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Games that Devalue the Player

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02 Aug 2017 11:16 #252001 by san il defanso
Charlie, you're right that there are narrative advantages I'm not really considering. Another big one is that the narrative is a whole lot smoother when the designer has a stronger influence. There is also a great moment in Pandemic Legacy that shows how to do this well. I'll put it in a spoiler tag...

Warning: Spoiler!


Those moments are only possible because the designer was guiding the experience the whole time.

Erik, you brought something up that is really fascinating. One of the things that comes up in any art form is how outside forces shape the hobby. Sometimes its easy to see that, like how globalization, the internet, and crowdfunding have all shaped the hobby in the last two decades. But the stuff you mention is the grassroots kind of thing that causes changes and broad trends from the ground up.

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02 Aug 2017 13:18 #252005 by Thrun
Replied by Thrun on topic Games that Devalue the Player
I dont Think its just limited to games like Pandemic, its also just the trend in gaming to throw the kitchen sink at Everything and more and more games demand you to fiddle around masses of chits, cards, and tokens, refill this, move that, check this board, the supply board, that board etc. When did this become OK, it just feels like too many games just want you to spend most of your time doing upkeep to justify a shit load of gunk that didnt need to be in the game to start with. When I play Tigris, I have 6 tiles, I play up to two and I fucking refill. Game on. (rant as a result of a week playing some Rosenberg and Feld games - though I Think stuff like through the Ages and Terraforming Mars, good games though they might be, also fail this "why am I messing About doing all this shit" category. I'm Calling them "games which should only be apps and played best solo")
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02 Aug 2017 14:24 #252008 by Michael Barnes
Somewhere lost in the mists of time is an article I wrote, hopped up on a viewing of Jodorowsky's film The Holy Mountain, wherein I compared the act of playing a game to the alchemical process. Playing a game effectively turns the base lead of rules into transcendent gold. The act of playing is as much a part of the creation of a game as is the authorship. I believe it was Uba compared a session of a game to a single performance of a drama. The source material is the same, but in the iteration there are the fine details and variations that make each play of a game a functionally independent example.

IF...and big IF...the game allows that to happen. I think the general sense in this thread, that Nate is alluding to, is that there is a big difference in these kinds of...well, I'm just going to come out and say it FASCIST game designs where it is all about what the designer intends, thereby undercutting and devaluing the role of the player. These are the games that have rigorous structures and processes with little space between for player identity, personality, creativity, relationships, and psychology to intervene. These kinds of games are especially popular in the current hobby environment where playing LOTS of games with strangers at events is paramount over playing FEWER games with friends and established groups. The reason is simple, these kinds of games provide a fairly consistent, routine experience. The trains run on time.

As a knock-on effect, there is also the trend toward equating depth and complexity with bulk. More things to move around does not make a game deeper or more complex. It just makes it more complicated. There is a difference between complicated and complex.

But going back YET AGAIN to the greatest game ever made, Cosmic Encounter...it is THE perfect balance of restriction and player agency. It uses its rules and restrictions to CREATE that player space, and in turn it puts a TREMENDOUS degree of value (and trust) in the player to perform the game not necessarily properly...but improvisationally and in the spirit of the design rather than to the letter of the design. Think about it. One of the smartest things EON did was to abstract the notion of proximity and geography into the Edict deck. In Risk or Diplomacy, who you can attack or affect is impacted by proximity and geography. But that deck replaces the proximity and geography AND it creates compelling social and psychological situations. And the alliance system- it's actually VERY rigid, but because of that rigidity, it opens up angles for negotiation and interaction that is TOTALLY up to the player to exploit or manipulate with a minimum of actual rules governing that aspect of the game The player powers, blah blah blah etc. are brilliant and so forth, sure, but other things like these really do just as much to supply the players with a sense of creation. Dune is, essentially, the more structured version of Cosmic which may be why it tends to be more universally appreciated these days.

But you've got to remember too that this game came out at a time when there really wasn't an alternative to Diplomacy and RPGs were hitting their stride. So it makes sense that it puts so much on the player. And it also explains why so many people today play Cosmic and "don't get it"...they are waiting for the game to throw out a bunch of stuff to fidget around with , some charts to move cubes on, or for the game to tell them how to win.

The best games almost across the board all give the player a lot of trust and lot of "soft" space to play in. Settlers of Catan, Tigris and Euphrates, Fury of Dracula, Wiz-War, Cthulhu Wars, Dune, Civilization, Imperial, El Grande, Eldritch Horror, Acquire, Modern Art...all of these give the player a chance to play the game and not just manipulate its pieces along a proscribed path that results in either a VP or two VPs depending on which of binary ("optimal" or "suboptimal") decisions you make..

Among the many reasons that miniatures games are more interesting to me right now is exactly because of this. I could play A Feast for Odin, and have this really fascistic sort of experience...or I could have an anything goes experience playing 40k and having no idea how it's all going to turn out...or if a plasma incinerator is going to blow up because I made a stupid decision to overcharge it at a time the dice planned to turn up a result of one.

This is all also why Cthulhu Wars is so appealing to me right now, to the exclusion of many other games. It's WILD. You mix that stuff up with the factions, the maps, the neutral stuff AND THE PLAYERS and you get a volatile experience that is about as close to Cosmic as you can get without it being Cosmic.
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02 Aug 2017 15:49 - 02 Aug 2017 15:52 #252014 by charlest

IF...and big IF...the game allows that to happen. I think the general sense in this thread, that Nate is alluding to, is that there is a big difference in these kinds of...well, I'm just going to come out and say it FASCIST game designs where it is all about what the designer intends, thereby undercutting and devaluing the role of the player. These are the games that have rigorous structures and processes with little space between for player identity, personality, creativity, relationships, and psychology to intervene. These kinds of games are especially popular in the current hobby environment where playing LOTS of games with strangers at events is paramount over playing FEWER games with friends and established groups. The reason is simple, these kinds of games provide a fairly consistent, routine experience. The trains run on time.


Man, the role of the player is to have fun. There's more creativity, unexpected twists, and engaging play in a module of TIME Stories than in a game of Nexus Ops.

There's merit in both types of designs that are being discussed. To act like one is more important or magical than the other is flawed. If player agency and telling your own story is such an integral piece to a quality game, we should quit board games and just play RPGs. Perhaps just sit around and tell stories at a camp fire with a six pack.

You can't play a legacy game with strangers at different events. It takes more commitment than any other game. It's exactly the opposite of what you're saying and against the trend of short fillers and playing as many games as possible.
Last edit: 02 Aug 2017 15:52 by charlest.
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02 Aug 2017 16:04 #252015 by Legomancer
This is sounding a whole lot like the monthly BGG threads where someone says that ratings are broken because Pandemic Legacy is in the Top 10 and How Can That Be?

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02 Aug 2017 16:42 #252022 by Michael Barnes
That's a good point about legacy games Charlie, and that is really a special situation...because those kinds of games are actually really influenced by RPGs.

There are plenty of very mechancial, "fascist" games I like (such as Scythe). And I would agree that there is merit to both types of games, and I would also agree that narrative and storytelling are not absolute.

The key thing here is that, yes, the players' main goal is to have fun. But it's the designer's responsibility to support that and to give the player space to do that. Some games need more than others.
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02 Aug 2017 16:44 #252024 by OldHippy

charlest wrote: Perhaps just sit around and tell stories at a camp fire with a six pack.


That's actually a fine idea and something I've been gravitating towards more and more these days.

I don't like games where the narrative is told to me. That includes the narrative being read off of cards (although in a game like Betrayal that can work because of the other options at play) or in-between sessions. I'd prefer if the actions I take are the vast majority of the story and any text either in rules or on cards is used to supplement that story a little bit or give you some ground to start from. If the majority of the story or narrative is the same for me as it is for someone else I'm not happy with the game.

Mage Knight.. for all it's issues (and it has issues) manages to tell a complete story with zero text or input from the designer. All of the story is created through in game actions. That's an ideal to strive for IMO ... for the types of games I like that is. Pandemic Legacy, Time Stories etc... all hold absolutely no appeal to me. I can see why the narrative would make more sense when the designer gets to control it but if I want a proper sensible narrative I'll read a book or watch a film. I don't like video games that do this either. Things like 'The Last of Us' which was infuriating at times since I had no control over where the story went yet simultaneously the story was the best part of the game. That's a raw deal in my mind because the repetitive nature of the game itself ruins the story's power and sucks you out of the narrative. Ruining what little fun the game actually had. If a game is just focused on fun and control the story might not be as strong (you're not getting great stories out of board games anyway so who cares?) but I like the surreal nonsense that happens to your stories when you let the game actions dictate how it goes. Things happen that no writer would ever take seriously and that's fine.

That said I don't think that people who like these other games are wrong.. but I know we aren't looking for the same qualities in our games.

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02 Aug 2017 16:59 #252025 by san il defanso
One thing that it's easy for me to forget is that it can be stressful to figure out how to fully take advantage of one's freedom in a game that allows it. I remember the first time I played an RPG, the very question of "what do you do?" is inherently disorienting, because we are conditioned as players to look for limits. That took a couple of sessions for me to grasp. Some games make this easy to figure out. In my experience Cosmic Encounter does this well, as do Battlestar Galactica and Catan. Those games get you to understand the interaction through their mechanical structure, and that's a really good trick.

The other problem with very "human" games is that they really do work better in a setting of mostly friends. I moved away from maybe my ideal gaming group in Texas, and it has been a struggle to find other people to play games with since moving to Michigan. In playing in local stores, I've had the best connection over two very mechanical games: Argent and Le Havre. One of those is really well-loved here, and the other is not, but they both provided a vital connection point when a more volatile game like Cosmic Encounter would not have worked for me.

Also, I'm going to create a Bingo card for use whenever Barnes posts. Talking about Warhammer...use of overwrought political jargon...Cosmic Encounter reference...BINGO!

Never change, Barnes.
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02 Aug 2017 18:37 #252031 by wadenels
I've gravitated more towards what I call framework games. It's not a very good name but it's all I've got for now. Framework games give you the rules and components as a means to an end; the rules are the framework but what you do with them is up to you. A key component of a framework game is that the rules and components are only a framework and couldn't possibly outline a path to victory. A framework game lets you tell the story you want to tell. A lot of player interaction is usually a factor in these games. Intrigue and Cosmic are probably the cleanest examples of games of this sort.

The antithesis of framework games are solution games. These are games where the rules and components are the governing factors in what happens on the table. VP engine games are solution games; while the situation may change from game to game there's almost always a "best" way to make your move each turn. Saint Petersburg and Puerto Rico are good examples of this type of game.

Obviously there's not a big bright line in the sand where one category begins and the other ends. They're two sides of a spectrum. Codenames would would land right in the middle.

So where does that put a game like Pandemic Legacy? Squarely in the solution camp, for two reasons. Each game takes place completely within the components and rules to solve the tactical mess at hand. The overarching game -- the Legacy aspect and storyline -- give the illusion of a framework but ultimately they just bolted a story on to Pandemic. I like Pandemic Legacy and am excited for Season 2, but let's not make Pandemic Legacy something it isn't. It's just successive games of Pandemic in campaign mode with "no backsies" if you fail and want to try a mission again. It has exactly as much player agency as playing Pandemic on repeat, but in a more interesting package.

I don't know if this really helps the discussion, but it's something I've been thinking about lately. I've realized that I prefer the framework style because I've found I've often had more fun and memories losing in absurd and spectacular ways than I've had winning through mental fiber.
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02 Aug 2017 18:44 #252033 by Shellhead
If I'm following your distinction, it seems like all co-op games are solution games, but games where the alliances are optional and maybe temporary are more likely to be framework games.

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05 Aug 2017 10:15 #252157 by repoman
If nothing else, you got me turned on to the Matt Colville videos which are outstanding.

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05 Aug 2017 11:43 #252158 by Thrun
Replied by Thrun on topic Games that Devalue the Player

wadenels wrote: I've gravitated more towards what I call framework games. It's not a very good name but it's all I've got for now. Framework games give you the rules and components as a means to an end; the rules are the framework but what you do with them is up to you. A key component of a framework game is that the rules and components are only a framework and couldn't possibly outline a path to victory. A framework game lets you tell the story you want to tell. A lot of player interaction is usually a factor in these games. Intrigue and Cosmic are probably the cleanest examples of games of this sort.

The antithesis of framework games are solution games. These are games where the rules and components are the governing factors in what happens on the table. VP engine games are solution games; while the situation may change from game to game there's almost always a "best" way to make your move each turn. Saint Petersburg and Puerto Rico are good examples of this type of game..


on the contrary, "framework" and "solution" games are EXCELLENT ways to describe this. Knizia designs frameworks for players to enjoy competing without his rules getting in the way, Feld just wants you all to solve his own narcissistic rules puzzles without much bothering what anyone else is doing, for example.

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05 Aug 2017 19:13 #252163 by san il defanso

repoman wrote: If nothing else, you got me turned on to the Matt Colville videos which are outstanding.


His videos convinced me to make D&D a larger part of my hobby, and convinced me that I could DM.

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