What is Normal

It's springtime, and I'm looking out my window at a snowy ground on a cold, dreary day. I thought we were past snow by this point in the season, but apparently not. This whole spring has been very odd; we've been alternating between nice summer-like weather and this. My new job is largely dependant on the weather; when it's cold and unpleasant, my shift is usually cancelled. This, like our current weather, takes some getting used to, but like any new job it takes a bit of time to adjust to what is 'normal' for that business. Mostly, it's the little things that take the most time to learn; things are done in a certain way, and it isn't always explained to new employees. The basics, like running the till or how to request time off are covered, but the minor things that are just done a certain way, the minor specifics, need to be learned as you go. Working at a new business, especially when it's in an industry that you haven't worked in before, really helps to highlight those minor differences groups have.

It's the same when learning a new game, or when playing with a new gaming group. Learning the mechanics of a game is comparatively simple to learning what the common tactics and play styles (the 'metagame') is for that game and that group. That is to say, you can easily be taught what moves are legal, but learning what moves are good takes time and experience. The varied metagames for groups is particularly apparent in board games that use an auction mechanic. In most other games the metagame is confined to deciding on the best moves on a given turn and prioritizing resources. The importance of certain resources at different stages of a game can be explained to new players, as can the optimal moves, but providing new players with specific values for auctioned items can be difficult.

If it is an item that can be sold for a profit later in the game, you can gauge its worth by how much it will sell for (i.e. don't pay more than what you will sell it for), but you can't do that when the item being auctioned is more abstract, like turn order. How valuable is going first? It varies so much that pinning down a specific value is next to impossible. Mercante and Masterpiece auction off items that are then sold for a profit; the games provide values associated with the auctioned items, such as the 'true' value of a painting or the price of goods at the market, and these values can help new players estimate what a good bid would be. Meanwhile, Planet Steam has players bidding on turn order and platforms, the value of which is highly subjective.

This subjectivity is especially obvious when a new player joins the group; after playing a game a number of times, a group establishes its own 'market value' for abstract game elements, but a new player, who is unfamiliar with their metagame, can shake things up considerably by over-valuing and over-bidding compared to what the group is used to. When one or two players consistently bid higher than what was considered 'normal' it can completely change things; suddenly auctions become much more expensive, and even when a 'true' value is provided, if a player is willing to have smaller profit margins the entire table has to adjust to compensate. It is difficult for the values to go down, however; consistently underbidding might have players second guessing their high bids, or the low bidders will simply have to make their own adjustments if they want to collect anything.

Many game reviewers look down on auction mechanics, finding them tedious. I find them to be a useful tool, and many games have added interesting restrictions to keep the game flowing, such as minimum bids, or blind auctions. Mercante, for instance, has a once-around-the-table bidding system, which eliminates drawn out bidding wars; either you out-bid the last bid, or you pass, but you never get to up your bid. The auction mechanic is especially interesting when played with a variety of groups; is this group a bunch of penny-pinchers, or are they willing to break the bank to go first?

13/13

A Quick Change of Plans

Last week I got sick. I lost my voice at the end of my work week, and it came back just before my next shift. It was a lovely weekend of miming and being reduced to a whisper. Unfortunately, with my new work schedule, plus getting ill, my post last week went up late. I'm still trying to get used to this new schedule, so the post is also late. This was not my plan when I started this blog.

I've certainly played many games where my initial plan was ruined. Sometimes it was just the luck of the dice, while sometimes it was my opponents shutting me down. Regardless of how it happened, the question always became whether or not I could change strategies in time to catch up. I usually couldn't.

It's not an easy thing to do, especially when my strategy early on does well. Getting an early lead is great, but often that rush style needs to be followed up with preparations for a longer game, just in case the quick win falls flat. Otherwise, a loss is all but guaranteed. Games of Magic: the Gathering are particularly indicative of this, where rush strategies are often compared to a flip of a coin: either those decks win early, or they lose horribly. There is no middle ground, and a good aggro deck doesn't usually have the tools required to survive a late game; it's all-in, and every card is there for the quick win. If their opponent survives to find their an answer, the rush deck has basically lost.

I've certainly struggled with trying to change strategies in other games, too. In games like Eclipse, Planet Steam, and a lot of resource management games, I so often focus on one strategy, and when it falters I don't usually know what to do. I've spent too many resources, committed too heavily on a particular plan, and, like the rush deck, I no longer have the ability to do anything different. Collecting a diversity of resources and leaving yourself open to that change in tactics is clearly the way to go in these longer games; I just have a bad habit of tunnelling in one plan. I will aggressively collect one resource, which will become devalued as the game goes on. My economic bubble will burst, and then what can I do?

This isn't really a problem with these games, though. It's just my approach to them that is the problem. I do have a lot of fun gobbling up sheep, or minerals, or water, or whatever resource I have (over)valued in a game, but I know from experience that unless I can trade these resources away for moderate value, it will end badly. Some games leave this option very open; Settlers of Catan has its ports, Ad Astra has cheap trading with the bank, and Lords of Waterdeep have quests for each resource. Each of these games makes it easy to adapt and change your strategies by making each resource roughly of equal value, and somewhat interchangeable, throughout the game.

Meanwhile, games like Puerto Rico and, to a lesser extent, City necessitate specific resources at specific times in the game, and if you find yourself unable to get the resources in the correct order, you will struggle. In games where resources are best collected in a certain order each time you play, I have to question granting access to these resources to players randomly throughout the game, especially if there is no way to swap what you have for what you need.

At least for the player who built the aggro Magic deck he chose what cards to include. Without any sort of agency over what resources you can collect, or at least some ability to get what you need when you need it, you can be shoehorned into a bad strategy for the whole game. Some variation is welcome in these games, making resources occasionally harder to get early on helps to prevent a game from getting stale. But this is best when balanced with some way to adapt strategies and to change plans on the fly.

13/13

Meeting Expectations

This week I got to help play test Keet, my contribution to The Red Dragon Inn. (I wrote a bit about how I came up with his design here and here.) During testing, something came up that I hadn't considered before: the importance of players' expectations. There are a couple of cards for Keet that do things that haven't been done in the game before, and while the rules can be written to make it clear what they do, for them to make it to print they will have to work in a way that players will expect without having to look up the rules.

Every player, no matter their experience, has expectations of how a game will work. As soon as you start to describe a new game to someone you can see them wrapping their head around what you're saying. Experienced gamers will often start comparing mechanics to games they've already played. I know I'm particularly bad for this habit, and I also know I'm not the only one who does it.

When given new information, most people try to liken it to what is familiar to them. So, when learning a new game, it's a lot easier and faster to describe its mechanics as being similar to other titles: “You use your resources to build things, like in Settlers of Catan,” or “If you don't complete your goal you lose points, like in Ticket to Ride,” and so on. Games can frequently be described as a mash-up of existing mechanics; the industry builds on itself as it grows. Even when a game does something new it will often be described as being similar to something else. I've seen this with Five Tribes: its core game mechanic, dubbed 'worker displacement', has been described as a combination of the 'worker placement' mechanic seen in many titles, as well as the bowl-filling of Mancala. The mechanic is new, but it can be described easily by highlighting its similarities to what has been done in the past. Personally, when learning Five Tribes I compared it to the action circle in Trajan.

The problem is that when you are working on a game to be published, you can't always describe it in terms of other games. Reviewers and play groups can, but a publisher can't. Not only does it make a game look derivative, but it narrows its audience by requiring people to have played the games used in the comparisons. So how do you make something original, and still make it easy to understand? Expectations are there, even from people who have never played another game before, so how do you make the mechanics clear to everyone?

One option to meet player expectations with new mechanics without using comparisons to other games is by having a strong theme. By applying a clear theme to your mechanic to can make something that would otherwise be odd to players can seem familiar and far more intuitive. You want a value to decrease over time? Perhaps it is a falling object, and your value is its altitude. You want to hide information until players perform a specific task? The players must do research and 'learn' what is hidden. Keeping the theme in mind can make mechanics resonate much better with players.

Games that are designed around a theme allow oddball mechanics to be included, and if the theme is strong enough those strange mechanics can be what makes the game truly shine. A game that starts with solid rules can play very nicely, but without a suitable theme, even the cleanest mechanics can seem confusing; if a player cannot make connections to anything familiar, then a common avenue of comprehension will be blocked, making it difficult to understand what is going on and to remember what to do. New games that are too abstract have trouble finding an audience, and need a way to stand out to be successful. Games with loose mechanics but a strong theme, like Munchkin, find an audience quickly and thrive. Still, even a light theme, if it is especially fitting, can be enough to garner clarity.

13/13

It's Popular Because It's Popular

Every entertainment industry has trends; whatever is popular will inevitably trigger the creation of similar entities. The Simpsons and Batman Begins, for instance, helped to change the landscape of their respective mediums by their sheer popularity. Once upon a time the idea that a cartoon would be inappropriate for children was unheard of, as were dark, gritty superhero movies. The board game industry is no different; trends pop up just as often as anywhere else. There they usually play out either as a common theme, or as a common mechanic. Common themes usually coincide with what is popular in other media, like tropes of horror, fantasy, or superheroes. Common mechanics are usually the result of other companies emulating a popular game.

I first noticed board game trends a few years ago, around the time that Munchkin Zombies was released and The Walking Dead first aired. There had been a growing cultural obsession with Zombies, and it seem to come to a head around then. The undead were everywhere, and it didn't take long for a glut of zombie themed games to appear. The zombie craze has since petered out, and while there are the occasional new title, the market is no longer as saturated with them; it has moved on to the next trend.

Around the same time, about when zombie games were starting to trail off, deck building games were on a huge upswing. Dominion had been released a few years prior, but around that time it had hit a remarkable level of popularity. It seemed that every game company was pitching their own 'deck building game... with a twist!' Unfortunately, most of these games ended up feeling basically the same. The 'twists' never really pushed these games to be all that different. Even Quarriors, one of the more unique takes on deck building, is essentially just Dominion with dice. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy a lot of these games, but they do feel somewhat derivative. It has taken time, but deck building is finally starting to move away from being the only core mechanic, which was what made these games all feel like Dominion, to being an interesting tool that designers can now integrate into other games.

I would be remiss if I did not touch on the recent craze of adult party games. They have been around for well over a decade, but it wasn't until recently that the genre became popular. One particularly offensive game exploded in popularity and spawned several copycat games aimed at being as shocking as possible. Personally, I'm sick of this style of game and look forward to them going away. My opinions aside, the genre is a good example of how the game industry latches on to a popular idea and produces as many games as possible to capitalize on it.

Once I started to notice the trendiness of game mechanics and themes with new releases, I started to look at older titles and saw it playing out in them as well. The most obvious example I noticed was shape of the classic Monopoly board. The spaces around the perimeter of the game board has appeared in countless titles over the years, like Careers, and stylistically they are clearly inspired by Monopoly. It is interesting to note that since the release of Settlers of Catan, the Monopoly-board design has given way to more games with hexagonal spaces modular boards.

Resource management, worker placement, and even cooperative games have all had their day in the sun. Themes come in bunches, as do mechanics. The market will always seek to make the most money, and looking at what is currently popular is a fine way to do that. (I'm expecting to see some variations on Five Tribes in the near future.) This isn't to say that this is a bad thing; it's just the nature of the industry. Still, it's always nice to see when something new comes onto the scene and mixes things up. And if you don't like the games that are coming out now, there is no shortage of older titles to play.

13/13

The Second Game Problem

During a game night I will occasionally play a game that ends far faster than usual. One player surges ahead and achieves a quick victory. When this happens it is fairly common for the group to decide that the game was too short, and to opt to play a second round of the same game. It is often assumed that because the first game was so short the second game should be about the same duration. This is never the case.

In my experience, when opting to play a second round of a game, it always takes far longer than a normal game. Munchkin is a particularly good example of this: the first game sees players levelling up with great haste, finding Potted Plants and Lame Goblins to slay, and getting to level ten with next to no effort. The group usually feels a little unsatisfied with the game; while everyone had fun, it just ended so soon. In my ten or so years of playing Munchkin (egads, has it been that long since high school?) I have learned the hard way that opting to play a second game of Munchkin in an evening is always a trap. For some strange reason, every single time one of my gaming groups starts that second game, it inevitably drags on for hours. It wouldn't be so remarkable if it didn't always happen, but it does. Every. Single. Time.

I used to think that it must have had something to do with the way we shuffled the deck; all of the cards that helped speed the game along, like the poor Lame Goblin, found their way to the bottom of the deck, clumped together with the other low-level monsters. This left the top of the deck filled with the nasty monsters, like the Plutonium Dragon and the Unspeakably Awful Indescribable Horror. To make matters worse, when not battling unstoppable monsters, all we would find would be Class or Race cards that were of no use to anyone (getting one class is great, getting four is not...)! I know that sometimes we could legitimately blame our setup, since we would occasionally opt to play with the cards we hadn't drawn yet (meaning if the first game had all of the little squishies, the second game would have all of the big bads), but even when we were thorough, and reshuffled everything for the second game, we still suffered the same problem: round two was too long.

This long-second-game phenomenon hasn't been limited to my games of Munchkin, either. I have seen it happen with Magic: the Gathering (particularly in games using the Commander format), too. There, the first game ends with a player winning early from an infinite combo or some other explosive play, so we play a second game which inevitably turns into a long stalemate. This past week I even experienced this strange phenomenon when my gaming group was playing Quarriors. Like my short, unsatisfying games of Munchkin from days gone by, or my remarkably quick Commander games, the first game of Quarriors this week was over all too soon. I had found a strategy that allowed me to gobble up points at an alarming rate, and we finished the game in only a few turns. We decided that a second round was in order, and we replaced the die that enabled that overpowered strategy. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a relatively brief second round of Quarriors turned into several hours of a stalled game state. It got very late, and we had to call the game, since people had plans the next morning.

I do wonder if this long-round-two nonsense is just a matter of perspective. When the first round of a game is so short, the second game will always feel like it drags on by comparison. It's possible that the second game is actually of average length, and the fact that it starts later in the evening and is compared to the abnormally short game just prior to it means that it feels longer. In remembering, too, it may be that two rounds in a single night blur together to seem like one long experience. I'm not entirely convinced by this argument, but regardless, the fact remains that the second game always feels longer.

13/13

A Bad Start

Have you ever played a game where it felt like you had no chance of winning? Have you ever played one that gave you that feeling on the first turn? I have, and it's not fun.

Games like Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan heavily punish players for bad choices or unlucky draws at the beginning of the game. In Puerto Rico, getting saddled with an unfavourable patch of farmland on the first turn will set you so far back that you may as well stop playing. In Settlers of Catan, if you place your settlements on the wrong numbers during setup you'll spend the entire game watching everyone else surge ahead while you wait.

These games are praised so highly, and yet they seem so unforgiving. Now, I will grant you that for years I enjoyed playing Settlers of Catan regularly, and I will still play it every now and again. However, the few times that I have played Puerto Rico, I had a miserable time. I have to wonder why I can find enjoyment in one of these games when they both can be such a punishing experience. It may be that my personal history with Settlers of Catan has granted my a bias: I learned how to play Settlers of Catan with my friends in high school, and I have good memories of playing it with them. Though my bias may be more shallow: I typically did well in games of Settlers of Catan, so I was infrequently the player lagging behind waiting for the dice to roll in my favour. Still, I feel that my ability to enjoy Settlers of Catan and not Puerto Rico may have more to do with the way the games play.

In an essay called “Stealing the Fun” Dave Howell suggests that “a game is not fun unless a player believes they have some reasonable chance to win until the moment the game ends” (p.84, The Kobold's Guide to Board Game Design. Open Design, 2011. ed. Mike Selinker). He notes that it is the mere belief that is important, not the probability. It can be extremely unlikely that the player in last place will win, but if that player *believes* it can reasonably happen, it is enough for them to have fun.

My experience would suggest that Howell is on to something; when I have been woefully behind in a game like Settlers of Catan, I know that the dice could eventually roll in my favour, and if it happens enough I could recover from a bad start. I've had the same experience with other dice-based games, like Blood Bowl and Warhammer. I have seen enough 1s rolled in a row (and enough 6s) to know that these statistical outliers do happen. If all I need to get back into a game is for someone to roll a 12 three turns in a row, I can hold on hope until the dice stop moving. It's very unlikely, buy it is reasonable!

Puerto Rico doesn't have that random element, though. The only randomness is drawing farm tiles to determine what resources you can collect, and it's that precise element that can make or break a game so early. Unlike Settlers of Catan, where each turn the game introduces a random element, the overall deterministic nature of Puerto Rico removes that 'reasonable chance' that Howell mentioned. It arguably makes the game more strategic, but I just find it unpleasant. Don't get me wrong, I like games with heavy strategy that require careful planning and forethought, but I like them best when you can make a mistake and still find a way to dig yourself out of the hole you have made for yourself. A single error early on should not completely ruin your chances at victory in any game.

My girlfriend dislikes strategy games, and it seems it is for this same reason; she does not feel that she ever has a chance at winning. I think she's wrong (she has the ability to win!), but it's this belief that keeps her from enjoying those games. It is important to note that actually winning doesn't factor in here; feeling that you can win is enough to enjoy the game. Actually winning is just a bonus.

13/13

How I Fail at Making Tea

Making a cup of tea is perhaps one of the easiest things to do. Boil water. Add a tea bag. Remove the bag. Drink it. And yet, for some reason I have failed at every one of those tasks on more than one occasion.

I've been known to go into the kitchen with the full intent of making tea, only to walk right back out again. Many times I have poured the water and stepped out before it boils, then proceed to forget about it as it cools; I've had to re-boil that same kettle three or four times some days. Then of course there's the tea bag; I once joked to a professor of mine that I make my tea so strong that I can stand the bag up in the cup. It was an exaggeration, of course, but I would routinely leave my tea bag in my cup for a good half hour before I would drink it. That is, if I remembered to drink it at all! Even now as I'm writing this I realize that I have a cup of tea beside me that has been there for quite some time. While I did manage to remove the tea bag, I suspect my tea is cold by now.... Yep. It's definitely cold.

My problem may be that I'm forgetful or easily distracted, but I think it goes deeper, that it stems from a general lack of conviction. I'll start many tasks, but finishing them is often a far greater obstacle; when something else comes along to draw my attention, I will too often set down the first project and never get back to it. It is particularly apparent when I can't even finish preparing a cup of tea, but I've noticed the same pattern with my hobbies, too.

For instance, several years ago I bought some plastic models to turn into an Elf team for Blood Bowl. I excitedly got to work cutting away weapons and carving out details. I had intended to use the team for the following season, about four months away. All I needed to do was finish assembly, prime them, and paint the sixteen models. It took three years to finish what was supposed to be a small project. Like my tea crafting, I set out to get the task done in a timely manner, but something happened. I stopped working on the models, and the project kept getting set aside for something else. I would think about it from time to time, but my excitement for it had faded. It wasn't until I decided it was finally time to use the models, ready or not, that I was able to get myself back into working on the team regularly.

So what got me back to work on that project? Well, primarily it was a deadline imposed by our Blood Bowl league; the rules state that models have to be 'table-legal' by the end of the season. That is to say, at the end of the twenty-six week period the models need to have at least three different colours on them and have finished bases. I had a very specific goal, and a very strict time limit to work with. It helped immensely.

I was always good at meeting deadlines in school, but it seems when deadlines are removed so is my motivation. The Elf team was by no means the only project that got set aside. I have boxes of models that are in various states of completion: some need only finishing touches of paint, while most still need to be assembled. It isn't limited to my models, either. Board game designs that I started years ago are collecting dust, and the piles of books I intend to read and board games I intend to play only grow. The obvious solution is to have self-imposed deadlines, but I often come to the same problem: if I miss my own deadlines, there are no consequences. That said, I get more and more frustrated by my inaction as time goes on, so I suppose there is one consequence. I am improving, at least, but it is taking time.

And on that note, I should probably go finish drinking that cold cup of tea.

13/13