Lessons from Board Games – Dungeon! and Social Interactions

I play a lot of games, some light and some heavy, and for the most part I’m not particularly afraid to jump into something pretty complicated. My group jumped from Risk to Pandemic to Battlestar Galactica in a few sessions, and the Flames of War rulebook is huge (I still haven’t read it all, because I don’t need to learn about artillery and aircraft if I don’t have any).

But still, I don’t mind a simpler game now and then (or 75% of the time) and Dungeon! is quite a simple game. You move, find monsters, roll a die, and either run away or get treasure, then go back to the center. There is almost no skill used in the game, and no strategy beyond the gamble of being at higher levels (which give you better payout but are more likely to kill you), or lower levels (which are easy but don’t give you much. It can be played mindlessly). Turns require almost no thought, just hope.

dungeonfront

Just try not to destroy the components

 

And in my opinion, that doesn’t make it a bad game. Are there better games? Absolutely! But if you’re just sitting around talking, and want to do a little more than talk, it is absolutely the game to go for. Since it doesn’t require much thought, Dungeon! doesn’t impede the conversation. The most interruption it’ll cause is either when you tell someone it’s their turn, or when there is an “epic” battle going on (which the player will almost always lose). In some cases it even helps the conversation to progress: if you have someone who won’t stop talking, they likely will for at least a moment to take their turn, allowing someone else to get a word in while the other can still listen. It also livens up the evening (or any time) by adding in moment of excitement where the players can cheer for either a monster or another player to win a battle, and since most battles are determined by chance, there is very little the “better” gamers can do to make it more likely for them to win.  Everyone’s even, and the stakes are very low, unlike in heavier games, where an aura of tenseness or ill-will can persist near the end of the game. Not that that usually lasts for long, or a grudge is held, but sometimes it’s good to just not have it.

The components got better, but the art isn't as unique

The components got better, but the art isn’t as unique

There are plenty of other games that can fill this role: most dice or “filler-type” games will work just as well. The difference here is that Dungeon! takes a bit longer, which, depending on the scenario, can be good or bad. If you just want to play for fifteen or so minutes and then get to something else (usually a larger game) Dungeon! isn’t the one to go for. But if you have 45 minutes to kill before dinner (supper, lunch, brunch, tea, possibly breakfast) and the conversation, while still going, is a bit down, it works great for that. That doesn’t make it a great game, and just because it works for my group doesn’t mean it’ll work for yours. But I know if I want to have a conversation and play a game with multiple people, Dungeon! is the game I reach for, and I like it for that. It fills a niche I never thought needed to be filled before, and might not ever have intended to fill. So, well done, Dungeon!  My shelf is a bit more well-rounded now.

 

Lessons From Board Games – Intro & Fluxx (and changing plans)

Intro

So I had a series of blog posts that I was writing in the past: I called them “Games that Teach”, and I intended to use them as examples of how common board games can teach or aid in teaching or increase understanding of various events, problems, and/or theories in life. However, I discovered after writing a few posts that I was discouraged when writing them. This was because I soon didn’t feel the title accurately reflected what I wanted to discuss. It sounded like something that should go in a school, and what I was talking about wasn’t school stuff. Still, I wrote a few more. I ran out of ideas for a while and then came back. And now I’ve decided that the old name has to go, and will be replaced with the much more open ended title “Lessons from Board Games”, which I think will allow me to discuss a much broader range of more interesting topics without feeling like I’m getting sidetracked. I hope you enjoy.

Fluxx and Changing Plans

Fluxx is a fun game, though strategy doesn’t play a big part. Most times, people win by accident. I’ve certainly never been in a game where that hasn’t happened. In a game where the rules and goals can change five (or so) times before the game comes back to you (even longer, if the turn order is reversed) there is little room for a plan. The game might be different with two players in that regard. I’ve never played that way. And it’s the wackiness of many players that makes it fun. The game could even be played with a few more than the box recommends (in theory a ton more, but it tops out to be unwinnable eventually). It’s a game that can expand with your plans a little bit, as you’re forced to do a lot in the game.

F3.0.contents

It could be a metaphor for life or something, but I wouldn’t go that far. But it does help one to understand that they should always be changing strategies as the need arises. Getting closer to victory is better than sticking to a plan. Fluxx is a game that forces you to do that if you are at all attempting to win. And sure, you can win without trying at all, and you can just try to have fun, hoping a win will result (my strategy, and much preferable to the former if you’re bad at games). But for the most part, some understanding of the game is required to win. And prior knowledge of the cards can shape strategy (in a mostly ineffective way). The best thing about Fluxx is that it teaches you to be adaptable in such a low-stakes manner. It’d be terrible to be in a five-hour euro game, when suddenly you realize that you’ve put all of your production into coal, and iron is what you need to win the game, because of some card that just came up. Fluxx lets you adapt and be flexible, without the pressure there of being in a long game of blood, toil, tears, and sweat. And it’s quite a welcome filler game, especially before longer games that require adaptation, for that reason.

Games That Teach – Axis & Allies and Short Term Planning

When talking about board games, games so old and still so loved as “Axis and Allies” are hard to find. With so many versions, updates, and house rules, defining the core that is “Axis and Allies” can be difficult at times. One of the core elements,though, is most definitely the controlling of factories to get points to build more units with. And while this mechanic (mechanism) might seem like it favors strategy and thinking over the long term, I’d argue that it really encourages planning in the short term, for your next turn and not for future turns.

The one I have isn't the greatest.

The one I have isn’t the greatest.

Let me try to explain before you scream at me for being wrong (or more likely just leave the page). The resources you get at the end of a turn will not be used until the beginning of your next turn or later. A player can save up for long periods of time but there is almost no point when you’re being punched in the face by you opponent’s pieces. The illusion of long-term consequences comes from this ability to save, but really the game is just about how many IPC’s (resources) a player can get at the end of this turn to have the most effective next turn. While a player deploys resources at the end of their turn, it still means that the maximum they are thinking is two turns ahead, and if they think farther than that (i.e. want a battleship or aircraft carrier, which are expensive) they are likely to get taken out by their opponent who didn’t do that and is fighting with superior strength.

This is also coupled with the fact that the ultimate goals of each side are placed only several spaces away, except for the United States, which is impossible to take and has to produce units and move them across an ocean to be effective (which is why they usually have China). Players don’t have the time to think about turns farther in the future because if they do they’ll be beaten by players who thought about the turn directly ahead.

Now I’m not going to say that this makes for a bad game, or an un-educational game. In fact, the game is quite fun and in certain cases even has the player going for historical objectives. I do think, though, that the idea of Axis and Allies being a grand strategy game is silly. It’s a tactical game on a strategic board, which in and of itself is quite a good way to teach people about proper resource uses in the short term. And saving a few IPCs each turn will lead to getting some more powerful units in the future if done right. I quite like the short-term resource management that Axis and Allies has. And I also like the fact that it has the realism of a series of tactical victories leading to a strategic victory. It definitely isn’t like chess where a series of tactical blunders could stumble you into a strategic success. I like games that reward short-term victories with long-term benefits, even if in some, if not most, will make you second-best to the person who thought through the whole game.

Really, though, “Axis and Allies” is just a good game for dice chucking and pretending to be some foreign super-power for a night with some friends. Even if it isn’t as deep as it looks, it still lasts for some time and holds one’s interest the whole way though (if the players like WWII.)

Board Game Creation Blogging Part 1 – Inception to Prototyping

I’m making a board game, and I run this blog, so I thought I could combine the two to write this blog post about making a board game.

I don’t know why I thought making a board game would be a good idea, but it seemed the most do-able project in my project lineup, aside from what I was already doing. In hindsight, this might not have been the case, but I think that making a board game might be one of the more rewarding things I’ll be doing for a bit, because it has immediate and highly tangible results. I like being near the end of a project and looking over the things I made and saying “Yes, I made these”. (Which, with the smallest number of games being 1000, might put me in a little over my head, but that’s a good thing.)

I’d say I started about a year and half ago. I’d graduated from high school two years early, and no longer had a chess partner (one of the few benefits of my forced interaction with people my age) and I wasn’t planning to go to college for a while. So I was just looking online a lot and drawing a bunch of comics, which I still consider my primary occupation. I had gotten on the fringes of the board game world when I had been looking up chess variants and other abstract strategy games (which I still love but getting only one other person to play them is kinda awkward). I decided to dive full into board games and got some of the most recommended beginner games (Pandemic) and some not so recommended games (Diplomacy). Quickly I discovered that while I was thinking about board games a lot, I didn’t have much time to play them. (My poker group was still a poker group and not the mini-gaming-group it is today. So I made up a bunch of designs for board games. The first was one I made for my mother’s birthday, which will show up later. But the main one was a historical game inspired by the Roman Empire. I had been learning quite a lot about the Romans (another hobby), and really wanted a game that captured the feeling of a late republican setting, which I found to my dismay during research was not available, at least how I wanted it.

So in the summer of 2013 I quickly made a prototype of my Roman game (Original code name) which at the time was really just cobbled together from other games that I’d played (Battlestar Galactica, Pandemic, Risk), seen (Eight Minute Empire, Cosmic Encounter), or had an idea of making (The board specifically was cannibalized from a Roman conquest game I still have plans for, although the boards are now quite different and will only get more so with development). I played it a few times with my family and friends, to which to response was a general “meh”. But I took “meh” on a first time prototype (a seriously bad one filled with inconstancies, spelling errors, and having almost no artwork for a very thematic game) by a guy who had absolutely no idea what he was doing as a sign that I had something good to work with here.

Seriously I played on this board several times.

Seriously I played on this board several times.

So I spent the next few months working on the game on and off. I had to stop several times because of important dates in my not-at-all lucrative comics business, and I tried building websites with no advertising plan in a small town. I heavily refined the game’s mechanics (mechanisms for snobs), wrote down actual rules, moved into a workable office space, made a good-looking board, and was just about to make better looking cards in January. I declared that I would playtest the game and have a Kickstarter launched by the end of February. My body’s immediate response to that plan was a month’s worth of migraines. At the middle of March I barely had the artwork done, so I decided to just order a prototype and see what information I could dig up. I did get to re-introduce the game to my friends, whose response went from “meh” to “man this is really cool!”. Unfortunately after that I got hit with a very bad cold and didn’t do my research (i.e. Why there isn’t a preview of my game by some well-watched game reviewers, etc.). But I did get a wonderful prototype at the end of it. Which I made a video about.

I think the new board might have helped

I went with the Game Crafter (www.thegamecrafter.com) to make my prototype for several reasons. The first and foremost is that it is very well known, and generally the most well-known producers make the most money and can afford to have the little touches it takes to make a high-quality product. Also, I considered the possibility of the planned Kickstarter failing, and me simply publishing the game through the already-uploaded files on the Game Crafter website, a proposition that seems less and less attractive, but might end up being the case if things go particularly badly. For these two reasons that are highly intertwined, I used the Game Crafter and only took a tiny glance at other platforms I could use for prototyping. I think, though, with the quality of components I got that I made the right decision.

I got several copies of the game, one of which is still wrapped and one is currently with me, being played by friends who now really like the game (of course it has negotiation elements, which can leave a sour taste in people’s mouths if played too much or in too long a game). I also got some other people to play-test it, to which to response was (and from my friends as well) “this is good, but the rules need some work”, which is what that phase of the process is for, so I can’t say it was a failure.

With this little bit of information in hand I dove in to the “Looking for a Manufacturer” phase which will be covered in the next post. I know I didn’t cover everything there is to cover here and I hope to cover some of the details more in-depth in later posts. If there is any particular part of the process you’d like to know about please leave a comment and I’ll move that closer to the top of my “to get done” list.

Games that Teach – BattleStar Galactica and Long Term Planning

Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is, as of now (on BoardGameGeek) one of the greatest board games of all time. And it is definitely the most played in my gaming group, which may or may not be a good thing. It can be gamed, and it can be a little annoying, so we can get a just a little mad sometimes. But really, it’s just fun, it’s one of the most fun times I’ve had almost every time I play it.

BSGHero
But there is something about BSG that I just love, and it isn’t revealing you’re a Cylon on the first turn to game the system. (Though I’m not sure this is a problem in the base game, or that it’s even really a good idea. It hasn’t been when I’ve been playing) It is the planning, and the treason (okay, I like the treason and the intrigue that comes with it), but the planning.

The game requires one to envision the endgame when surviving the present situation seems unlikely. While one is dealing with the current enemy warships, skill checks, and entering enemy robots, they must also constantly be thinking about who is and who may be a traitor, and if you might become a traitor in the future.

While you’re spending all your cards now to stop a Cylon (evil robot) invasion of the ship, or prevent a food shortage, you must think about how far this ship will move, is it really worth it to give up all of your cards now? (Yes, yes it is) Now, usually the worst happens, but if one has experienced teammates’ it usually ends in human victory. But what if it doesn’t, what if your teammates’ actually a Cylon? What if you are a Cylon? As long as there is the possibility of someone becoming a Cylon you have to remember to not do “too” well to avoid later suspicion.

And while avoiding doing too well as a good guy because you might become evil isn’t a realistic scenario, it does apply to various aspects of everyday life. Like, should I sink all of my money and/or time into this project, what will it prevent me from doing in the future (being a good villain)? Will it make other things I want to do harder? Etc. And I believe that it has really positively affected me and the way I look at future scenarios. Not to say that I was bad at long-term planning in the past and now I’m magically good, but I do have a bit of different perspective to look at things from and assess the future by.

In the end BSG is just a fun game of intrigue, bad stuff happening, and betrayal (Okay, I promise it’s fun, that sounded better in my head). But it can give a little push in the right direction when it comes to long term planning. It is by no means perfect, and by no means a class where one can develop the skill, but it could easily help with the development. Which is all we can really ask of a board game. (And Treason, we can ask that, too.)