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Mighty Eris posted:I won my first game of twilight struggle in turn one when the AI held a scoring card unplayed as an unforced error, so “OK” is a bit generous in my mind. It might say something about me that I don't like... but I'm just fine with poor/predictable AIs. I really enjoyed beating up the Twilight Struggle AI (when it came out on Steam), though it probably gave me some bad ideas about how the game "should" work. Going further, the Agricola mobile app (which doesn't seem to be available anymore, but still works) has straight-up terrible AIs. I win like 98% of games (regardless of the AI level, which is more like "the AI personality")... which is dumb... but learning to exploit the predictable behavior of each AI personality is it's own little game and I quite like it. I probably wouldn't have played nearly so many games if the AI was better or more realistic. At some point, AI tools will progress enough that it's straightforward to add "incredibly strong" AIs to most boardgames. That's great, but I hope they don't stop making "last minute hack" easy AIs too.
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Dec 30, 2021 20:47
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Resident Idiot posted:Nice, I just use some little glass bowls that used to have crème brûlée in them. I found some small glass bowls that are clear, square, and have rounded edges/bottoms (for easy "last token" removal). My only complaint is they're thicker than they need to be (I think they were meant to go in an oven). Other than that we use actual petri dishes for Pandemic, and bead boxes (again clear and with round-bottom cavities) for games with many token types (eg. Gloomhaven). I've looked at a bunch of commercial options, but they all seem to have usability problems.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:00
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Did a first round of Return to Dark Tower. Kind of a mix between a much lighter Mage Knight and Pandemic. The giant mechanical tower makes for a pretty striking look, but it doesn't really do much in terms of game mechanics. The app is fine, and thankfully feels like it's mostly "automating board game stuff" rather than "hiding core mechanics under opaque nonsense". I think between trying different heroes/treasures/companions, and going against different monsters/adversaries we (me and the kids) will get reasonable value out of it - but I don't know that it's a great fit for the thread's normal preferences. And I imagine it'll be expensive to grab. Still, it's pretty light rules wise, looks really cool, and has some "fun stuff to try" - so if you don't mind spending a couple hours on a light game it's worth trying if you get a chance.
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Jan 22, 2022 20:13
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Infinitum posted:Is the game playable without the tower? Not really. I mean, you could replace the tower and app with a much simpler/cheaper app that did the same thing. But I can't imagine many people would be interested in playing it.
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Jan 23, 2022 00:57
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armorer posted:I never had a board space issue with the standee bases, and played exclusively with 4 players. We tried a variety of solutions - spinny bases, dice, an app (pretty feature light, we played right after release). They all worked fine for most stuff, and none worked well for stupid Slimes. The right answer for slimes is to not do those missions, and instead, like, rub gravel into your forehead or do anything else. (In general we REALLY liked Gloomhaven, for the first 40 missions/hours or so anyway).
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Jan 27, 2022 00:37
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CitizenKeen posted:My "serious boardgamer" friends sometimes get angry when I shift gears from "win" to "end the game as quickly as possible by any means necessary", and I'm always confused why I should continue playing for an hour so they can figure out who is first versus second when I'm in fourth and I have the option to drive the game into the ground and end the game now. This kind of stuff is one reason I'm wary about playing (especially longer games) with strangers - too many slapfights/sads about play expectations/conventions. Like, I think "push to end quickly is fine". I also think "fight to the death to be 3rd instead of 4th" is fine. But some groups will get touchy about the first, and others will get touchy about the second (especially in a political game where "player in 3rd" effectively decides the winner by taking a crack at the player in 2nd). And getting judged on your NPC behavior while you watch the protagonists play the "real game" isn't real fun to start with. In general I prefer games where it still feels like I'm doing something even if I'm not winning. Like, yeah maybe I'm not going to win a game of Agricola - but i still want to "finish what I was doing", get a stone house, feed my family, whatever. Having an unimpeachable motivation for your doomed actions - "I need 3 more stone for a reno" - smooths out some potential bad feels. jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Feb 4, 2022 |
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Feb 4, 2022 17:56
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MonsieurChoc posted:gently caress it, I'm getting it. Little late - but... I wouldn't? We tried a couple rounds, and it didn't really grab anyone. It seemed like a lot of work/fiddling/rules for a bland game. Certainly don't get it if the theme of adventuring is important to you, as that doesn't really come through well.
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Mar 1, 2022 17:25
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I've been playing a bunch of D&D with the kids, but they want to play it more often than I want to DM. So anyway, I picked up a D&D adventure board game - Wrath of Ashardalon thinking it could sort of bridge that gap. What a tedious piece of garbage. Sprawling, fiddly, pointless mess. Boringly, grindingly random. Dry... endless deserts of downtime, with turns lost to curses or misses or just... nothing. Poorly themed, boringly interchangeable enemies. Player characters felt like much-too similar lumps, with very little special, super-repetitive turns, with much too little progress through the session (and most sessions being standalone, so no help there either). Box full of tiles with grid chunks... but whole map felt mostly irrelevant. Far too much play time spent resolving crushingly boring "Encounters", far too many of which were effectively "lose a turn" or "everyone takes damage". An incredible amount of "no-decision" randomness. One of the worst designed, least enjoyable games I've played. CONS: Interminable joyless turd. PROS: Components are fine. jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Apr 2, 2022 |
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Apr 2, 2022 23:18
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discount cathouse posted:I prefer Exit to Unlock by a little bit. Exit can feel more abstract, but it also has a higher number of fun puzzles per session. Escape room: the Game was worse than these 2. The "Escape Room: The Game: The Whatever" series is consistently terrible - sometimes jaw-droppingly bad. But the "Escape Room: The Game: The Puzzle Adventure: The Whatever" series actually work pretty well. There's like 6 small jigsaw puzzles, and some little escape room type puzzles mixed in with each step. Would recommend, though not for more than 2 players (the puzzles are too small for more).
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Apr 8, 2022 17:44
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Gort posted:My group often screws up in Seven Wonders and grabs duplicate cards. We then notice like, two ages later and someone's science score drops from a million to twenty Yeah - I've run into the same problem a few times with simultaneous choice games (eg. 7 Wonders, Steampunk Rally). With nobody watching all their turns, it's easy for players (anyone really, but especially a new player) to unintentionally cheat, and that spirals into bad feelings for someone. For 7 Wonders, that was one of the reasons I liked the team version (especially with new players), even though the team version has some extra complications.
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Apr 19, 2022 17:53
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FirstAidKite posted:Always see people talking bout sleeving cards but I never see anyone talk about sleeving hexes, dice, tiles, counters, cubes, minis, and meeples. Smh We played so many games of Resistance: Avalon that the images were worn off the cardboard bits. Went through several sets of sleeves for the cards. For our second copy, we painted the cardboard bits with "mod podge puzzle saver". Result was much more durable, without changing appearance much.
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Apr 22, 2022 17:39
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Poopy Palpy posted:I have an entire sleeved Dominion collection. Don't sleeve Dominion. Buy a few sets of Base Cards and replace them as they start to show wear. I bought a huge set of Dominion - like every expansion up to Adventures(?) maybe. All sleeved...every sleeve on upside down (ie. "hole at bottom"). We joked about them being "rain sleeves" for a while... but while I was laughing outside, inside I was dying every time I shuffled. I ended up spending like 5 hours re-sleeving. Then like days later we got Gloomhaven and never played Dominion again.
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Apr 22, 2022 22:17
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Ubik_Lives posted:I know the monkeys aren't the only tiebreaker issue card, but I feel like they were the worst offender by a long margin, and you didn't need an entire new rule system to deal with them. It mostly bothered us that the tie breakers were hidden. But when we tried ways to fix that, it didn't make the game better. In the end, this is mostly a "naked" hidden action selection game, and hidden/simultaneous selection is a luck mechanism (despite what the Dave Sirlin hyper gamelords might think). Magnifying that, this is a very swingy game, where a few wrong calls can set you way behind. To me the "fix" for Libertalia isn't trying to change all that and make it into some deep skill game - I think the fix is to make it shorter and less complicated. Something you can play a bunch of rounds and not worry too much about - like you'd play other "high luck" sorts of games.
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May 10, 2022 16:35
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Glagha posted:I mean it depends on how many options are available and how many trials you have in a particular game but I will die on the hill that simultaneous selection is like poker: skill based with variance, but it's not luck. I have no idea what this game is like though this is me going to bat for Yomi because Sirloin came up Sure - all of Poker, Libertalia, and Yomi have skill certainly. And they all have significant luck inputs. Those are two separate measures. The optimal strategy for a given position in a simultaneous action selection game (or a game with hidden information, which are closely related) is usually going to resolve to a probability equilibrium - but playing by that equilibrium will pay off differently depending on luck (given a reasonable opponent, anyway). None of that is to say you can't make a wrong move, weight options incorrectly, or fail to take advantage of a poor/predictable opponent in these games. Poker is absolutely a high skill game, and Yomi and Libertalia almost certainly are. One way Poker is (at least to me) much better than Libertalia (or Pandante, going back to Sirlin) is that you usually play more "hands" (or equivalent) - giving your "skill" signal more opportunity to overcome the "luck" noise. This is one of the reasons I think Libertalia could do with being shorter. jmzero fucked around with this message at 02:37 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 02:35
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Aramoro posted:What do you consider to be the luck element in Libertalia, assuming perfect knowledge of the cards or new Libertalia where tiebreakers are public? Really it's only initial card selection that all your cards have poor tiebreakers for the card they have, either high or low, and that's a fairly rare thing to happen. Consider a particular setup on your first turn. I'm player B, the treasure showing is X, etc... Suppose you decide that, in that situation, the best move is Y, so you always do Y. This doesn't work. Your opponents, knowing that you would always do Y in this situation, could use that knowledge to counter that strategy. So you need to be able to "mix up" your choices to not be predictable. Glossing over a lot of theory, this ends with the the game theory optimal move being not one move, but a weighted set of options (a Nash equilibrium). So maybe in Libertalia situation X, you should effectively play card Y 80% of the time and card Z 20% of the time. To be clear, this game-theory-optimal strategy doesn't guarantee wins - it just maximizes your odds of good outcomes (given an opponent who is also playing well). Because of this, hidden/simultaneous action will involve some luck (when played with realistic opponents). Which is not to say there's not also skill - there's tons of skill involved in deciding appropriate weightings, and also in terms of identifying tendencies in opponents who are unlikely to be playing optimally themselves. By contrast, the "Dave Sirlin hyper gamelord" view, that I sometimes see, is that in perfect play you'd always be able to make the "hard read". That, for example, you could or should always be one step ahead in reading your opponent in a "he thinks that I think that he thinks that I think I'll do X, so I'll do Y" Iocaine powder game. This is a pleasant fantasy for some gigantic egos, but is not viable given realistic opponents. That's not to say these reads don't happen, just that they shouldn't be expected to be the norm. In the end there's usually going to be some luck involved. jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:32 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 18:29
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The Exit games' answer disc was a reasonable novelty at first, but I think sticking with it has limited their design space. They've become more reliant on gimmicks. In general, they've gone downhill over time - I think they need to shake things up. Meanwhile, the writing/puzzle-making on the Unlock games have gotten better. We just went through Unlock: Mythic Adventures; they were all fine, with a few clever bits. The app gimmicks have been well done lately, and the "number hidden in smoke"/moon-logic-groaners have gotten much less common. While these games are all more expensive than necessary, the Unlock games being perfectly re-usable by design is nice. We usually get two uses in our family, then pass them on to the next group. I feel like the best place for these to go is either "reusable card game, using app for gimmicks" (like Unlock) for 2 or 3 players and pretty casual engagement - or "deluxe physical experience" games like Werewolf Experiment for dedicated evenings. Exit games seem to currently be hitting a middle ground with disadvantages from each side, and not much benefit. Our other current favorite escape room series is Escape Room: The Game: The Puzzle Adventure, which make for a pleasant 2 player night. We did the first Cantaloop game a while back.. not great, or at least not what we were looking for. Lots of text to read (and we didn't love the story); more "random clicking" than puzzle solving. Probably better suited to solo play... but at that point, seems like you should just play an adventure game on the computer (which is what you're doing, mostly, just with a really awkward interface).
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May 29, 2022 23:46
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Morpheus posted:I've played a few Exit games without destroying stuff, with the intention of giving it to my friends afterwards. When playing with that kind of mindset it's really easy to see how often you're asked to cut something up or fold something without any need to (mechanically or thematically). Sometimes it adds a lot to the experience though, but I've got a few sitting on my shelf that have been played but unaltered that say otherwise. Yeah, there has been a few great Exit gimmicks that required damage - some very memorable moments where you're about to do something you won't be able to undo, just hoping you've got the clue right. And also clearly some where the destruction was just for destruction's sake (and that you can avoid destroying without changing much); I wish they'd drop what is clearly a "must include destructive elements" design mandate. quote:Me and my partner still get each one as it comes out though. Though some might be less than stellar, they're still a fun way to spend ~45 minutes. I'm in the same boat... Like... I don't know if I actually like most of these games, but I sure do keep buying them. jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jun 6, 2022 |
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Jun 6, 2022 18:09
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Radioactive Toy posted:My shower thought yesterday was about how when I first got into the hobby in 2009 I heard the team "engine builder" and thought the game someone was referring to was actually about building a car engine. They made Deck Building: The Deck Building Game where's my Engine Building: The Engine Building Game. There's also Point Salad, Ketchup Mechanism, Traitor Mechanic. Can't think of other really on-the-nose ones (maybe Take That? one of the "Roll/Role" pun names?) Any others? VV: Those are great! jmzero fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 6, 2022 |
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Jun 6, 2022 20:05
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FirstAidKite posted:Is BIPOC pronounced by each letter (bee eye pea oh sea) or is it pronounced like a word (bye-pock, bip-ock)? I wasn't sure either - usually having only seen it written. Googling/random-Youtube-videos seem pretty consistent that it's this: quote:BIPOC is pronounced “buy pock” (“pock” as in “pocket”).
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Jun 29, 2022 17:52
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nordichammer posted:How many times do you think you should play an average game ($60 USD priced game for a point of comparison) for it to be 'worth' the purchase? I think you have to consider how you're using the game, and what sort of experience you're looking for. Like, we only played "A Distant Plain" twice (with 4 players each time) - but both times it was the central event for a get together, and it was the only "thing" we did that night. So while we sold it after 2 plays, it feels like we got excellent value out of it. Other games (>80% of games I've owned over the years) just feel like "options in a pile", and aren't bringing significant value above "whatever else we might have played". Many have felt like net negatives compared to just re-playing "old workhorse games" we already know. Even if I get some plays out of a mediocre "variation" type game, it's hard for me to get excited about it. I used to like wandering around the board game cafe, and learning random new games; now I want something that's very novel, or that is established as a real "new contender" that makes significant improvement on an old favorite. So yeah, for me it's not just about plays (though obviously you don't want to buy too many games you'll never play) it's about "added value over a game you already have". If a new game is going to "create an event", that's a lot different than playing random mid-weight Euro X instead of Y. jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 18:36
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Morpheus posted:Unlock has always had problems with audio clues, both from an accessibility standpoint and just when it comes to sound quality. Whenever there's one of them coming up I inwardly sigh. Yeah, the audio clues are consistently terrible. My phone (pixel 6) has a perfectly good speaker, and I've tried using headphones... doesn't help - both quality and localization are consistently bad. A few times I've gone back to see if we can "hear it" after we know the answer, quite often it's still pretty sketchy.
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Jul 16, 2022 20:05
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WhiteHowler posted:Also, maybe Concept? No reading to do, it's all pictures. And the player count is a loose recommendation. My group rarely plays with the rules in the box -- we just go around the table rotating "pickers" until we get tired of playing. Yeah we've got a ton of miles on Concept over the last few years. Works with a broad range of people, and has great support for people coming in and out, or just watching (and yeah, ignore scoring).
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Jul 17, 2022 19:59
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Quote-Unquote posted:I just ordered the base game, on the fence about the expansions. I know it looks generic as all hell but man, the tower gimmick got me. I know it will hit my table plenty of times (we have had a lot of mileage out of Talisman, after all). We played on my normal-sized phone. Not ideal - it meant passing the phone around, and only one person can really see the fight or whatever - but it was fine. The app doesn't have, like, a bunch of status information that everyone needs to see at once. We didn't have any persistent tech/rules issues. It is not a great game - and a few of our games ended with pretty wet farts - but the novelty got us through 5 or 6 games before we sold. I'd be hesitant to buy it on a "I'm going to get $130 worth of plays out of this" basis, but definitely worth trying.
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Jul 26, 2022 19:47
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Tekopo posted:my board game purchases have gone way down My purchases have been very slow, even as pandemic eases. I still play a reasonable number of board games, but my "dedicated group" was co-workers. With everyone working remotely, that's 99% gone. Rare to have enough people to game at lunch, too much hassle to get together after - a few don't even live in the city anymore. Dedicated nights pretty rare, don't need a lot of new games. I play some with the family, but we go through games pretty slow. Jaws of the Lion. Crew. D&D. These are games that last months, into years. (Did go back to Micro/Macro lately. Good game.) For casual "playing with visitors", I don't want to play a new game - I want to play a game I know backwards and forwards, where I know all the rules people might miss on a first playthrough, where my teaching spiel is smooth and fast, and where I have good reason to believe it'll be a hit with new players. Not worth experimenting with something new.
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Aug 19, 2022 00:41
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Perry Mason Jar posted:Downloaded the f2p Dominion and the two AI games I played both ended for reasons I don't understand? Provinces were not depleted nor three supply piles I assume one of the depleted piles was Curses (as someone mentioned above). I remember the Curse pile emptying being a shock for me when I first played the digital version. In paper we had messed up and always played with more than the rules specify. (To be fair to us, the correct Curse count is kind of awkward - "10 for each player beyond the first") Edit: ah beaten several ways. In new content... man I wish the expansions on Steam were cheaper by... a lot. They're like $15 CDN... it'd be hundreds of dollars ($213.28 CDN) to get them all. I like Dominion and all... but that's way too much. jmzero fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Sep 17, 2022 |
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Sep 17, 2022 00:25
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Magnetic North posted:Catan Yeah, I know a few random people - family, co-workers - who did the Catan cycle ("wow so neat", "wow so neat except politics at the end", "huh actually this whole game is samey and frustrating", "maybe expansions/house-rules fix it?", "I promise I will never play Catan again") post Covid.
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Sep 26, 2022 02:10
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Bottom Liner posted:Vagabond is not nearly as powerful/imbalanced here as many folks here seem to think. It can run the table if other players are inexperienced and all, but against competitive experienced players they can get really shut out. I think the newer advanced setup also randomizes which Vagabond card you get. Root is a heavily political game; the Vagabond being "within range of being balanced by politics, if the table is experienced" isn't really saying much. Or, rather, it's kind of leaning towards the opposite point.
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Sep 27, 2022 15:19
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Bottom Liner posted:It’s really not though, especially compared to Cole‘s other designs, but even generally. It’s no more political than Blood Rage, Kemet, etc. Inis has more mechanical incentive for politics and deal making because of shared incentives to peacefully coexist in spaces. CitizenKeen posted:A game being about politics doesn't make it a political game. Sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm not saying it's "about politics" thematically, I'm saying it's political mechanically, in a game design theory sense. To clarify: A multi-player game (>2P) is "political" to the extent that players can choose to harm or help specific other players. "Bashing the leader" is one hallmark of a political game (along with others like "Fly Under the Radar", and "Only Trade with Losers"). When someone says that the vagabond is balanced as long as people choose to beat him up, that's saying that the role is balanced by politics. Edit: And yes, Root is no more political than some other very political games. But it's much more political than a random Euro (or a "conflict" game with more effective blunting of politics, like Tash Kalar or King of Tokyo). jmzero fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 17:14
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Bottom Liner posted:I specifically addressed how Root is not political mechanically. The only exception is the Vagabond allying but that is basically never in play meaningfully. Sorry, again, I think we're just using a different definition here. I'm not using a regular definition, like "the activities associated with the governance of a country..." I'm using "politics" as a term of game design theory (eg. see the section on politics here: Characteristics of Games) jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 18:13
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Bottom Liner posted:And it's pretty clear I'm not either. Ah yes, "politics" is "things that reinforce political workings". And a "horse" is a "horse shaped thing that horses". And for my supposed definition of politics, you've again used "politics" in the definition, and ignored the two explicit times I've defined exactly what I mean, and which isn't what you say. Also, how does your definition even fit how you used it previously?: Bottom Liner posted:The only politicking in Root is bash the leader and strategic whining,
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Sep 27, 2022 18:34
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Bottom Liner posted:I don't know why you don't see the difference in social politics above the table and mechanical politics in a game design. Strategic whining and game politics as you define them can be applied to any game with any level of player interaction. In Agricola you can beg people to not go to a certain spot, in Skull you can whine about someone bidding too high to start a round, in Ganz Schön Clever you can try to influence someone to take a certain die. None of those games are political. Social dynamics =/= game mechanics. Again, those are metagame concerns and pitfalls of multiplayer conflict designs. "Strategic whining" would be a good example of "out of game interactions that fit a normal definition of negotiation or politics". And this is what you seem to think I'm talking about when I say "politics". Please... please believe me that that's not what I'm talking about. I don't know how to make that clearer, at least not under my current assumption that you're not reading my posts before replying. And yes, clearly there is some level of "politics" (by my definition) in almost all multiplayer games. But that doesn't mean that there isn't variance between games with high politics (Risk) and low politics (Dominion). Edit: To be clear, I said "my definition" above, but I mean "the definition I'm using". Which I learned out of a textbook. And sorry, yes, when you wrote this: quote:The only politicking in Root is bash the leader and strategic whining, but those are present in most games with direct conflict. It’s thematically political, but not mechanically. ...I assumed the "it" was "Root", not "strategic whining", so I may have misunderstood what you where trying to say with that. (ie. I thought you were saying Root had some politics - "bash the leader" - but that that alone didn't make it political). jmzero fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 18:46
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CitizenKeen posted:Can you explain why your definition of politics (jmzero) includes bash-the-leader but not strategic whining? In my mind it would be hard to distinguish between those two. Sorry, to be clear it's not my definition or something - I learned it out of the textbook I linked. When I say "bash the leader", I don't mean "telling someone to bash the leader", I mean "doing it". Bashing the leader is either something the mechanics allow you to do, or they don't. You can (often) bash the leader in Risk because you can choose who to attack with your dudes. It is harder to bash the leader in Dominion because you don't have the mechanical tools to single them out. That is why one is a more political game than the other. Strategic whining is not a mechanical thing, and is not governed by game mechanics. I think it comes up more often in political games, because there's more "targeting" behaviors you can try to change by whining. But in the end you can whine about anything - I've had people whine in Dominion.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:07
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Bottom Liner posted:I quoted your list of political game hallmarks, so yeah, I know what you're saying. The book you referenced is not concerned with mechanics but social dynamics creating a political experience out of game, and even agrees that those elements often devolve into the flawed chip-taking example. Kingmaking in Root is not political. It's a bad outcome of the design that sometimes rears its head. Kingmaking in Oath is political, because it can have in-game ramifications and reasons for why you would choose one player over another. Alliances are in-game, not above the table such as in Risk. The game itself is mechanically political. Sorry, I think I understand your idea of politics more clearly now - explicit negotiation, deal-making, or alliance mechanics. That is fine. As to what I'm trying to get at: when I gave those hallmarks, understand that those are not my definition of politics, but rather consequences that often accompany games with high politics. In a similar way "patchy hair loss" might be a symptom or hallmark of syphilis, but those aren't syphilis. Similarly, when the book talks about the way political games play out, that's illustrative example, not the definition. The definition itself is pretty simple. Again - a game (>2P) is political to the extent you can choose to harm or benefit specific other players. That's it. It's a characteristic of a game. Root is political by this definition because you have lots of choices about who to punch. Doesn't mean Root is bad.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:16
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silvergoose posted:If your definition of "political" is "has direct interaction", sure. I don't think that's a generally accepted equivalence. To be clear, this is not my definition - this is game design theory. It's not universal, no - but I will go to bat for the usefulness of this definition and in general I'll go to bat for using precise terminology when describing properties of games. "Political" is not the same as "direct interaction". Pandemic and Chess have direct interaction, but no politics (by definition, since Pandemic has only one effective agent, and Chess only one "target" to pick). That matters when it comes to understanding these games, comparing them to others, and predicting how players will engage with them. It'd be like trying to discuss car racing, and stopping at "fast". Unless you tease out "horsepower", "weight", "downforce", (and then much further, building on those concepts), then you can't make progress in understanding what makes "fast" happen. This definition of "political" is specific, and points directly to the way this characteristic impacts game play. Understanding "politics" is then a stepping stone to understanding further game characteristics (eg. "luck", whose game design definition you probably also would not like - but again is very helpful in understanding games). Bottom Liner posted:That is navel gazing to the point of being completely useless when discussing game design. See now I know you read my posts  . Pedantic, navel-gazing, useless... these are all valid charges. Like, I'm interested in game design but an absolute failure at actually doing it. I consider and theorize way too long instead of actually play-testing.
jmzero fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 19:27
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Bottom Liner posted:Game design theory is woefully incompetent and outdated when discussing modern board game design. Lol, now I know you're just trying to wind me up. It's working. I feel compelled to defend Richard Garfield's honor. But I'm also posting on work time so I should probably stop.
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Sep 27, 2022 19:34
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silvergoose posted:Okay. "political" does necessarily mean "direct interaction in multiplayer competitive games", then? Yes? I guess it depends on your definition of "direct" (and maybe "interaction"). Like, the "direct" here would have to imply choice or targeting. For example, when you are King of Tokyo, you're having "direct interaction" (at least in some sense) with all the other players when you attack, but you can't choose who you're hitting, so it's not a "very political" action in the game. Or (to use another Richard Garfield game example), consider multiplayer Magic: the Gathering (which I'm not endorsing... just an example). With free-for-all rules, it's an "extremely political" game. With "attack to your left" rules it moves down to "very political", as you now have much less choice about who to punch. With emperor rules (2 teams) it's not political per se (as there's only 2 teams) - though it can still have some "I got singled out" bad feelings (as humans are not strategy robots). jmzero fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Sep 27, 2022 |
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Sep 27, 2022 20:08
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golden bubble posted:So basically your sole criteria is how effectively a player can choose to target interaction against a specific opposing player in a multi-player competitive game while still trying to win. By that definition Hansa Teutonica is as political as Blood Rage, and arguably more given how the Blood Rage draft is way more important to winning the game than any other interactive mechanic in the game. Yep. And it can be hard to predict how political a game will feel into you play it some. Like, Kemet in practice is less political than we expected. Obviously there's times where it hurts to be attacked, and the end-game sometimes forces someone to choose who wins. But in general I think the designers did a good job of softening the blow of losing an army, and thus the game usually feels like it comes down to "what you got done" more than "how many times someone wrecked you". On the flip side, Keyflower is way more of a stab-fest than we would have expected.
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Sep 27, 2022 23:10
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Mr. Squishy posted:I don't like the storytelling of Betrayal - flipping cards and reading out a snippet of some horror movie cliche does nothing for me. The fact that there's no objective at all in the first half of the game also annoys me. And the game depends on sending a random player away to read and internalize a private rule-set is pretty fraught in my experience. Not everyone who likes boardgames likes, or is competent at, reading and understanding rules, and the rulebook is not perfectly written. Yeah, my group tried Betrayal a couple times, and then Betrayal Legacy a couple times.. and probably never again. Very early on, people mostly gave up on "trying to win" a game so random. While that maybe avoided frustration, it likely also made the result feel more tedious. If you're just sort of sitting around together, fiddling with bits while waiting for a game to tell you a story... Betrayal doesn't actually do that much storytelling. We didn't really go for Tales or Cosmic Encounter either - just a few games of each before it felt like a pointless random grind. Our games of Avalon quite often made for better stories than any of these because, while there's no magic trombones, "the game narrative" and the "trying to win" parts worked together.
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Oct 5, 2022 15:51
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uncle blog posted:What's the thread consensus on Clank!? And which version is the one to get? Looking for a medium/light game that plays fairly fast and works well with 2-4 players. Have previously tried Quacks, Quest for Eldorado, Splendor and a few others. Want something a bit thematic with a decent amount of interaction and a bit more complexity than what those had. I don't hate Clank - but it can be a bit of a random slog (I can only speak to base Clank, I haven't tried the further versions). Most deckbuilders can have "non-turns" where you draw the wrong mix of stuff. In Dominion you can draw all your terminals at once, or have an overload of gold. But in Clank it happens way more. "What you want to do" varies based on where you are, and with 3 "currencies" (used for "buy", "move", and "fight") for stuff you want to do, it feels like too many turns are blanked out by "drawing wrong". It also has some real balance problems, meaning you're often buying "the good cards" on autopilot... and then just hoping they come back at the right time. There's more layers of randomness on top of that, and the overall pacing of the game often doesn't seem to match the intended narrative. Not, like... a bad game. But my play group didn't find it very satisfying either.
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Oct 24, 2022 21:09
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Perry Mason Jar posted:I've played The Resistance once, years ago, and Avalon once last month. Maybe it's the groups I've played with cause the game gets a lot of love but my experience is that deception takes a backseat to deduction in it whereas One Night is more deception and Secret Hitler is probably a happy middle. Something's not clicked with my plays, at least when I played Avalon recently the person who sold us on playing it ended by saying "well it's better with more people" which might be true but it didn't generate any excitement for anyone at the table even for them who calls it a fav. We played with five and I think the one from years back was the same, maybe six. Yeah, I don't think there's a particularly good config for Avalon at 5 - you really need 7 or 8. You can learn to play with 5, but there's going to be a lot of "blue cruises" where nothing happens, where spies are deductively identified, etc..
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Oct 31, 2022 03:39
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