This is sort of a follow-up of a previous rant. In there, I stabbed a bit at some popular board games of my youth. And really: there are some BAD board games out there. Games that are just being popular because people don't know alternatives. And because learning games can mean actually LEARNING, there is less incentive to do so. So many people just stick to what they know rather than broaden their horizons. It's not that different with video games, where the PC has a feud with consoles, both are stigmatizing mobile games, MMORPG-players don't really mix with FPS players and you CERTAINLY don't want to put run&gun first person shooter fans in the same category to the wallhugging "one shot will kill you so you better duck and cover" kind of FPS.
Similarly: board games differ as well. Some paint stories with new species and/or entire universes for players to explore where others are as abstract as chess. Dices and other elements of luck are frowned upon by some whereas others find games that are all about deduction 'too puzzle-y'. Some games are dished because they are too simple, others because they are too complex. And let me be clear on that: that is all okay! I'm pointing out these differences in games because they differ on aspects that do not inherently make the game good or bad.
So why is monopoly bad? No, it is not because "it entices players to become soulless capitalist tycoons" or the randomness of some items (why are the pawns as nonsensical as they are?). It is because
1) the randomness is so large that there is hardly a meaningful choice to be made, let alone a difficult one. Face it: you have no impact on where you'll land, and most of the cards don't give you a choice either. Your only real choices are in whether or not you want to buy a street when there's an opportunity for it (and this comes down to "do this unless you're SERIOUSLY starving on cash), and when you want to trade streets with your opponent. For anything else in the game, you could just be watching a cutscene.
2) it drags on way too long after winners and losers have emerged. You all know this situation: after 2 or 3 rounds, most of the streets are sold. The ones with the least amount will lose the game (unless in the unlikely event that they happen to have a set)...but because the game plays until you go bankrupt, these players just have to "be there" because it can lead to arguments if they quit.
See where this is going? This isn't a "this game is bad because I don't like its looks" or "it's bad because I suck at it" situation, but it is bad by metrics; by doing an analysis and coming up with the why and how of this. It's not that gut emotion in games isn't important, but that the chances of games touching you emotionally are simply more likely with games that follow rules about game design.
Oh, and...the above somewhat goes for video games as well, but board games differ mostly because they are inherently about social interaction. Play a game with a dry accounting department and the experience will be very different than playing the very same game with your buddies after a few beers. So in that regard, the question of "is this game good?" is more to be read in the vein of "is this game good when compared to other games when played with the same people and mood?". And even that is subjective, as e.g. horror games work better when there is nobody musing about how a sexual encounter between Cthulhu and Medusa would turn out.
Game design (not to be confused with game theory, which is...something different) has become an entire industry, so just me yapping about things that make games GOOD is at best scratching a surface of what someone else studying game design already told. Instead, I'll provide some recent classics and what they might bring to the table.
Some of my games...
One thing I've found is that many people consider games they don't know to be "more complex" than what they already know (at least my girlfriend is like that). This isn't impossible, obviously, but unless you've got a sadistic friend hellbent on torture, the first modern board games you'll play should be so-called gateway games.
More than anything, gateway games should be simple enough to pick up on what you should be doing quickly. Carcassonne? Play a tile and optionally put a meeple on it somewhere. Catan? Harvest and trade. King of Tokyo? Roll dice to kill all other players. Splendor? Either collect jewels or use jewels to buy cards. Santorini? Climb until the third story.
Mind you: this premisse - also called 'the hook' - isn't the same as the rules, but the rules should be built around that core idea. Exceptions should be little or non-existing, and they should feel intuitive. There is also another feature that separates "gateway games" from "simple games", but I'll better start with explaining the given examples a bit more.
In carcassonne, you and your opponents have a bunch of pawns (known in the hobby as 'meeples'). Each turn, you draw a square tile from the stack and place it somewhere next to the ever growing landscape (that starts with one single tile). These tiles depict (parts of) cities, grassland, roads or monestaries. By choosing where to place your tile you not only make a choice for the rest of the game but potentially enlargen your own influence, as larger cities or grasslands touching completed cities are worth more. You make two simple choices each turn (where do I place this particular tile, and do I place one of my meeples on it?), but these have far reaching consequences.
Catan is a known game revolving around trade. You each pick a starting position next to some resources. Then each turn starts by a random harvest of these resources, slowly granting (hopefully) each player more or less an equal share of some of the available goods - wood, stone, wool, wheat and ore. Specific combinations of these resources mean you can expand and/or upgrade your settlements, but unless you're SERIOUSLY lucky with the dice rolls, you'll never have enough of what you'll need by yourself. The interesting part is that the other players want to expand as well (it is what'll win the game, after all) but might need completely different resources. So while it contains some luck, the best part of this game is to figure out on HOW to progress, and what to trade with whom.
Catan's a modern classic, but IMHO no longer the best choice to start the hobby with. The problem is mostly in a long setup time, and especially: your initial location on the random map can make or break you for the rest of the game. So teaching this game is relatively hard, especially if your other players barely can calculate chance (the harvest is determined by 2 dice. But that means that resources with a value 6 and 8 are far more likely to show up than those with 2 or 12).
King of Tokyo is either playing Godzilla or a dice game, depending on your perspective. You and your enemies each have a monster and want to do battle it out in Tokyo (why? "Because", that's why!). the general idea is that one of you will be in the center (Tokyo), fighting everyone else at the same time. Everyone else can either damage you, heal themselves, load up on improvements or rise in skill level. And you do this...by rolling dice. Each turn, you roll the included dice "yahtzee style", meaning that you can pick and reroll some of your dice, and then once again pick and reroll some other (or the same ones). It's the end result of that third throw that will decide what'll happen. The goal of the game is to either be the last monster standing (meaning: reducing everyone else's lives to zero), or level up to your maximum level.
In this game, the fun isn't so much in the dice rolling (though that aspect is certainly fun) but in the social interaction. With miniatures depicting Godzilla, king Kong, a robot, a dragon and Cthulhu, OF COURSE you're going to root for your own monster. It's the typical game where you'll mimic fallen skyscrapers, literally kick other player's avatar out of Tokyo and (if the mood or the booze is decent
) howling noises fill the room. And the dice rolling becomes something concrete really fast ("no, you don't want to do that much damage to me. Reroll that die as well. You want to heal. Come on! Reroll that die! Nooooo!!!! ")
Meanwhile, Splendor is a simple engine building game. There are five colors of gems on the table (six if you count gold, which is a wild). Each turn, you either do
1) pick three different colored gems
2) pick two colored gems of the same color (if possible)
3) reserve a card from either the open stack or one of the 3 draw piles AND receive a gold gems
4) buy a card with your gems and/or your previously bought cards
There are three sorts of cards, but while they are separated from each other, they differ only in cost and in points worth (the cheapest color of cards has at best one point, but don't cost that much). The interesting thing, however, is that each card also counts as a self-replenishing gemstone of a certain color. So a card that costs 2 red gems and 3 black ones can either be payed with 2 red gems and 3 black gems; 1 red gem, a red gem card, a black gem card and two black gems, and any other combination. You always pay for cards with gems, but never with cards. So in the beginning of the game you'll spend turns pondering which colors of gems to pick whereas in the later stage you want to pick up high point cards simply by re-using other cards. The game is really a race in that regard. Reserving a card that your opponent is about to buy might set them back (which advances you), hoarding all gems of a certain color might help prevent your enemy from picking the gems you really want, and so on. The game is until fifteen points, but while it takes a while until players get, say, 4 points, it then quickly ramps up as the players become richer and can afford more expensive (but point-rich) cards.
In Santorini, you've got a five-by-five square grid; each players (usually two) have two pawns they place anywhere on the board. Then each player takes a turn, moving one of their pawns to an adjacent position (including diagonal). This position should be at most one position higher than the current one, and not occupied by another player. After the move, the player builds one cube adjacent to that same character. The goal is to be the first to move one of your pawns on top of a third floor.
...and that's the entirety of the rules for you. Sure, the game comes with "God cards" as well, granting you specific variations on this basic rule set, but the game is as tactical as go, even without using these. This is really a game of moves and counter-moves. The moment someone's on the second floor and is adjacent to a third floor, you should move in and build one additional floor on it (making the position unavailable for either player). Matches can be surprisingly franctic and deep. The game also has a cutesy Greek theme, but that doesn't hide the fact that this is at its core a game as abstract as chess.
Pandemic is another modern classic. Here, all players combine their efforts as a worldwide medical team while four diseases roam the world. Each of you have a special power, but each of you only have four actions to perform on a turn. So which actions should you take to make sure that the cures for these diseases are found before the world is overflooding with them?
While technically not the first co-op game, it is the one that made the genre a staple, and still the main 'go to' game. And for good reason: this game has a theme everyone can get behind and has a rising tension with each and every game. That is because your special powers by themselves aren't enough: you really NEED to work together as a team to overcome what's going on (diseases are added literally every turn!). The game is a bit more complex than the others, but simple enough to wrap your head around yet complex enough that you likely won't be able to find the optimal turn order every time.
So...six short reviews for modern board games. I admit I picked them because I have these and like them, but that's not the only reason. These games are all gateway games. That is to say: if you like them, there are plenty more that somehow expand on the concept. Isle of Skye is carcassonne with a bidding mechanic. Gizmos shares similarities with splendor. Pandemic has a whole slew of co-op games where you fight diseases together. I won't guarantee that you'll like them all. But I'm sure that you would like some, given the chance.
...and I hope you'll get a chance at some point. Because gaming shouldn't be limited to electronic devices.
Similarly: board games differ as well. Some paint stories with new species and/or entire universes for players to explore where others are as abstract as chess. Dices and other elements of luck are frowned upon by some whereas others find games that are all about deduction 'too puzzle-y'. Some games are dished because they are too simple, others because they are too complex. And let me be clear on that: that is all okay! I'm pointing out these differences in games because they differ on aspects that do not inherently make the game good or bad.
So why is monopoly bad? No, it is not because "it entices players to become soulless capitalist tycoons" or the randomness of some items (why are the pawns as nonsensical as they are?). It is because
1) the randomness is so large that there is hardly a meaningful choice to be made, let alone a difficult one. Face it: you have no impact on where you'll land, and most of the cards don't give you a choice either. Your only real choices are in whether or not you want to buy a street when there's an opportunity for it (and this comes down to "do this unless you're SERIOUSLY starving on cash), and when you want to trade streets with your opponent. For anything else in the game, you could just be watching a cutscene.
2) it drags on way too long after winners and losers have emerged. You all know this situation: after 2 or 3 rounds, most of the streets are sold. The ones with the least amount will lose the game (unless in the unlikely event that they happen to have a set)...but because the game plays until you go bankrupt, these players just have to "be there" because it can lead to arguments if they quit.
See where this is going? This isn't a "this game is bad because I don't like its looks" or "it's bad because I suck at it" situation, but it is bad by metrics; by doing an analysis and coming up with the why and how of this. It's not that gut emotion in games isn't important, but that the chances of games touching you emotionally are simply more likely with games that follow rules about game design.
Oh, and...the above somewhat goes for video games as well, but board games differ mostly because they are inherently about social interaction. Play a game with a dry accounting department and the experience will be very different than playing the very same game with your buddies after a few beers. So in that regard, the question of "is this game good?" is more to be read in the vein of "is this game good when compared to other games when played with the same people and mood?". And even that is subjective, as e.g. horror games work better when there is nobody musing about how a sexual encounter between Cthulhu and Medusa would turn out.
Game design (not to be confused with game theory, which is...something different) has become an entire industry, so just me yapping about things that make games GOOD is at best scratching a surface of what someone else studying game design already told. Instead, I'll provide some recent classics and what they might bring to the table.
Some of my games...
One thing I've found is that many people consider games they don't know to be "more complex" than what they already know (at least my girlfriend is like that). This isn't impossible, obviously, but unless you've got a sadistic friend hellbent on torture, the first modern board games you'll play should be so-called gateway games.
More than anything, gateway games should be simple enough to pick up on what you should be doing quickly. Carcassonne? Play a tile and optionally put a meeple on it somewhere. Catan? Harvest and trade. King of Tokyo? Roll dice to kill all other players. Splendor? Either collect jewels or use jewels to buy cards. Santorini? Climb until the third story.
Mind you: this premisse - also called 'the hook' - isn't the same as the rules, but the rules should be built around that core idea. Exceptions should be little or non-existing, and they should feel intuitive. There is also another feature that separates "gateway games" from "simple games", but I'll better start with explaining the given examples a bit more.
In carcassonne, you and your opponents have a bunch of pawns (known in the hobby as 'meeples'). Each turn, you draw a square tile from the stack and place it somewhere next to the ever growing landscape (that starts with one single tile). These tiles depict (parts of) cities, grassland, roads or monestaries. By choosing where to place your tile you not only make a choice for the rest of the game but potentially enlargen your own influence, as larger cities or grasslands touching completed cities are worth more. You make two simple choices each turn (where do I place this particular tile, and do I place one of my meeples on it?), but these have far reaching consequences.
Catan is a known game revolving around trade. You each pick a starting position next to some resources. Then each turn starts by a random harvest of these resources, slowly granting (hopefully) each player more or less an equal share of some of the available goods - wood, stone, wool, wheat and ore. Specific combinations of these resources mean you can expand and/or upgrade your settlements, but unless you're SERIOUSLY lucky with the dice rolls, you'll never have enough of what you'll need by yourself. The interesting part is that the other players want to expand as well (it is what'll win the game, after all) but might need completely different resources. So while it contains some luck, the best part of this game is to figure out on HOW to progress, and what to trade with whom.
Catan's a modern classic, but IMHO no longer the best choice to start the hobby with. The problem is mostly in a long setup time, and especially: your initial location on the random map can make or break you for the rest of the game. So teaching this game is relatively hard, especially if your other players barely can calculate chance (the harvest is determined by 2 dice. But that means that resources with a value 6 and 8 are far more likely to show up than those with 2 or 12).
King of Tokyo is either playing Godzilla or a dice game, depending on your perspective. You and your enemies each have a monster and want to do battle it out in Tokyo (why? "Because", that's why!). the general idea is that one of you will be in the center (Tokyo), fighting everyone else at the same time. Everyone else can either damage you, heal themselves, load up on improvements or rise in skill level. And you do this...by rolling dice. Each turn, you roll the included dice "yahtzee style", meaning that you can pick and reroll some of your dice, and then once again pick and reroll some other (or the same ones). It's the end result of that third throw that will decide what'll happen. The goal of the game is to either be the last monster standing (meaning: reducing everyone else's lives to zero), or level up to your maximum level.
In this game, the fun isn't so much in the dice rolling (though that aspect is certainly fun) but in the social interaction. With miniatures depicting Godzilla, king Kong, a robot, a dragon and Cthulhu, OF COURSE you're going to root for your own monster. It's the typical game where you'll mimic fallen skyscrapers, literally kick other player's avatar out of Tokyo and (if the mood or the booze is decent
) howling noises fill the room. And the dice rolling becomes something concrete really fast ("no, you don't want to do that much damage to me. Reroll that die as well. You want to heal. Come on! Reroll that die! Nooooo!!!! ")Meanwhile, Splendor is a simple engine building game. There are five colors of gems on the table (six if you count gold, which is a wild). Each turn, you either do
1) pick three different colored gems
2) pick two colored gems of the same color (if possible)
3) reserve a card from either the open stack or one of the 3 draw piles AND receive a gold gems
4) buy a card with your gems and/or your previously bought cards
There are three sorts of cards, but while they are separated from each other, they differ only in cost and in points worth (the cheapest color of cards has at best one point, but don't cost that much). The interesting thing, however, is that each card also counts as a self-replenishing gemstone of a certain color. So a card that costs 2 red gems and 3 black ones can either be payed with 2 red gems and 3 black gems; 1 red gem, a red gem card, a black gem card and two black gems, and any other combination. You always pay for cards with gems, but never with cards. So in the beginning of the game you'll spend turns pondering which colors of gems to pick whereas in the later stage you want to pick up high point cards simply by re-using other cards. The game is really a race in that regard. Reserving a card that your opponent is about to buy might set them back (which advances you), hoarding all gems of a certain color might help prevent your enemy from picking the gems you really want, and so on. The game is until fifteen points, but while it takes a while until players get, say, 4 points, it then quickly ramps up as the players become richer and can afford more expensive (but point-rich) cards.
In Santorini, you've got a five-by-five square grid; each players (usually two) have two pawns they place anywhere on the board. Then each player takes a turn, moving one of their pawns to an adjacent position (including diagonal). This position should be at most one position higher than the current one, and not occupied by another player. After the move, the player builds one cube adjacent to that same character. The goal is to be the first to move one of your pawns on top of a third floor.
...and that's the entirety of the rules for you. Sure, the game comes with "God cards" as well, granting you specific variations on this basic rule set, but the game is as tactical as go, even without using these. This is really a game of moves and counter-moves. The moment someone's on the second floor and is adjacent to a third floor, you should move in and build one additional floor on it (making the position unavailable for either player). Matches can be surprisingly franctic and deep. The game also has a cutesy Greek theme, but that doesn't hide the fact that this is at its core a game as abstract as chess.
Pandemic is another modern classic. Here, all players combine their efforts as a worldwide medical team while four diseases roam the world. Each of you have a special power, but each of you only have four actions to perform on a turn. So which actions should you take to make sure that the cures for these diseases are found before the world is overflooding with them?
While technically not the first co-op game, it is the one that made the genre a staple, and still the main 'go to' game. And for good reason: this game has a theme everyone can get behind and has a rising tension with each and every game. That is because your special powers by themselves aren't enough: you really NEED to work together as a team to overcome what's going on (diseases are added literally every turn!). The game is a bit more complex than the others, but simple enough to wrap your head around yet complex enough that you likely won't be able to find the optimal turn order every time.
So...six short reviews for modern board games. I admit I picked them because I have these and like them, but that's not the only reason. These games are all gateway games. That is to say: if you like them, there are plenty more that somehow expand on the concept. Isle of Skye is carcassonne with a bidding mechanic. Gizmos shares similarities with splendor. Pandemic has a whole slew of co-op games where you fight diseases together. I won't guarantee that you'll like them all. But I'm sure that you would like some, given the chance.
...and I hope you'll get a chance at some point. Because gaming shouldn't be limited to electronic devices.
