|
OmegaGoo posted:... I think you have rather horribly missed the point. This. And as to the chess thing, Pandemic is qualitatively different than if we're playing Chess or BattleCON or Dominion or whatever. "Competition" is a Known Social Contract, wherein I am not responsible for Bob's success in a given match (although it is in my best interest to help Bob become better between iterations, but that's a separate matter from the game itself). I am supposed to provide adversity, not support. This is okay. We have consented to this.
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 19:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 21:07 |
|
|
The safeword is flipping the table.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:00
|
|
|
Andarel posted:The safeword is flipping the table. Nuclear tesuji.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:01
|
|
|
Competition is a lot like BDSM: You agree to hurt each other, because you find pleasure in it. This is just one of many ways to link eroticism and gaming, as I will discuss in this five page manifesto.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:03
|
|
|
Gutter Owl posted:Competition is a lot like BDSM: You agree to hurt each other, because you find pleasure in it. Would read this manifesto.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:04
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:This isn't loving Philosophy 101: most games have clear winning conditions so there isn't space for argument in terms of what is winning or not winning. I wasn't talking about quarterbacking there. But I agree with you that win conditions are clear and not some philosophical thing. My experience has been that the design of the game is a factor, and the players themselves are also factors. My experience has also been that players are motivated by more than a game's pure win conditions, and that can lead to players in a very real sense playing a different game than the one they are all sitting down together at, because they are after different things. Otherwise you wouldn't see behavior like "Win, otherwise Spoil or Kingmake". Or, for that matter, chip-taking vendetta stuff that clearly gets you nowhere closer to a win but someone does it anyway. These situations are in the minority but they are nowhere near being isolated. Heck, games like Munchkin seem to pivot on enabling and encouraging that stuff. I don't seriously want to try playing philisophy games about defining "winning". I'm not articulating this well and maybe we're even talking about different things, but the reason I brought that up along with the Defenders of the Realm FAQ story was because these discussions tend to attract blank and white statements about who or what's fault it is that gameplay experience X even exists but it never sounds useful or relatable to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:05
|
|
|
"I direct your attention to figure 1: the Harem card from Dominion"
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:05
|
|
|
Aston posted:"I direct your attention to figure 1: the Harem card from Dominion" Well yeah. I guess abject body horror IS a component of eroticism for a lot of people. I don't kinkshame.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:09
|
|
|
Mister Sinewave posted:I wasn't talking about quarterbacking there. But I agree with you that win conditions are clear and not some philosophical thing. You're trying really hard to not use the F-word here. It's okay, this is a time when "fun" can be mentioned. You're mixing up the object of the game with a player's goal in a game. For me, if I play chess against an experienced player, the object of the game is to win. That is always the object of the game of chess. The entire game is designed around fostering an environment where both players try to win. However, my goal is not to win. I know I can't win, I'm a pretty awful chess player. My goal is to try and lose as gracefully as possible or try out a strategy I hadn't done before, or maybe just have a good time. I can accomplish my goal without accomplishing the object of the game. Note the difference. One is the object as set out by the game, one is the goal I set myself. You can see the same thing of a challenge run in a video game. Let's say I decide to play Super Mario World never touching Yoshi. The object of the game is to clear levels until the final level, Bowser's Castle, is completed, at which point I have beaten the game. My goal, however, is to beat the game while never using Yoshi. I could also add in a goal of getting all 96 exits. In which case, the object of the game is the same: Super Mario World does not care what I want to accomplish. However, my goal has changed. For many people, the goal of a game may very well be to win. In fact, you might see everyone in a game start with that goal. As a frontrunner appears or backstabbing occur, their goal may change. However, the object of the game has not. Interfering in other people accomplishing the object of a competitive game isn't frowned upon. Hell, it's encouraged--that's the point of any competitive game with interaction. Interfering in other people accomplishing their goal tends to have those people get annoyed at you. When that goal is to win, you can usually say "Hey, the point is to try to win, and I'm trying to win" and a reasonable person will say "yeah, that's fair". When their goal is to attack a particular player and you killsteal, then you get "Hey, I was going to do that!" but everyone's probably fine. When their goal is simply to "enjoy themselves playing a game and hanging out with friends" then you're an rear end in a top hat. This is the quarterbacking problem. The object of Pandemic is for the player team to win. Some people's goal might be to "win". Some people's goal might be to "play a game and have fun". If that goal involves such things as making decisions and having agency, then interfering in that goal means you're an rear end in a top hat. But...if their agency means making a potentially game losing play, aren't they interfering in your goal? It's kind of lame to say that what one player wants from a game is superior to another, but someone's losing out in this exchange. This is the sort of thing bad game design encourages, for mutually exclusive players to be able to accomplish goals. Good game design lets everyone have their goals be reasonably accomplished (and let's face it, most goals fall under "win", "do as best as I can", or "have fun"). If you have a game and it says, right there in the rulebook, the "object of the game is to have fun", then if someone's all like "But I want to win!" when everyone else is trying to have fun, then everyone says "dude, why?". Interestingly enough, this is what happens in tabletop RPGs, where the object is to tell a cooperative story and people who try to "win" it are looked at as assholes. But if your game doesn't say that but it says that you're trying to win and all the mechanics support trying to win, but you try to claim it's not about winning or losing, but about having fun, then you need to look over your game design some, because something's not lining up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:28
|
|
|
Fat Samurai posted:
I don't actually own every Talisman expansion though! The majority of my set comes from 1st and 2nd edition fan expansions, I don't have any of the 4th edition small ones like the Werewolf or Lich.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:35
|
|
|
I thought Legendary Encounters: Predator was a pretty fun cooperative game with a minimal amount of quarterbacking which mostly devolved to 'if you can, you should probably try to kill this thing' or 'if anyone can play a coordinate card it would really help me a lot'.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:38
|
|
|
Gutter Owl posted:Okay. I am playing Pandemic with Bob. I have played over 100 games of Pandemic. (This is actually true. My boss had a work league going for about a year.) Bob has played ten or fewer. Thanks for spelling this out, I get what you're saying. It didn't make sense to how we play Pandemic and I didn't follow. To us, what's germane to the experience of being a cardboard CDC organization is figuring out - given what you have - how to do the most with the least. Part of that is trying to come up with a better or more efficient plan for everyone than whatever has been proposed so far, adopting or discarding it, and going with the optimal one. You do this as a group because you're the CDC (CEDA) and the game's set up for that more than it is set up for players being individual autonomous directors. I get what you're saying though that this is conceptually at odds with letting a new player make their own mistakes - because their mistakes aren't their own. That being said it has not been my experience that this is an actual practical problem in Pandemic because honestly Pandemic is not a particularly complex or opaque game. It's absolutely possible to logically explain why A would be better than doing B, and the game really isn't so complex that you need the experience of previous games under your belt before you can contribute to being a cardboard CDC co-director. Then again, we do only play Pandemic with like-minded people come to think of it. If I broke out Pandemic at a weekly boardgame meetup and tried things out with every mix of players under the rainbow I think I'd be singing a different tune. Or at least adding a lot more IFs and BUTs.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:39
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:I don't actually own every Talisman expansion though! The majority of my set comes from 1st and 2nd edition fan expansions, I don't have any of the 4th edition small ones like the Werewolf or Lich. Well, now we all know what to get you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 20:59
|
|
|
Rutibex posted:
I have been in the TG Secret Santa three years now and have not received things that I didn't want. I ask for boardgames, so unless someone is especially dense you should get boardgames or something related I would hope. I did get Fiasco once, but that was because the goon found a thread where I mentioned interest in it, so it was a win. I had a miniatures gamer and an RPG gamer, but I knew the systems they liked and what they already owned so purchasing a gift wasn't hard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 21:07
|
|
But I don't want heroclix, D&D books, or Magic cards
|
Oh the joy of discussing Pandemic! A slight detour: A friend of mine (who I learned Pandemic with actually) has been heavily into Magic. He has played online and semi-professionally. Before he began that, he enjoyed introducing new people to the game and he had fun playing them. Now, he has gotten too good at the game for it to be fun for him to teach an play newbies. His skill is (in his own words) too high for a newbie to have any chance at challenging him. You could say that his goal is to be challenged, and that goal is not achievable when playing newbies. Setting a different goal runs counter to either his enjoyment (just win, who cares about challenge) or the game (try to "play fair" instead of optimally), so it doesn't really work. To me, playing Pandemic runs into a similar kind of problem a lot quicker, which is the "design flaw" portion of quarterbacking (I don't entirely agree that it's a design flaw though). Difference in skill level means someone is getting a suboptimal experience, either the newbie not being allowed to make choices or the experienced player being dragged down by bad plays. The solution is to only play with people of a comparable skill level. Comparable does not mean equal, but it makes it pretty hard to introduce to new players. This actually means that pandemic is great as a legacy game, because you will play it with the same group, who will then be of similar skill level. Then there's the separate but related quarterbacking problem of the guy who will not stop telling other people what to do. The friend I mentioned does this all the time, and for that reason my girlfriend cannot e in the room when I play coop games with him, much less participate. He does this regardless of whether he knows the game, and he really means well. When I play with him, I take his "do this" as a suggestion, which I will shoot down whenever I have a better idea, and I enjoy the pacing it brings to the game. But I can see how other people cannot play with him. This kind of quarterbacking is definitely a jerk player issue. I'm also totally into boardgaming santa, but I may also just go for the trad games one... Also europeland only would be cool.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 21:52
|
|
|
Mister Sinewave posted:Thanks for spelling this out, I get what you're saying. Totally agree. This is how our work league did its massive number of games--the players were of generally equal experience, and the notion of individual pawns belonging to individual players gradually disappeared. I think there's an important distinction to be made between liking or disliking a game, and that same game accomplishing or failing at good design principles. Like, compare to TV. Mad Men was a generally excellent TV show--well shot, well paced, well scripted--that I just couldn't get into for personal reasons. Meanwhile, Sailor Moon is a technical mess monster-of-the-week show, but I love it with my whole being. I have a strong preference, but I'm not going to outright say "Sailor Moon is a better television show than Mad Men."
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 21:56
|
|
|
I think a legacy version is the best version of pandemic. To be played through with a static group at the same skill level until the game is done, then put on the shelf. It's essentially what happened with a lot of people's copies of pandemic anyway, they just didn't sharpie the board or tear up cards.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 22:07
|
|
|
I'd humor the argument put forth that quarterbacking isn't a design flaw if there weren't games that fixed that flaw. As it stands, it sounds to me like somebody's claiming that salmonella is just something we're gonna have to deal with if we want to eat chicken.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 22:23
|
|
|
To be fair, you do have to risk e-coli if you want carpaccio or steak tartare. But that's why those foods are unusual delicacies, rather than dietary staples.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 22:35
|
|
|
I expect this from reddit, but I'm astounded at the level of Kinshasa shaming here.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 23:00
|
|
|
Is anyone other than me making the Gamer Hajj to Essen next week?
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 23:56
|
|
|
Hanabi and Space Alert both have ways of reducing quarterbacking in a coop and should probably be introduced into more games in some way. Both games reduce communication which is one of main necessities of Quarterbacking. Space Alert does it via time pressure for the most part. Hanabi has it baked into the rules though. Hanabi has a second way of doing it and that's via incomplete information. Normally, in a coop game, information is practically public. However, because Hanabi prevents players from seeing their own cards, they have a reduced control over their own ability to play and have to better collaborate to focus on influencing the play of the rest of the table. Hanabi can still be quarterbacked, somewhat, by establishing a system of discarding and developing a pattern of emphasis when giving out clues, but it's nowhere near the level of what can be done in Pandemic, Arkham Horror or Ghost Stories. A big part of quarterbacking is communication. If that's limited, quarterbacking can be limited.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 23:56
|
|
|
sector_corrector posted:I expect this from reddit, but I'm astounded at the level of Kinshasa shaming here. What the hell does the capital of the Congo have to do with board games?
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2015 23:58
|
|
|
It's has three yellow cubes on it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:01
|
|
|
Xelkelvos posted:Hanabi and Space Alert both have ways of reducing quarterbacking in a coop and should probably be introduced into more games in some way. Both games reduce communication which is one of main necessities of Quarterbacking. Space Alert does it via time pressure for the most part. Hanabi has it baked into the rules though. Hanabi has a second way of doing it and that's via incomplete information. Normally, in a coop game, information is practically public. However, because Hanabi prevents players from seeing their own cards, they have a reduced control over their own ability to play and have to better collaborate to focus on influencing the play of the rest of the table. Hanabi can still be quarterbacked, somewhat, by establishing a system of discarding and developing a pattern of emphasis when giving out clues, but it's nowhere near the level of what can be done in Pandemic, Arkham Horror or Ghost Stories. The whole point of playing cooperative games is communication with other players to coordinate. I would go so far as to say you reduce quarterbacking by requiring, or putting an emphasis on, communication. Taking the same examples: In Space Alert you need to communicate with other players, because you don't know what they've done by looking at their board. And maybe someone has updated the game board during the action part of the game, but you need to ask Bob, what turn he's shooting the Blue cannon so you can make sure you synergise. In Hanabi, which I've never played, it seems to be all about refining your clues via communication. It's information you need to limit, so that no one player can know everything, hence requiring players to communicate. Another way to reduce quarterbacking is to get input from all players and increase communication. Just get everyone talking. THat's the group puzzle strategy thing, but that's what cooperative games are all about. Working together.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:09
|
|
|
Xelkelvos posted:and developing a pattern of emphasis when giving out clues What do you mean by this? If you're talking about saying "This is your blue card" to mean "play this", but "This is your blue card" to mean "hold onto this", then that's obviously cheating.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
This touches on the related issue of whether or not a game's rules can be so poorly worded as to make cheating inevitable.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:27
|
|
|
Amoeba102 posted:
Yeah honestly if you have the group approach it as a big puzzle to solve together and less a "I have MY character" thing, that can help. You can even add in one more character than there are people to drive that point home. Everyone should help every turn etc.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:30
|
|
|
We've debated the propensity for certain people to try to "cheat" Hanabi before, and while I'm in the camp of "don't play with those people" and don't write off the game as intrinsically flawed, I have been hung up on the idea of trying to "fix" the problem by finding a way to have that same gameplay without verbal communication. I'd love to play the game with a system like the old classic Mastermind, using colored pegs on a board to communicate which cards are certain colors or numbers to eliminate the temptation to give over-emphasized hint-hint-nudge-nudge clues.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:32
|
|
|
PopZeus posted:Yeah honestly if you have the group approach it as a big puzzle to solve together and less a "I have MY character" thing, that can help. You can even add in one more character than there are people to drive that point home. Everyone should help every turn etc. I'd think that the problem is still there though. The quarterbacker will still tell everyone what should be done on each turn. The difference would be that everyone else will be more vocal before being told why they're wrong.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:36
|
|
|
Merauder posted:We've debated the propensity for certain people to try to "cheat" Hanabi before, and while I'm in the camp of "don't play with those people" and don't write off the game as intrinsically flawed, I have been hung up on the idea of trying to "fix" the problem by finding a way to have that same gameplay without verbal communication. I'd love to play the game with a system like the old classic Mastermind, using colored pegs on a board to communicate which cards are certain colors or numbers to eliminate the temptation to give over-emphasized hint-hint-nudge-nudge clues. People claimed Hanabi was broken because you can use eyebrow-wriggling as a clue. To fully prevent cheating, you would need to have players in separate rooms, with a computer system delivering clues between them. Even then, you'd need the computer system to enforce each turn's length to be exactly the same, so you couldn't use "how long it took for me to make my move" as a method of signalling. Meanwhile, my grandparents are somehow able to play Bridge just fine without the bidding phase degenerating into nudge nudge wink wink bullshit and arguments over how this proves Bridge is a broken game. This is probably because they're not socially maladjusted nerds, just huge racists.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:39
|
|
|
I've had probably more reliance on quarterbacking in Space Alert, because people expect me to tell them what to do and keep track of everything and coordinate the team. You do kind of need at least one person to track everything, but I try to split up tasks ie try and get one person track the incoming threats handles those tasks, one person keeps track of the trajectories of threats, one person handles the energy supply, and one person tries to keep an idea of where everyone is and coordinate actions. Problem is I don't have many people to play with that have a lot of experience with it and they default to relying on me. I have maybe one or two other people in my regular circles that actually likes the game and can handle it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 00:44
|
|
|
I understand how lots of people might not like Pandemic, but I don't understand how a non-sociopath would fail to understand how an open information group puzzle might appeal to some people, or exist as a valid genre.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 01:24
|
|
|
Lottery of Babylon posted:What do you mean by this? If you're talking about saying "This is your blue card" to mean "play this", but "This is your blue card" to mean "hold onto this", then that's obviously cheating. For example, on Boardgame Arena, there's an unwritten rule that players discard the rightmost/oldest card in your hand unless a clue states otherwise. This means you can wait to give a clue about having a five until the five gets to the rightmost position.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 01:27
|
|
|
golden bubble posted:For example, on Boardgame Arena, there's an unwritten rule that players discard the rightmost/oldest card in your hand unless a clue states otherwise. This means you can wait to give a clue about having a five until the five gets to the rightmost position. What does that have to do with quarterbacking though
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 01:29
|
|
|
golden bubble posted:For example, on Boardgame Arena, there's an unwritten rule that players discard the rightmost/oldest card in your hand unless a clue states otherwise. This means you can wait to give a clue about having a five until the five gets to the rightmost position. As an aside, I hate the weird meta play that develops on online games. It's bad, for instance, on The Resistance Online where regular players have some unspoken rules which they freak out over if they are not followed precisely - making playing with strangers not worth the time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 01:32
|
|
|
It's almost impossible to join a game of Hanabi on BGA because they're all set to Expert level only for the handful of players who have memorised the BGA metagame.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 01:40
|
|
|
Technically Pandemic RAW is not open information. Your cards are hidden. You're just all playing it wrong. Quarterback concerns averted 
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 01:56
|
|
|
Apparently the Twilight Struggle digital version is going into beta, is anyone here in on that?
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 02:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 21:07 |
|
|
Cocks Cable posted:Technically Pandemic RAW is not open information. Your cards are hidden. You're just all playing it wrong. Quarterback concerns averted They removed that rule in the second edition.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2015 02:13
|
|