stuck when it comes to getting the wheat and ore required to build cities. The combination of luck, player interaction, and alternative paths and varying commodities puts the unpredictibility into the game which alleviates the runaway leader problem found in games of this sort.<br /><br />Of course, in Settlers, you can still get totally boxed in and be a runaway loser. I never said the game was perfect.<br /><br />Goa has so many different interacting mechanisms - including the use of multiple commodities - that the runaway leader problem tends to be alleviated here as well. (Or possibly, the game is so complex and players are so focused on their own player boards that nobody notices.) There is no single path which a player can dominate to the point that he dominates the game. One player may have the most points because he has concentrated in getting the high scoring values on one or two tracks, but another player may have a greater balance in being able to buid ships and gems in order to score future advances, and a third player may have the strongest money position with which to seize the best assets at auction. The very fact that players need to use special combinations of commodities to advance may hamstring the leader if his plantations don't produce what he needs next.<br /><br />One possible weakness in the Goa system occurs in the auctions. I have not personally experimented with a money strategy, but money can buy pretty much anything in Goa. There isn't much that can prevent a player from pushing hard on the money track, and then using purchases at the auction to fill in his production gaps. There is no way for players to gang up against him. What does alleviate such a strategy is the ability of players to avoid putting certain tiles up for auction after carefully seeing what the leader needs (a difficult tactic). Another mitigating mechanism is the "once around" auction mechanic which makes it difficult for the leader to guarantee being the highest bidder.<br /><br />As they say about mutual funds: "past performance is no guarantee of future results". To the extent that this is true in a game, a trailing player ought to be able to catch up. This is the challenge that designers of economic development games must address to insure that all players remain viable.<br /><br />Any business game has the potential problem of being repetitive. This can especially happen in operational games like "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/57">Schoko & Co.</a>" In these games, players are going through several seasons of business cycles, but their basic position isn't changing. Some prices may be higher, others lower, but there is no long term development and such games can suffer from that.<br /><br />Games of economic development have a distinct advantage over such operational business games because players positions <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> changing. Their productive assets are getting bigger; their income is getting bigger. Unless this opens new choices to the players, though, then nothing fundamentally changes. How do business games get their <a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory1.shtml">Story Arc</a>?<br /><br />In order for these games to avoid being repetitive, designers have put into place mechanisms that cause them to "shift gears" in some way so that the late game doesn't feel too much like the early game.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Zavandor%20gem%20cards%202.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/400/Zavandor%20gem%20cards%202.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Scepter of Zavandor is probably the least successful in this regard. Players are always jockeying to get bigger better gems that will give them more income, but there is nothing about a diamond that makes it different in nature than an emerald other than income. Indeed, one of the key improvements that Jens Droegemueller incorporated over the original "Outpost" design was to streamline all the different production levels. So diamonds and emeralds are pretty similar - but a player does need to decide which, if any, he'll go for. To make the jump to rubies does require an entirely different strategy. Instead of buying special artifact cards at auction, a player must advance on the "Knowledge of Fire" level. That's a great example of shifting gears. As players start to really expand their production, they hit a ceiling unless they abandon one growth path and start another. The alternative is to try to accellerate to the endgame by getting those big-VP sentinels. Nonetheless, Scepter has a certain sameness to it which hurts the game - especially considering its length.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Power%20Grid%20croweded.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Power%20Grid%20croweded.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Power Grid uses the limitations of the map and the three plant limit to add new dimensions to the game. In the beginning, players are typically just finding the most efficient routes to build on. Eventually, they crash into each other and the game becomes more territorial as expanding out to the remaining available cities becomes a key strategic consideration. As the endgame approaches, players confront a new challenge: how to trade up efficiently so that the total of all three plants puts them over the top for reaching victory conditions. This can be very tricky because often the "best" available plant is very economical, but it isn't good enough for final victory. Players must manage the decision of whether to hold out - producing at a suboptimal level for some game turns - or to invest money in a plant which is efficient, but which will require yet another plant to be replaced.<br /><br />Goa has many tools at its disposal to add variety: the many different tracks that a player may choose to build on, as well as the differing types of commodities that a player must collect. However, I feel that like Scepter of Zavandor, Goa falls a little short in its ability to provide different types of experience to the players as it progresses. Finding the right commodity needed to advance is important in the endgame- but it is always important. If there is any gear shifting that goes on, it is in the need to switch from a strategy that maximizes productive capacity to a strategy that maximizes victory points. By the time players are getting to the end, they can often produce more stuff than they can reinvest. It is at this point when a player is most likely to want to cash in oodles of spice for money. There can be some gross imbalances in a player's production and in the endgame some of the challenge comes from finding a use for it that will translate into victory points. In the middle and endgames, players confront the race to be the first to grow to the 4th and 5th levels in order to earn extra expedition cards. However, I think that the game would have benefitted from new restrictions or opportunities which would have made the endgame feel less like what came before it.<br /><br />Sometimes a game won't suffer too much from sameness because it's sufficiently complicated that the players don't notice. To some degree all of the above games have that going for them. They require a lot of analysis and juggling of competing needs - enough so that players are too busy to feel that the last turn is similar to the first ones. In fairness, late game positions in these games are not just scaled up versions of early game positions, but they all do have some elements of that.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Settlers%20endgame.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Settlers%20endgame.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Settlers of Catan is the game among the four which I think has the best story arc. It has a lot going for it. It has a board which is much more textured than the Power Grid board, forcing players into new considerations as they expand away from the richest areas of the board into leaner ones. Players will also find the mix of commodities they produce to change significantly as the game evolves, which also forces different play styles. But the inclusion of the bonuses for longest road and largest knight force is a critical inclusion. It adds a new dimension to the game of pure expansion and creates heavy contests in the midgame and endgame. Consider the fact that earning either of these contributes 25% of the total points needed for victory - once you subtract the initial two points that all players begin with. Imagine what Goa would be like if the races for 4th and 5th levels contributed 2-3 points each. I can't promise that it would be a better game, but it would certainly add a new dimension to the game once players began approaching those levels.<br /><br />Hey - think fast. In a business game, what are the victory conditions?<br /><br />Here's the obvious answer: most money in the end wins. Here's the surprise: none of these games are determined by most money. Actually, that's a realistic result. In the real world, who cares about how much cash a company has? A company's value is determined by its future earnings expectations. In a game, that needs to be simplified and quantified in some objective manner, usually by evaluating a player's production capacity.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Power%20Grid%20Map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Power%20Grid%20Map.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Power Grid, true to its relative realism, handles this in the most straightforward manner. The player who can supply energy to the most cities wins. This is really another way of saying: the player with the most annual revenue at the end of the game wins. Of course, if the game were to play out another turn, that could change. Fuel might become unavailable. Also, the game measures total revenue and ignores the "operating cost" (of fuel) that the player incurs. But overall, this is a pretty good measure of a player's earning potential.<br /><br />Settlers works in a similar way, rewarding the quantity of settlements and cities - the main production units - as the primary source of victory points, and then adds in the bonuses for longest road and largest army - principally (in my opinion) to just add another dimension of gameyness go give players alternative paths to aim for.<br /><br />Scepter of Zavandor departs most significantly from its roots as an economic development game by giving victory points for non-productive assets, especially the "Sentinels". <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Zavandor%20sentinels.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 312px; height: 111px;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Zavandor%20sentinels.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>The sentinels in Zavandor are similar to the large buildings in Puerto Rico. They are ways of converting lots of money into lots of victory points (but no other advantages), where the quantity of points depends on other conditions you've achieved during the game. In a way, this is really just a way of awarding VP's for having money. It merely adds another game step of making big stacks of cash (yeah, yeah, "energy") convert into VP's by requiring players to auction off the sentinels, and having their VP value contingent on other strategies that the player has pursued. It's a good enough solution. It is, at least, more interesting than just awarding 1 point for every 10 energy points. But even if having a player buy a bunch of seemingly useless sentinels has no business parallel, ("great, I just bought a statue of a giant frog") it is also more satisfying to actually own something physical than to count gobs of cash at the game end. Additionally, these mechanisms help to create end-game conditions, and they provide players with a use for resources that would otherwise escalate to a point that becomes meaningless. If Scepter of Zavandor, or any of these games, ended when one player accumulated a certain quantity of money or commodities, the endgame would seem like a let down. Players would start accumulating more resources than they had outlets to spend them on, and the whole exercise would be begin to seem pointless.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/goa%20score.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/goa%20score.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Goa addresses victory conditions in the least realistic and most game-y manner. Goa assigns varying victory points to a variety of conditions, most notably the advancement levels that a player has in each track. Moreover, the victory points are not proportional. For any given track, the first level is worth 1 point, then an incremental 2 points, then 3, and so on. Ultimately, this does parallel the notion of awarding points for productive assets. It is game-y in the way that values escalate. Now if you look at any given track, the actual production of a track tends to be stepwise. On the ship track, the first step produces one ship, then two ships, then three and so on. One more ship per level. But the points are 1 VP for reaching the first level then 3 VP for reaching the second, then 6 for reaching the third, and so on in a triangle function. This was clearly a conscious sacrifice of realism in order to inject more agonizing decisions into the game. If all levels paid off proportionally, players would tend to build their levels equally, benefitting from being able to play a balanced strategy. Instead, Rudiger Dorn forces players to go against their natural desires and instead to shoot for the big payoff. <a href="http://jbdgames.blogspot.com/2006/03/art-of-scoring.html">These escalating payoff tables are commonly used in many games</a> to provide players with potentially big payoffs which add to the excitement of the game.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Siedler%20nurnberg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Siedler%20nurnberg.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>In most of Klaus Teuber's subsequent settlers games and historical scenarios, Teuber pretty much forces players to invest in non-productive ventures. In Cheops, for example, players must allocate commodities to building the pyramid, and they will gain or lose considerable victory points depending on their relative contributions. I've always hated these mechanisms. Hey, I'm running a business here. I'm trying to build something <span style="font-style: italic;">productive.</span> Why are you wasting my valuable resources with the need to build some pile of crap for a stinkin' monarch? It only made matters worse that players are in perpetual competition with each other to waste more resources than anyone else. Fall behind, and you lose VP's. Thematically, Teuber made these diversions less offensive in later games. In The Great Wall of China scenario, for example, players need to contribute to building the wall in order to keep those nasty Huns away. I guess I'd rather pay for defense than for tribute.<br /><br />The effect of having nonproductive uses for resources is very different in the Catan games than it is in Zavandor (or Puerto Rico). In Zavandor and Puerto Rico, the decision to buy Sentinels or Large Buildings is always an endgame move. After a player has done everything possible to expand his productive capacities, these choices become alternative ways to store value (VP's). They accellerate the endgame and don't really compete with the need to build things that provide more money. On the other hand, the need to invest in walls or pyramid blocks or knights in the Catan games can't wait until the end. In some cases, players need to actively build the stuff early on or else be attacked by Barbarians, Pirates, Huns, or government bureaucrats. Additionally, players often need to secure specific non-productive positions on the game map early on, or else risk being closed out of them by the game's end.<br /><br />There is a tradeoff in designing the game this way. As irritating as I may find these wasteful uses of resources to be, I certainly respect them as game mechanisms. They absolutely encourage player interaction and alleviate the incremental nature of business games by adding a bomb, in the form of a competition for some very valuable victory points. On the other hand, they can detract from letting players pursue the core strategy of building a production empire, which for me is the heart and soul of what makes these games interesting.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/zavandor%20board.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/400/zavandor%20board.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>So what can we take away from all of this? I think that the most critical component to making a game of economic development interesting is finding the road blocks to pure growth. Each of the games we've looked at introduce limits to growth as a key mechanism. Potentially, these can enhance the sense of story arc in a game as players grow and begin to bash their heads against each other - or the game's own ceiling - and are forced into new directions. These games also benefit from presenting players with alternative paths to growth - whether in the form of different commodities which may come into play in different ways as the game evolves, or in the form of varying growth paths such as are found in Scepter of Zavandor and Goa. They introduce strategic options into the game and can help to alleviate the runaway leader problem that is a danger in this genre. The best games are designed to insure that trailing players can find potential shortcuts to growth which don't force them to follow in a leader's footsteps. These designers have also shown that there are very different ways of incorporating player interaction. They can range from the direct interaction found in the trading phase of Settlers of Catan to the head-butting found on the map in Power Grid to the inter-turn auctions of Goa. But they only work when small changes can make a big difference to the players. The auctions in Goa work because they can provide players with opportunities which can radically affect the decisions made in the solotaire portion of the game.<br /><br />I have heard that some designers have no interest in creating games around business subjects because this is something that can be done in real life better than it can be done in a game. That may be true, but few of us have the opportunity to be corporate CEO's - much less renaissance traders. I find that business games are one of the great opportunities in gaming to engage in a real-life fantasy, and one which doesn't involve hacking, slashing, or overrunning armored military units.<br /><br />I deliberately chose to look at these four games because they are so different from one another. Some don't even look like business games - but they all approach the common situation of enabling players to start with meager resources and to use them to build an economic empire. Each is an excellent game and together they show the breadth of possibilities that great game designers have created in the genre.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-1144102075498217592006-04-03T15:05:00.000-07:002006-04-04T16:46:38.686-07:00101 Ways to Score - The Art of Scoring Part 2<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;"><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2006/04/101-ways-to-score-art-of-scoring-part.html">Printer friendly</a></span><br /><br />All our talk in the first part of this article, "The Art of Scoring", has covered 3 narrowly defined ways that strategy board game designers have used to provide focused efforts with disproportionate rewards: majority bonuses, triangular scoring, squared scoring. What does a designer do when he wants to get a little creative? It's a tough problem because at first blush, there aren't a lot of choices out there, apart from just creating a table. But sometimes the above 3 ideas aren't quite what the designer wants - either because it doesn't provide the proper reward and incentives, or it's too cumbersome, or... he just wants to try something new.<br /><br />After the triangle numbers (1,3,6,10) and the square numbers (1,4,9,16), the most obvious mathematical progression is exponential - especially doubling: (1,2,4,8). I'm aware of only one game that uses this: Palmyra, reissued as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/146">Buy Low, Sell High</a>. The game was introduced in 1996, the scoring system was used in the value of contract cards, it seems to have never been used in any subsequent game, and it works poorly. At the low ends, the rewards are too slight and at the high ends the rewards are too great. Specifically, in Palmyra, there is a set of four contract cards that can generate payoffs for a given commodity. Playing the second one - half of all the cards available - only gets you one point - the same as the first one got you. The third card gives you two more points - only upping the stakes by one. Only in the unlikely event that you can get all four cards down does the payoff start reflecting the effort. But if you went to five or six cards, suddenly the payoff would explode. Indeed, in Buy Low, Sell High, Knizia caps it so that another card is never worth more than 4 incremental points per share. I've never played it the following way, but I suspect the game would have been better served if those cards had paid off in a triangle progression.<br /><br /><br />In <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12962">Reef Encounter</a>, Richard Breese took one of the simplest - and extreme - approaches possible. Subtract four; only count what's left. This obviously creates a strong (actually mandatory) incentive to only collect coral tiles when you've got at least 5, and to keep on going beyond 5 as much as possible. It also helps simplify the math because each tile scored may have a base value of from one to five points. If you had to say "a five tile group has a value of 15, times its 3 point base value equals 45", you'd find the final scoring to be that much more cumbersome. But note that, in the range of tiles that people typically take in a set (5 - 9 in my experience), it's a pretty steep curve with big benefits for collecting large sets. Collecting 6 tiles is twice as good as collecting 5. Going from 7 to 8 tiles improves your score (4/3) 33%. Even in a steep "squared" system, your value only goes up (64/49) 31%, and the relative difference is greater for the Reef Encounter scoring system at lower numbers.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Reef%20Encounter.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Reef%20Encounter.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Some of the consideration in choosing this method, I'm sure, was just simplicity of the calculation. But some must also be an issue of what you want to reward. In the case of Reef Encounter, the rules are implicitly saying: "any dope can feed a group of four tiles to his parrotfish." The game is about the harder effort to put together a larger group, which is going to be much more vulnerable. Indeed, the game is set up so that any player can place a cluster of up to five tiles on the board that can't be attacked (because they are all adjacent to the player's shrimp). So Breese is effectively giving players credit for a single tile, and then rewarding any tiles that go above and beyond that. The Bomb is the reward for placing *vulnerable* tiles on the board, and keeping them there for at least a turn.<br /><br />In <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/878">Wyatt Earp</a>, Richard Borg and Mike Fitzgerald turned the scoring problem upside down. All players who get to share in a given outlaw's bounty share it nearly equally. The magical word here is "share". The fewer people in the bounty pool, the more you get to keep for yourself. The challenge comes in the question of whose shares count. Any player who contributed points to that outlaw within five points of what the leader contributed gets his part of the take; any player who falls behind more than that is excluded entirely. This creates lots of player interaction as any player who might be leading has an incentive to try to pull more than 5 shares ahead of as many people as possible, and everyone expecting a payoff would like to kick the others out. (Hmmm. This feels more like the sort of system that the outlaws would use to share their spoils, not good law abiding bounty hunters.) Moreover, it not only encourages players to contribute points, but it naturally turns players on each other - ultimately true to its theme and its mechanics - as they throw "take that" cards viciously at each other. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating being the leader - you expect a windfall but may only get 1 more chip than others who are in the pot. But the game absolutely does provide a bomb in providing incentives to attempt to be the last man standing in the competition to lead your opponents by at least 5 shares.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Ra.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Ra.jpg" border="0" /></a>Reiner Knizia put so many different scoring mechanisms in <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12">Ra</a> that the game could fill up an article on its own. This is a set collecting game in which players are collecting all different types of sets of tiles, each type with its own distinct scoring rules. The scoring for pharoah tiles is a traditional majority system, with the additional rule that not only rewards the majority holder, it penalizes the player who takes the fewest, and thereby discourages players from simply abaondoning the pharoahs altogether. Civilizations have their own quirkiness which shows up in some other Knizia games: I'll call it a step-wise scoring in which each new civilization is worth 5 points... except for the second one. So the value of each incremental civilization is: 5,0,5,5,5. There can be any number of variations on a system like that, say: 0,5,0,5,0,5, which would be a fully step-wise system. I don't think that this system is intended to create a bomb. After all, the first civilization is worth more than the second and as much as later ones. Rather, it is intended to enable civilizations to have different values for different players. If I have a civilization and you have none, then the one that's up for auction is worth more to you than to me - and these differing subjective values help to drive what is interesting about the game. The fact that only unlike civilization tiles score also enforces the differing subjective values. Note that the second civilization isn't totally worthless to me, because if I do take it, it enhances the value of the following civilization tile that may come up. On the other hand, the scoring for monuments is absolutely a bomb, and Knizia makes it work in two dimensions, rewarding both concentration and diversity at the same time. The value of individual matching tiles is 0,0,5,5,5 - a sudden step-wise jump. The value of collecting unique tiles is 1,1,1,1,1,1,4,5. So here is a very simple, non-formulaic pattern that rewards players for concentrating in monuments generally - but gets its intrigue from the fact that players become torn between trying to diversify or concentrate within the monument strategy.<br /><br />All of the scoring systems we've looked at so far have been from the perspective of how strategy board game designers use scoring systems to create bombs - which typically force players to concentrate in an effort to get ever increasing payoffs. There is another class of scoring systems that do just the opposite. They force players to adopt mixed strategies. I think that these scoring systems have a different purpose than creating a bomb. Instead, they play into the need to create agonizing decisions for the players, especially in games where going after a single minded strategy would be very easy to execute, and therefore be boring.<br /><br />Note that there is an overriding plan to some of the scoring systems in Ra. They discourage players from concentrating in some areas while entirely abandoning others. For example, if you don't compete at all in Pharoahs, you're penalized 2 points each turn. If you don't take at least one Civilization, you're penalized 5 points each turn you fail. Now you have a dilemma. You'd really like to focus on the bomb of getting oodles of monuments - but you're somewhat compelled to take at least one Civilization tile each turn or else pay a steep penalty. You can't entirely abandon Pharoahs or you're going to get dinged every turn - potentially 6 points total.<br /><br />Perhaps no game beyond Ra has as many competing scoring systems all inside one box, but some do reward a balanced approach. These are systems where the whole value of several *different* things is greater than the sum of the parts. I'll call these Synergy Scoring Systems.<br /><br />The most obvious examples come again from Reiner Knizia (who seems to really like using scoring systems as an essential game component) in his games <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/42">Euphrates & Tigris </a>and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9674">Ingenious</a>. Neither is particularly like a set collecting game, but both involve scoring points in different flavors (4 different colors in E&T, 6 different colors in Ingenious.) A player's final score is based on which color he has the <em>fewest</em> points in. So if you end a game of Euphrates & Tigris with 15 black points, 7 red points, 7 blue points and 2 green points, your final score is: 2 points. Your two green points totally overwhelm your 15 black points. The effect here is obvious - it forces you to balance the colors of points you take. In terms of game design, it is implicitly acknowledging that it is relatively easy for a player to concentrate in one or two colors, and thereby forces him to play <em>against his strengths</em> to score well.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Oasis.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Oasis.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />In <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9027">Oasis </a>by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum, the designers use multiplication to create synergies in scoring. In any given color, players play square tiles on the board, and take rectangular "scoring" tiles into their hand. The score for the color is the product of the board tiles times the scoring tiles. This means that a player must again achieve a balance <em>within a color type</em> to maximize his score. 10 yellow board tiles and 2 yellow hand tiles are worth 20 points, but if he instead gets 6 of each they are valued at 36 points - nearly twice as much. On the other hand, a player must concentrate within colors as much as possible. If the same player had those 12 tiles divided 3 red scoring, 3 red board tile, 3 yellow scoring, 3 yellow board tiles, his score would be 3 x 3 (red) + 3 x 3 (yellow) for a total of 18 points.<br /><br />The scoring for Nile and Flood tiles in Ra (you didn't think I forgot about those, did you?), while very simple, is possibly the game's most original scheme, and another example of a Synergy Scoring System. The rule is that a player gets 1 point per Nile or Flood tile - but only if he has taken at least one Flood tile in that turn. Some players may have as many as 7 or 8 Niles by the third scoring round, and boy is there a need to get that Flood. The fun here comes from the fact that to get to that point, the player has to have made an investment in the more common Nile tiles - which will not be worth anything in each scoring round that he is unable to get a Flood (the Nile tiles carry over in each round, but the Flood tiles are discarded at the end of each round.) Each Nile tile is worth from 0 - 3 points, depending on when it's acquired and depending on whether the player gets a Flood in each round, and a Flood tile's value depends on how many Nile tiles the player has accumulated; Knizia has created a tremendous amount of ambiguity and relativeness in the value of each.<br /><br />The question that I have is - how does a synergy scoring system bring fun into a game? Escalating scoring brings the tension of a bomb into the game. Majorities scoring injects player interaction as well as a potential bomb. Is a synergy scoring system more than a gimmick? Of the examples we've seen above, Euphrates & Tigris, Oasis, and the flood & Nile tiles of Ra, I think each is doing a slightly different thing. The scoring in E&T is partly just a game balancing mechanism. It acknowledges that sometimes a player can have a windfall of points, and so it doesn't want to let such a player get away with an easy victory from a single stroke of luck.<br /><br />There's another element, though, that I'll call (until I come up with a better name) the Tough Nut. A player has a Tough Nut when he is challenged to play against his advantages in the game. You've got a windfall of black cubes, a solid position in red and blue cubes - and no natural assets that will enable you to get more green cubes. And you've got to cobble together a plan to get those darned green cubes. Tough Nuts keep you on your toes. They force you to solve a strategic puzzle that has emerged for you, during the course of the game, as the one that is most challenging. This is one of the great gifts of Euphrates & Tigris - the challenge that each player has to dig himself out of a hole in the color he is weakest in.<br /><br />In the case of the Nile/Flood tile scoring system in Ra, I wouldn't call the Flood tiles a "bomb" because you can't work toward them. Typically, you work toward collecting the 1 point Nile tiles, and pray you can get a flood in time. If anything, I think this scoring system adds a sort of gambling element to the game. You collect Nile tiles not knowing with certainty how much, if anything, they'll ultimately be worth to you. Apart from the risky element, I'm not convinced that this scoring system adds much in terms of challenging decisions. The bomb of being able to get a flood each turn can sometimes be serendipitous - although for a player who is heavily invested in Nile tiles, the challenge of bidding on a flood certainly can raise the temperature in the room. However, I must admit that I do find these tiles to be fun, and I think that they work best as one in a suite of Ra's many scoring system, and would probably not work well in isolation.<br />I'm not convinced that the multiplication rule in Oasis is all that effective in the context of that game. It ends up being a hybrid between an escalating scoring rule that encourages concentration and a synergistic scoring rule that encourages diversity. The problem is that there is barely any mechanism in the game that makes it difficult for a player to concentrate in just a couple of colors, so the "bomb" aspect is not that interesting. Similarly, the two different types of tiles within each single color are just part of the same pool of assets that get auctioned. There's no conflict there either. Ultimately it's hard to figure out what challenges the designers were trying to provide for the players by using this scoring system.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/WebofPower.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/WebofPower.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Finally, let's look at <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/491">Web of Power</a>, recently reissued as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18100">China</a>. The very original scoring system here, while simple, is in a class by itself. Michael Schacht really showed how an innovative scoring scheme can help to define the game in this terrific design. In Web of Power, there are a limited quantity of total cloisters that can be played into each region. The player with the majority will score points equal to the total cloisters - his own and all others - in the region. But all players score. Any player will get points equal to the number of cloisters held in the region by the next higher player. If there are four players participating in a region, the player with the second most cloisters gets points equal to the quantity of cloisters held by the leader. Even the player in 4th place gets points equal to the quantity held by the player in 3rd place.<br /><br />This creates very erratic situations in which the most efficient move may well be to end up in last place. If a region holds 5 cloisters, and another player has placed 4 in there, I can snatch 4 points with a single cloister, while the leader gets 5 points - only one more than I got! Conversely, if a region holds 8 cloisters, and the cloisters per player are 3,2,2,1, then all the players trailing the leader will get 1 more point than the number of cloisters they put in, while the leader will get 8 points for his 3 cloister investment. It's a very dynamic system in which players must consider not only their relative positions, but also how their play may help their opponents more than themselves. Web of Power also has a very clever system of scoring "advisors" in which players must at least share the majority in *each of* two adjacent regions. Here is a synergy scoring system that really creates interesting opportunities for the players. Again, the mechanic of requiring combinations of majorities is, to my awareness, unique to this game. Each region in which a player can get a majority of advisors is worthless in itself, but creates multiple <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">opportunities </span>in the various adjacent provinces. The smart player can string these together in a network - but the need to at least share the majority in each of these areas makes it a challenge. When Web of Power was first released, many described it as "El Grande lite", comparing it unfavorably (I suppose that depends on your attitude to "lite") to the longer and more complex game of majorities. Had this been entirely true, I doubt that this game would have had the staying power it has shown. I think that the originality of its scoring systems - notably coupled with the unique tactical considerations that it presents to players - has helped make this game a favorite in its class.<br /><br />There's a saying here where I work: "your commission plan is your business plan." That's a way of pointing out that the incentives you create for your sales people determine their behavior which in turn determines which products will sell. The same holds true for games. Your scoring design is your game design. When a designer like Michael Schacht creates a unique scoring system such as the one in Web of Power, he sets into motion a series of incentives which help to define the objectives and interactions that the players will confront for the duration of the game.<br /><br />In an effort to create a little "player interaction" here at the Journal of Boardgame Design, I'd like to propose a challenge to readers. What original scoring mechanism can you envision for some unknown (or known) set collecting board game or card game which would create a distinct set of tactical or strategic considerations? What sort of game would it be best suited to? Here's an opportunity to design an original game mechanism without the messy trouble of designing and playtesting the whole darned game. I take my inspiration here from Web of Power, which showed how you could tweak the traditional majorities game and create something really fresh. What else fresh is out there? Please respond in the Comments section of this post.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-1142819066944426312006-03-19T17:29:00.000-08:002006-04-10T08:51:37.743-07:00The Art of Scoring<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;">How Game Designers Encourage You To Get More</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;"><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2006/04/art-of-scoring.html">Printer friendly</a></span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/AcquireStocks.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/AcquireStocks.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />In my Games Theory 101 Article on "<a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory2.shtml">The Bomb</a>", I explain why the majorities scoring used in games such as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5">Acquire</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/93">El Grande</a>, and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/94">Union Pacific </a>is used so widely. Briefly, it enables explosive scoring opportunities in which the payoff of an additional share or cube can be very disproportionate to the investment. This creates tension as the need to get that one or two additional shares (or whatever) becomes very great.<br /><br />Scoring for majorities is one of the most popular mechanics in Eurogames. I scanned my own collection and found that out of 100 games, I identified 35 of them that use scoring for majorities in some form. But there are other ways that designers have come up with to grant disproportionate, typically escalating, scoring in their games. It's pretty darned hard to come up with something new, but fortunately there are a lot of creative designers out there. I thought it would be fun to see what people are using, and to see what different effects they can have on game play.<br /><br />We're going to talk a lot about "set collecting" games here, and for our purposes I'm going to use a very broad definition. A set collecting game for this discussion is any game in which players can collect assets <em>which come in different varieties </em>and whose collective value is <em>not proportionate to the quantity</em> of each variety of asset. The idea is that the game is either encouraging you to concentrate your collecting efforts (<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5782">Coloretto</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/71">Civilization</a>, diversify them (<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/42">Tigris & Euphrates</a>), or offer some conflicting alternative (the monuments in "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12">Ra</a>", and any majority game such as "Union Pacific"). Having different varieties just means that you can collect cards of different colors, or shares of different companies or whatever. If there's just one type, then the game isn't directing players to collect sets of anything, it's just encouraging them to build up assets. If value is just proportional to the quantity of an item you collect, then there is no set collecting element either. Suppose you get 1 VP for every yellow card, 5 VP for every red card, and 10 VP for every blue card. In such a case cards are just a way of storing VP's, like money in different denominations. But 1f you get 5 VP's for every color of card in which you have the majority - but 0 VP's for all other cards - you have the elements of a set collecting game. In this case the incremental value of a red, blue, or yellow card all depends on the situation. It might be worth 5 VP's and it might be worth none. There's now the rudiments of a "game" here, depending on how players acquire the cards.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/El%20Grande.1.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/El%20Grande.1.jpg" border="0" /></a>Moreover, for this purpose, "area control" games such as "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/93">El Grande</a>" and "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/491">Web of Power</a>/<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18100">China</a>" are really set collecting games in disguise. The difference between an "area control" game and a "set collection" game is just the difference between "put" and "take". Want to convert "El Grande" into a set collecting game? Create different colored cards, one for every region on the board. Now, instead of placing two cubes of your own color into "Baskenland", you take two green "Baskenland" cards. When scoring, each player sees how many cards of each type they have to determine majorities. Of course, "Web of Power" also gives bonuses for connecting chains - but to that extent it is neither a set collecting game nor an area control game. Want to convert "Union Pacific" into an area control game? Create a board showing all 10 companies. Now every time you'd normally take a share card, just discard it and put your colored cube into that company's area. Voila; "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/94">Union Pacific </a>" is now an area control game. In fact, that's how <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12632">Goldbrau</a> operates. Players play shares in beer halls and breweries, but mark their control with their colored cubes.<br /><br />Now there are good reasons to choose one form versus the other. The theme may involve collecting shares - and that is best represented directly. Your game play may involve a map, and there may be particular rules concerning areas that are adjacent to each other so that putting cubes into a central board makes play easiest to follow. But when it comes to scoring, both forms are equivalent. Our goal here is to discuss how designers address the issue of scoring these sets, and what the implications of their choices are.<br /><br />A resolution: I intend, in this blog, to avoid algebraic notation, even when that may be the most efficient way to express things. I have two reasons for this. One is that I don't want to tune anybody out. I'm pretty good at math, and even my own eyes glaze over when I start seeing formulas. I just want to express everything in plain English. The other reason has to do with black holes. In the introduction to his "A Brief History of Time", author Stephen Hawking says that his editor required that he write his entire book without using a single mathematical formula. Well, I figure that if Hawking can explain the big bang, charmed quarks, and black holes without using algebra, then I sure as hell better be able to explain board games that way.<br /><br />The set collecting mechanic is a way of creating a <a href="http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/GameTheory2.shtml">bomb</a> in a game. A bomb is a disproportionately high scoring opportunity that focuses players' actions and creates tension. If a game rewards a player with 5 points for every yellow card he collects, that's not a bomb, that's an incremental reward. If the game rewards him with with 1 point for the first yellow card, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, and so on - the designer has removed the proportionality and created something more explosive. Now the player has his eye on the long-term prize.<br /><br />"Collecting a yellow card now is okay, but what I <em>really</em> want is to work toward collecting ten yellow cards. Those last cards will be worth <em>a lot</em> of points if I can come up with a plan to achieve them."<br /><br />There are two generic ways that designers have achieved this: either with some sort of majority scoring, or with an escalating scoring system of the type I described above.<br /><br />Sometimes, either one might work plausibly. But the two are very different and will create very different types of games.<br /><br />The most glaring difference between the two is that a majority scoring is based on players' <em>relative</em> positions, and so it creates inherent player interaction, while escalating scoring is based on a player's position irrespective of his opponents, and so the game must get its interaction elsewhere.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Get%20The%20Goods.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Get%20The%20Goods.jpg" border="0" /></a>Alan Moon's game, "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/247">Get the Goods</a>" is an example of a majorities- scoring set collecting game stripped down to its essentials. You draft cards in any of ten colors, and you play them, and three times in the game you score points based on your majority position in each of the ten colors. You get 3 points for 1st place; 1 point for second place. There's very little else in the game. It's very similar to "Union Pacific" - but without the board. Instead of placing trains to determine what a company is worth, all are set at a base value for the duration of the game. (Get the Goods is reputed to be based on <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1448">Freight Train</a>, but Freight Train has a much more complicated system to draft and play cards. In its basic draft-vs.-play mechanic, Get the Goods is much more similar to Union Pacific.)<br /><br />With hardly any rules besides "pick up cards, play them, and score them based on majorities" Alan Moon created an entirely viable game whose player interaction is self evident. The player interaction comes, of course, in the competition to gain the majority when the scoring cards are revealed. There's always a bomb in a majorities game because no matter how many pieces of a set you've collected, if players are close, then two pieces can make the difference between a being the top dog and being a dead dog. Sometimes that difference can be <em>too</em> extreme, and so most frequently designers offer consolation prizes for second and later places.<br /><br />The majorities mechanism can be fragile. If a game mechanism enables a player to easily secure a runaway lead, the competition peters out for everyone. Trailing players aren't motivated to catch the leader because the investment in resources is too great. Leading players similarly can go to sleep, knowing that they've outdistanced the competition. In games with limited shares available - such as Union Pacific or <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5">Acquire</a>- players can get a permament lock on a majority. That can be a nice thing to get players to fight for - as long as it can't happen too early into the game.<br /><br />Generally, one thing that makes a game fun is when there's no concrete way to evaluate a particular move. That's a built-in feature of majorities games. Another share might be useless - or it might help you takeover the lead. Of course, if runaway leaders can be created, the value of an additional share is easily known: it's worth nothing.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/St%20Pete%20Score.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/St%20Pete%20Score.jpg" border="0" /></a>The primary alternative to majorities scoring is escalating scoring. This is where each incremental item added to a set is worth more than the last one. An early example of escalating scoring appears in <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/71">Civilization</a>, in which the value of any set of cards was based on the *square* of the quantity of cards. Five cards in a set isworth 5 x 5 = 25 (I'm not counting anything as an algebraic formula unless it includes a variable!) times its base value. The most common escalating scoring formula is probably the "triangle", in which the first card in a set is worth 1 point, the second is worth 2 points, and so on. To see why it's called a triangular progression, picture a pyramid with one stone on top, then two beneath it, and so on. You've got the shape of a triangle, and the number of stones in say a 5 level pyramid is equal to 1+2+3+4+5 = 15. This sort of scoring appears in the way that color sets are treated in "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5782">Coloretto</a>", in the points scored for treasures in "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/54">Tikal</a>", and, in a modified form, in the track laying bonuses in "<a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9209">Ticket to Ride</a>" (1+1+2+3+4...). In each case, players have an incentive to collect unified sets with great intensity and little incentive to collect lots of unmatched pieces.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Coloretto%20Cards.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Coloretto%20Cards.jpg" border="0" /></a>Escalating scoring is used to achieve two sorts of objectives, depending on the type of game. It can encourage players to concentrate in one flavor of set - as in Coloretto and Civilization - and it can just offer players incentive to concentrate on a particular strategy - as is done with aristocrats in St. Petersburg.<br /><br />Escalating scoring is used nowhere near as widely as majorities. In my sample of 100 games, I identified 10 that used escalating scoring, compared with the 35 games that used majorities (and at least one game, Tikal, that used both).<br /><br />The scoring system used for commodities in Civilization gives a player tremendous incentive to trade cards in an effort to specialize. Two sets of four cards would be equal to 32 points (2 x 4x4) but a single set of eight cards would be worth double that: (1 x 8x8) 64 points (times the base value). The "squaring" formula tends to be stronger than the "triangle" formula - especially with low numbers. If we were using triangle scoring, the trade would result in your score going up 80% (36/20) instead of 100% (64/32). This is meaningful if you're playing a game where collecting 8 of a set is viable. Say you're only realistically going to collect up to 4 of a set. Then what happens if you trade two sets of "2" for one set of "4"? With squared scoring, you go from 8 points (2x2x2) to 16 points (1x4x4)- again up 100%. With triangle scoring you go from 6 points (2x3) to 10 points - an increase now of only 67%.<br /><br />In short, you get an unexpected result. The difference between squaring and using the triangle formula (1+2+3+...) to give a "concentration" bonus is actually most extreme with smaller numbers. So in a game like Coloretto, where players are typically collecting sets of 3, with 4 and 5 piece sets being really nice, if Michael Schacht had used squares for the scoring, the incentive to get big sets would have been even greater. Conversely, the penalty for collecting more than three colors (where you earn negative points) would have not been all that consequential, because players tend to get singles or doubles of those.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Civ%20Trade%20Cards.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Civ%20Trade%20Cards.jpg" border="0" /></a>At first blush, squaring the number of units seems to escalate much faster than using the triangle approach - and for low numbers it does - but in fact the two formulas are closely related algebraically (but we won't go there!) However, just as the triangle numbers can be expressed as 1+2+3+4+... , square numbers can be expressed as 1+3+5+7+...<br /><br />Both majority scoring and escalating scoring achieve a basic common game function - providing explosive disproportionate benefits that provide tension and that direct players to focus on specific strategies. Their consequences in games are very different. Most obviously, majority scoring provides built in player interaction because the score is all based on your position relative to your opponents. A game with escalating scoring needs other mechanisms to supply the player interaction. In fact, without those other mechanisms, the scoring breaks down because tactics become so obvious - specialize and leave everyone else alone. Imagine a pure draft and play game like Get The Goods (or Union Pacific) where your score for a particular share was just based on the triangle pattern. Your approach would be trivial. You collect the yellows, let me collect the blues, and leave Greg alone to collect the purples. Any time I choose a yellow over a blue, I'm giving up lots of points for just one or two points. The cost to me probably at least equals what I'm costing you, and Greg ends up at an advantage (no wonder Greg always wins!) If everyone is free to pursue their best (and obvious) strategy unchallenged - there's no game.<br /><br />With escalating scoring, collecting more of the same is always the best. It's not neccessarily that way with majority scoring. You take a single yellow - and now you're the leader. Your best next action might be to take another yellow, to help secure your lead, but in the short run, your best choice to take blue, which could give you the lead score now in two colors. Now for me, the best course might be to take purple - but if I take two yellows I can score in yellow *and* deprive you of that score. In fact, I think that's what I'll do ;-) . Even so, strategies in such a system can become trivial, which is why games of majority control will typically limit your choices in such a way that, perhaps you'll end up with a blue even if it's not your first choice - thereby prodding you into competition with me for control. Get the Goods and Union Pacific do this, for example, by limiting your selection to the available face up cards (and the face down card). El Grande uses the brilliant (and I don't use that term lightly) mechanism of the king, which forces players to all drop their cubes in regions adjacent to a "king" piece which typically moves each turn. Only a small subeset of all regions are available to the players at any given time, thereby forcing them into competion with each other. Another method of encouraging competition is rewarding second places. If you already have two yellows, it may not pay for me to invest in yellows, knowing that it will take at least three to overtake you. But if I can get a modest payoff for second place, I'll take a single yellow - and now you've become within easy shooting distance of me. Hey, maybe I'll challenge you for first place after all.<br /><br />Since escalating scoring systems have potentially trivial strategies and no inherent player interaction, they are neccessarily dependent on other primary game mechanisms to provide what's missing. In Coloretto, one of the simplest games with escalating scoring, players are rewarded for collecting sets in any three colors, but penalized for collecting cards in any additional colors. The driving mechanism that Michael Schacht introduces is that players must take bundles of cards, which their opponents are trying to poison with cards of contrasting color. Creating and choosing the bundles is the heart of the game, and the scoring system just makes it work. One of the most beloved games with escalating scoring is <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/475">Taj Mahal</a>, which uses this method to score the elephant "commodity" tiles. (Arguably, escalating scoring is also used to score palaces, but there is so much else going on there that it's better to exclude them from the discussion.) Reiner Knizia does two very basic things to keep it interesting. The obvious one is that he requires players to bid for the tiles. On its own, this could still lead to trivial tactics as players specialized in their favorite flavors. The added element is that every tile has two commodities, each in a different combination. This naturally forces people into competition and forces a mixed strategy. Players can't implicitly divvy up the commodities and choose to go only for their one best choice. I have two tea, one spice and one rice, so I'd really rather go for tea... but that spice and gems tile coming up isn't too shabby. And I can be confident that there's at least one other player who is collecting either spices or gems. By putting the collectible items into bundles of mixed sets, Schacht and Knizia help to include greater player interaction and mixed, non-trivial strategies.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/Caylus.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/320/Caylus.jpg" border="0" /></a>There's an interesting paradox in this scoring system. How much is one more item worth? The answer is not as obvious as it seems. Let's use <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/18602">Caylus </a>as an example. In Caylus, a player can take his "King's Favor" on any one of four different tracks, and can mix it up during the course of the game. In the case of the Victory Point track, the first favor is worth 1 VP, the next is worth 2, and so on, up to a maximum of 5. So you take 6 King's Favors on this track, you get 1+2+3+4+5+5 = 20 points; the first one is "worth" one point, and so on. But that analysis misses something. Had you passed up any one of those scoring opportunities - even the first - it would have cost you five points. If you're embarking on a strategy of taking lots of King's Favors on the VP track, each missed opportunity will cost you 5 points, and has to be evaluated that way. Yet, when it's all over, your 6 king's favors are only worth 20 points, not 30. That stinks! Where did the other 10 points go? How do you reasonbly evaluate the value of the strategy?<br /><br />I can propose two answers. One is that this just highlights the intrigue and ambiguity of the scoring system. No scoring opportunity can be evaluated precisely. The other - which I think works fairly well in this case - is that the moment you commit yourself to taking lots of king's favors as VP's, you've put yourself ten points in the hole. That represents the shortfall between the incremental value of each favor (5 points), and the total you'll get from collecting five or more. So you need to evaluate each opportunity as though it's worth 5 points, but you need to evaluate the strategy as though it's always worth 10 points less than the sum of the parts. Of course, if you don't actually get at least 4 such scoring opportunities, everything changes. But if you really focus on the strategy and can plausibly attain it - that's the best way to evaluate it.<br /><br />Which is also a way of saying: the escalating scoring system, in this case, really forces a commitment. It prompts you to evaluate each opportunity as having a high 5 point payoff, and then *penalizes* you by the difference between what you actually get and the 5 points you counted on if you chicken out or fail midway. You made a decision based on this move being worth 5 points, but it turned out to only be worth 3 points.<br /><br />All our talk so far has covered 3 narrowly defined ways that designers have used to provide focused efforts with disproportionate rewards: majority bonuses, triangular scoring, squared scoring. What does a designer do when he wants to get a little creative? It's a tough problem because at first blush, there aren't a lot of choices out there, apart from just creating a table. But sometimes the above 3 ideas aren't quite what the designer wants - either because it doesn't provide the proper reward and incentives, or it's too cumbersome, or... he just wants to try something new. In the next installment of this article, we'll take a look at some of the alternatives that are out there.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-1142580179287025922006-03-16T22:44:00.000-08:002006-03-16T23:45:20.666-08:00Ticket to Ride: Readers comments<span style="font-size:85%;">I've been gratified by the thoughtfulness of the responses I've received to the "Ticket To Ride" article. I'd like to highlight some of the comments received, and provide my own commentary. As the JBD develops, my hope is to organize the articles into different types - ones that focus on a specific game, mechanisms, and who knows what else. The next article, coming soon, will focus on scoring systems. It takes off on the idea of the "bomb", and looks at how majorities scoring and escalating scoring systems have been used in games, and what makes each appropriate to its own context. I invite ideas for articles from readers with the caveat that I tend to be so darned independent that I'll bet a lot of suggestions will be made before I adopt one. But the more realistic expectation is that understanding what interests readers can help spark my imagination and help direct future articles - however indirect the effect may be.<br /><br />I'm a little envious of some of the other blogs and sites out there. I have a feeling that just reviewing new games, for example, is the "fun stuff". More readers seek it out, and it's cooler to turn people on to something new than it is to pull apart games in what might be an abstract way. But I'll blog on, hoping to add a distinct voice and to provide material that ultimately helps people enjoy their gaming even more. Another possibility - especially to fill in a void for those times when I feel that I can't find anything new to say - would be to create a sister blog that will focus more on new games - ones that I haven't played enough to really give a detailed analysis of, but where I can still apply a critical look at the mechanisms within.<br /><br />Enough avoidance. Let's look at the comments.<br /><br />Larry Levy (huzonfirst) offered an especially thought provoking view:<br /></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><span style="font-size:85%;">...(N)ot all of the aspects of the game are "features" for me. For example, the ticket "bomb". While it adds considerably to the game's tension, its all or nothing aspect detracts from the game a bit. In most games, missing out on even one moderately sized route eliminates you from contention.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Chris Farrell agrees and adds some additional observations on the issue:</span><br /><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><span style="font-size:85%;">If you feel that you can't win without finishing your big ticket, this significantly constrains your play. You can only use other tickets that compliment this route, and you can't build much track that doesn't work towards your goal.<br /><br />TtR basically forces a certain level of risk on you, which you then have faily limited tools manage. If people don't feel well-rewarded for the risk they've taken, or if they don't feel like they have control over their level of risk, this can lead to frustration.<br /> </span></blockquote><br /><blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Bombs come in many sizes, from point advantages to make-or-break requirement. I do agree with Larry that the tickets in Ticket To Ride have a danger of dominating the game. A player typically only has a few of them, and it's a shame to feel that one missed opportunity is not just a strategic issue - it's the whole game. I think that designers need to balance this carefully, and that the tickets are definitely on the "nuclear" side of bombs. I'll propose these two (untested) variants - and be eager to hear from anyone who tries either. One is to reduce the penalty for missing a ticket to halve the value. This will encourage players to take more tickets, take more chances, and spread the risk. The other goes a step farther. Double the benefit for making a ticket, but keep both the penalties and the ticket bonuses where they are. This is really the equivalent of halving both the penalties for a missed ticket AND halving the values for laying track. This accomplishes the earlier objective and also puts more emphasis on making tickets. I'm not sure whether to manipulate the 10 point bonus for longest run. Anyway, I'd like to try it and hope others will do so and report back.<br /><br />Greg Aleknevicus offered his thoughts on the difference between the first edition and Ticket to Ride Europe:<br /><br /></span><blockquote style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);"><span style="font-size:85%;">I find that the specific implementation of (the) system in the original to be poor. The problem as I see it is that the board and distribution of tickets strongly favours east-west route building. Getting an east coast-west coast ticket will not guarantee victory but in over 90% of the games...<br /><br />I think Ticket to Ride: Europe greatly improves the game... I do agree that the Petrograd-Stockholm run is excessive but I think the tunnels are a fine addition. Yes, it introduces luck to the claiming of routes but it's not as if the original did not already have luck to begin with (albeit limited to the card draw). The reason I like it is that it adds tension -- losing a turn to a bad tunnel draw is something you really want to avoid.</span></blockquote><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Like Greg, I too prefer Ticket to Ride: Europe because of the way that the board and tickets are laid out, as compared with the original, and agree that the long east-west tickets dominate to too great a degree. I think also that the original east-west long tickets too often run parallel to each other, whereas the European long tickets tend to collide to a greater degree. So in the original, getting those good routes is just a lucky thing - they can seem like a cake walk, and those unlucky players who don't get one can feel out of contention.<br /><br />I understand Greg's point about the game having lots of luck in any case, but there is something so darned bald in the luck of the tunnels. If you don't get the colored cards you want - well that can be rough, but that will often create new opportunities (and I've been hurt often enough so that I'm not so quick to snub my nose at locomotives which are often very available). But just drawing random cards and getting arbitrarily penalized feels like no fun to me. And the game doesn't need it. At very least, I've sometimes felt that if a player has to pony up more cards to get through a tunnel he deserves more points. It still adds uncertainty without that punitive feeling.<br /><br />Richard Vickery makes the good observation that:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">In TtR, you can watch the cards drafted and so narrow the range of locations. This helps you more clearly identify a developing threat, which adds to the tension and feeds into the agonizing decision.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Good point. This further contrasts Ticket to Ride as being more like a Eurogame than an abstract. Indeed, I can't think of any abstracts that allow you to read your opponent's plans through anything other than the board position.<br /><br /><br /></span><blockquote></blockquote>Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-1138137638884427532006-01-24T13:04:00.000-08:002006-04-10T08:56:26.260-07:00Ticket to Ride<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/1600/TTRbox.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6932/1867/200/TTRbox.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;"><a href="http://jbdgamesprintable.blogspot.com/2006/04/ticket-to-ride.html">Printer friendly</a></span><br /><br />I completed the last of my four-part "Games Theory 101" series in March 2004. In that series, which I have linked to and will gradually be republishing here, I identified four qualities that contribute to a game's excitement and richness.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9209">Ticket To Ride</a>, by Alan Moon, came out within a couple of months of that last article. I was immediately very impressed with it. The game seemed to dispense with obviously clever mechanisms often found in Eurogames, and just deliver a lot of <em>fun</em>. It started tense and got to be more so as the game wore on. It forced you to plan, to readapt, to take painful calculated risks. And yet, it was so simple, that people <em>apologized </em>when they taught it. "Well, there's not really much to the game. I hope you weren't expecting something for gamers. Here is all you need to know..."<br /><br />When I compared "Ticket to Ride" to the four qualities identified in Games Theory 101, I was delighted to realize that Ticket to Ride had them all. Moreover, Ticket to Ride proved to have a strong and wide appeal. It quickly became a very well regarded game in gamers' circles, getting high ratings and frequent plays recorded on Boardgame Geek, and then went on to win the Spiele des Jahres. It was as though a hypothesis had been proven through a real life experiment.<br /><br />Not only is the game so effective, it has simple rules and a straightforward and breezy gameplay. Ticket to Ride seems to me to distill the essentials of a good game into the most uncomplicated presentation.<br /><br />What makes it so good? How does it do that so elegantly?<br /><br />Alan Moon put tremendous excitement into a connection game by giving it several bombs - all or nothing scoring opportunities. The most important, of course, is the use of "tickets" which put high stakes on being able to connect to a specified pair of cities - especially the big tickets which have the cities on far sides of the board. The prospect of gaining or losing 20 points has a wonderful way of focusing the mind.<br /><br />To my mind, this feature is an innovation in Ticket to Ride. Typically, connection games have fallen at either ends of a spectrum. On the one hand there is the pure connection game like Hex, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/949">Twixt</a>, or <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/19764">Punct</a>, in which the entire game rests on making a connection. These have typically been pure abstracts. On the other hand are games of incremental connections such as <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/5419">Magna Grecia</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/509">Through the Desert</a> and <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9675">La Strada</a>, in which players have a series of skirmishes over gaining a few victory points each. In all such games that I can think of, players are usually trying to get to any of several specified points on the board - the more the better. Usually, you're not trying to connect two specific places, although these games have you build a network off of an existing line, so this happens as a matter of course.<br /><br />The tickets - especially the big tickets - in "Ticket to Ride" elevate the big payoff to a strategic level. This applies especially to "Ticket to Ride - Europe" where a player typically is going for exactly one long ticket. Players have many different goals, but that big ticket colors everything you plan and execute. Players must also plan for their short tickets based on how they connect into the large ticket, and a lot of the fun in the game comes from the interaction between the big ticket and the smaller ones. While there may be many viable ways to make your big ticket, needing to get the small tickets as well creates many more conflicting alternatives for the player. Best of all, the player also needs to not only consider <em>how</em> to make the small tickets, but <em>whether</em> to. Once the going gets rough - which finger do you decide to cut off?<br /><br />The nature of a connection game naturally opens up lots of possibilities to players, because in any situation there are many ways to successfully make a connection. This may help to explain why railroad games, generally, are so popular. Part of the challenge in making a connection game exciting is using its open-ended nature to make the system <em>nervous</em>. By this, I mean, setting it up so that a player's plans can get sufficiently messed up to force him to substantially change them to adapt to the situation. In Ticket to Ride, it definitely works that way. Someone gets to a critical link before you do, and you're off slapping your head, working out an alternative where you can <em>still</em> make your connection, and <em>still</em> tie your other routes together, and <em>still</em> make a good use of the cards in your hand. I hate it when it happens to me, but the fact is, I love the challenge.<br /><br />A critical balancing act that was achieved in the game system and its maps is the level of granularity that is offered. In a highly granular hex-type map, such as the ones that appear in the <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/157">Eurorails</a> series of games, and in the original edition of <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12166">Funkenschlag</a>, if an opponent takes your link it typically only requires a small adjustment. Conversely, had there only been one or two ways to make a given connection, it would have sacrificed the excitement of requiring a player to be flexible. Either you can make it, or you can't, or the alternative solution is self evident. When an obstacle gets throuwn your way in Ticket to Ride, in comparison, it opens up a wide new set of decisions for the player - which is the best new way to go, how urgently to lay track that you need, how to create new fall-back positions should any of <em>those</em> plans get mucked up, and which, if any, of your tickets now need to be painfully abandoned.<br /><br />The "Expedition/Terra-X/Wildlife Adventure" <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/223">series</a>of games by Wolfgang Kramer also deals with this issue excellently. In this series of games, the board is a series of world locations, interconnected with lines. Each player extends the last end of an expedition (like a track), trying to bring it to his own scoring cities. The critical design element in the board is the fact that when an expedition goes off in a given direction, it is often difficult to get it back to where it had just been. Had the board basically been just a hex grid, the game would have entirely lost its flavor. But in fact the board is loaded with blind alleys and express lanes that can drive the head of an expedition to places that make returning a challenge. Once an opponent takes an expedition which you hoped to direct to Northern Asia down on a southern turn, you've suddenly got a lot of thinking to do.<br /><br />The tickets and the style of board layout do many things for Ticket to Ride. As mentioned above, they provide the all-or-nothing confrontations that add tension. They also give players stratetic objectives which help to give the game a story arc - a sense of beginning, middle and end, which makes playing the game a complete and varied experience. The board layout provides the nervous system which keeps the players on their toes, always adadpting to the game's changing situation.<br /><br />Yet in this simple game in a genre, train connections, which has been explored so thoroughly, Alan Moon adds two more innovations which really define the game and help to provide the tension and agonizing decisions. One is the decision to enable players to play anywhere on the board, rather than just off the end of existing lines. The other is the requirement that players collect sets of like-colored cards in order to be able to place track, rather than having it placed one step at a time.<br /><br />Up until Ticket to Ride, train games almost always had players extend track of existing lines. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/94">Union Pacific</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3348">Santa Fe</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/460">Railway Rivals</a>, <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2842">Transamerica</a>, and the Empire Builder/Eurorails series all work that way, as do non-train network games such as Expedition and Power Grid. <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/4098">Age of Steam</a> allows players to build out from any city - like Ticket to Ride - but in practice the need to create a network that grows during the course of the game means that in Age of Steam players create isolated links only infrequently. The 18xx system began with isolated track in <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1823">1829</a>, but abandoned that system in later games of the series.<br /><br />There is another distinction that needs to be made - games in which players or companies own track segments - such as Union Pacific and Eurorails, and those in which track is collectively owned and used - such as 18xx, Transamerica, and Streetcar.<br /><br />Ticket to Ride is most like Twixt, Hex, and other abstract connection games in that players can - and do - play disconnected lines, which they uniquely control, all over the board and connect them up later. It's not realistic, but it puts much more player interaction into the game. You can never rest assured that you can reach your goal before another player. Any critical junction can be stolen with little or no warning. As we've discussed, that jeopardy goes hand-in-glove with the fact that such an intervention doesn't destroy a player, but rather presents him with new challenges - admittedly uncomfortable ones.<br /><br />The other innovation in Ticket to Ride is the fact that players must collect sets of cards of a common color, and play them as a set, in order to be able to lay track. Requiring players to play sets of a card together is hardly innovative - but to my knowledge it is unique among track laying games. This rule has two effects. First, it creates a scoring bomb - because it encourages players to attempt to collect large sets in a single color in order to benefit from the big scores attained by laying five and six cards down in a single shot. Additionally, it adds to the anxiety in the agonizing decision of when to draw cards and when to play them. Without this feature, Ticket to Ride would begin to resemble too closely the abstract connection games it shares a bloodline with, and would lose some of its more freewheeling Eurogame style.<br /><br />Consider how much Ticket to Ride would play like an abstact game without the colored cards, generally, and if every connection between cities required a single move. Now every choice is based strictly on the connections it helps you make or block. Players find choke points and take those. They next identify those connections which offer multiple ways to connect between their previous plays and their goal cities - to help create an defendable plan for the final connections. Such a game might be engaging, but it would be purely strategic, and by lacking uncertainty it would give up much agony in uncertainty of the decision making. It would start to look more like Twixt or Go or possibly Through the Desert. These are all excellent games, but Ticket to Ride has its own unique qualities, and the game would lose its special character if they were sacrificed.<br /><br />Here's a quote from the game's designer, Alan Moon:<br />“The rules are simple enough to write on a train ticket – each turn you either draw more cards, claim a route or get additional Destination Tickets. <em>The tension comes from being forced to balance greed – adding more cards to your hand; and fear – losing a critical route to a competitor</em>.”<br /><br />This difficult choice of either drawing cards or playing them comes right out of "Union Pacific". In each case, the player is desperately trying to collect cards which act as critical assets, and often can't afford to pass up an opportunity to take the cards he needs. On the other hand, in both games, drawing cards means that you don't play any cards in that turn - and every turn you delay playing cards puts you in jeopardy. In Union Pacific, the jeopardy is that a scoring card will turn up; in Ticket to Ride it it is that you will lose a critical route to a competitor. In both games, the effect creates deliciously agonizing decisions for the players.<br /><br />The mechanism works better in Ticket to Ride because the ticking time bomb that the player is up against is his opponent rather than the luck of the cards. When the scoring card makes a premature appearance in Union Pacific, you curse your luck. When an opponent snags a route from you in Ticket to Ride, it's all part of the game's tactics (although you probably curse your opponent as well.)<br /><br />But it is that need to collect cards in sets of three, four, and more that helps build this tension, and I think it was a key touch that Alan Moon added to the game. Had the board been made of a series of smaller one-card links, it would still have only been a step away from being like an abstract. You draw a card one turn; you place it the next turn. At any stage, each player would need a great variety of card colors to play. Maybe you need this red card, but even if someone takes it, you can always use that yellow card - or <em>some</em> card that's available. But requiring <em>sets</em> of cards to be played creates urgent goals which need to be fulfilled over several turns. The set collecting aspect to the game helps to bring in the best elements of Union Pacific - that "do I draw or do I play" dilemma that Alan Moon describes. He creates a situation where, when a red card comes up, that player really really needs it, and requiring cards to be collected in sets enforces that need.<br /><br />Everything I've described so far has focused on the connection part of the game, and has entirely ignored the points that players get from laying large sets of cards. To me, the connection part is what defines Ticket to Ride, and the set scoring aspect is pretty mundane. If you took away the set scoring, you'd still have a pretty interesting game. If you took away the connections - you'd have a weak card game that couldn't stand up to "Coloretto" or "Get the Goods". I think that the set scoring may have even been an afterthought - a rule to compensate for the fact that it is disproportionately harder to create a single 5 track connection than five 1 track connections. In the first version of "Ticket to Ride", the set scoring got a little out of control, as the values of 5 and 6 train connections became a little too strong and threatened to overtake the connection game. This was addressed in "Ticket to Ride - Europe", which made a number of improvements. It made those 5 and 6 train connections less common. It designed the long connections to intersect each other to a greater degree, forcing more competition. It also put in some elements which were not improvements - notably by introducing luck in rules for the tunnels, and in the giant 21 point tunnel between Petrograd and Stockholm, which can too easily dominate the victory conditions and which favors certain long routes more than others.<br /><br />The points you get immediately for playing cards don't make the game, but they definitely enhance it. While the "tickets" provide those big scoring opportunities that bring urgency to the game, the card-laying points do so in a shorter time frame; they help to propel the game.<br /><br />"Ticket to Ride" is what has become known as a "gateway game" - meaning a game that is useful for introducing Eurogames to non-gamers. Sometimes I fear that term is applied to this game a little derisively. It's as though this is a gateway that you walk through, then keep on going, and don't look back. I first played "Ticket to Ride" after I had been playing Euros for over a decade and I was immediately taken by it's straightforward fun, and I hope to never tire of it. I prefer to see it as the gaming equivalent of works such as "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" or "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" - works which are instantly enjoyable by almost anyone, but whose simplicity belies their true inventiveness and master craftwork. And like those other works of art, I expect it to join the gaming canon and someday be enjoyed by many of our grandchildren.</href>Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21310057.post-1137872656043481472006-01-21T11:34:00.000-08:002006-01-25T13:48:05.803-08:00IntroductionI created this blog because I wanted to go a step further after writing a series of four articles in "The Games Journal" entitled "Game Theory 101". I've been playing and loving boardgames for my entire life - really the first present in my life I ever remember asking for was "Clue". When, in Junior High, I became aware of the 3M series of games I became obsessed with them - in spite of what seemed like their insane cost of $8 each. Nonetheless, after endless agony, I bought and loved "High Bid", and in time added "Acquire" and "Stocks and Bonds" to my collection.<br /><br />Just before entering college, I discovered and subscribed to Strategy & Tactics (through an ad in National Lampoon!) and bought many SPI games but the truth is I rarely played them. They were overly complicated, made it hard to find opponents, but most of all they were slow moving. Even back then, I was a little outside the norm because I preferred multiplayer games.<br /><br />(The one nice thing about spending money on so many SPI games that went unplayed is that I was able to sell many of them years later at a hefty profit - funding my current habit quite nicely!)<br /><br />During the 1980's I discovered more player-friendly games, often through exposure to Games & Puzzles, The Gamer, and Games International magazine. It was in this period that I picked up games ranging from 1829 and Civilization to Organized Crime and Conspiracy. While simpler and more approachable than the wargames, it was still very difficult for me to find opponents and many of these games just filled shelves.<br /><br />Things picked up significantly when I moved to Southern California in 1986 and discovered some of the conventions that are held in Los Angeles. It was here that I got to meet gamers who shared interest in the types of games I enjoyed best, and I started pulling these games off the shelves and actually playing them. I played in public groups and in a small private group - where some of the games of choice included Merchants of Venus, Eurorails, Guerilla, and The Great Dalmuti.<br /><br />But in the early 90's, things started breaking open with the discovery of Eurogames. The exposure came from several angles. One was meeting a few gamers at these conventions who were taking the trouble to import games directly from Germany. The games were elegant, playable in an hour or two, typically possessing impressive components, and just had plain exciting gameplay. At open gaming tables, I got my first exposure to the beautiful deduction game "Inkognito", the auction business game "Modern Art", and the ambitious game of travelling "Elfenroads". Soon thereafter, I gained access to the Internet, and a friend pointed me to Ken Tidwell's "The Game Cabinet" which featured reviews and rulesets for more of these intriguing games. Soon, at a convention, I was introduced to the recently released games "Manhattan" and "Settlers of Catan". I just <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">had </span>to own them.<br /><br />Settlers is a favorite of many people - but for me it was the game I had been seeking for over a decade. I love economics and the principles free trade, and had always imagined some game where players collected and traded commodities, and built up their economies. I had actively sought out such a game for many years. The few I found did not really work that well. "After the Holocaust" had more rules than gameplay, and was really plodding in the way it portrayed economic development. "Pecuniary" was a privately published game with some of the cheapest components imaginable (a sheet of paper for the map, sequins for the markers), but more important, all of the mechanisms of the game were flawed. There was a gold standard mechanism, in which you could bankrupt other players, but no sensible player would allow himself into that position. The game was all about collecting full sets of commodities, but again no sensible player would make a trade to allow that to happen. "Cooperation" was also a privately published game that seemed promising - but it not was only flawed, it was bizarrely polemical. The authors were trying to promote a sort of left wing fascism, with private ownership but great government controls - and so rigged the game to discourage capitalism by giving some players incredible advantages and others insurmountable disadvantages.<br /><br />Settlers was a real game. It really had everything I had been seeking all those years. Just as I'd always wanted, it included a variety of commodities and gave each one unique qualities in what it could contribute to the economy. It showed how trade was mutually beneficial. It also included elements - such as building a network of roads - that I hadn't even thought of. On top of all this, it had really exquisite components - attractive art on its tiles and cards, and wooden houses, cities and roads.<br /><br />I had to own it. I even took the trouble of buying it from an importer at what was for me the unheard of price of $45. In the same order, I made the even crazier purchase of El Grande - a game I had not played or even seen - for $65. El Grande soon became my favorite game of all time - so I suppose it was worth it. It was worth it not only for the value of the game, but for also opening me up to the wider world of what some of us then called German Games (since, heck they were all being published in Germany and had German rules).<br /><br />Today they are most commonly called Eurogames (a tip of the hat to the occasional English, Dutch, or French publisher). Game designer Alan Moon has proposed the name "Designer Games", but to me that evokes "Designer Jeans", a term with too many fru-fru connotations. I'd like to propose the term "Alternative Games", paralleling "Alternative Rock", but who am I kidding - the term won't catch on.<br /><br />This discovery of a certain style of games has pushed me into a hobby that has occupied me for more than the past 10 years. As more people have entered the hobby, I find that I play much less often than many others (my4+ hours a week seems like nothing to some of these guys), and my collection of maybe 125 games of this type is also often dwarfed by folks with deeper pockets and more shelf space. But I can say for myself that I've been gaming for longer than than the vast majority of them, and so I have an appreciation of the history and development of many games that exceeds most other hobbyists. And you can't take that away from me.<br /><br />A couple of years ago I came up with the idea of writing game analysis which, I hoped, would approach an academic level. Again - so many people write reviews to make another contribution seemed redundant. However, I was taken by a book on art analysis - "A Fine Disregard - What Makes Modern Art Modern" by Kirk Varnedoe. In that book, the author identifies four key approaches to art which developed in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially by Degas and Gaugin. I wanted to do for games what Varnedoe did for modern art. To that end, I wrote a series of four articles, entitled Game Theory 101, which examined characteristics of game mechanics that I felt took games to a higher level. These four - never intended to be all inclusive - were:<br />1) Story Arc - the sense of a game developing differently in its beginning, middle and endgame.<br />2) The Bomb (I still wish I had a better term) - mechanics which create tension by offering players consequences that are disproportionate to the resources invested<br />3) Agonizing decisions - confronting the players with decisions which defy analysis<br />4) Nervous systems - an inherent instability in the game which forces players to always reevaluate their strategies.<br /><br />In this blog I want to do at least two things. I want to continue this series with an examination of other game characteristics which make them successful. The idea here is to examine some of my favorite games to see what broad principles they have in common.<br /><br />Knowing that this can be taken only so far, I want to also devote time to review specific games. These game reviews will not be like most reviews. They will not rehash the rules in painful detail, and will hardly rehash the rules at all. They will not be intended as a buyer's guide. In fact, the working assumption is that the reader is already familiar with the game. The model instead is intended to be taken from film criticism. The goal is to reflect the sort of approach taken by the great Pauline Kael (and my film professsor, Gerald Mast) rather than, say, Roger Ebert. The goal is to appreciate, reflect on, and analyze.<br /><br />My hope is that this will lead to the growth of an accepted language in the appreciation of boardgames. In my dreams, this column will encourage gamers to look at and discuss games with a shared perspective.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I know from the past that my time is limited and I may not contribute as often as I like - but I can only hope to discipline myself.<br /><br />My first contribution wil be an appreciation of "Ticket to Ride". This game is amazing to me because it so well captures the many characteristics I look for in an engaging game - and does it so simply. Coincidentally, it first came out just around the time I had finished the fourth of my The Games Journal articles - so it was fascinating to discover a game that had it all - in one package - just as I had finished thinking and writing about what makes a great game great.Jonathan Degannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09377251737931816828noreply@blogger.com14