Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Cole Wehrle's GDC talk in defense of king-making in board game design. It echoes a lot of my feelings as 2018 was the year I started rejecting the Efficiency Euro design and started getting attracted to purely competitive games that punish poor play and are really fragile to player decisions.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 21:53

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# ? May 24, 2024 21:02

DogCop: Aug 6, 2008; Bake him away, toys.

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I will draft the heck outta some games

# ? Apr 9, 2019 21:56

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

Empty quote

# ? Apr 9, 2019 21:57

armorer: Aug 6, 2012; I like metal.

The problem I have with king making in board games is that, within my regular group of friends, I'm known as someone who wins a lot at board games. It's not entirely unfounded, but what it means is that in games where king making is a thing, whichever player is doing worst essentially just makes sure I don't win. The worst part is that in situations where things are close but I'm actually losing, whichever friend is winning convinces everyone else I'm secretly winning, and get themself made to be the winner. Essentially unless I manage an early runaway lead, I will never win such a game with my regular group. One of my housemates actually introduces any new player to the group by first explaining that in every game, it's everyone vs me. Trying to say that's absurd just makes them believe him even more!

Edit: Also a number of the people I play with are married couples who will simply always try to make their spouse win if they are losing.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 22:19

Countblanc: Apr 20, 2005; _{Help a hero out!}

armorer posted:

The problem I have with king making in board games is that, within my regular group of friends, I'm known as someone who wins a lot at board games. It's not entirely unfounded, but what it means is that in games where king making is a thing, whichever player is doing worst essentially just makes sure I don't win. The worst part is that in situations where things are close but I'm actually losing, whichever friend is winning convinces everyone else I'm secretly winning, and get themself made to be the winner. Essentially unless I manage an early runaway lead, I will never win such a game with my regular group. One of my housemates actually introduces any new player to the group by first explaining that in every game, it's everyone vs me. Trying to say that's absurd just makes them believe him even more!

Edit: Also a number of the people I play with are married couples who will simply always try to make their spouse win if they are losing.

This is really just a more specific version of the "people playing poorly ruins the game" fragility issue. Which, for me at least, is simply a problem that results from not ever playing the same games more than once or twice a year, if that. One of my favorite games ever just completely falls apart if one player isn't at least moderately skilled so I don't think it's a damning quality, but if that same game were introduced to me today instead of a decade ago I'd probably think it was trash.

Of course if people are deliberately playing badly (ie to help a spouse win) that's a social issue too, but still an example of a game being vulnerable to bad plays not only tanking that player's chance of winning, but of ruining the experience for many people.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 22:29

Randalor: Sep 4, 2011

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

Sure, I'll give it a go. So is it a list we take from, or just the 15 games/expansions we think are best and haven't been said? And how do expansions work? Do we list them with the game, or as a seperate game?

# ? Apr 9, 2019 22:29

al-azad: May 28, 2009

I love navigating the politics of playing games because we also have a dude who regularly wins but not only is he good at analyzing the games he's playing, he's also good at hiding this fact until the end when it's too late. Working the table is something I find immensely enjoyable and while I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea I'm really glad there's a new movement that's pushing it forward.

SVWAG recently discussed games that try to cover all bases with having varying degrees of co-op and solo modes and that was how I felt about 2018 as a whole. Lots of games that are either softly competitive or almost entirely co-operative which just isn't my thing.

al-azad fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Apr 9, 2019

# ? Apr 9, 2019 22:32

Thoom: Jan 12, 2004; LUIGI SMASH!

I'd love fragile conflict games a lot more if all of my friends were evenly skilled, but that's not the world I live in.

It's very hard to say "Sorry Bob, you're not invited to board gaming this week because I want to play Root and you'd ruin it for everybody else by being bad" diplomatically. Especially hard to do so repeatedly if you want multiple plays.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 22:53

Papes: Apr 13, 2010; There's always something at the bottom of the bag.

Thoom posted:

I'd love fragile conflict games a lot more if all of my friends were evenly skilled, but that's not the world I live in.

It's very hard to say "Sorry Bob, you're not invited to board gaming this week because I want to play Root and you'd ruin it for everybody else by being bad" diplomatically. Especially hard to do so repeatedly if you want multiple plays.

Root seems pretty easy to handicap by just starting them at a non zero value.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 22:56

Thoom: Jan 12, 2004; LUIGI SMASH!

I imagine the bigger problem with a bad player in Root is that they wouldn't be as effective as necessary in kneecapping whoever else needs to be kept in check. So runaway advantages would be much harder for the remaining players to stop. But I admit that I haven't put Root on the table with any of our group's weaker players, so I don't have any firsthand experience of that kind of failure.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:18

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

The couple I play games with the most always does everything the can to suicide bomb each other in games and/or poo poo talk until one of them tilts.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:19

Dancer: May 23, 2011

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

'Sup

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:24

jmzero: Jul 24, 2007

al-azad posted:

Cole Wehrle's GDC talk in defense of king-making in board game design. It echoes a lot of my feelings as 2018 was the year I started rejecting the Efficiency Euro design and started getting attracted to purely competitive games that punish poor play and are really fragile to player decisions.

I wish people would talk about game design using the Garfield theory. Kingmaking is a subset of politics. Politics is a subset of luck. Luck reduces rewards of skill - the extent to which better decisions consistently lead to higher winning percent. Preferences regarding rewards of skill are agential. So yeah, kingmaking is not implicitly good or bad. If you like narrative and unpredictability, you almost have to care less about rewards of skill. Conclusion, if you prioritize narrative and unpredictability, you shouldn't worry about having some kingmaking in your game.

This is the same conclusion he gets to in an hour... and when you phrase it in Garfield theory, the utter banality is clear. The conclusion is almost baked into the definition of the words. It's only when you try to stumble your way back there with vague words like "fun" and "fairness" that it's awkward.

Meanwhile he hints at some interesting questions - stuff like "how can you have interesting narrative moments while not being trampled over by politics?" - but he doesn't seem to get anywhere on them. Like, he thinks Starcraft free-for-all is terrible while PlayerUnknown's Battleground free-for-all is great. He doesn't offer any idea why this might be. To be clear, he's right - I mean, neither game mode works competitively (because of politics), but it's true that PUBG at least sort of works played casually.

But he stops short of why, which would have been the first interesting thing in his talk. These talks are usually frustrating like that, and usually for the same reason. All these people spend their time re-inventing the wheel of game design theory (usually doing a poor job) and by the time they've done that they rarely get beyond that to interesting new thoughts. You see the same thing in, like, software design where people are forever rebuilding theory from the ground up, and ending up in weird cycles of "it's all about X" and "ignore X".

jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Apr 9, 2019

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:39

Cthulhu Dreams: Dec 11, 2010; If I pretend to be Cthulhu no one will know I'm a baseball robot.

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I'm keen

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:40

Chill la Chill: Jul 2, 2007; Don't lose your gay

I want to draft and if goose isn�t part of it I�ll first pick NT. I�m stating this outright: if I�m in and anyone else picks it before I do, I�m rare drafting the good stuff and everyone will be left with terrible decks. I�m taking all the Splotters and nobody can counterpick them

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:47

admanb: Jun 18, 2014

jmzero posted:

I wish people would talk about game design using the Garfield theory. Kingmaking is a subset of politics. Politics is a subset of luck. Luck reduces rewards of skill - the extent to which better decisions consistently lead to higher winning percent. Preferences regarding rewards of skill are agential. So yeah, kingmaking is not implicitly good or bad. If you like narrative and unpredictability, you almost have to care less about rewards of skill. Conclusion, if you prioritize narrative and unpredictability, you shouldn't worry about having more politics in your game.

...

But he stops short of why, which would have been the first interesting thing in his talk. These talks are usually frustrating like that, and usually for the same reason. All these people spend their time re-inventing the wheel of game design theory (usually doing a poor job) and by the time they've done that they rarely get beyond that to interesting new thoughts.

Not sure what Garfield being dead has to do with kingmaking in boardgames, but sure.

I think you're putting a lot of weight on the very limited content of a 1-hour talk directed at people who more than likely have never designed a boardgame before. I would argue that a big part of why designers spend so much time reinventing the wheel is that the hustle of capitalism demands they produce to survive, and learning has to be a distant second.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:48

Randalor: Sep 4, 2011

Chill la Chill posted:

I want to draft and if goose isn’t part of it I’ll first pick NT. I’m stating this outright: if I’m in and anyone else picks it before I do, I’m rare drafting the good stuff and everyone will be left with terrible decks. I’m taking all the Splotters and nobody can counterpick them

Which one is NT? I'll knife fight you over all the splotter titles though.

# ? Apr 9, 2019 23:55

Lichtenstein: May 31, 2012; It'll make sense, eventually.

Eh, I went in the opposite direction, I think, where i first abhorred multiplayer solitaire aspect of many euros, but I grew really tired of heavily political games that lean heavily on kingmaking/keeping leader in check as their key dynamic, like the extreme crab bucket fight aspect of COINs. If someone is bad or overly passive they easily ruin the game for everybody, if everyone is good it devolves into an endless exercise in bashing the leader where I lose sight of the board as munchkin cards start flashing in front of my eyes.

I much prefer the games where you can and should point your aggression meaningfully against the leader, but try to usurp their position via fighting for the context of the boardstate. Like the shifting victory conditions of Pax series*, the cube insanity of shifting objectives of Tigris and Euphrates, all the insane manipulations of the Greatest Political Game John Company and so on.

* Not truly a good example in context, but, you know.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:05

nimby: Nov 4, 2009; The pinnacle of cloud computing.

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I'm in.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:15

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

Sure

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:29

TastyLemonDrops: Aug 6, 2008; you said "drop kick" fyi

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I'd be up for this.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:29

Bottom Liner: Feb 15, 2006; a specific vein of lasagna

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I�m gonna hate draft everyone

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:34

Chill la Chill: Jul 2, 2007; Don't lose your gay

I�m going to sneak in some powerful wargames that slip in while everyone else is fighting for 18xx and Splotters.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:35

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

Chill la Chill posted:

I�m going to sneak in some powerful wargames that slip in while everyone else is fighting for 18xx and Splotters.

I�m just gonna draft different numbered 18xx games and nobody can stop them, my list is just gonna be an imcreasing number

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:37

Chill la Chill: Jul 2, 2007; Don't lose your gay

Tekopo posted:

I�m just gonna draft different numbered 18xx games and nobody can stop them, my list is just gonna be an imcreasing number

Going to counterpick your xx picks. As a note, for anyone participating: if someone gets 17 and USA together or OE and C2C, might as well give up. Those combos are too powerful. If someone gets space alert, trucker, lords, and mage knight though....that�s also game ending.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:40

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I'll give it a shot if there's room.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:44

jmzero: Jul 24, 2007

admanb posted:

Not sure what Garfield being dead has to do with kingmaking in boardgames, but sure.

I may be missing a joke here, but anyway, yeah, Richard Garfield has written a bunch about game design theory. His work provides a framework to describe characteristics of games (of any sort). It's great, and nobody uses it. Instead, they make up their own words and their own definitions, which are typically arbitrary, inexact and under-baked. This means communication is lossy, ideas are muddy, and theory progresses slowly as people endlessly reformulate the most basic ideas.

Ideally, attendees at a bloody game design conference would have some minimal shared vocabulary they can use to describe things precisely. They don't, and that's a big reason their conversations end up so little content. That's how you end up with talks like "you need to 'find the fun'", and books on "game design" that are really about "things I like and dislike in first person shooters".

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:48

The Eyes Have It: Feb 10, 2008; Third Eye Sees All
...snookums

That makes total sense, unless I discover it means I game I personally dislike has some kind of objective merit in which case it is total bullshit by ivory tower nerds of course.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:51

Chill la Chill: Jul 2, 2007; Don't lose your gay

al-azad posted:

Cole Wehrle's GDC talk in defense of king-making in board game design. It echoes a lot of my feelings as 2018 was the year I started rejecting the Efficiency Euro design and started getting attracted to purely competitive games that punish poor play and are really fragile to player decisions.

Looking forward to watching this. I�ve been arguing (if not here, discord) that kingmaking doesn�t exist or if it does, is present from turn 1 in any multiplayer game that�s interactive enough. I imagine some of the problem is the conflation of meta behavior, which I would agree is gamebreaking, to behavior that is perceived to hand a game to one or another player.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 00:53

al-azad: May 28, 2009

Also on the subject of game design, James Ernest is producing a massive book on Cheapass Games filled with rules for all of their cheap rear end games as well as history, musings, design theory, and so on.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 01:05

armorer: Aug 6, 2012; I like metal.

jmzero posted:

I wish people would talk about game design using the Garfield theory. Kingmaking is a subset of politics. Politics is a subset of luck. Luck reduces rewards of skill - the extent to which better decisions consistently lead to higher winning percent. Preferences regarding rewards of skill are agential. So yeah, kingmaking is not implicitly good or bad. If you like narrative and unpredictability, you almost have to care less about rewards of skill. Conclusion, if you prioritize narrative and unpredictability, you shouldn't worry about having some kingmaking in your game.

This is the same conclusion he gets to in an hour... and when you phrase it in Garfield theory, the utter banality is clear. The conclusion is almost baked into the definition of the words. It's only when you try to stumble your way back there with vague words like "fun" and "fairness" that it's awkward.

Meanwhile he hints at some interesting questions - stuff like "how can you have interesting narrative moments while not being trampled over by politics?" - but he doesn't seem to get anywhere on them. Like, he thinks Starcraft free-for-all is terrible while PlayerUnknown's Battleground free-for-all is great. He doesn't offer any idea why this might be. To be clear, he's right - I mean, neither game mode works competitively (because of politics), but it's true that PUBG at least sort of works played casually.

But he stops short of why, which would have been the first interesting thing in his talk. These talks are usually frustrating like that, and usually for the same reason. All these people spend their time re-inventing the wheel of game design theory (usually doing a poor job) and by the time they've done that they rarely get beyond that to interesting new thoughts. You see the same thing in, like, software design where people are forever rebuilding theory from the ground up, and ending up in weird cycles of "it's all about X" and "ignore X".

I haven't read his stuff, so maybe I'm missing something, but I 100% disagree with the concept that politics is a subset of luck.

To me, luck is the inclusion of randomization by some mechanism like dice, cards, etc. The rules of probability apply, and a person can make informed decisions based on outcome likelihoods. Sure, upsets happen, and they make for GREAT gameplay when they do, but at the end of the day it's numbers.

Politics is totally not that at all. It's a social engineering game layered on top of the game itself, which has no defined rules and is completely open ended.

I could see someone arguing that both present a form of unpredictability, but they are very different things.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 01:09

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

I'm not gonna draft, too busy with job hunting, so you and tek can fight over NT, Chill.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 01:09

Chekans 3 16: Jan 2, 2012; No Resetti.
No Continues.; Grimey Drawer

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

I'm in.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 01:17

jmzero: Jul 24, 2007

armorer posted:

I haven't read his stuff, so maybe I'm missing something, but I 100% disagree with the concept that politics is a subset of luck.

To me, luck is the inclusion of randomization by some mechanism like dice, cards, etc. The rules of probability apply, and a person can make informed decisions based on outcome likelihoods. Sure, upsets happen, and they make for GREAT gameplay when they do, but at the end of the day it's numbers.

Politics is totally not that at all. It's a social engineering game layered on top of the game itself, which has no defined rules and is completely open ended.

I could see someone arguing that both present a form of unpredictability, but they are very different things.

You're right in that Garfield's definition of luck is much more expansive than the word implies - and you're not wrong to be bothered by that. I forgive him for this because I think his definition of luck is very useful. As you've guessed, it's tied to unpredictability - it includes (among other stuff): overt randomness, "Nash game theory" style decisions involving simultaneous action or hidden information, player limitations (particularly ability to predict consequences), and politics.

To be clear, he's not saying - for example - that there isn't skill to politics, or that players don't vary in their ability to predict consequence. But as you follow through with his breakdown of games, it becomes clear how useful it is to consider these seemingly disparate things - all the sources of luck - together when analyzing how games work.

VVV: In his talk, Cole uses "variance" to mean "variability" or "variety" - or "no two games will be the same" or something. No word is safe.

jmzero fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Apr 10, 2019

# ? Apr 10, 2019 01:52

Chill la Chill: Jul 2, 2007; Don't lose your gay

I like to distinguish between player chaos and variance. I wish there was more unified game rules language as well. Rules are technology. But sadly we won�t ever have that especially when common usage has crap like worker placement meaning anything and everything nowadays. It can�t become jargon if it�s slang.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 02:13

jmzero: Jul 24, 2007

Chill la Chill posted:

Looking forward to watching this. I�ve been arguing (if not here, discord) that kingmaking doesn�t exist or if it does, is present from turn 1 in any multiplayer game that�s interactive enough. I imagine some of the problem is the conflation of meta behavior, which I would agree is gamebreaking, to behavior that is perceived to hand a game to one or another player.

I imagine you agree that kingmaking can exist as behavior, even if it's not "valid gaming"? Like, if someone just gives all their stuff to someone in Catan, and now that person wins easily, then surely that has to meet a definition of kingmaking. This happens, or at least can - so surely kingmaking exists in at least a trivial sense.

Further, I think it's pretty clear the raw potential for this behavior varies by the game. I could almost always sway a game of Catan by kingmaking. It'd be more challenging to try to force a winner in a game like Agricola. Meanwhile, you have very limited tools to pick which other player wins a game of Dominion. Perhaps you don't agree that Dominion is "interactive enough", but surely among games that are "interactive enough", we'd still see some variance here.

One step further, I think there's games that prompt potential kingmaking interactions more than others. Actually handing all your cards over to someone in Catan is pretty extreme behavior, and it's something the game does not prompt. In Lords of Waterdeep, by contrast, you are very much prompted to give someone that Mandatory Quest. In other games, you have to choose who to buy from, who to place first in turn order, or generally are forced to make political decisions that can - at least some of the time - decide who wins.

When this discussion has come up before, I think a lot of the disagreement has come down to what I'll call "Broken Loose Theory". It's the idea that in a game with direct interactions, ideal players would choose who to hurt or help based on a unique ordering of "which choice will make me most likely to win". In this view, a superior player should be able to see from that other player's point of view and predict their decision. If that's the case, then politics don't really exist as something independent - it's just a facet of strategy. "I will avoid being ahead on resources coming into turn 9", a player might think, "because then the correct choice for Brian would be to place me last in turn order".

Clearly this is the case sometimes. In Catan, if you are placing the robber and one player is far ahead, it feels like you "should" try to hurt that player. If you decide instead to screw someone else, it feels like you're randomly messing up the game - like you're kingmaking. I think it's fair to say that, in this situation, there's a choice players "should" take, and people should be able to plan on you taking it.

Where this breaks down for me is when two players are far ahead, and someone else still has to place that robber. Sometimes you're effectively deciding who wins - and, to me, that decision is no different than deciding the game by dice roll. Now, to be clear, you could try to make some case that that decision was the result of every other decision in the game, or theorize that there will always be some ephemeral way the balance should be tipped - that no decision is ever arbitrary and that player a "should" always have some basis on which to make a decision.

I think that's mostly hogwash. Even if people are paying enough attention to know who's even ahead, and could predict how targeting Sam has 1% better EV than targeting Larry, I don't think there's some imperative for them to follow that. While I think there's egregious bad behaviors, I think there's a whole range of behaviors that are just fine, and should absolutely be up to a player's unpredictable whims. If a player decides they want to slow down the leader, fine. If they want to target the person in 4th, so that they clinch 3rd, fine. If they just want to finish collecting their set of orange moon bases, I think that's fine too.

Realistically it's not just weird edge cases where politics is essentially random. Often political decisions are made without anything like surety in terms of how they'll affect a player's chances. On turn 2 of a game of Root, there's an impenetrable fog of hidden information and unknowable game progression - and sometimes you have to gotta pick someone whose clearing you're going to stomp. That stomping might really slow them down, and I don't think there's always going to be a rational way to decide who to hit. In the end, I don't think of this decision as anything but random.

In any case, once we accept that players motivations can legitimately vary based on unpredictable factors or whims, we're left with the potential for kingmaking to decide a game - at least some of the time.

Personally, I find these kinds of decisions unsatisfying to make or to have made by others. Now this is not some absolute. In a realistic interactive design, you can't steer around politics completely - and I don't mind if a close game comes down to politics or a dice roll or whatever. But still, I choose games that prompt less political decisions, and where those decisions tend to be less impactful on who wins.

I call that "avoiding political games" or "avoiding games with kingmaking". I don't think my preferences are any righter than anyone else's here, but I certainly think it's a thing.

EDIT: Holy crap sorry I just wrote a bunch of text.

jmzero fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Apr 10, 2019

# ? Apr 10, 2019 03:10

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

Shadow225 posted:

Here is an article that was posted in the discord chat: https://www.cardboardrealitypodcast.com/written-reviews/2019-4-8/the-ultimate-board-game-collection-draft

The premise is that a collection of people were trying to draft the best board game collection, fantasy football style. I think that this is a really cool concept. As such, I want to run one with this thread.

Quote this post if you are willing to participate in the draft

I am thinking of capping at 10 people and 15 games, but if there is more interest we can roll that too. Once interest has been established, I'll maybe a separate thread and go from there.

i can show everyone what correct taste looks like, sure.

# ? Apr 10, 2019 04:43

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Gutter Owl posted:

i can show everyone what correct taste looks like, sure.

First choice meltwater?

# ? Apr 10, 2019 04:47

gutterdaughter: Oct 21, 2010; keep yr head up, problem girl

silvergoose posted:

First choice meltwater?

christ no. if i never play that garbage game again it'll be too soon.

(please buy meltwater)

# ? Apr 10, 2019 05:43

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# ? May 24, 2024 21:02

Reynold: Feb 14, 2012; Suffer not the unclean to live.

So I just picked up Championship Formula Racing not too long ago, and had a question that I can't find an answer to in the rules. To put it simply, we're not sure where the racing line actually starts. Do you have to begin on the space with the dot on the nose of your car (which is BEHIND the red line, not ON it), or can you swoop in diagonally from the side and land on the first space with the red line in it to begin following the line?

FWIW, the actual rules are this:

"Many corners have red lines running through them (you can see red lines in the example corners above and on the right). Some corners have more than one red line. These lines represent the ideal path through the corner. If your car follows the entire red line through a corner then the speed limit of spaces you enter are considered to be 20 mph faster then what is written on the track."

Seems unclear to me. This came up in our first game, with one player on the space with the dot in front, and another to the right of that player on the inside line. We played it that the inside line feller went first because they were at the same speed, and cut across diagonally to follow the racing line, spoiling the attempt of the other player to block access.

Edit: Looking at the board, the Historical Driver guides on the side of the track do not treat the space with the dot in front as being "on line," which leads me to believe we played it right.

Reynold fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Apr 10, 2019

# ? Apr 10, 2019 05:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Board Game Thread 4e: The Call of Catan

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