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Wallet posted:I don't really have any issue with conflict, but I find it much harder to get a good game with something directly competitive because I'm very rarely playing a game with a group of people who all have the same level of experience and investment. Whenever my group starts to develop a meta or something resembling a strategy by playing the same game a couple times we move to a different game. Everyone is on the same footing if they're learning it at the same time! The month we played solely Gaia Project was very memorable as the strategies finally started to sink in.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:10
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This is why I love Dungeon Petz, actually. It's almost impossible to play Dungeon Petz with a specific strategy in mind, and stick to that strategy throughout the game, because every decision is reactive and needs to be taken in context of the current board state and what pets/sellers/exhibitions are currently available. This is not to say that you can't get better at the game, and it's certainly possible to build up an understanding of the game and how to make the most of its moving parts (which is why I will routinely outscore people in it when given half a chance), but there isn't really any possibility to create a defined meta within the game, since the entire decision-making space is almost entirely reactive. The only meta is the "picking or not picking Wreckie" dichotomy.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:16
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Magnetic North posted:I think that is only part of it. I don't know if conflict aversion is the right way to describe it, but rather that direct mastery or accomplishment is not the concern of many modern hobbyist board gamers. You can certainly play chess or go with that kind of attitude, but because of the directness of the competition and the lack of luck, it is going to directly demonstrate that you are better or worse than someone. So that would dampen the drive of someone who is not as interested in that particular measurement. Adding additional players, new rules and experiences and additional elements of luck can let you be entertained without that 'judgement' for lack of a better term. Perhaps it would be better to say "competition agnostic" rather than "conflict averse" or something? Oh yeah, for sure I'm kinda floundering with the term 'conflict averse', as I mention, board games kind of revolve around it, I think you're right with 'judgement' (and with it being in quotes, too). Certainly, as well, I don't pretend to think the CotN is exclusively this, but sometimes I see people with big collections, and they're not really sure what happened, they don't feel FOMO and they don't normally behave like that, and it tends to be the people that DO play a lot, so it's not even like, y'know, they're just hoarding, and in those circumstances I think this applies. Wallet posted:I don't really have any issue with conflict, but I find it much harder to get a good game with something directly competitive because I'm very rarely playing a game with a group of people who all have the same level of experience and investment. Yeah, it definitely gets around that, too. And I think, if you're doing "the teach" with a new game none of you have played, then it automatically puts you in like an elevated position, where it's ok if you win, because you've sort of grokked it more, with a bit more time to study it, but it's also OK that you win, because YOU haven't played it before either. Whereas, when it's a game that only you've played, then obviously you winning is out of the question for the teaching game (if you're doing it right). I think even that, for some people, is what they're after. Like it gives permission for everyone round the table to lose with no judgement, and also, for the person who bought it, to win with no judgement! Again, I don't think that's solely it. Obviously, something new and shiny is new and shiny for all the same reasons anything new is desirable. I just think that there's a sort of 'everyone wanting to be nice to each other' thing that's sort of unsaid. And, I'm not even saying it like that's a bad thing. Seems to me if you could do a game a bit like Betrayal (but good) that has enough different moving pieces that it's essentially impossible to ever develop strategies for, without being munchkin random, that would be a smash hit. And, typing this, I realised, that's exactly what Cosmic Encounter is. When we play, the friend that has it, has a few expansions, and there are enough different races, there literally wouldn't be enough time in the day for us all to read them all. So, picking them at random and then seeing how they play out, we could all play different races every time we played that game. And it would ALWAYS be like playing a brand new game, to some extent. I think that's going to be a huge part of the draw for a lot of people. I wonder if there's a way you can create mechanics though, where that's not finite at all, but still cool? Like rolling for a set of abilities or something? Tekopo posted:This is why I love Dungeon Petz, actually. It's almost impossible to play Dungeon Petz with a specific strategy in mind, and stick to that strategy throughout the game, because every decision is reactive and needs to be taken in context of the current board state and what pets/sellers/exhibitions are currently available. Oh, ok, yeah like this. I haven't ever played Dungeon Petz, it sort of sounds a bit like Clank! though maybe, with emergent strategies that you can't predict. (Although, again, I don't think Clank! is a great game, but probably that's part of it's mass appeal).
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Apr 27, 2023 14:22
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), and back in the day you might have subscribe to a magainze, etc. In Calvin and Hobbes, I remember that Calvin was subscribed to "Chewing" which was a chewing gum magazine that was a parody of the cycling magazines that Watterson read. This is somewhat quaint now in the world of crowdfunding and social media, but it is still about hype and excitement and minutiae.
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Dungeon Petz isn't very much like Clank, but it does emergent strategies in a similar way: while clank has a market row of cards to choose (iirc), Dungeon Petz is a worker placement game (with a twist) in which most of the placement spaces are small market rows of their own, that refresh each turn with different items being available, regardless of if they get picked up or not. The theme of the game is that you are running a monster pet shop, so in any given turn, you might have a different combination of special items, cages or additions that you can get, but the focus of the game is the monsters themselves: each one is completely unique, there are no duplicates, and the aim of the game is to target specific monsters to specific buyers (which you know are coming in advance). In essence this creates a framework where, since you don't know what's going to be available in terms of equipment, and you don't know what specific monster is going to be available, you have to adjust instantly to the requirements of the game and make reactive decisions depending on what you see is available and what is most likely to score you points in later turns, while still making sure that the needs of the monsters under your care are being taken care of so that you don't lose points from losing/neglecting monsters.
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Apr 27, 2023 14:34
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Board gaming is an intensely strange hobby due to the cult of the new. Well made medium-heavy euros are intricate, deep, and finely tuned through heavy play testing. It is likely that the depth of the gameplay won't reveal itself until 10+ plays and that you won't see the actual game as intended by the designer until 20-30 plays. Yet, the average board gamer will only play the game 3-5 times total and this even holds true with well respected reviewers. Board games are akin to competitive multiplayer video games to me. Imagine someone trying to rate or comment on balance issues in Starcraft after playing 5 matches. They would be laughed at. Yet, this is the bog standard experience for board game reviewing. Over the last few years I totally changed my perspective on the hobby. I made a conscious decision to consolidate my game collection and only keep games I considered great. I went from 120~ games down to 50. I sold/traded tons of games I thought were good/solid to just get down to what I considered the best of the best. Since then I have been picking 5-6x games per year, and making it a goal to play them 10x each with roughly the same group of people. It's vastly increased my enjoyment of the hobby as a whole. I've also become far more critical of buying new games. I'm much more likely to wait for reviews than order things sight unseen from kickstarters.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:01
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Kind of related to the conversation/a bit of a non-sequitor but conflict averse is a pretty apt descriptor I think but in a few of my gaming circles it's the type of conflict that people are averse to. We've been playing bloodless TRACK GO UP Euros for so long that whenever there are direct "take-that" conflicts no one is accustomed to it and the reactions are quite negative and it can result in hurt feelings. That said, I've seen some blowups over the most anodyne and hilarious poo poo including a friend losing it on his wife when she outbid him on the winter tile he had been working toward in Keyflower. Not exactly invading someone's home system in TI:4 is it? Contrast that with some other groups who play a wider variety of gently caress YOU games and there's none of those issues and everyone generally has a way better time and doesn't take it personally when bad poo poo happens to them. manero posted:Once I fairly-regularly played with a guy who would always go after people in games, but our group was mostly chill so we just rolled with it. That's pretty rare in my opinion, usually the aggressive person is as much a masochist as they are a sadist and are thrilled when someone fights back. Usually. My favourite personally is when the frontrunner in a game is getting the poo poo kicked out of him when people correctly deduce 'hey we need to rein the dude in' and acts like you killed his mother because you're... not letting him... win... FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 15:04
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FulsomFrank posted:Kind of related to the conversation/a bit of a non-sequitor but conflict averse is a pretty apt descriptor I think but in a few of my gaming circles it's the type of conflict that people are averse to. We've been playing bloodless TRACK GO UP Euros for so long that whenever there are direct "take-that" conflicts no one is accustomed to it and the reactions are quite negative and it can result in hurt feelings. That said, I've seen some blowups over the most anodyne and hilarious poo poo including a friend losing it on his wife when she outbid him on the winter tile he had been working toward in Keyflower. Not exactly invading someone's home system in TI:4 is it? Once I fairly-regularly played with a guy who would always go after people in games, but our group was mostly chill so we just rolled with it. Finally I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine, and he acted like I personally killed his mother 
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Apr 27, 2023 15:07
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What the boardgaming space needs is to follow the natural development of competitive multiplayer games like what happened in video games, and stop publishing 1v1 games and instead publish team-based games instead, where each crushing defeat can be handily deflected towards one of your noob team-mates instead of having to blame yourself or your lack of skill. This is why Mafia/Werewolf/Codenames is the future of board gaming.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:08
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Tekopo posted:What the boardgaming space needs is to follow the natural development of competitive multiplayer games like what happened in video games, and stop publishing 1v1 games and instead publish team-based games instead, where each crushing defeat can be handily deflected towards one of your noob team-mates instead of having to blame yourself or your lack of skill. This is why Mafia/Werewolf/Codenames is the future of board gaming. Guards of Atlantis II and it's ilk. Are you ready for MOBA toxicity to be transferred into board gaming?
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Apr 27, 2023 15:16
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It's kind of interesting because the boardgaming space does have some of the same issues, but since team-based competitive games are relatively rare, it is apparent within different genres. Co-op game are (or were) rife with alpha-gamers trying to direct everyone's action and getting huffy if their team-mates weren't following lock-step, to the extent that I made an entire blog post about games that try to remove that particular dynamic, since I sometimes felt that certain high difficulty co-ops almost forced complete cooperation without allowing for self-expression/choice.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:23
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Another part of it is that board game players trend older as a demographic. Older often means more income and less time for hobbies/social opportunities, so buying a new game offers the “feeling” of engaging in your hobby, having a rule set to pore over and new trinkets to tinker with, despite that it will maybe never make it to the table.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:24
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Wallet posted:I don't really have any issue with conflict, but I find it much harder to get a good game with something directly competitive because I'm very rarely playing a game with a group of people who all have the same level of experience and investment. I think this is a big part of it. If you've been playing a game a couple times within the same group, some players may get more plays or just get more into it and get into the deeper strategies more quickly and you'll have a very lopsided game. Trying new games regularly keeps everybody on a more level playing field while also letting everyone continually experience the joy of discovery which is a big part of the appeal of games. Once you start doing that, you've introduced a certain set of selection pressures that will favor certain types of games over others. Games with major pitfalls or key strategies that aren't immediately obvious just wind up leading to the same problem since some players will figure them out on the first game and some players won't. So you want a fairly shallow point salad game where you can bumble around blindly and still come out ok, where there's not a lot of deeper strategies that will let an experienced player utterly dominate. But that gets boring, so you want a big decision space with a lot of interlocking mechanical systems so that you constantly have things to do and it feels like you get to execute cool strategies even though the end result is still roughly the same amount of points. Things like Wingspan and Earth are the natural outcome of this evolutionary process.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:36
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When I was younger and had less disposable income, I only really owned a small set of games that were the things I really loved to play. Even then, I was "the board gamer" in my primary friends group, and so I ended up hosting most of the game nights. Friends with a lot of varied interests came by, and while some of the games they wanted to play weren't my top choices, the community aspect of the thing that was forming was great in its own right, so I started to fill in the gaps in my collection. It turns out that there are a lot of gaps to fill in if you take that pursuit too seriously, so now I have way too many board games. It does mean that pretty much anyone with a passing interest in games will find something on my shelf that they like, but yeah my collection is absurd and a lot of it gets played like once a year or less. For my own part these days, I find that I mostly pick up new stuff by designers I personally like (For example I kickstarted the upcoming coop Santorini expansion), and new interesting small box stuff like Cat in the Box. There are still a few gaps I want to fill in (like racing games, if Heat ever comes back in stock) but I think I'm at the point where I will need to start selling some stuff off before I let myself buy new stuff. I've also started using BGStats (although I've missed some plays) so that I have some actual data about what I play rather than just going by memory.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:39
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I find, lately, that I’ve developed an interest in solo games just so that I can play more and on my own time. Otherwise, I’m content to alternate between Arkham Horror and Oath for the foreseeable future. Though, Arkham Horror in itself sort of builds in that “retail therapy/shiny new game” aspect by design.
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Apr 27, 2023 15:55
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armorer posted:I've also started using BGStats (although I've missed some plays) so that I have some actual data about what I play rather than just going by memory.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:01
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Admiralty Flag posted:How is this possible? It should be the easiest thing (complete game --> enter stats) but my ADD-riddled mind forgets to do it half the time until three days later when I'm going to my next gaming meetup, and some unknown percentage of the time just completely drops the ball. Frustrated with myself -- how will I know what I played the most of in 2023 next year if I can't get this right? My boardgaming legacy! Hahaha, yeah I also don't give a poo poo about my board gaming legacy. I am using it mostly so I have some idea what portion of my collection gets used, so I can more easily convince myself of what I can let go. But 100% it's what you've described, I play a bunch of games and don't think about tracking it at all and then later remember that I had intended to do so.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:10
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For board wargamers, not playing a game is a source of pride, not a badge of shame.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:16
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Tekopo posted:For board wargamers, not playing a game is a source of pride, not a badge of shame. A minute playing is a minute not clipping corners.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:25
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There are several wargames I own where I've spent a significantly longer time clipping them than actually playing them.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:25
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Serious question: would clipping the corners on my Civ tokens be a Good Decision?
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Apr 27, 2023 16:32
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It depends how they have been die-cut. Most of the reason why you do it for wargames is because the die-cuts for wargames have linkage material in the corner. A lot of standard board games have smaller linkage material on the sides, and pre-rounded corners, so no need to clip corners for those.
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Apr 27, 2023 16:38
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Naw, why would you bother re: clipping civ
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Apr 27, 2023 16:45
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Something that affects boardgames in an unusual way is the fact that they are almost all essentially limited print runs. Most games, even popular ones, are not constantly available off a shelf. They go out of print, and it doesn't take all that long to happen because they are not exactly stacked on shelves coast-to-coast at Walmart. Reprinting a game is also a lot more complicated than "Hi 4,000 more copies just like last time plz", "yah no prob, done in 3 months thx" So if there's a game you want -- maybe not right this moment, but still -- you might want to pick it up because it just plain might not be there later. And then it might sit on the shelf for a while 
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Apr 27, 2023 17:51
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The Eyes Have It posted:Something that affects boardgames in an unusual way is the fact that they are almost all essentially limited print runs. Most games, even popular ones, are not constantly available off a shelf. They go out of print, and it doesn't take all that long to happen because they are not exactly stacked on shelves coast-to-coast at Walmart. I have six games on my shelf that I bought solely because I heard that SUSD loved them and they were my jam, and I thought "If I take the time to do my due diligence they'll be sold out for two years." I've bought about ten or twelve games using that methodology, and then just returned them / canceled the order when I realized they weren't for my table. But "Ooh, this sounds good, I can have it now or maybe never" definitely drives purchases.
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Apr 27, 2023 17:58
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It's good that SUSD don't put out any videos these days then
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Apr 27, 2023 17:59
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I haven’t bought a game in over 5 years because I decided not to buy any more games until I played everything I have at least once. Which isn’t a ton but I have a few games that can be hard to get to the table in my groups. I have one game left. (It’s Dungeon Lords.)
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Apr 27, 2023 18:09
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Megasabin posted:
I think a lot of folks here have a similar story. I went from a similar number down to 50 games about 5 years ago as well (not counting small box card games). I used a system of 10 games in the following categories: top 10 games overall, 2p games, party games, euros, non-euros. I'll usually end up getting 3-5 new games a year but I do one in one out or sell them on. Speaking of, anyone want free copy of the original version of Psychic Pizza Deliverers? Yours for the cost of shipping.
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Apr 27, 2023 18:26
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The first few plays of a boardgame are always tolerable at best and the idea that it might be the most fun someone has with that particular game seems either sick and wrong or really tragic
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Apr 27, 2023 18:37
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RabidWeasel posted:The first few plays of a boardgame are always tolerable at best and the idea that it might be the most fun someone has with that particular game seems either sick and wrong or really tragic Counterpoint: shallow games. So let me preface this by saying this is only my opinion and I know some people love it, but my first few plays of (e.g.) Wingspan were the most enjoyable, and it started dropping off significantly after those. Each new expansion, especially Oceania, rejuvenated the game for a brief while, because there was new stuff I hadn't seen (and Oceania shook up gameplay a bit), but I am not excited to play it like I was the first few times; in fact, when my wife or daughter suggest it now, I have to suppress a groan.
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Apr 27, 2023 18:48
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RabidWeasel posted:The first few plays of a boardgame are always tolerable at best and the idea that it might be the most fun someone has with that particular game seems either sick and wrong or really tragic Holy poo poo, this. The repeat play is grossly undervalued in this hobby. I have seen people, including myself quite frequently, who think they grasp a game on the first play and are ready to rate/dissect/poo poo on it whatever, but in truth the game is just way smarter than them still. Not saying that you need to play every game X number of times to be able to rate it (I rate on first play), but give games a drat chance to marinate. Serotoning fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 21:05
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FulsomFrank posted:Serious question: would clipping the corners on my Civ tokens be a Good Decision? No, they are nice and square. I've thought about it before but I only have a 2.5mm clipper, I'd have to get a 3mm to get a really noticeably round corner.
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Apr 27, 2023 21:24
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The first play is incredibly important. If the game gives a bad first impression no amount of convincing will get us to devote more time to it. Even if I personally know that the game is greatly enhanced with repeat play if my group was put off bad enough to say no that's that. Time to go to another game.
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Apr 27, 2023 21:41
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FulsomFrank posted:That said, I've seen some blowups over the most anodyne and hilarious poo poo including a friend losing it on his wife when she outbid him on the winter tile he had been working toward in Keyflower. Not exactly invading someone's home system in TI:4 is it? No, it's a thousand times worse.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:14
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Pro move on her part though. She correctly identified his strategy and punished him for going all in on a winter tile. Send her to the big leagues.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:00
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Tekopo posted:Dungeon Petz isn't very much like Clank, but it does emergent strategies in a similar way: while clank has a market row of cards to choose (iirc), Dungeon Petz is a worker placement game (with a twist) in which most of the placement spaces are small market rows of their own, that refresh each turn with different items being available, regardless of if they get picked up or not. The theme of the game is that you are running a monster pet shop, so in any given turn, you might have a different combination of special items, cages or additions that you can get, but the focus of the game is the monsters themselves: each one is completely unique, there are no duplicates, and the aim of the game is to target specific monsters to specific buyers (which you know are coming in advance). Dungeon pets sounds really good! I'll have look. We've got one friend, and his tantrums are the stuff of legend, BUT! In the moment, he is uproarious. Minutes later, he is totally cool on it. He knows that he's hot headed too, he never even slightly holds a grudge, and he's one of the best people I know. Which means it's GREAT when he gets like, betrayed, in a game, because his reaction is so big. It's not like laughing at him though either, it's just, like, it makes it FEEL like this huge epic event, but you know actually everything is ok.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:17
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People talking about Dungeon Petz is making me want to try it. That and Troyes are on BGA. Just gotta figure out how to convince my group to try them.
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Apr 28, 2023 09:58
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I kinda hate the Troyes implementation on bga, fwiw. No undo and it's very punishing if you choose the wrong move or didn't quite understand the options. Petz one is great!
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Apr 28, 2023 10:01
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Anonymous Robot posted:Another part of it is that board game players trend older as a demographic. Older often means more income and less time for hobbies/social opportunities, so buying a new game offers the “feeling” of engaging in your hobby, having a rule set to pore over and new trinkets to tinker with, despite that it will maybe never make it to the table.
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Apr 28, 2023 13:02
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Magnetic North posted:People talking about Dungeon Petz is making me want to try it. That and Troyes are on BGA. Just gotta figure out how to convince my group to try them. Petz is fun, but I haven't played it in a while so last time I did, I got really frustrated at how far my opponents were pulling ahead - this is because I forgot that it's not an engine builder or anything, leads last about as long as it takes to rake in a good customer.
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Apr 28, 2023 13:04
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Yeah, another reason why I love Petz. The engine that scores you point is not permanent, and evaporates as soon as you score the points, because you have to get rid of the pet to score the big points.
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Apr 28, 2023 13:24
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