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[PATV] Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 23: A Case for Board Games
One other great thing about board games is that all the number crunching (and data retention) in the game needs to be simple enough for human players to do relatively quickly. This forces the designers to try to make their designs as elegant as possible.
Frankly I think that if more designers actually came out of the board game and (non-D&D) PnP RPG space with an added understanding of how computerizing those types of games changes them, that we'd have better CRPG and MMORPG games these days. A lot of the failings of CRPGs and MMORPGs these days come down to having mechanics that are too complex to be fully understood by any one person (see WoW) or abandoning a strong sufficiently mechanical core. For example the WoW core mechanics are terribly uninteresting. It's just roll 1d100 and add up all your bonuses. (essentially, I know it's a little more nuanced than that but not much) and see if you hit. Then roll your damage range and add your bonuses. This is essentially D&D with larger numbers. However, how the bonuses are derived is so complex that no single person at Blizzard understands it completely. Which is why there are so many balance issues after a major patch. If the WoW core mechanics were based more closely on an interesting core mechanic I think that the rest of the math could be simpler and yet the gameplay more engaging. Ultimately a good designer who is familiar with how to do something mechanically other than roll dice and add numbers and compare it to someone else's rolled dice and added numbers and can design the power curve to be contained by a horizontal asymptote then we will have truly mechanically engaging old school MMORPG and CRPG experiences rather than exercises in reverse engineering piles of simplistic math. Understanding how to encapsulate an entire experience inside a single set of interesting and engaging mechanics with an understanding of how to handle power creep would create some excellent games. As it stands though it looks like MMORPGs are instead moving towards ARPG mechanics, which are fun and I like them, but remove the requirement for strong unified and flexible mechanical system.
as an aspiring board game designer i have always found your show really helpful. this episode is just icing on the cake. thanks for your continued insite
You do realize that Dungeons & Dragons is a role-playing game, right? A role-playing game is a different animal. I define a role-playing game as a game where the in-game elements can be used in terms of what they are. I got that from someone else because I'm not clever enough to come up with something like that but I am smart enough to steal it.
An illustrative example I like to use is rope. In the game Clue (Cluedo), a rope has one purpose, to make an accusation. It was Mr Green in the conservatory with the rope. That's it. You can do anything else with the rope in Clue that you could with a real rope.
In Dungeons & Dragons, you can do anything with an in-game rope that you could with a real rope. You can tie a know. Climb out a window, coil it up and make a stylish hat, unravel the strands and weave it into a nice itchy rug, set it on fire and then eat the ashes. Whatever.
This loose nature is part of the appeal of role-playing games, but it's also why I don't think they're a good fit for learning actual design for video games since part of the design of a role-playing game involves giving the players guidance in creating their own rules. I think very few role-playing games, outside of tournaments or other venues of official play, are played as written as game groups write new rules to cover situations not covered in the published rules or they replace published rules because they decided they like their own house rule better.
Which is not to say that house rules are not unheard of in board games. It's just that in role-playing games, house rules are as integral to play as the dice. This core feature is not very useful in video games where it's equally intrinsic that the player has no or extremely limited ability to alter the rules.
I've been developing an indie video game for a while now and had to learn game design as I went (I'm a programmer by trade). As an exercise, I've been making board games on the side, in txt files.
I've been making a pen and paper game to try and fix the problems I see with DnD (mostly the fact that at an advanced level, character creation takes ridiculous amounts of time and that newer players usually get stuck in analysis paralysis during play). A 1v1 card game where players play as boxing fighters and am currently making a deck building game.
I think it's been a huge help as a lot of lessons can be taken from board games and applied directly to video games. Especially about keeping rules and explanations simple. Pen and paper games have a huge amount of math associated with them so streamlining calculations is very important. Players don't like fractions, keeping everything as small integers is generally easier for them.
My boxing game is very simple but showed me how important it is to have a symbol nomenclature and that the visual element of board game design is at least as important as the rules.
In all games though, I think one of the biggest lesson I've learned is about diversity and how it's important to design in different "vectors". Allowing players to play using different styles (like how a thief relies on stealth and finess to deal dmg rather than a warrior that is pure brute strength).
All in all, board games are great as design practice, especially since you can make and test a board game in a matter of hours where I've been working on my game for over 2 years now...
I'm having to wonder if there are rules implemented in videogames that don't have an analogue in board games.
For instance, a board game never needs to worry about the tokens floating off the board, or whether the board's spaces properly confine the tokens. On a stable surface, these things are going to sort themselves out. But in a videogame, you have to ensure the environment is stable too, and how much do you allow these rules to interact with the real meat of the ruleset, the actual game, before it becomes a problem. Ideally, they shouldn't interact at all, but when push comes to shove how much do videogames have to compromise here.
Also, communication in Settlers of Catan? When does that happen? Typical "conversation":
"Who wants to trade?"
"No-one, cause it's your turn and you'll immediately spend everything whilst we get stuck with too many resources just before a roll of 7"
"Well shucks"
But yeah, competitiveness aside, the social aspect is definitely a huge part of why board games are awesome.
Cardboard prototyping is another fine ability you can pick up from board games. I'm actually using a boardgame that I'm developing as a tool to develop my entire suite of game development skills - game design, programming, UI design, technical writing, and eventually graphics and so on. I would highly encourage everyone to try as this video suggests, especially with a game that is at least somewhat abstract and math-based (Candy Land-style games won't teach you as much as even something like Snakes and Ladders). If you try to figure out the math behind your game, you'll give yourself a huge boost into game design and balance., and maybe even dip into automation if you take your boardgame and program it into, at least, a console application.
Tabletop on the Geek and Sundry channel on Youtube is another great show. It's hosted by Wil Wheaton, and it's always him playing board games with celebrity nerds. They go through the rules, and really show the best parts of a game through play itself. I've picked up 4 new boardgames just from watching that show, it's always a great way to hear about games you wouldn't have tried/heard of. Plus, Wil really knows his stuff, so it's great to see which games he chooses to play on the show and why.
@Deacon No, EC's right. A good PnP RPG requires minimal or no "creative interpretation" or house ruling. RPG's are different in that player participation can alter outcomes in ways exceeding the scope of the rules, but that is also somewhat paradoxically part of the system as well.
That's usually the Role-Playing part, of course.
Oh yeah, SUSD is made of gold. And yes, I don't play a lot of board games as I'm primarily video gaming, but the more I learn about how board games are put together, my appreciation of game dynamics and systems goes up too. I realize how games like Civilization or X-Com might not exist if the ideas of rules + mechanics + player control didn't exist. So yeah, totally agree with everything in this episode!
Board games are something I've always wanted to get into (both for designer study and general recreation) but, sadly, I could never get beyond one session of Battleships I played with a fellow pupil in primary school during our break. Everyone I know will not go near board games (damn you video games!). So I ask to any board game enthusiasts that maybe reading: are there any good singleplayer board games out there?
Honestly, I prefer board games over video games. The in person social interaction is paramount to the human experience and video games do not deliver on this aspect. Nothing beats a day spent playing board games with friends.
For people looking to get people to engage with board games here are some simple choices that are great for new players.
Munchkin
Settlers of Catan
The Resistance
Bang!
Carcassonne
Memoir '44
In the literature that I have read on the topic of game design, there is a concept which provides an abstraction of the rules you mention in this video. The abstraction is called a ludeme and ludemes can apply to both board games and video games as specific implementations.
@Roda: Ghost stories is an excellent board game for 1-4 players, so you can try on your own and play with a few friends if you can convince them to later on. It's infamous for being nigh impossible to beat on the hardest difficulty, so that could be a fun challenge.
Phantom Leader puts you in charge or a squadron of Vietnam-era fighters and bombers, and you try to keep your team together as your pilots slowly go bonkers.
You can print and play The D6 Shooters: Long Road to Reno. It's kind of like the Oregon Trail (sort of) and it has you starving and shooting things and getting mugged by bandits as you watch your posse get slowly whittled down to just a lone gunman.
Sorry to hear about your friends though, it was like pulling teeth getting my friends to play with me. Maybe if they are into a TV show like game of thrones you can get them to play those licensed board games. Or start with something that no video game offers like The Resistance. Good Luck!
@Roda: Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness are both MP co-op board games based on survival horror. Arkham Horror is the best one for what EC is suggesting in the video, as Mansions of Madness is stoopid expensive can only be played SP with its "Call of the Wild" expansion.
To toot Arkham Horror's horn specifically: it uses a deck, tokens with symbols, and some simple rules to create enemy AI. Although each player is supposed to control a single PC, anyone who's played Final Fantasy knows how to manage a party. If you're a code sort of fellow, you can hear the IF/THEN statements clunking while it plays.
Riffing off of JoshuaS, below: Pandemic and Forbidden Island use mechanics similar to Ghost Stories (i.e., the board randomly self-destructs every turn, and your primary focus is keeping it together). You can play FI and GS on phones or tablets for six bucks a throw.
SmallWorld and Ticket to Ride are classic MP games that you can play SP on a phone or tablet, as well.
My son is 4 years old, and we are insisting that he play board games (not that it takes much insisting). My wife had a very formative experience as a child designing her own board games with friends. The trial and error of creating her own games taught her an immense amount about design, rules, communication, and the nature of fun. Even today, I can't convince her to sit down for a single video game (Plants vs. Zombies being the one curious exception), but she'll play Catan any time.
I think the PA EC team is on to something when it comes to the explicit nature of rules for board games. You see the psychological imprint of the designer all over a board game in ways that video games can mask or obfuscate. It's fun to have those 'aha!' moments where you see for the first time why a particular rule was added by the designers. I hope that in a world of great video games, my son can learn something about design (and designers) from board games as well.
Over the last few months I have been designing my own table top RPG to play with some friends. I have to say that between this show and actually designing the game I have learned so much about game design and how fun it is. From making the world and creating stories to making interesting systems for magic and combat with out making them so complex that a new player would be lost in them. It has been a wonderful challenge and I am very grateful that Extra Credits has been making all these grate videos helping people and eventually me make fun games. Thanks guys.
DO NOT be confused in with the belief that the #1 ranked game is the "best". There are MANY MANY MANY different types and styles of board games. You (and your friends) need to find the game that you like best.
IF you are looking for board game reviews/recommendations you can also look here: http://www.dicetower.com/
And here: http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/
Wesley [edit: sorry, I mean Wil Wheaton) and friends sit down and play games. You /may/ recognize some of the players. (note: they forget some of the rules sometimes, but hey)
I can vouch for the 'removing a rule changes the game significantly' aspect with an anecdote of my own. Me and my family occasionally sit down to play Settlers of Catan, and when this story takes place, we'd just gotten the Seafarers expansion for it and were giving it a go for the first time.
The first game, we ran a pirate scenario, but we hadn't read the rules thoroughly enough (in particular, the rule stating that Knight Cards = Warships, we'd assumed that all ships were warships), and as a result none of us found the scenario particularly challenging, and as such it felt shallow.
When we discovered that rule, it made sense as there was no other reason to have the Knight cards in play (and it'd told us to remove the Victory Points cards already, as well as the bonuses for Largest Army and Longest Road), and a second go at the same scenario proved much more fun than the initial one was.
Mind you, I do have another anecdote where ignoring one of the rules was more entertaining than otherwise stated. In a different match of Settlers, before we got the expansion, I had ended up stranded in a small space due to being walled in, and had no chance of winning. My two brothers, on the other hand, were tied, and the Largest Army bonus would have swung it in either ones favour. We didn't know that trading Knight cards was against the rules, and as such I held the major power by having the last of the Knight cards, as they'd all been drawn at this point, so whoever I gave one of the cards to would be the winner. It proved most entertaining, given that I'd more or less given up on the game after being walled in within the first few turns.
I got in on the Dungeon Roll Kickstarter and the game is awesome. I recommend you get it, I think it's 20 bucks for the base kit. Dice game with treasure, dragons, and assorted manners of wizardry. Watch It Played featuring the game:
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J. D. MilknutLord of ChipmunksPortland, ORRegistered Userregular
I also recommend Dungeon Roll. Super-simple rules which simultaneously manage to capture the feel of dungeon crawling and arcade action(!) while using dice and tokens. Once you get over the oddity of heroes "dying" in every single battle (if you're a 4e D&D fan, you can think of the rule as them using their "dailies") and using scrolls to drink potions, the rest of the rules are pretty intuitive and flow nicely. Multiplayer is like super-oldschool Competitive D&D where teams of heroes strike to gather the most loot and XP. The main solitaire rules are like an arcade game where you try to beat the previous high score.
The game's best feature is the way you get to choose each turn exactly how much risk you want to take. There's equal odds of rolling seven treasure chests as seven dragon heads on level seven, right? Town Portal Scrolls have never been so precious.
Man, boardgames are awesome. I even remember when I tried to make a couple of my own back in college. They were absolutely basic things - roll a die, move that number of spaces on a (crappy looking) board, do what the space you land on says, repeat until someone reaches the end. The second one i made was the same, but introduced a basic branching path, one long but safe, the other short but dangerous, as well as a "draw from the deck" mechanic similar to Monopoly's chance/community chest cards.
But even though they sound simple, it took me weeks of work and playtesting to figure out how many spaces big the game path should be, what should go on the spaces and where on the board those spaces should go, even the proper size of the spaces themselves (what if more then 1-2 pieces land on the same space? Will they look alright, or will it be too crowded for the tiny space?). Later I had to add what to put on the cards that seemed balanced for play, how big to make the branching paths so that THEY were balanced. And both of these were bare bones non-colored boards made from old strips of cardboard boxes with notecards for the card deck and game pieces consisting of whatever you find laying around: I never even got into what colors look best for the game, board game themes, artwork on the board, artwork and look of the cards, flavor text for the cards and spaces (mine were literally "move forward 1 space". So exciting...), and those are just the technical considerations. Stuff like player social interactions, competitive vs cooperative balance and where to put the stuffed monkey's paw didn't even enter my mind at the time.
Mad props to boardgame makers, for they have insane skills to be able to make games people want to pull out and play.
The way of the Paladin:
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
I would note that card games are often not classified as board games, but are in fact also excellent starting places. Magic: The Gathering is one of the best designed games of all time (possibly THE best designed game of all time) and there is a great deal you can learn from its design.
I would also note that Tabletop Roleplaying Games are a TERRIBLE place to look at rules, because they, as a rule, are badly designed.
I love board games! But, I still have to find one that has a self-sufficient rule book. All games I played, I needed to read the rules twice or more, ask somebody else what they think the rule means, etc.
SUSD is on Penny Arcade? Wow, I didn't even know that.
They have their own website, too, with podcasts, text reviews and all other kinds of stuff. It's very entertaining. http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/
This may have been addressed elsewhere, but does anyone know if there's a EC meetup this PAX? I'd love to go, if just to bask in the magnificence of James' flowing locks...
[PATV] Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 23: A Case for Board Games
Posts
An illustrative example I like to use is rope. In the game Clue (Cluedo), a rope has one purpose, to make an accusation. It was Mr Green in the conservatory with the rope. That's it. You can do anything else with the rope in Clue that you could with a real rope.
In Dungeons & Dragons, you can do anything with an in-game rope that you could with a real rope. You can tie a know. Climb out a window, coil it up and make a stylish hat, unravel the strands and weave it into a nice itchy rug, set it on fire and then eat the ashes. Whatever.
This loose nature is part of the appeal of role-playing games, but it's also why I don't think they're a good fit for learning actual design for video games since part of the design of a role-playing game involves giving the players guidance in creating their own rules. I think very few role-playing games, outside of tournaments or other venues of official play, are played as written as game groups write new rules to cover situations not covered in the published rules or they replace published rules because they decided they like their own house rule better.
Which is not to say that house rules are not unheard of in board games. It's just that in role-playing games, house rules are as integral to play as the dice. This core feature is not very useful in video games where it's equally intrinsic that the player has no or extremely limited ability to alter the rules.
I've been making a pen and paper game to try and fix the problems I see with DnD (mostly the fact that at an advanced level, character creation takes ridiculous amounts of time and that newer players usually get stuck in analysis paralysis during play). A 1v1 card game where players play as boxing fighters and am currently making a deck building game.
I think it's been a huge help as a lot of lessons can be taken from board games and applied directly to video games. Especially about keeping rules and explanations simple. Pen and paper games have a huge amount of math associated with them so streamlining calculations is very important. Players don't like fractions, keeping everything as small integers is generally easier for them.
My boxing game is very simple but showed me how important it is to have a symbol nomenclature and that the visual element of board game design is at least as important as the rules.
In all games though, I think one of the biggest lesson I've learned is about diversity and how it's important to design in different "vectors". Allowing players to play using different styles (like how a thief relies on stealth and finess to deal dmg rather than a warrior that is pure brute strength).
All in all, board games are great as design practice, especially since you can make and test a board game in a matter of hours where I've been working on my game for over 2 years now...
Watch this, and love shut up and sit down, and am aspiring to be designer as well.
For instance, a board game never needs to worry about the tokens floating off the board, or whether the board's spaces properly confine the tokens. On a stable surface, these things are going to sort themselves out. But in a videogame, you have to ensure the environment is stable too, and how much do you allow these rules to interact with the real meat of the ruleset, the actual game, before it becomes a problem. Ideally, they shouldn't interact at all, but when push comes to shove how much do videogames have to compromise here.
Also, communication in Settlers of Catan? When does that happen? Typical "conversation":
"Who wants to trade?"
"No-one, cause it's your turn and you'll immediately spend everything whilst we get stuck with too many resources just before a roll of 7"
"Well shucks"
But yeah, competitiveness aside, the social aspect is definitely a huge part of why board games are awesome.
That's usually the Role-Playing part, of course.
For people looking to get people to engage with board games here are some simple choices that are great for new players.
Munchkin
Settlers of Catan
The Resistance
Bang!
Carcassonne
Memoir '44
Phantom Leader puts you in charge or a squadron of Vietnam-era fighters and bombers, and you try to keep your team together as your pilots slowly go bonkers.
You can print and play The D6 Shooters: Long Road to Reno. It's kind of like the Oregon Trail (sort of) and it has you starving and shooting things and getting mugged by bandits as you watch your posse get slowly whittled down to just a lone gunman.
Sorry to hear about your friends though, it was like pulling teeth getting my friends to play with me. Maybe if they are into a TV show like game of thrones you can get them to play those licensed board games. Or start with something that no video game offers like The Resistance. Good Luck!
To toot Arkham Horror's horn specifically: it uses a deck, tokens with symbols, and some simple rules to create enemy AI. Although each player is supposed to control a single PC, anyone who's played Final Fantasy knows how to manage a party. If you're a code sort of fellow, you can hear the IF/THEN statements clunking while it plays.
Riffing off of JoshuaS, below: Pandemic and Forbidden Island use mechanics similar to Ghost Stories (i.e., the board randomly self-destructs every turn, and your primary focus is keeping it together). You can play FI and GS on phones or tablets for six bucks a throw.
SmallWorld and Ticket to Ride are classic MP games that you can play SP on a phone or tablet, as well.
I think the PA EC team is on to something when it comes to the explicit nature of rules for board games. You see the psychological imprint of the designer all over a board game in ways that video games can mask or obfuscate. It's fun to have those 'aha!' moments where you see for the first time why a particular rule was added by the designers. I hope that in a world of great video games, my son can learn something about design (and designers) from board games as well.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/
And there is a pretty complete list of board games here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
DO NOT be confused in with the belief that the #1 ranked game is the "best". There are MANY MANY MANY different types and styles of board games. You (and your friends) need to find the game that you like best.
IF you are looking for board game reviews/recommendations you can also look here:
http://www.dicetower.com/
And here:
http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/
Wesley [edit: sorry, I mean Wil Wheaton) and friends sit down and play games. You /may/ recognize some of the players. (note: they forget some of the rules sometimes, but hey)
and (OMG) there is an entire section of PA forums for ....board gaming !?!?!
ZOMG: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/categories/critical-failures
And If you happen to live in the Mentor area: https://www.facebook.com/GreatLakesGameEmporium
And the Akron area:
http://www.underhillsgames.com/
Both stores have MANY open box games that you can sit down and play to see if its something you like.
The first game, we ran a pirate scenario, but we hadn't read the rules thoroughly enough (in particular, the rule stating that Knight Cards = Warships, we'd assumed that all ships were warships), and as a result none of us found the scenario particularly challenging, and as such it felt shallow.
When we discovered that rule, it made sense as there was no other reason to have the Knight cards in play (and it'd told us to remove the Victory Points cards already, as well as the bonuses for Largest Army and Longest Road), and a second go at the same scenario proved much more fun than the initial one was.
Mind you, I do have another anecdote where ignoring one of the rules was more entertaining than otherwise stated. In a different match of Settlers, before we got the expansion, I had ended up stranded in a small space due to being walled in, and had no chance of winning. My two brothers, on the other hand, were tied, and the Largest Army bonus would have swung it in either ones favour. We didn't know that trading Knight cards was against the rules, and as such I held the major power by having the last of the Knight cards, as they'd all been drawn at this point, so whoever I gave one of the cards to would be the winner. It proved most entertaining, given that I'd more or less given up on the game after being walled in within the first few turns.
Amazing content. http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/
The game's best feature is the way you get to choose each turn exactly how much risk you want to take. There's equal odds of rolling seven treasure chests as seven dragon heads on level seven, right? Town Portal Scrolls have never been so precious.
But even though they sound simple, it took me weeks of work and playtesting to figure out how many spaces big the game path should be, what should go on the spaces and where on the board those spaces should go, even the proper size of the spaces themselves (what if more then 1-2 pieces land on the same space? Will they look alright, or will it be too crowded for the tiny space?). Later I had to add what to put on the cards that seemed balanced for play, how big to make the branching paths so that THEY were balanced. And both of these were bare bones non-colored boards made from old strips of cardboard boxes with notecards for the card deck and game pieces consisting of whatever you find laying around: I never even got into what colors look best for the game, board game themes, artwork on the board, artwork and look of the cards, flavor text for the cards and spaces (mine were literally "move forward 1 space". So exciting...), and those are just the technical considerations. Stuff like player social interactions, competitive vs cooperative balance and where to put the stuffed monkey's paw didn't even enter my mind at the time.
Mad props to boardgame makers, for they have insane skills to be able to make games people want to pull out and play.
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
I would also note that Tabletop Roleplaying Games are a TERRIBLE place to look at rules, because they, as a rule, are badly designed.
They have their own website, too, with podcasts, text reviews and all other kinds of stuff. It's very entertaining.
http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/