If I am.....

.....going to start blogging again I should try and ensure the preview picture that comes up makes more sense then an Odyssey Photo (much as I love that Odyssey photo).


Fortunately I do have drawing of me as the Bishop of Games, the Dice Pope so lets use that.

Action Limitation

I got thinking about action limitation and all the different ways board games limit what you can do because having to choose what to do is what drives making decisions (and good game play involves making informed decisions).

Turn is not quite the right term because sometimes a turn is a subpart of a larger game cycle.  For example, worker placement your turn is placing a worker and taking a single action.  But that is contained within some sort of larger action limitation because at some point the action spaces clear, workers come home, and stuff goes back onto the board.

The term I’m going for is “game cycle” it'll do for now.

Limited Actions: you can do N actions from a list of available actions (where N can be 1) and you will have the same number of actions next game cycle.

Resource Spend – there is a cost in doing something be that spending resources, money, cards, or even exhausting a card.  But if you can pay the cost you can keep doing stuff.

Common actions – picking from a pool of common actions that only one person can do within that game cycle.

Random available actions – what you can do in a turn changes based on some random factor could be rolling dice, drawing out of a bag, and having some cards available.



Push your luck – do stuff until some turn ending event you’d rather avoid happens.

Real time passing – do an action that will take a certain amount of real time and you can’t do something until that time has passed, generally controlled by a sand timer.

 

These seem like major mechanics, but they are often combined together.   But there are also other twists and modifiers that designers use which I don't think quite make it to a major mechanic.

 

For example

 

Sub Turns - for example do a thing(s), and then do another thing(s) a bit later on.  For example Terraforming mars. 

Not all players have the same number of actions – for example Caverna when you get an extra dwarf.

Picking an action does something for other people as well – for example race for the galaxy.

Actions have a sequence – for example Antikes roundel

Drafting your actions – for example Innis.

Making a choice on a card – pick a or b for your self which then gives the other to somebody else – for example fire on the lake.

Limited Repeatability – there is some sort of limited repeatability.

 

To me this covers a lot but I’m sure I’ve missed lots of possible options. 

 

So lets play a game – either suggest a mechanic I’ve missed and I’ll see if I think it’s already covered by the above or suggest a game you don’t think goes into the above structure and I’ll try and work out what I think it would be.......

 

Wingspan: thoughts on design and theme

I played Wingspan the weekend and in addition to being a good game I think it provides some really good examples of game play and an interesting perspective on theme.

 

Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game. You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves.

 

You have a pile of action cubes which you use to do one of 4 actions.  Play a card (a bird) into one of your environments by paying some food (and maybe some eggs) or you activate one of three environments.  Each environment gives you one of the three main resources of the game- food, eggs, or cards.  The more birds in an environment the better the action is, and sometimes you can trade food, eggs, or cards for another type of resource.  If a bird has a brown action you get to do that brown action when you use that environment.  Once all your action cubes are done the round ends, you get scored on some end of round scoring thing, mark how well you did with an action cube and then do another turn.  4 turns in total and it’s all over and you score game end card(s).  Most points win. That is basically it.

 

The first thing to talk about is just how much this game delivers with a simple rules set.  3 main resources (cards, eggs, food – of which there are 5 sub types), and 4 actions (one of which is play a card) and the other three work the same way they just deliver different stuff.    That’s not a lot but it delivers lots of choices, with the value of a card being very much determined by what you’ve already got down, your resources, the bonus scoring for that round, what other people have down.  Lovely.

 

Each individual card is simple and the language clear, and even when combined with other cards abilities they never get complicated or unclear but they do get interesting and effective – finding a sweet combo is *kisses air*.

 

Let us take the moment to appreciate the design that went into the decision that you start off with lots of simple actions – but as the game goes down you lose actions but each action increase in effectiveness.  Brilliant. 

Another nice touch is that your abilities fire in an order right to left – so no trying to work out if you can eek out a better result with a different order.  Make that decision when you play the card.  Or how the action is kept moving because you can draw blind or you can draw from 3 face up cards but those face up cards don’t replenish until after your turn.  So the amount you have to consider on your turn lower, and things keep moving no matter how many cards you are drawing. 

 

If Innsmouth Escape got me into board game design by making me go “I can do betterthen that”, Wingspan makes me go “I should give up – I will never be that good”.

 

Now I want to talk about theme and this gets supper nerdy.

This is a game that drips with theme.  It is about birds, and the cards are covered in bird related details.  Wingspan, max egg numbers, nest type, what they eat, where they can live.  I have absolutely no doubt that these details are informed by the real world and not by what the designer wanted.  So nothing is pasted on about this theme.

 

So why did I sit there playing it, enjoying it and think “you know this system would work really well for an economic engine builder?”

 

I think the answer was because I was experiencing Ludo Narrative Dissonance – which is a term normally used for video games but in this case means the decisions and the theme were not in accord. 

 

It’s what I tend to think of as “how evocative is it”?  Do I feel like the person, thing, or entity the game is telling me I am?  On that account Wingspan sort of falls down because honestly I don’t feel like a bird enthusiast – I feel like somebody looking for efficiencies, eeking out synergies to get ahead of the competition.  Just how and why do "bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors" - "build engines"?  I mean the dissonance is right in the description at the top.  With a lot of consideration I did come to the conclusion 'by creating an eco system' was the answer to what sort of engine do twitchers create.  But personally it never felt like an eco system.   

For me this is far from a deal breaker.  I want a copy and will happily play your copy until I get my own.  Heck I played it 3 times over the weekend because I enjoyed it so much.  But it felt a really interesting example of why the term “theme” in board games is a lot more complicated then people seem to think it is.

 

As a side note I did start sketching out what a reskin into an economic game would look like (food = resources, eggs = population, cards = research) but I very quickly found my self going so what sort of building could be built in all three of the areas?  How do you produce the sheer range of different buildings/cards all with there subtle little differences?  Which is an indication to me just how much birds really did drive elements of the game design. 

Been a while....

....but expect a lot more as I've had an idea.....

So last weekend I went down to Stabcon South (It's called that because it's in Southampton and it's run by people who really like Stabcon. Which is in Manchester and if you want to know why that's called Stabcon you'll need to ask the people that make it happen) and played a bunch of games.

One the Sunday we played a game called Forge War which made me think about 'theme' and games.

In Forge War you play a blacksmith, mining metals, to equip hero's with weapons, to send them out to defeat quests and gain victory points.  Which to do well involves a lot of timing and finesse as quests are multi stage and increase in difficulty as each stage falls.

Two of the players (including myself) felt that it had rather had a theme fail - because we'd been expecting a game about being a blacksmith making and selling weapons to hero's.  Where as from my perspective it would have taken but a tiny twist of the game to make us wizards directing a team of hero's.  Theme wise this would have fitted my head fine - that's a thing that wizards do, it's not a thing blacksmiths do (in a fantasy land, with dragons).

However one of the other players was fine with the theme - they saw nothing odd about a blacksmith equipping there own team of adventurers and sending them out.

So based on this I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about theme (which are not all linked to the above - this just seems like a good time to write them down).

Theme is a pretty important concept in board games - with people attacking or defending games based on theme.  A common complaint about a game is that the Theme is just pasted on.

Theme is evocative.  It seeks to invoke in you a particular feeling above and beyond the mechanics.

Mechanics invoke theme.  If you are taking actions in the game which seem counter to your expectations - then no matter how mechanically good it is - it won't invoke theme.

Words, and art invoke theme.  In Lord of Waterdeep you get cubes which represent warriors, wizards, clerics, and thieves - if you called them something else (like Ninja's) you'd be invoking a different sort of theme.

Expectations define theme. If the game matches what you think should happen that sets the boundries of how a game does or does not invoke theme.  If the game has a world war II tiger tank on the front cover and I get a stock mechanic then my expectations will not be met.

For me the mechanics are the most important bit - so much so that I originally called Mechanics Major Theme, and Words and art , if they match then I feel a game is themed. Take Caverna it's a game about dwarves developing there home.  So the classic worker placement mechanic fits really well for me, I go get stuff, I make stuff, things grow and develop.  The dwarf stuff on the other hand - some what skin deep.  Stuff is named sort of dwarvish but you spend half your time growing pumpkins and raising sheep....

Heck I like Battle Line a game allegedly about the battles of Alexander and Darius - which is so little about the battles of Alexander and Darius it was originally released as game about battling Scottish Clans.  But it's game play of slowly trying to build up strong formation (groups) of cards in key places, trying to scupper your opponents plans (even at the cost of some parts of your plans) for me invokes feelings of being a classical general.

I originally called mechanics the major theme, and words and art the minor theme because that's how it works for me.  But I've avoided that here simply because there might well be other people out there.  People who think that Ra is a game with a good well developed theme - because the art is really Egyptian......

So most of this conversation about the theme of War Forge took place as part of a drive; and as part of that we talked over what a game would look like that was the game we thought we were going to play.  You are a blacksmith - sell weapons to hero's to profit.

This rather enthused me and for the first time in a long time I appear to have a game design on the go.  In fact I was so enthused that last night we did a play test of the crafting and selling system which did not utterly suck but in fact seemed to be broadly what we wanted.  I need to rework the entire deck and the card mix - but that's frankly as expected......

Orleans and bag building

Odyssey, the arena and why I want more of it.......

Sometimes I write loads for an update – and then realise I need to summarise - and sometimes that summary gets really long as well......


Case in point this hit four pages with a lot of background and explanation and asides before I realised – lord that is long and not finished.


So short version. The larp Odyssey is based around arena combat – it has stands – and I genuinely enjoy sitting in the stands with wine and sausage watching as people beat each other up with foam rubber swords for my amusement.


Sadly Odyssey is coming up towards the end of it's designed life (4 more events and it's done), it's not been a commercial success and so it seem unlikely that another company will choose to make something else based around an arena.   Which means no more arena fights for my entertainment because as far as I know Odyssey arena focused combat is as far as I now unique (do tell me if I'm wrong I might well break my “PD only” rule.


Since a picture speaks a 1,000 words I'll use this photo to show you why I want there to be more arena based larp.

Because from the looks on there faces something amazingly cool has happened – and they all got to see it. Apparently at the last Empire one of members had an awesome drag out fight with the opposing general – I know this because the person playing the general came by to thank him for it. I was on that field – I had no idea........

So following a couple of long conversations with some fellow Odyssey people my brain starting ticking over what you might do – game design wise to try and keep the arena combat but sort out some of the problems.


Problematically the bit of Odyssey I do – the god game – works (and works well enough to be moved into Empire as the Eternal game). So I have very little direct experience of the arena – this is based on conversations with people – so it's possible I've got the wrong end of the stick. I should also say that I've nothing but the highest respect for the people that designed Odyssey – that it works at all is a tribute to there vision. So it's very possible that more skilled game design minds have already look at this problem – but hey it's been rattling around my head so I best get it out so I can think about other things.


First step to solving a problem is working out what you think that problems actually are.


Firstly as a warrior the number of fights you can take part in is pretty limited. Basically you get to take part in one attack and one defence a day. Those fights are intense – but short – the great battle for Athens took 5 minutes for example. So you get twenty minutes of action over a weekend – which is a pretty low action to time ratio. There are quests as well but it’s an issue.


Secondly – at game release – the amount of stuff that warriors could do that was not arena based was limited – which meant people spent some time distracted. Profound decisions have worked hard on that area of the game to their credit – and I think somebody turning up who used to play but stopped would find a very different game. Some of this is that there are just more quests per player now (and they sorted out the issue where we once sent the whole of Persia to deal with some bandits – there were about ten of them – they very sensibly put down there weapons when the 80 or so players appeared and scowled at them).


Thirdly - while the arena seeks to give you epic combat where skill matters – it does not guarantee it. So you can turn up to a fight to discover your opponents have given up so they can concentrate on another fight or on the flip side you are the other fight and superior numbers are about to roll you into the ground.


Problem number 3 is especially bad when combined with problem number 1 – because only have four fight sucks when two of those are terrible. This then gets worse when you realise that number of people is a key factor in a fight, so of course you are going to do everything in your power to outnumber your opponents to win. The game does have a feedback mechanism for this – the Gods want entertainment – but that feedback mechanism is a confused channel compared to winning which is clear (made less clear because the Gods are also very keen on you winning as well….).


Fourthly – every epic moment requires that some other player fails. Some people are much better than others in a fight so some people are just going to keep getting those epic moments. One of the great things about Odyssey is that the truly great warriors stand out – there names are shouted across the arena but one of the bad things is that some people are just never going to get that moment and be an also ran.


Problem four might be solvable – magic/buffs/general shinies can be a great leveller. But there are two reasons that does not quite work – the in game reward cycle and rational choice. The reward cycle means that the really good people tend to get the shinies - the person that just dropped 4 opponents with a dramatic flourish is the one going to get noticed, is the one going to get the shinie toy (and lets me clear they deserve that reward). But the net effect of that is that the winner gets stronger while the loser has even less chance next time around. The second time is rational choice- magic only makes so much of a difference compared to skill. I’m not a brilliant fighter - bit of a flapper who hides behind a shield if I’m honest. You could magic me up the wazoo and I know I’d still get torn apart by anybody half way decent – so why bother magicing me up the wazzo in the first place? Save that for more useful people.


So what do you need to do.


There are two things you need to sort out more then anything else– the first is you need to get people more fights. The second is those fights have to be more balanced at least in numbers – because it's numbers that really determine if a fight is going to be a walk in the park or not. Fortunately I think the solution to both of those is the same – control the numbers going in. Have fixed numbers on each side.


They don't have to be the same number – because imbalanced fights can create epic moments – but they need to be 9 vs 6 not 20 vs 1 – and the people signing up to that fight have to know what they are getting into.


Background wise – you stop using the arena as a proxy from battles and treat it like an actual arena – with preset limits solely intended to ensure amusement to the crowd.


That removes some of the dead space that can exist in Odyssey – the sacrifice attack to force the opponent to burn resources – that takes 30 seconds but has a half hour slot because it was not clear what exactly was going to happen. If you've got a 9 vs 9 battle scheduled you can call that 15 minutes - and away you go. On the other hand if you've got a 30 vs 30 grudge match then give them the full 30 minutes slot.  You can also drive action by having a timer - attacker wins by the end or the defender does.  Means the attacker has to do just that - attack.


If you are controlling how many people then the cunning and manipulation has to be who is fighting each battle. Which means rather then the Odyssey 'War leader says we go here' each player needs to be involved in arranging where they personally are fighting. Which is good as it gives you something to do. You can make groups - I fight with my brothers only - but there smaller, informal and flexible.


That means you need to limit the number of fights people can have – otherwise you'll just send El Tasty the finest swordsman into every single fight (also you need to give everybody a go). But rather then a hard limit – use increasing resources – it costs more and more each fight you go into. So at some point you have to ask your self 'do I want El Tasty or do I want to save my money for another day?'


Finally giving people the chance to shine. Well the obvious solution is leaguing – split the player base up into skill ranks. Trouble with that is – what if El Pretty Good manipulates things so they stay in the bottom league and slaughter people? I think a better solution is to have sets of weapons – and then have some fights limit the sets of weapons that are allowed in that fight. So this character fights ambidextrous, this character fights sword and shield, this character fights with a two hander. This battle is only for two handers – that gives you a better chance to shine in your chosen field the one you are best at. It's not perfect but then neither is leaguing.....


The devil is in the detail – but a game based around an arena with those rules – provided you managed to make the stakes high enough (and one things Odyssey does do is make you care about those fights) might well solve some of the issues. Oh don't get me wrong the devil is in the detail – how much does each extra fight cost – how to do you manage the paperwork and ensure that somebody does not get missed out and end up with no fights at all?


But this is 'short version' is long enough I think......



Background wise – for some reason I think decadent empire with a gilded class (relatives of the Emperor perhaps) kept from the true power by utterly Machiavellian civil service but given this one route to struggle amongst themselves for privilege and status. Perhaps with the Byzantium fervour about chariot teams thrown in – a faction you support for the joy of supporting that crosses religious, economic, and social boundaries.

Edit - changed something about Odyssey life cycle because I'd got the wrong end of the stick somewhere.

Stabcon

Being one in a series of six monthly reviews of my favourite friendly games con.

Before the event somebody asked what our plans for the event was - so I thought I'd compare my answer to reality.

"Drink port, stay up to late, demand to know why they have not brought me prince charmings head on a plate, mock the bacon forge, buy a new game from Dave, reduce the size of my unplayed shelves, deliver 2 bundles of Essen joy, and start 2015 as I mean to go on......"

I definitely drank port.  Saturday morning was not a good morning.

I went to bed at 4.30 and 4 - and while I was never the last one up I figure that counts as late.

I totally failed to play Aye Dark Overlord and so never asked for prince charming head.....  I got sucked into a supper late night game of Kanban which might have been a mistake - see later......

There was some bacon forge mocking - but if I'm honest not that much - and it was better then I expected it to be.  This might indicate just how hung over/still drunk I was on Saturday morning.

I did buy one game from Dave - and while tempted by a 2nd I said no.

I played two unplayed games - my own Antike conversation pack, and Dice Vs Cards.  Which makes me down one over all.  Which is fine......

So I delivered two set of Antike update conversation packs from Essen.

All of which sounds like I managed most of my plan.

In addition I went out to a restaurant and eat a very tasty and frankly excessive quantity of meat.  Still not sure about the meal out - it's always fun but takes a chunk of the con out.  Not just leaving at 8 and back at 11 - but the fact you don't start anything in order to be able to do that.

Introduced some new people to aquasphere - and more evidence that it's not a supper complicated game it's just a really unforgiving game.  The fact that your actions need to be pre-programmed, are often mutually exclusive, and exploiting opportunities requires you to spend time to do so - makes for a very harsh game environment where you can spend a lot of turns achieving very little which feels crappy.

While slightly drunk and unable to choose between Dalmuti and Perudo (two stabcon late night favourites) decided to fire up the large games collider and invent Dalrudo, or maybe Permuti.  We never really decided.  Turned out this worked quite well - with senior roles looking at more dice then lower roles, with the merchants dropping there dice into a shared trade pot and only the highest merchant getting to see all of them.  Did lead to interesting situations - where people were playing while unable to see any dice at all......

Maybe we should try mashing Coyotte and Dalmuti together next time.....  :-)

Anyway - onto new games....

Antike 2 - an old favourite got a new version at Essen. I debated picking it up - a debate that ended when I learned there was an upgrade pack to go from version 1 to version 2. The improvements are minor, some improvements in balance and smoothness of play but it is a better version of the game which is a euro style war game. Got two games of that in and it was well received.  War is in nobody interests......

Arkwright - an epic game of industrialisation that basically eat all of Saturday day. Maths heavy - prone for causing analysis paralysis but it's system of quality, price and appeal is as smooth an implementation of a complicated system as you'll find.  I also like the use of shares and share price to provide a score system that allows different styles of play.  Not one I'm going to own not because of quality but because my opportunities to play would be very limited.

Cards against Dice this is a very quick little filler game with one cards worth of rules.  It's actually a game that could easily be played just using a few dice and a deck of standard playing cards and it is almost a classic pub game but a good and fun classic pub game.  Only one change I'd make to the rules is to reduce the amount of 'lucky' tokens need to win as I think otherwise it might drag a little.

Progress the evolution of technology -  beat described as 'civilisation without the armies and maps' just an epic technology tree to explore.  There is a distinct lack of interaction between players might well be an issue, and it might well be quite random with luck of the draw being the deciding factor but I want to play it again.  It looked like I was storming a head because I was playing tons of cards - but in the end it was much closer then it looked.

Kanban - the game of automotive design is sadly one that left me rather cold.  The idea amused me - it's based in an office designing cars - and you do lots of things but it ends with a scoring round which is you trying to talk about what you've achieved.  As a euro worker placement game with a good reputation I was very keen to play it. I found it baffling - I was unable to plan and every choice seemed worthless.  I described it as not being able to find a rhythm or routine for the game. Buy the end of it i was almost getting the hang of it so it's worth a second attempt.