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Dark Moon could have 100% cheatproof rules and it would still be a bland game that plays itself, because there's little reason for either side to move beyond the First Order Optimal Strategy. That said, I'm with Broken Loose on the subject of unverifiable information being bad design. Locks exist to keep honest folk honest. But more importantly, locks keep honest folk precise. I have trouble doing mental arithmetic under pressure. I often miscount, or lose track of numbers. I brain-fog and forget how many actions I've taken. I also have a bad habit of fiddling with small objects, and on more than one occasion I've unconsciously picked up a rolled die when I shouldn't. Little things like that. Having other people able to check my work is really helpful. Or to put it another way, rchandra posted:In Dominion, if people just announce their coin totals instead of at least flashing their hands, we get more 7-cost Provinces. (A silver and 5 copper just looks like so much money). Well, showing money we still get the 7-cost provinces - but somebody else will point it out and it gets corrected, no harm done. Like, even in accepted Good Games, unverifiable info frustrates me. We've houseruled both Sekigahara and Guns of Gettysburg so that you have to back up any claims. (Revealing leaders in Seki, and revealing legal artillery formations in GoG.)
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Nov 29, 2015 05:51
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jmzero posted:"propensity for cheating" is a continuum, rather than a clear line between "cheaters" and "people who would never cheat" Gutter Owl posted:Locks exist to keep honest folk honest. Of course, nothing is truer than the following: jmzero posted:I look forward to having this discussion again in 100 pages.
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Nov 29, 2015 05:58
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I got a copy of War of the Ring 2nd Edition from my BGG secret santa. Took me over an hour to set everything up to start teaching myself the game. Anything I should know before diving in?
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Nov 29, 2015 06:23
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jmzero posted:I hate Broken Loose as much as anyone, but I think his general point is right here - it's a positive property for a game to make cheating (or suspicion of cheating, which often is more of a problem than actual cheating) less likely. And his argument, that "propensity for cheating" is a continuum, rather than a clear line between "cheaters" and "people who would never cheat", seems pretty sensible. He's not saying you're actually a sociopath, he's saying that you're not being honest about your own capacity for cheating (which, even if it's small, probably exists at some level above zero). Of course it's a continuum, I never argued that it wasn't. Nowhere in anything I said was I suggesting that I divide the world into pure noble virtuous paragons whose minds never know the taint of sin and mustache twirling villains who kick puppies and cheat at games. Mister Sinewave has the right of it though, when I talk about "don't play with cheating assholes" I'm not talking about some strawmannish construct of pure nefarious evil, I'm referring to people who, upon being confronted with the opportunity to cheat at games with people who are ostensibly their friends, go "yeah sure, that sounds good." True board game thread confession time: the other day I was playing Skull and was a winning hand away from taking the game. I was starting off and as soon as the hand begun I realized "aw poo poo, I should have put a different coaster down instead, damnit." At that point the thought occurred to me "y'know, I bet I could totally just swap coasters out real quick and nobody at the table would notice" because no one at out game table is on high alert for people using slight of hand to cheat at Skull. So yes, these thoughts do in fact occur to me, only I didn't actually, y'know, cheat despite my great love for winning at games and having the chance to look all clever and poo poo. I didn't cheat not because it earned me some Bioware paragon points, I didn't cheat because cheating at board games with your friends is a dumb, lovely, rear end in a top hat thing to do and in general I try to avoid being a dumb lovely rear end in a top hat with my friends as much as I possibly can. I stand by my assertion that the specific example which prompted this argument, that of "in Dark Moon because you use a dice screen to hide your rolls it's easy for someone to cheat if they decide they're entitled to for whatever reason," is similarly assholish behavior that goes beyond the game designer's responsibility. And, like, we're not even talking about interesting ethical quandaries here is the thing. This isn't "well would you shoot someone who was beating you to death," it's not "would you steal a winning lottery ticket from an elderly man dying of cancer," it's "would you cheat at a game with your friends because apparently you're in a pissy mood?" If you're the sort of person who needs locks on your board games to resist the temptation to deliberately (not accidentally) cheat then yeah, maybe the problem actually lies with you and not the game.
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Nov 29, 2015 06:26
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Gutter Owl posted:I have trouble doing mental arithmetic under pressure. I often miscount, or lose track of numbers. I brain-fog and forget how many actions I've taken. I also have a bad habit of fiddling with small objects, and on more than one occasion I've unconsciously picked up a rolled die when I shouldn't. Little things like that. Having other people able to check my work is really helpful. I wouldn't consider any of these things cheating.
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Nov 29, 2015 06:33
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drat Dirty Ape posted:I wouldn't consider any of these things cheating. Sure, it's not cheating, but it is adversely impacting the game. And the same mechanics fix both issues. Let's forget the ethics and the psychology, because no one loving cares. It's boring, and it doesn't actually matter outside of tournaments. Look at it instead from an engineering standpoint: Game systems that feature simple public verification are just flat-out better design because they efficiently ensure a more accurate, more consistent game state with minimal rules overhead. And failure to account for this simple principle is just lazy design.
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Nov 29, 2015 06:44
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DarkHorse posted:Has anyone thought about using masks to help solve the emoting problem for Codenames? I think it could actually be pretty fun to have goofy masks to hide expressions and contribute to the trash talking.
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Nov 29, 2015 07:13
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I feel the problem people would still be a problem. Unless you use horse heads, cause you can't see poo poo out of those.
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Nov 29, 2015 07:24
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postin itt to say terra mystica loving owns
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Nov 29, 2015 07:42
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Radioactive Toy posted:I got a copy of War of the Ring 2nd Edition from my BGG secret santa. Took me over an hour to set everything up to start teaching myself the game. Anything I should know before diving in? Just read the rules. They're very straightforward.
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Nov 29, 2015 08:11
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Games don't cheat people, people cheat people!!!
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Nov 29, 2015 09:09
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Alright my first game of mafia de Cuba I literally waited for 5-10 minutes, didn't take anything from the box, wasn't asked any questions and lost the game without any real input from me possible, which meant another 5 minutes or so of the box being passed around to set up for the next round. The game is either a really easy cakewalk for the Don if the players are 9 or less and the breaking strategy is used, or just a series of 50/50 decisions on part of the Don because he has no real way to verify anything. Two other games had loyal henchmen miscount diamonds, leading the Don to lose.
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Nov 29, 2015 09:19
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Lichtenstein posted:Games don't cheat people, people cheat people!!! *plays FoF for 20 minutes* "This would never have happened if he had a cheat"
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Nov 29, 2015 11:08
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Scyther posted:I have no interest in Dark Moon, and I'm pretty convinced it's a turd, but on the subject of cheating are most ONUW and Resistance style games also Bad because there's nothing stopping someone from doing illegal actions while everyone else has their eyes closed? As has been pointed out, in Resistance there is no way to perform an illegal action while everyone else has their eyes closed. The only people who have their eyes open when nobody else does are the people with "identify role" abilities, and those roles are identified by other players putting up their thumbs. It's possible to perform illegal night actions in ONUW, but also pointless as you don't know which side you will be on at the end. Cheating merely for the sake of information is impossible to do without being caught, because if someone knows something they shouldn't it's trivial to completely reconstruct the night and find out who it was unless other players start lying to protect the cheat.
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Nov 29, 2015 11:38
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In a game with Merlin, Percival and Morgana, it would be a pretty big advantage for Percival to know which is which. In ONUW even something as simple as knowing "Bob is the Seer so Phil must be lying when he's claiming Seer, and Kate who is backing up Phil is also lying" is a pretty big deal, even if you can't claim to know it with certainty to the table because that would out you as a cheater. I think it's fair to say like BL did that there's LESS incentive, but the act itself is no less possible and can still provide an unfair advantage. Scyther fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 14:14
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Gutter Owl posted:Dark Moon could have 100% cheatproof rules and it would still be a bland game that plays itself, because there's little reason for either side to move beyond the First Order Optimal Strategy. Thought you had to reveal leaders in sekigahara if you're using them for leadership, though? Good point for GoG, though, that is the main thing that bugged me about the game.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:02
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Forgot to brag about it on Friday but I got a copy of Deluxe Hanabi from my FLGS for 50% off during their Black Friday sale, and holy crud it owns not having to hold up all your god drat cards anymore. It's real easy to mentally map out areas on the table which belong to different colors/numbers and organize your tiles accordingly, too. Plus, clacking down a bakelite tile to build a firework just feels real nice.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:25
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Once you get old, this cheating thing is simply not an issue. I as a 58 year old played games with a 59 year old and a 62 year old yesterday. If I wanted some kind of advantage, I could have simply asked, no one at our games really cared enough about winning to deny a request. 
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Nov 29, 2015 16:46
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silvergoose posted:Thought you had to reveal leaders in sekigahara if you're using them for leadership, though? Good point for GoG, though, that is the main thing that bugged me about the game. I remember thinking that as well on my first play, but if you check the manual you just have to declare you have one, not actually reveal it.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:50
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silvergoose posted:Thought you had to reveal leaders in sekigahara if you're using them for leadership, though? Good point for GoG, though, that is the main thing that bugged me about the game. Nope, FAQ even states that you only have to tell your opponent "there's a leader in this stack" without revealing. Which bugs the crap out of me, so we houserule it. I mean, I get that revealing leaders can give up information to the opponent (suggesting the clan composition of s stack, or pinpointing the location of your commander), but it honestly has a minimal impact on the game compared to the benefits of transparency. And I'll admit, there are games with unverifiables that I love and play without houserules. Outside of tournaments, Twilight Struggle is just a better game if you don't have to reveal your held cards between rounds. But I do think that's a design flaw.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:51
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Lorini posted:Once you get old, this cheating thing is simply not an issue. I as a 58 year old played games with a 59 year old and a 62 year old yesterday. If I wanted some kind of advantage, I could have simply asked, no one at our games really cared enough about winning to deny a request. You have obviously never played Rummy with my aunts and grandmother.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:51
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Oh, weird. We missed that one! I think I like it the way we played, anyway, it's like revealing cavalry in NT when you road feint or w/e.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:52
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So 7 Wonders Duel is utterly fantastic and definitely scratches the 7W itch when you only have one other person to play with. I was worried about the Science or Military victories making game's end too soon...but both times that's happened it was really late in Age 3 anyway, so we didn't feel like we had lost any significant game time. I am really interested to see what design space they fill in with the inevitable expansions; as the game already feels pretty all-encompassing as it is.
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Nov 29, 2015 17:00
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silvergoose posted:Oh, weird. We missed that one! Right? It just seems so basic. GoG is a bit more complex to fix, but the game already has a convention for revealing units without revealing their strength. So we just do that to reveal that we have legal artillery formations. And like the Sekigahara fix, you end up revealing "unnecessary" information that is tactically relevant in theory, e.g. "I have II Corps spread out across multiple positions, rather than protected in a single position. Attacking here might disrupt my ability to play II Corps artillery tokens in the future." But in practice, GoG has enough going on that this tiny bit of additional information isn't going to swing the game. And if any game needs the added verifiability, it's Guns of Gettysburg, the Game of Twelve Rules Mistakes Before Breakfast™!
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Nov 29, 2015 17:19
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I just picked up a copy of Horus at my FLGS for $10 because I'm a sucker for ancient Egyptian themed crap. Is it worth ever actually bringing to the table though? I've never heard of it and I feel like if it was any good I would have.
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Nov 29, 2015 17:27
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Scyther posted:In a game with Merlin, Percival and Morgana, it would be a pretty big advantage for Percival to know which is which. And how does Percival know that without having his eyes open when Merlin does?
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Nov 29, 2015 17:47
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Okay, so, granted, you don't have to put your role card flat on the table, in fact it would be dumb to do so for this reason, but I've seen a lot of groups that do, and then all it takes is to sneak a peek.
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Nov 29, 2015 17:58
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Dude if someone really wants to cheat they will just barely have their eyes open, like little kids have been doing forever.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:07
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You're right of course, anyone can just peek through their fingers.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:33
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Also, if you don't cut my deck after every shuffle, I'm pretty sure I could trivially stack my deck in Dominion if I really wanted to be terrible.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:37
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Radioactive Toy posted:I got a copy of War of the Ring 2nd Edition from my BGG secret santa. Took me over an hour to set everything up to start teaching myself the game. Anything I should know before diving in? I'm not sure if they changed the pacing but if you push hard and fast on the fellowships progress you put a ton of pressure on saurons end
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Nov 29, 2015 18:53
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Also, if you don't cut my deck after every shuffle, I'm pretty sure I could trivially stack my deck in Dominion if I really wanted to be terrible. It takes a lot more deliberate, concentrated effort to stack a deck than to fudge an unseen roll. Stacking a deck also requires you to deliberately cheat before you've seen the outcome of the random event, when you're unlikely to be pissed and do something on the spur of the moment. Fudging a roll happens the moment you see the outcome of the random event, when you're most likely to get pissed off and react emotionally. It's the "locks keep honest folks honest" thing again. If a door says "Do Not Enter" but is unlocked, then plenty of people will try going through it anyhow, if only to see what's on the other side. If a door is locked, then sure, anyone could in theory learn to pick locks, come prepared with lockpicking tools, and break open the lock -- but normal people won't. Echophonic posted:I'm with you on that. I'd love a version of BSG that cleaned off all the rough edges. Base game + Pegasus errata.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:42
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Gutter Owl posted:Outside of tournaments, Twilight Struggle is just a better game if you don't have to reveal your held cards between rounds. But I do think that's a design flaw. I thought you just had to reveal the bottom border, not the entire card, which is enough to prove non scoring without giving the whole thing away
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Nov 29, 2015 20:47
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The entire point of this cyclical discussion is that party A is making the claim that locks physically exist and can be installed, while party B is either claiming the Just World Fallacy or telling people to psychologically screen everybody they will ever game with in the future ever. A game without locks is a bad game. Dark Moon has other things that make it bad, too.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:28
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Finally got to play March of Ants. It's a very  -ish steam-lined 4x strategy game. I liked it a lot and will definitely kickstart the expansion they are working on. It's not overly long. The design is pretty tight. Evolutions as a stand in for a tech tree is smart. And the reaction mechanic keeps you engaged in other players turns. My minor nit picks would be that goal cards didn't feel like they were worth the cost in most cases and I wish there were more "things" that could happen when exploring except for the occasional centipede. I also hope the expansion could add different kinds of ants like queen, solider, drones.
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Nov 29, 2015 22:24
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Cocks Cable posted:Finally got to play March of Ants. It's a very My experience was in the first couple of games we discounted the goal cards but after a few plays the scores got really tight and the 2-4 point difference from a goal card could make or break the winner. There aren't that many ways to actually get points, so the goals can really help push you ahead, especially if you're a small underdog
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Nov 29, 2015 22:39
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I agree with everyone saying that games need 'locks.' Some good examples of why are the games that cannot have them for entirely legitimate reasons. For instance, Love Letter. There is nothing keeping a player from lying about what they have in their hand when targeted by a guard. In face, the rules explicitly mention the possibility.Love Letter Rule Booklet posted:A player could cheat when chosen with the Guard, or fail to discard the Countess when that player has the King or Prince in hand. We suggest that you don’t play with knaves who cheat at fun, light games. So why not design the game differently to prevent that kind of cheating? Because in this particular situation, it's impossible. The only way to confirm it would be to reveal the information to other players, but the game needs to keep that secret to allow the players deduce that. I think the approach must be this: for any game that is missing such 'locks' there must be a compelling reason for why they have not been included in the design.
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Nov 29, 2015 22:57
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Eldritch Horror question: does anyone know how you're meant to play against Syzygy? Syzygy puts the mystic ruins deck in play, which is basically a second expedition deck that sometimes lets you fiddle with the omen circle. Syzygy flips when the omen reaches red three times, unlike other old ones who flip based on the doom track, so clearly the intent is that you use the mystic ruins deck to affect when Syzygy flips. But are you meant to make Syzygy flip faster, or slower? We played twice. Game 1, we decided that the old one flipping was probably bad news, so we did mystic ruins encounters to slow its flips while focusing on defense and mysteries. But its mysteries seem unusually nasty -- for example, where most old ones have "When you solve a research encounter, spend the clue you received to put a marker on this, do this #investigators times to solve the mystery", Syzygy has "When you solve a research encounter, spend the clue you received to put a token on a nearby wilderness, then go there and succeed at another encounter to put a marker on this, do this #investigator times to solve the mystery". Since the mysteries were a slog and we were sinking actions into the mystic ruins stuff, we ended up losing to attrition. Game 2 we decided that since Syzygy's mysteries were harsh but the reverse side of Syzygy could be completed without solving mysteries at all, what we should really do is ignore the mysteries, use the mystic ruins to flip Syzygy sooner, and then just win with the endgame special encounters. This time we focused on defense, getting our characters built up, and using the mystic ruins to make Syzygy flip super fast. But the endgame special encounters were really hard, and super punishing if you failed them -- the average one seemed to require you to make two not-especially-easy tests and would devour you instantly if you failed even one of them. We failed a couple, lost the stuff we had built up, and ended up losing to doom as we desperately fed human waves into the portal in the hopes of getting lucky and passing a couple special encounters. Looking back I'm thinking the best thing to do is to ignore the mystic ruins entirely. I don't think the investigators really care when Syzygy flips -- they don't mind if it flips since the reverse side is barely any more punishing than the front side, but they also don't have any interest in flipping it quickly because it's not viable to try to rush through special encounters with characters who aren't fully geared into godhood. But since controlling when Syzygy flips is the entire point of the mystic ruins, the headline mechanic is an irrelevant waste of time.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:05
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Magnetic North posted:I agree with everyone saying that games need 'locks.' Some good examples of why are the games that cannot have them for entirely legitimate reasons. For instance, Love Letter. There is nothing keeping a player from lying about what they have in their hand when targeted by a guard. In face, the rules explicitly mention the possibility. There's also the fact that it's love letter so what the gently caress is the point of cheating
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Nov 29, 2015 23:11
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I think there's something else going on here beyond "locks or no locks." In fact, I think the whole framing is off. From the start, the discussion assumes that winning is the primary purpose of play, and that not winning because someone cheated amounts to having something stolen - therefore the lock analogy. While that perspective certainly represents a number of posters in this thread, it's not representative of the whole of players. I enjoy winning, but my reason for playing is not to test my skill or dominate others - it's the act itself. Exploring rule systems, enjoying the company of friends and family, etc. And, admittedly anecdotally, I've found that most other players that I have played with feel similarly. So I don't believe that having the potential of cheaters cheating makes a game bad. It makes it worse for a certain kind of player. But so do traitor mechanics, front loaded rules, player interaction, whatever.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:22
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