The Personal, Political Art of Board-Game Design
December 23, 2023 9:53 AM Subscribe
If you climb Mt. Everest you will collect $120'000.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:34 AM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:34 AM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is a good article, mainly about contemporary game designers. Its focus on contemporary games and nod at Monopoly as a precursor game with a moral dimension could give the impression that the "game-as-argument" with constructive moral/political aspects is primarily a modern phenomenon. Someone on HN pointed out Senet had a religious/didactic role for several thousand years. Buddhist board games in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan had themes of religious enlightenment over the past thousand years as well.
In Europe, some late Renaissance parlor games had players pay for mistakes by answering questions with moral significance, and in 1796, GutsMuths published a politically-themed variant of Avocat called Parlament in which players become King, Chancellor, Secretary, etc. to address strategic matters of state such as "whether one should be allied with the [Ottoman] Porte, recognize the [French] Republic, continue the war, [or] levy a new tax or not," the trick being to respond to the question in lieu of a partner. Many more examples from the 19th / early 20th C. come to mind.
It's very encouraging to see contemporary game designers being more self-aware about the moral dimensions of their games, and I think it supports them to point out how normal and in many cases successful that has been in the past.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:36 AM on December 23, 2023 [13 favorites]
In Europe, some late Renaissance parlor games had players pay for mistakes by answering questions with moral significance, and in 1796, GutsMuths published a politically-themed variant of Avocat called Parlament in which players become King, Chancellor, Secretary, etc. to address strategic matters of state such as "whether one should be allied with the [Ottoman] Porte, recognize the [French] Republic, continue the war, [or] levy a new tax or not," the trick being to respond to the question in lieu of a partner. Many more examples from the 19th / early 20th C. come to mind.
It's very encouraging to see contemporary game designers being more self-aware about the moral dimensions of their games, and I think it supports them to point out how normal and in many cases successful that has been in the past.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:36 AM on December 23, 2023 [13 favorites]
Board games teach, always, with intimacy the depth, width, and height of every shelf in your home.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 12:26 PM on December 23, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by MonsieurPEB at 12:26 PM on December 23, 2023 [10 favorites]
Board games teach, always, with intimacy the depth, width, and height of every shelf in your home.
Also their load-bearing capabilities.
posted by goatdog at 12:27 PM on December 23, 2023 [8 favorites]
Also their load-bearing capabilities.
posted by goatdog at 12:27 PM on December 23, 2023 [8 favorites]
Another recent bit of excellent game analysis was Shut Up & Sit Down's in depth breakdown of John Company 2e and the intersection of board games and colonialism . In their words:
"In this nearly 50 minute monster, Tom is taking a thorough dive into John Company: Second Edition – a frightfully expansive game with lofty ambitions in both its mechanics and themes. Touching on some truly horrifying, very real history; this game pushes the limits of what can be comfortably represented on your kitchen table. For this reason, we’ve pulled out all the stops to comprehensively cover this beast of a box."
posted by allofthethings at 12:45 PM on December 23, 2023 [8 favorites]
"In this nearly 50 minute monster, Tom is taking a thorough dive into John Company: Second Edition – a frightfully expansive game with lofty ambitions in both its mechanics and themes. Touching on some truly horrifying, very real history; this game pushes the limits of what can be comfortably represented on your kitchen table. For this reason, we’ve pulled out all the stops to comprehensively cover this beast of a box."
posted by allofthethings at 12:45 PM on December 23, 2023 [8 favorites]
There was a recent MeFi post about Holland's Doubt is our Product.
posted by zamboni at 1:39 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by zamboni at 1:39 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Dominion, from 2008, popularized deck-building, in which players curate a collection of cards that grant points or powers. (The same mechanic is used in Magic: The Gathering.)*record scratch* These games do not have the same mechanic.
M:TG (released in 1993) lonnnnng predates Dominion, and is a collectible card game. Each player builds up a collection of cards by buying semi-random packs of cards, and if you play seriously you have to keep buying new expansions as old cards stop being tournament-legal. In each game, each player uses a deck they previously constructed from their collection -- everyone could be playing with completely different cards.
A deck-builder game like Dominion is just a single boxed set (with some limited number of expansions, also boxed sets). All the players have access to the same cards (in Dominion they're a subset of all of the available cards -- you can select a different combination for each game). The deck-building happens during the course of the game -- purchasing new cards to cycle into the cards you play with is part of the gameplay.
So while both categories involve "building a deck", these games are vastly different: M:TG requires considerable financial and time investment (at least if you want to play seriously -- I'm sure there's fun to be had with a limited collection of inexpensive old cards). Dominion is something you buy once (maybe with the expansions if you really like it) and you can play it with minimum setup (no setup if you play it online) -- I would say that it's much more beginner-friendly.
Annnnyway, I'm still enjoying the rest of the article, and the list of cool games I've never heard of. I'm not a huge board or card gamer (not counting RPGs, which are a different thing, and with the exception of... *cough* Dominion, which I enjoy soloing online against a clever but flawed bot, and can always be persuaded to play with friends).
posted by confluency at 2:40 PM on December 23, 2023 [10 favorites]
Regarding MTG vs Dominion - they're talking about game mechanics, and broadly, yes they're both about "building a deck" and there's more than just the Constructed format in MTG, which I don't find particularly interesting. Anyone could go look up "most powerful decks for this set" and just use money and buy it. Admittedly there was a bit more charm to this in the good old days before Google existed, when you played against someone you never quite knew what was in his deck, and there were whispered rumoured of secret tech going around your playgroup.
MTG's best formats in my opinion are Draft and Sealed. In Draft (which is the closest to Dominion) - players pass around stacks of cards clockwise, inspecting and taking 1 card each before passing it on. By looking at the cards NOT taken when they get passed to you, you can infer what the players to the right of you are trying to build, which guides your choices. The next stacks are passed counter-clockwise, which gives you information about what players to the left of you are trying to build. Repeat until you're all out of cards. Then finally everyone builds a deck out of the cards they've picked, and plays everyone else at the table in a series of 1v1 matches round robin style. So in this game you build your deck 1 card at a time, while trying to avoid competing for the same cards with players adjacent to you while also sometimes "spoiling" them by picking a strong card they know they want to deny them the use of it. It's really not too different from Dominion in that sense which is what they might be trying to get at - they're both classified as Drafting games.
Sealed tournament is pretty great as well, I've played it many times at Pre-Release friendly tournament events. You register for the tournament, your "buy in" is 6 booster packs from a new set that hasn't been released yet (so everyone is ostensibly playing blind, leaks notwithstanding). You build the best deck you can, then play a set of 4 friendly matches where after each match, if you won, you go into the pool to match with other players of the same record as you. So if you went 3 wins 0 losses after the first few games, you're playing against players with also 3 wins and 0 losses for the last match. You get an additional 2 booster packs at the end of the tournament based on every win you got, so if you won all 4 games you picked up 8 more boosters in addition to the 6 you started with. I usually went 3 wins at least every time I played, and I didn't play Constructed so I had no use for the cards afterwards, so I had a friend who would pay my registration fee and I'd play and give him all the cards and winnings. And even if you're not a particularly experienced player, by pairing you with people of similar rankings, it's very likely you'll walk away with at least 1 win.
Sealed was a blast to play, because no one knew what the cards were, and there was this giddy excitement of opening and packs and going holy shit, this is some really cool art and systems mechanics. Then you played against some other guy, and he surprises you with some cool creature or spell, and you go holy shit together. The vibe was really friendly (mostly) and as an experienced player I often helped the players I beat fine-tune and improve their deck for their next match, also we wanted to see each others complete deck and cards we hadn't used.
posted by xdvesper at 3:17 PM on December 23, 2023 [7 favorites]
MTG's best formats in my opinion are Draft and Sealed. In Draft (which is the closest to Dominion) - players pass around stacks of cards clockwise, inspecting and taking 1 card each before passing it on. By looking at the cards NOT taken when they get passed to you, you can infer what the players to the right of you are trying to build, which guides your choices. The next stacks are passed counter-clockwise, which gives you information about what players to the left of you are trying to build. Repeat until you're all out of cards. Then finally everyone builds a deck out of the cards they've picked, and plays everyone else at the table in a series of 1v1 matches round robin style. So in this game you build your deck 1 card at a time, while trying to avoid competing for the same cards with players adjacent to you while also sometimes "spoiling" them by picking a strong card they know they want to deny them the use of it. It's really not too different from Dominion in that sense which is what they might be trying to get at - they're both classified as Drafting games.
Sealed tournament is pretty great as well, I've played it many times at Pre-Release friendly tournament events. You register for the tournament, your "buy in" is 6 booster packs from a new set that hasn't been released yet (so everyone is ostensibly playing blind, leaks notwithstanding). You build the best deck you can, then play a set of 4 friendly matches where after each match, if you won, you go into the pool to match with other players of the same record as you. So if you went 3 wins 0 losses after the first few games, you're playing against players with also 3 wins and 0 losses for the last match. You get an additional 2 booster packs at the end of the tournament based on every win you got, so if you won all 4 games you picked up 8 more boosters in addition to the 6 you started with. I usually went 3 wins at least every time I played, and I didn't play Constructed so I had no use for the cards afterwards, so I had a friend who would pay my registration fee and I'd play and give him all the cards and winnings. And even if you're not a particularly experienced player, by pairing you with people of similar rankings, it's very likely you'll walk away with at least 1 win.
Sealed was a blast to play, because no one knew what the cards were, and there was this giddy excitement of opening and packs and going holy shit, this is some really cool art and systems mechanics. Then you played against some other guy, and he surprises you with some cool creature or spell, and you go holy shit together. The vibe was really friendly (mostly) and as an experienced player I often helped the players I beat fine-tune and improve their deck for their next match, also we wanted to see each others complete deck and cards we hadn't used.
posted by xdvesper at 3:17 PM on December 23, 2023 [7 favorites]
Board games teach, always, with intimacy the depth, width, and height of every shelf in your home.
Also their load-bearing capabilities.
posted by goatdog at 2:27 PM on December 23 [4 favorites +] [⚑]
And the amount of money left in my pocket.
posted by symbioid at 4:29 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also their load-bearing capabilities.
posted by goatdog at 2:27 PM on December 23 [4 favorites +] [⚑]
And the amount of money left in my pocket.
posted by symbioid at 4:29 PM on December 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
This reminded me that I hadn't finished the SU&SD review of John Company so I did that, and in doing so discovered this game which isn't going to help either my wallet, my shelf space or my Wehrle-fanboyism.
posted by Slothrup at 5:08 PM on December 23, 2023
posted by Slothrup at 5:08 PM on December 23, 2023
Two other games in this vein are
Cross Bronx Expressway, with perhaps the most surprising "advertisement" for a board game you'll ever see here.
Votes for Women, with a review here that mentions Holland's The Vote.
(Disclaimer: I haven't played these)
posted by Slothrup at 6:41 PM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
Cross Bronx Expressway, with perhaps the most surprising "advertisement" for a board game you'll ever see here.
Votes for Women, with a review here that mentions Holland's The Vote.
(Disclaimer: I haven't played these)
posted by Slothrup at 6:41 PM on December 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is a good article, I'm glad it wasn't a geek safari kind of article. I got my wires crossed and started thinking "wow this seems very trans positive for the NYT" before remembering it was -er not -T.
I'm a little surprised it didn't mention Brenda Romero's "Train"^ but that was a long time ago. (Or maybe I missed it, brain very discombobulated rn).
It's really not too different from Dominion in that sense which is what they might be trying to get at - they're both classified as Drafting games.
My 2c is that drafting is not that similar to deck-building. In Dominion you have little power to deny other players a thing by picking it yourself, which is pretty important to drafting. If I buy a Chapel, that doesn't prevent you from buying your own Chapel at all unless I happen to buy the 10th one (unlikely*). So Dominion is more like just regular building-of-decks in M:tG.
Dominion is obviously similar to M:tG in a few ways; in both of them you do play cards and look for card combos, and you do fret about about the contents of your deck that you build/built. It's not wrong to compare the two, but the article's actual words are wrong, and I don't think drafting reconciles things. Deck-build-as-you-play was a novel mechanism, and it's not in M:tG.
*I was an early Dominion playtester and I remember Rio Grande games was griping about the number of cards, and they suggested that the supply piles could be smaller. So instead of 10 of each card, some piles would have smaller amounts, like maybe only 4 Adventurers and 6 Chapels or whatever. That idea was dropped, perhaps as they started to believe the game would sell well idk. However, even if it had been tightly constrained and denial came up more, well, Quest for El Dorado has very small piles like that but that didn't feel like drafting to me either.
posted by fleacircus at 6:07 AM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm a little surprised it didn't mention Brenda Romero's "Train"^ but that was a long time ago. (Or maybe I missed it, brain very discombobulated rn).
It's really not too different from Dominion in that sense which is what they might be trying to get at - they're both classified as Drafting games.
My 2c is that drafting is not that similar to deck-building. In Dominion you have little power to deny other players a thing by picking it yourself, which is pretty important to drafting. If I buy a Chapel, that doesn't prevent you from buying your own Chapel at all unless I happen to buy the 10th one (unlikely*). So Dominion is more like just regular building-of-decks in M:tG.
Dominion is obviously similar to M:tG in a few ways; in both of them you do play cards and look for card combos, and you do fret about about the contents of your deck that you build/built. It's not wrong to compare the two, but the article's actual words are wrong, and I don't think drafting reconciles things. Deck-build-as-you-play was a novel mechanism, and it's not in M:tG.
*I was an early Dominion playtester and I remember Rio Grande games was griping about the number of cards, and they suggested that the supply piles could be smaller. So instead of 10 of each card, some piles would have smaller amounts, like maybe only 4 Adventurers and 6 Chapels or whatever. That idea was dropped, perhaps as they started to believe the game would sell well idk. However, even if it had been tightly constrained and denial came up more, well, Quest for El Dorado has very small piles like that but that didn't feel like drafting to me either.
posted by fleacircus at 6:07 AM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Was just discussing this with my husband when he remembered having a board game in the 80s that was just about accumulating more and more shit. Like monopoly but even more materialistic. Worse than “mall madness” Ah the 80s. My favorite board game used to be Pandemic until… well, you know
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:58 AM on December 24, 2023
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:58 AM on December 24, 2023
The attack of the Ostrogoths ?
posted by MonsieurPEB at 8:28 AM on December 24, 2023
posted by MonsieurPEB at 8:28 AM on December 24, 2023
coördination
I’m sorry New Yorker you lose me at shit like this
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:16 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’m sorry New Yorker you lose me at shit like this
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:16 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
Aw, I love that they've chosen to die on the diaeresis hill. It looks nice, and I wish we lived in the parallel universe where it caught on instead of the boring hyphen which eventually atrophies to nothing.
posted by confluency at 3:46 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by confluency at 3:46 PM on December 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
I completely forgot about draft when I was writing my first comment -- I agree that it comes somewhat close to in-game deck-building, but also agree that it's still not the same thing. I did enjoy draft tournaments because of the element of randomness and the much more level playing field (I've only actually played M:TG a handful of times with borrowed cards, but I got into V:TES for a while).
I appreciate randomness in games more generally because I've had some frustrating experiences playing games with overplanners -- the kinds of people who enjoy mapping out (verbally, collaboratively, and at great length) the tree of optimal probable upcoming moves on every turn of literally any game, whether it's supposed to be collaborative or not, which is not enjoyable when you're just trying to play the fucking game and would like 1) for it not to take six hours, and 2) to have a sliver of a chance of making a clever move that another player will not notice. Randomness reins in this type of behaviour because it limits the amount of prediction that is actually possible.
posted by confluency at 4:01 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I appreciate randomness in games more generally because I've had some frustrating experiences playing games with overplanners -- the kinds of people who enjoy mapping out (verbally, collaboratively, and at great length) the tree of optimal probable upcoming moves on every turn of literally any game, whether it's supposed to be collaborative or not, which is not enjoyable when you're just trying to play the fucking game and would like 1) for it not to take six hours, and 2) to have a sliver of a chance of making a clever move that another player will not notice. Randomness reins in this type of behaviour because it limits the amount of prediction that is actually possible.
posted by confluency at 4:01 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
My favorite board game used to be Pandemic until… well, you know
the same designer went on to make a series of games, the Forbidden series, that take some of the core ideas of Pandemic (a co-operative game with different roles, a map with several Problems to solve, and a deck of cards you go through as the game goes on that includes several kicks in the nuts) and builds something different and a little friendlier to do with them.
posted by Merus at 9:18 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
the same designer went on to make a series of games, the Forbidden series, that take some of the core ideas of Pandemic (a co-operative game with different roles, a map with several Problems to solve, and a deck of cards you go through as the game goes on that includes several kicks in the nuts) and builds something different and a little friendlier to do with them.
posted by Merus at 9:18 PM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by cupcakeninja at 10:19 AM on December 23, 2023 [5 favorites]