Good Game, Well Played

I stayed up way too late playing Dominion Online last night. I was just going to take a quick look at it, since it's free to play, but I ended up in a vicious loop; if I lost a game, I'd feel the need to try again, but if I won, I'd be pleased with how I played and would want to try and repeat my performance. While I lost far more games than I won (I was impressed with the AI, actually), it nevertheless ate up my entire night.

So either Dominion is a highly addictive game, or I'm just really stubborn. Maybe I have that competitive urge that supposedly all male gamers have? It's certainly possible. I know that when gaming with my friends I really focus on the game and I almost always play to win. I'll certainly help new players when they want advice, and I'm usually rather open about my strategies, too. I mean, really, if I can help my friends get better at a game that I like to play, they'll be more likely to beat me, and thus will be more inclined to play again. Nobody likes to get trounced at a game, especially when they feel the winner had an unfair advantage, like experience. I can relate to this; I know that I can get a bit sullen when I lose, though I like to think I'm fairly gracious in defeat. Well, most of the time. At least, when I feel the game was a close one. Let's face it, when losing feels like a foregone conclusion an hour before you finish the game, I think everyone is entitled to be a bit moody when the final scores are added up.

Still, it's a bit funny; outside of gaming, I love seeing my friends do well. Their well being brings me great happiness, and I'm thrilled when they succeed. So isn't that always the case when I'm gaming with them? Is it because I know that there are no consequences if my friends lose? Or is gaming the one medium where I can vent my frustrations and indulge my repressed selfishness? (As a side note, this dichotomy may be why I like cooperative games so much; I can be competitive and try to win, but I also get to see my friends do well and succeed.)

At the end of it all, I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer any of these questions. For one thing, I'm still pretty tired from my night of constant Dominion. (Oh dear... Out of context that sounds really bad!) Still, I do know that when things are going well for me in a game, I get excited and really pleased. Seeing a deck that I've built hum along, even if it's just for a turn. Or seeing everything fall into place in a worker placement game. Or even correctly divining someone's play before they make it. These are all thoroughly satisfying to me, as is winning a close game. Mind you, I also get a similar satisfaction from the sound of rolling dice or the feel of shuffling a deck of cards. It might just be a mild obsession with order and things falling into place. I honestly don't know.

I think what I can take away from all of this is that I should be able to find a similar satisfaction in seeing my friends win at a game. And, thinking back, there have been times when that has been the case. There are games that I've simply enjoyed playing, and the outcome hasn't really been an issue for me. Win or lose, I did something fun during the game, and even if the scoreboard didn't reflect it in the end, I know it was a good game. By contrast, games where I've just stomped my opponent have never felt as satisfying; sure, I won, but there was no challenge, no uncertainly. I just got lucky, and my opponent didn't. It almost doesn't feel fair.

As for those nail biters, where it could go anybody's way, where everyone played well and can feel proud of what they did? Those games are always the best, no matter who wins.

13/13

The Joys of Limitation

I like building decks for trading card games. I've played a number of them, including the old Harry Potter TCG, the now defunct Warhammer 40k CCG, the discontinued World of Warcraft TCG, and the everlasting Magic: the Gathering, and I've enjoyed constructing decks in all of them.

For me, deck building is a creative outlet. Usually, I pick a theme, look at my card pool, and build a deck that fits that theme. Often this will be centred around a single card and built out from there, but sometimes it's around a combination of two or more cards, or more generally around a type of card or game mechanic. Occasionally, I look at my collection of cards and build the best deck I can with what I have. I enjoy that, but I usually get more satisfaction out of 'jenky' decks that have themes; they have more character to them.

When I was growing up, I was limited by my card pool when building decks. This was an interesting restriction, since I could obviously only build with what I had; I never was big on the trading aspect of these games, and would usually just collect the cards. As a kid, I could only ever get so many cards, but still, I enjoyed being restricted in that sense; it added a challenging element to building, and I didn't feel compelled to spend a fortune to find the right card to complete a deck. What I had would have to be good enough unless I got lucky opening a booster pack.

By contrast, when I started playing Magic: the Gathering a few years ago, my approach to deck building changed. While I still built decks based on a theme when I could, I was no longer limited by my card collection; buying specific cards was far easier with Magic than it ever was with other trading card games I played. This meant that I could look at a list of every card printed, find the card I needed for the deck, and pick it up from a local gaming store. This removed the restriction I had as a kid of a small card pool, and opened up far more opportunities for building those themed decks. If I had an idea for a deck, I could build it, no matter what my luck was in opening packs, or how old a card was that I needed. If the card was one I could afford, I could get it for my deck.

Magic is particularly interesting, however, in that it has several supported ways of playing. These formats are either 'Constructed', where players create decks from whatever they have in their collection, or they are 'Limited', where players are given a small number of sealed booster packs from which they build decks. Given the small card pool, Limited settings make building themed decks largely out of the question, so it falls to building the best deck you can with the limited resources at your disposal. Nevertheless, I find Limited environments to be quite rewarding; players only have a short amount of time to build their decks, and it forces players to use cards that would be passed over in Constructed games in favour of better cards.

I've heard it said that greater restrictions breed greater creativity. I'm not sure that it applies entirely with trading card games, but greater restrictions in TCGs certainly encourage greater resourcefulness. Building a deck out of whatever you want is a lot of fun, but building a deck out of a small pool of cards really does make you better appreciate a lot of otherwise uninteresting cards; sometimes you have to make do with what you have, and those mediocre cards may just be the best on hand.

13/13

The Oral Tradition of Games

How often do you actually read the rules to a board game? Usually, groups will have one person read the rules (usually the owner of the game) and then teach everyone else; this makes sense, since it takes less time to have one person learn the game first than to wait for everyone to read the rulebook. But what about older games? Have you ever read the rules for Monopoly? Yahtzee? Risk? What about all of those games you've played with a standard 52-card deck? There are so many games that people teach to each other without having read the rulebook first.

Classic games that 'everyone' knows how to play are an interesting breed; most of the time the rules of these games are passed down from generation to generation, or at least from group to group, as a sort of oral tradition. We are often taught these games when we are young, when our reading skills are just developing. This has the interesting side effect of feeding that sense when we grow up that 'everyone' knows how to play; we are astonished when someone doesn't know the rules of a game we've grown up with. These games were a part of our childhood, and we know how to play them by the time we would even think to read the rules, so it seems strange that someone else would need to read a rule book for them. We never bothered; why would we spend the time to read them when we already know how to play?

Add to this the fact that some of these classic games don't always come with rules, or if they do the rules that are provided are often on a small piece of paper that is poorly written. Chess sets in particular come to mind; the rules of Chess are remarkably complicated, but whenever rules are provided with a set they lack diagrams or seem to assume that the reader already knows how to play. Backgammon is no better; growing up I tried to learn how to play by reading several rule sheets, but the rules I read were always so unintuitive that I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't until later when I played Internet Backgammon on our family computer that it finally made sense; the tool tips provided were extremely informative and it showed just how straightforward the game actually was to play. Still, looking at how the rules for these old games are written, they seem almost to require a teacher to start playing them.

Standard 52-card decks of playing cards are similar to Chess or Backgammon sets in that they also rarely comes with rules. Of course, a standard deck of cards can be used for hundreds of games, and space is limited by the tuck boxes they are in, so you can't provide complete rules for every game in a pack. Nevertheless, the consequence of this lack-of-a-rulebook seems to be that players gravitate towards card games that they already know how to play, rather than seeking out rules for new ones. These games are almost always taught to people by family or friends instead of a book. For instance, I learned to play Cribbage from my family; I've glanced at the actual rules for it once or twice, and I know there are some house rules that we use, but I've never sat down and read through the rules in the same way that I do when I get a new board game.

By contrast, modern board games often have a compact, presentable rulebook that makes it easy to learn the game. They will usually have plenty of examples and diagrams to make things as clear as possible, and almost every game has an emphasis on spending less time learning the game and more time playing it. Some companies have gone a step further to that end by creating things like learn-to-play videos, which allow new players to have a game taught to them rather than reading the rules. This has proven to be a great way to learn a game, and seeing a game played can provide a sense of what good strategies are, too, making the first game less intimidating. So that's a bonus.

Still, even when learning a game from someone else, sometimes it's worth just reading the manual.

13/13

House Rules – The Great Divide

I like house rules. These unofficial modifications to the way a board game is played can be as minor as changing how one card works or setting a time limit on turns, or as major as changing the basic turn structure or victory conditions of the game. But regardless of how minor they are, I find them to be an interesting study in game design. What would happen if we changed this little rule? What about if things worked that way instead? How would strategies change, and would it break the game entirely? How fundamental is this rule to the flow of the game? At the end of the day, when I do implement my own house rules it gives me a satisfying feeling of creativity and of ownership over a game. I have contributed something unique, and part of the enjoyment I get from playing the game is directly because of the modifications I've made.

As much as I enjoy puzzling over possible house rules, however, not everyone shares this passion. A few people I know are dead set against house rules unless they are, as one friend put it, 'necessary.' But what makes a house rule 'necessary' for a game to be playable? I've usually found that if my gaming group has stumbled onto a dominating strategy or a loophole in the rules, a minor house rule can patch up the game. It prevents players from abusing the loophole or forces them to adopt new strategies, keeping the game fair and fresh. I've also adopted house rules to for players who have trouble seeing the board due to poor vision, or for younger players who will get frustrated by more complicated rules. These are all put in place to keep the game fair and enjoyable for everyone.

What about the house rules that make the game more complicated, or that are put in place just to 'spice up' the game? One could argue that these rules will make the game more enjoyable for the group, and that's certainly possible, but I find that house rules of this nature require a very specific group. Everyone at the table needs to be very familiar with the original game and needs to have played with this same group for a long time. This is especially true as these rules modifications have a tendency to compound and multiply, making the game ever more complex and daunting for anyone not part of the core group.

And that's where the problems arise; as soon as a new player is added to the mix, as an outsider, they'll see the changes to the rules as being pointless, confusing or frustrating. They won't enjoy it, no matter how much your gaming group assures them that these changes are the best thing since sliced bread. The catch, of course, is that the group will usually be so ingrained in their collection of house rules that they will refuse to play the game any other way because it's 'not as fun.' This can cause a great divide between players, isolating groups from one another, sparking heated debates about how to play, and even resulting in confusion about how the rules are actually written.

So are house rules a problem? No, they really aren't; play your games the way you like to play them. It's important to keep in mind, though, that just because a house rule works for you and your group doesn't mean it will work for every group or every new player. Their mileage, like yours, may vary.

13/13