Has it really been 6 months since I posted here? My concept of time has been simply mad this year.
A couple of hiatuses from, and subsequent returns to, game design, have lead to a crystallization of my thinking on the process. I find I'm less inclined to go down poor paths, to flesh out ideas that aren't workable. My instincts for good and bad designs are growing more keen, and I can bring them to bear on less well-formed designs. I was attempting to pin down what exactly the insights are, but they're slippery. Here's a start:
- Don't fall in love with engines. I sometimes figure out a conceptual way that certain game entities might interact, creating an engine that the player can influence. This is a bad starting place for a design, and placing such a mechanism first is going to put you down a design path that is unlikely to actually be fun, and will to tough to deviate from mentally. This was the biggest problem with much of my early designing.
- What is the challenge structure? This is the biggest insight I've had, is to ask this. Challenges, as I think I discussed in a previous post, are at the heart of interesting gameplay. When the player sits down, what challenges are presented to them? Ask this of any new design you have, if you don't have a good answer, work on the idea until you do. If you still can't solve it, its not a good design.
- What is the simplest version possible of this game? God, this exercise is useful, this is a great way to judge the early viability of a game.
- What are the first two sentences you say to a new player when you sit them down to play this game? Imagine you are just sitting down to play this game, and it is being explained to you, is it something that you want to play? This is an important step-back method later in the process, when you're trying to sort the details out. Is there a core way to explain the game to someone new that is understandable (grokable even) and appealing? So often you wander from the core of what you wanted to do in a game, get so excited about some mechanism that its become impenetrable to the new player.
I think games need to be constructed in layers of elegance, and that this can be detected by the way that a new player perceives the game. Is there a quick, high-level picture of what the game's about? Does the rest of the stuff fall under that as reasonable extensions of the initial principles?
My point is, a teachable game is a good game. The more easily players can internalize the logic of your game, the sooner they can get to the business of playing it. Thinking about how you would present the game as it currently exists is a valuable exercise in the quality of the design.
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This is all to say these are techniques for seeing your game in terms of the experience it provides, rather than the makeup of its parts. And this doesn't mean the decisions that are presented, or the per-turn nuances that you're trying to create: that's the sort of stuff you think about naturally while you're designing. The challenging part is to see the big picture, to see if all that stuff is adding up to a game.
Because honestly, usually when you take a stab at the detailed mechanics of a game, you're going to end up with ones that just don't work. Its such a fragile, fickle, brittle, wicked thing, game design, the low level stuff you create that seems good in isolation just rarely works in the broader context. The trick is to recognize that early on, and try again, and again, and to keep your searches shallow and your process broad. When you dive too deep into a given mechanic, and invest too much time into it, and allow too many assumptions inherent to it to calcify, you've ruined the entire design for yourself. You're no longer able to throw it away and try something else, it has crusted into place around the rest of your design the two have to live or die together. So they die.
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So yes, this is all a bit dramatic, mostly for effect. Of course generating ideas is good, as is exploring them, falling in love with them, honing them and being patient. Finding elegance is hard work. But I rant like this because I think that the other side of the coin is easy to ignore, especially for the novice designer (like me, still, to be honest). Of course, yes, you can throw ideas away, and good designers do. But my point is, its harder than you think, and hard work and focus on a given idea that shows promise is not always the right course of action.
--
This ties into two general design theories that have come into focus for me this year, that I will allude to just briefly here:
1) Design is about creating approximations of the outcomes and experiences that you expect your design to lead to. You need to create sketches, models, mental simulations, actual simulations and other approximations of your design, and see how they fare in approximated practice. This is tough in board game design, where the actual experience is borne of the complex unknowable interactions of mechanics and human minds, but the tips I mention above are a start.
2) There are special challenges when you are designing information-based products such as software and board games, when you are creating not a physical object but a system of rules and ideas. In these cases, too much depth early on is a death stroke. Its as if your first step in designing a building was to lay down a huge iron column and decide what to do from there (with apologies to Christopher Alexander).
Here's the myth about software design and board game design: that mental design decisions are wholly malleable. The ideal is that you just think about stuff, and if a given solution doesn't work, well, you'll just try something else. You won't.
Once you've thought about a given idea in enough depth, put the effort into developing it, gotten used to thinking about certain idea's you've developed as givens and constraints to work around, they become solid. They become as solid as if you'd physically started building something.
What you need to do in board game design, and software design as my ongoing research is trying to prove, is take lots of little stabs at the problem. Explore it from a variety of angles at minimal depth, and slowly work your way in. The preliminary work on one angle will provide the means to understand the other angles, and as long as you don't go deep on one too early, you won't lock the whole thing up and ruin it.
Some of the tips I mentioned above are towards this aim. You think about the challenges, the simple version, the explanation of the game. They yank you out of your current angle, show you the others, show you where they clash. And if you're lucky, you can try to build an elegant solution that involves the shifting of all of the angles' needs, instead of building them around one big calcified spike of an idea that you're just too attached to.
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Again, I know, this is all very dramatic. The idea of spikes you can't move, of all these angles, of clawing your way back out of your ideas? Its only to draw contrast to what you might think about game design.
Every idea you generate is a double edged sword that represents progress in one direction, but resists deviations from that path. Its a fortress. You've staked out a space, and now you can use it, but if you try to uproot it, it will bristle with crossbows from palisades. Build little outposts on the landscape, but don't let any of them get so strong that they defy you.
Edit: added 3rd section as something of a response to Chad's comment - thanks Chad!
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theory. Show all posts
Monday, April 13, 2009
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The Drama of Dice
Why board games over computer games? Why bother with board games at all? I think a lot of it is that they're an excuse to hang out, to enjoy face to face interaction. But its also the bits, some intangible quality of the physical components.
I've been reading this book about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, with these impassioned descriptions of how certain fuzziness was achieved using analog techniques, how acoustic guitars trump electric, how lo-fi can be better than polished. I think a lot of the appeal of board games lies in the same subtle corners of "realness".
In particular, dice. There was this geeklist a while back where someone was saying what was wrong with American-style board games. Dice was one of the problems, too many dice. But it made me realize how much I *like* dice. Here was one of my responses, about the appeal of an important die roll.
They bounce and rattle and tease you with the face you need, spinning on end, your mind grasping for the first moment when the result is rendered, eyes darting across the seven settling cubes; a five! did I see a one and a two out of the corner of my eye? I swear that was about to fall a six! Everyone's eyes fly about, trying to be the first to declare the result. And someone yelps, and a ripple runs through the players, a mere half-second in length as everyone sees the result - success!
That dulcet anticipation of the result is terribly underappreciated, and terribly lacking in other mechanisms.
Its just not the same as flipping a tile, looking up a result on a chart, or your opponent revealing a card. The die has been cast, nothing can be done now, but to watch and hope, and try to figure out the result as soon as possible. Its like a basketball shot flying through the air, as you try to determine whether you think its going to go in, as all has been done, and soon physics will tell you the outcome.
Here's another example, from a Battlestations session report I did (that, by the way, was featured on their official site, for some reason). Note that all rolls are two dice in this game, needing a total of 8, in this case:
At this point, despite having the “lucky” perk, Leonov was completely out of luck. The ship was size 4, the speed was 6. Leonov had one point of piloting skill, and he had prepared. He *needed* a natural roll of 8 to turn the ship.
We made this clear, and got ready for the roll. We psyched ourselves up and leaned forward on the couches. Nate readied himself, and rolled the dice. The first die came up a 2. Immediately. We all agreed afterwards that there was a subtle but distinct backward motion in each of us, as we slouched backwards in defeat and disappointment. It was just instinctual, you see a 2, and its over. 2’s are really, really bad. But that damn second die just spun on its corner, I can still see it now. It spun and tumbled and came down a flippin’ 6. We totally lost it.
That actually happened that way. So strange, that the low number slapped down right away, while the other die spun for so long. The odds of all of that coming together for maximum drama are ridiculous.
------
So I like dice. As an actual game design post, what is the conclusion? Well, its made me realize the importance of the pieces you use. I've long considered the relative merits and abilities of cards, tiles, dice, discs, etc., but another dimension is the psychological impact of the actual physical objects that are at play.
And when it comes to dice, how do you use them to determine outcomes? This came about when I was designing this superhero game today, which is really more of a candidate theming of a mechanic I like, rather than a theme I'm married to. In any case, I wanted a simple die roll to determine the outcome of a crime-fighting activity. At first I considered a single die roll + modifier check. But then I considered, this is a simple roll that will often have a very big impact on things: it needs to carry as much drama as possible. From that perspective, rather than looking at the result of a single die, it would be more exciting to have that brief moment of uncertainty as you roll. Its that moment when the two samurai have run past eachother, and you wait to see which generates a jet of blood indicating he had already lost.
So maybe two dice, as in battlestations. Or maybe a number of dice equal to your skill, requiring a particular number of successes, as in Arkham Horror, Betrayal, etc. I think its telling that those two games, theme-rich as they are, both use that mechanic, and I certainly have gotten some good drama out watching those die rolls unfold.
Plus, double counting makes it tougher to pin down the actual odds at play, vs needing a given number on two dice.
My point is, I had often seen randomization mechanisms purely in terms of the outcomes they could produce, and in what proportions. But there are also implications to the user experience of actually handing those components, and using them to determine the results of their actions. What kind of physical drama does that create, in the real act of playing the game? Its a subtle issue, and not one that I've seen get much overt attention from the game design community.
I've been reading this book about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, with these impassioned descriptions of how certain fuzziness was achieved using analog techniques, how acoustic guitars trump electric, how lo-fi can be better than polished. I think a lot of the appeal of board games lies in the same subtle corners of "realness".
In particular, dice. There was this geeklist a while back where someone was saying what was wrong with American-style board games. Dice was one of the problems, too many dice. But it made me realize how much I *like* dice. Here was one of my responses, about the appeal of an important die roll.
They bounce and rattle and tease you with the face you need, spinning on end, your mind grasping for the first moment when the result is rendered, eyes darting across the seven settling cubes; a five! did I see a one and a two out of the corner of my eye? I swear that was about to fall a six! Everyone's eyes fly about, trying to be the first to declare the result. And someone yelps, and a ripple runs through the players, a mere half-second in length as everyone sees the result - success!
That dulcet anticipation of the result is terribly underappreciated, and terribly lacking in other mechanisms.
Its just not the same as flipping a tile, looking up a result on a chart, or your opponent revealing a card. The die has been cast, nothing can be done now, but to watch and hope, and try to figure out the result as soon as possible. Its like a basketball shot flying through the air, as you try to determine whether you think its going to go in, as all has been done, and soon physics will tell you the outcome.
Here's another example, from a Battlestations session report I did (that, by the way, was featured on their official site, for some reason). Note that all rolls are two dice in this game, needing a total of 8, in this case:
At this point, despite having the “lucky” perk, Leonov was completely out of luck. The ship was size 4, the speed was 6. Leonov had one point of piloting skill, and he had prepared. He *needed* a natural roll of 8 to turn the ship.
We made this clear, and got ready for the roll. We psyched ourselves up and leaned forward on the couches. Nate readied himself, and rolled the dice. The first die came up a 2. Immediately. We all agreed afterwards that there was a subtle but distinct backward motion in each of us, as we slouched backwards in defeat and disappointment. It was just instinctual, you see a 2, and its over. 2’s are really, really bad. But that damn second die just spun on its corner, I can still see it now. It spun and tumbled and came down a flippin’ 6. We totally lost it.
That actually happened that way. So strange, that the low number slapped down right away, while the other die spun for so long. The odds of all of that coming together for maximum drama are ridiculous.
------
So I like dice. As an actual game design post, what is the conclusion? Well, its made me realize the importance of the pieces you use. I've long considered the relative merits and abilities of cards, tiles, dice, discs, etc., but another dimension is the psychological impact of the actual physical objects that are at play.
And when it comes to dice, how do you use them to determine outcomes? This came about when I was designing this superhero game today, which is really more of a candidate theming of a mechanic I like, rather than a theme I'm married to. In any case, I wanted a simple die roll to determine the outcome of a crime-fighting activity. At first I considered a single die roll + modifier check. But then I considered, this is a simple roll that will often have a very big impact on things: it needs to carry as much drama as possible. From that perspective, rather than looking at the result of a single die, it would be more exciting to have that brief moment of uncertainty as you roll. Its that moment when the two samurai have run past eachother, and you wait to see which generates a jet of blood indicating he had already lost.
So maybe two dice, as in battlestations. Or maybe a number of dice equal to your skill, requiring a particular number of successes, as in Arkham Horror, Betrayal, etc. I think its telling that those two games, theme-rich as they are, both use that mechanic, and I certainly have gotten some good drama out watching those die rolls unfold.
Plus, double counting makes it tougher to pin down the actual odds at play, vs needing a given number on two dice.
My point is, I had often seen randomization mechanisms purely in terms of the outcomes they could produce, and in what proportions. But there are also implications to the user experience of actually handing those components, and using them to determine the results of their actions. What kind of physical drama does that create, in the real act of playing the game? Its a subtle issue, and not one that I've seen get much overt attention from the game design community.
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Strategizing
I think the clues were all there. This will maybe be no big epiphany to most of my readers, who mostly know me well. But the full realization came as something of a surprise to me: I like talking about games more than I like playing them. In fact, I think one of the main reasons I even bother playing games is so that I can talk about them afterwards, or even during.
Whatever it might be, the design of the game itself, the way the game played out, or the strategies that one might employ. The latter of these was what really got my attention yesterday. I was playing a bit of this flash game proximity, and was mulling over the strategies one might use. The game was fun, but it was mostly a testing session to puzzle over what the overall strategies might be. And when I came to interesting tradeoffs, about defensive moves vs offensive ones, for example, I wanted to chat over them. If I'd been playing with a person, I would have found that much more interesting than continuing to play the game in isolation of one another.
What does that mean? Some offshoots:
1) It help explains some of my issues with being chatty during games.
2) This explains why I like games like Magic, where discussing new cards, decks, strategies, formats, are totally part of the game. Similarly, I like that Apples to Apples is mostly about discussing the choices (at least for me), and can see how I might come to like an open-ended game like Race for the Galaxy once I could talk competently about the cards.
3) Maybe this means I'm cut out to design games, in that I like thinking about games and externalizing said thoughts. But maybe it means I'm a lousy choice - I mean, if I don't even like playing games, just theorizing about them, does that disqualify me from doing it right?
4) Is there a way to leverage this appeal into a game? Cooperative games are a start, where you discuss strategies. Nomics are a start, but sort of too fiddly. I guess the problem is that it can't be competitive, at least not openly. Maybe what I want isn't a game at all, but a conversation. Is there a way to structure an activity that would scratch this itch? Now I'm just getting out there. Maybe there is room for something like this in a Social Game (a topic I've not really touched upon yet properly here, but likely will some day).
Games are more interesting than they are fun, for me, these days. A troubling realization, perhaps.
Whatever it might be, the design of the game itself, the way the game played out, or the strategies that one might employ. The latter of these was what really got my attention yesterday. I was playing a bit of this flash game proximity, and was mulling over the strategies one might use. The game was fun, but it was mostly a testing session to puzzle over what the overall strategies might be. And when I came to interesting tradeoffs, about defensive moves vs offensive ones, for example, I wanted to chat over them. If I'd been playing with a person, I would have found that much more interesting than continuing to play the game in isolation of one another.
What does that mean? Some offshoots:
1) It help explains some of my issues with being chatty during games.
2) This explains why I like games like Magic, where discussing new cards, decks, strategies, formats, are totally part of the game. Similarly, I like that Apples to Apples is mostly about discussing the choices (at least for me), and can see how I might come to like an open-ended game like Race for the Galaxy once I could talk competently about the cards.
3) Maybe this means I'm cut out to design games, in that I like thinking about games and externalizing said thoughts. But maybe it means I'm a lousy choice - I mean, if I don't even like playing games, just theorizing about them, does that disqualify me from doing it right?
4) Is there a way to leverage this appeal into a game? Cooperative games are a start, where you discuss strategies. Nomics are a start, but sort of too fiddly. I guess the problem is that it can't be competitive, at least not openly. Maybe what I want isn't a game at all, but a conversation. Is there a way to structure an activity that would scratch this itch? Now I'm just getting out there. Maybe there is room for something like this in a Social Game (a topic I've not really touched upon yet properly here, but likely will some day).
Games are more interesting than they are fun, for me, these days. A troubling realization, perhaps.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Challenges
I continue to wrangle with ways of thinking about designing games, looking for metaphors and perspectives that might shed light on which approaches are most promising. One perspective that has seemed promising is Challenges, that is, looking at designs in terms of the challenges they present to the player. Does the play have a way to translate their overall goal of winning into lower level strategic and tactical challenges? Ideally, a game has a variety of cycles of goal-setting, goal-pursuit and resolution.
For example, a game of Puerto Rico might involve a player who says "I'm going to pursue a factory strategy", "I need a coffeee roaster", "I need to get more money", "I need to get that last small market", "I need to sell my goods", "I need to make sure I sell my goods before Ted, who aslo has a sugar and would clog that market slot". Etc. There are challenges that have subchallenges, and a player can pursue them.
Challenges are good. They give the player something to strive for, and even feeling like you have chosen the right goal is itself satisfying. Plus, whenever you have a challenges, you have an opportunity for drama. Either you have victory or defeat, either you meet your challenge or fail.
So a challenge is:
- Setting a goal
- Making decisions in an effort to achieve that goal
- Resolution of the challenge, as success, failure, or a bit of both.
Challenge Establishing
It would seem that all games would have challenges, but some are surprisingly lacking, and suffer as a result. In a game like Fresh Fish, where results are largely emergent can defy challenge-making, at least the first couple of times you play. You have the challenge of "get your production facilities close to the delivery spots" but it can be hard to translate that into lower-level challenges. Strategies are not readily apparent, so you blithely throw down cubes. If you fail, you don't feel as if you're failed to meet a challenge, but rather just shrug at the situation.
An unexperienced Go player will see opportunities to surround enemy groups, and establish their capture as a Challenge. But more experienced players will know to look for sublte aspects of eyes, sente and aji, carefully choosing which battles to fight, setting up areas of power, and psychological ploys. Their challenges extend to higher and lower levels of abstraction, giving richer gameplay.
So its important that the gameplay provide opportunities for players to establish challenges in the first place. Ideally, this happens from the first play. For example, in Ticket to Ride, tickets suggest the challenge of completing them, and beneath that there are the challenges of finishing particular routes, and therefore challenges of gathering the necessary cards. The game is such a successful gateway game because it provides a rich challenge structure, right off the bat.
Challenge Pursuit
Once a challenge has been established by a player, they need to have the tools to satisfyingly pursue it. There should be uncertainty about whether you will succeed, but you should have some control over your fate. If you don't feel like your efforts affect your consequences, you're going to stop caring about the challenges before you.
A lot of well-known problems with games can be related to this idea. If a game is too luck-heavy, you can find yourself establishing challenges, trying to meet them, but being arbitrary thrwarted. Eventually, you're liable to lose interest. Similarly, there's the "runaway leader problem", where once a player gets ahead there's little other players can do to stop them (often in a racing game). This means that other players' challenge of "winning the game" might not have any subchallenges that could reasonably lead to success. Players end up disengaged from the game without challenging challenges.
-----
So this is a perspective on ways you engage the player, and provide them with opportunities to engage themselves in the gameplay. The encouraging thing is, I can look at a lot of my failed designs and see how they didn't present viable subchallenges. They gave the player win conditions, and choices, but not any interesting nuggets of intermediate goals, success and failure. Conversely, I can see how nearly any game I like has a good challenge structure. I hope that by seeing things this way, I can have a better concept of how to separate promising designs from unpromising ones earlier in the process.
One direct offshoot is that I think the current Monster City design has some real problems here. But the good news is that I have some ideas, albeit drastic ones, on how to fix it. More on that soon.
For example, a game of Puerto Rico might involve a player who says "I'm going to pursue a factory strategy", "I need a coffeee roaster", "I need to get more money", "I need to get that last small market", "I need to sell my goods", "I need to make sure I sell my goods before Ted, who aslo has a sugar and would clog that market slot". Etc. There are challenges that have subchallenges, and a player can pursue them.
Challenges are good. They give the player something to strive for, and even feeling like you have chosen the right goal is itself satisfying. Plus, whenever you have a challenges, you have an opportunity for drama. Either you have victory or defeat, either you meet your challenge or fail.
So a challenge is:
- Setting a goal
- Making decisions in an effort to achieve that goal
- Resolution of the challenge, as success, failure, or a bit of both.
Challenge Establishing
It would seem that all games would have challenges, but some are surprisingly lacking, and suffer as a result. In a game like Fresh Fish, where results are largely emergent can defy challenge-making, at least the first couple of times you play. You have the challenge of "get your production facilities close to the delivery spots" but it can be hard to translate that into lower-level challenges. Strategies are not readily apparent, so you blithely throw down cubes. If you fail, you don't feel as if you're failed to meet a challenge, but rather just shrug at the situation.
An unexperienced Go player will see opportunities to surround enemy groups, and establish their capture as a Challenge. But more experienced players will know to look for sublte aspects of eyes, sente and aji, carefully choosing which battles to fight, setting up areas of power, and psychological ploys. Their challenges extend to higher and lower levels of abstraction, giving richer gameplay.
So its important that the gameplay provide opportunities for players to establish challenges in the first place. Ideally, this happens from the first play. For example, in Ticket to Ride, tickets suggest the challenge of completing them, and beneath that there are the challenges of finishing particular routes, and therefore challenges of gathering the necessary cards. The game is such a successful gateway game because it provides a rich challenge structure, right off the bat.
Challenge Pursuit
Once a challenge has been established by a player, they need to have the tools to satisfyingly pursue it. There should be uncertainty about whether you will succeed, but you should have some control over your fate. If you don't feel like your efforts affect your consequences, you're going to stop caring about the challenges before you.
A lot of well-known problems with games can be related to this idea. If a game is too luck-heavy, you can find yourself establishing challenges, trying to meet them, but being arbitrary thrwarted. Eventually, you're liable to lose interest. Similarly, there's the "runaway leader problem", where once a player gets ahead there's little other players can do to stop them (often in a racing game). This means that other players' challenge of "winning the game" might not have any subchallenges that could reasonably lead to success. Players end up disengaged from the game without challenging challenges.
-----
So this is a perspective on ways you engage the player, and provide them with opportunities to engage themselves in the gameplay. The encouraging thing is, I can look at a lot of my failed designs and see how they didn't present viable subchallenges. They gave the player win conditions, and choices, but not any interesting nuggets of intermediate goals, success and failure. Conversely, I can see how nearly any game I like has a good challenge structure. I hope that by seeing things this way, I can have a better concept of how to separate promising designs from unpromising ones earlier in the process.
One direct offshoot is that I think the current Monster City design has some real problems here. But the good news is that I have some ideas, albeit drastic ones, on how to fix it. More on that soon.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Romantic Bits
I was looking at a board game book on Amazon, and noticed this cover of a related item. I'm a big fan of bits/pieces/tokens/components in a game - I liked the little gems in Niagara so much that I bought 7 bags of them in various colors for use in prototypes. I just wanna touch em.
For some reason, the little dice with an Anchor on it, in the top right of this picture, really appeals to me. I want to roll a dice and hope for an anchor.
It's strange. Suppose there's a game where you can take a number of actions, as determined by a dice roll, and one of these actions is to move your ship. I'm not that excited about a game where a standard dice is used, and a 6 corresponds to ship movement. But when I need to roll an anchor to move the ship, now I'm stoked.
This is tough to get past when I'm prototyping. You don't have time to do every little thing right in an exploratory prototype, and you certainly don't have the ability to get custom pawns/dice/etc made. So you make do. But sometimes when a game is missing some spark, I have to wonder if the spare physical composition is to blame. I feel like a Niagara prototype, without the canoes, waterfall effect and gems, would belie the appeal that the finished game ended up having.
I even let this problem impede me in the monster city game, where I wanted to use the Memoir 44 dice (depicting tanks, infantry, grenades, etc) so badly that I let it dictate some probabilities I might not have gone with otherwise. The effect wasn't all that profound, but I found myself drawn by the components in a strangely seductive way.
I suppose the answer is to learn to see past the components during a prototype, but that's tough. At very least I need to separate my emotional dissatisfaction with the feel of a game from whether or not its actually working. If its "working" in some sense, I might need to gussy it up a bit and see how it feels then. The more I think about it, I know of plenty of games that would have seemed pretty lame before a proper componenting out.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Flexibility in Representations / Racetrack Design
I've been sketching lots of maps for the Pirate Co-op game, just trying to get a feel for the design space. But it occured to me it would be really nice to have a way to be really flexible about this, to have a physical map that could be readily rearranged during playtesting.
Heroscape tiles might be nice if we ended up with a hex-based game (this is still not certain, believe it or not!). But just starting with a map with a blank grid, and then placing island / trade route / dangerous seas tiles on it could work too. Its strange, I assumed we would have a printed map, but there's really no reason that must be the case, especially not during playtesting.
-
The concept of a flexible, intermediate representation of design ideas is something that I've been thinking about a lot. When you're designing, its often a matter of finding a medium that reflects the properties you're looking for and then:
1) creating a representation of your ideas in that medium
2) evaluating that representation to see if it has the qualities you're looking for
3) adjusting or creating a representation based on what you saw
Ideally, you end up in Schon's of Reflection in Action, where this all happens as a unified, creative thought process, where you're evaluating as you create.
So, you want a representation that is easy to create, but that tells you what you need to know. These are the two steps I've always focused on when thinking about this stuff, ignoring that third step of adjusting course. Maybe that's because most of the books I've seen on this subject focus on sketching, where you usually make sketch after sketch, rather than trying to adjust a previous drawing.
But what about a representation that lends itself to changing its configuration? That is, rather than sketching map after map, should I be creating a physical set of objects that can be nudged around as I see fit?
-
So I was already thinking about this a bit, but what prompted me to post was seeing this show about a guy who designs racetracks. They had this footage of his studio, and I immediately started to wonder, what sort of representations would you use for this? As he pointed out, you need to consider making the course challenging to drive, interesting to watch, you need to work with the topography of the land. They showed these drawings of course layouts, but I didn't see how you could get to those just by drawing squiggle after squiggle and saying 'that looks like a good one!'
About 5 minutes later, I wasn't disappointed. They had built a topographical model of a location out of layers and layers of cardboard, and were using pins with yarn between them to lay out possible course routes. They had multiple routes in different colors, and when one guy placed this red segment, they talked about how it had this nice drop down the hill, and how the cars would really fly down it given the angle and the speed they would have. How cool is that?
The lesson I got from this was how to build prototypes so that you can readily adjust them as you're playtesting. More specifically, don't assume that the approach you're going to use in the final game is the approach you have to use for a playtest: even if you plan to use a static map in the end, tiles might do you good in the meantime. For reasons I won't get into here, I firmly believe playtesting is one of the only good ways to get feedback about a board game design, and ensuring that third "adjusting" step is as easy as possible seems like a good idea.
Is this obvious? Maybe? Its something I overlooked though, and it seems like an observation worth holding onto.
[Finally started adding labels. Will maybe go back and add them to the old ones some day.]
Heroscape tiles might be nice if we ended up with a hex-based game (this is still not certain, believe it or not!). But just starting with a map with a blank grid, and then placing island / trade route / dangerous seas tiles on it could work too. Its strange, I assumed we would have a printed map, but there's really no reason that must be the case, especially not during playtesting.
-
The concept of a flexible, intermediate representation of design ideas is something that I've been thinking about a lot. When you're designing, its often a matter of finding a medium that reflects the properties you're looking for and then:
1) creating a representation of your ideas in that medium
2) evaluating that representation to see if it has the qualities you're looking for
3) adjusting or creating a representation based on what you saw
Ideally, you end up in Schon's of Reflection in Action, where this all happens as a unified, creative thought process, where you're evaluating as you create.
So, you want a representation that is easy to create, but that tells you what you need to know. These are the two steps I've always focused on when thinking about this stuff, ignoring that third step of adjusting course. Maybe that's because most of the books I've seen on this subject focus on sketching, where you usually make sketch after sketch, rather than trying to adjust a previous drawing.
But what about a representation that lends itself to changing its configuration? That is, rather than sketching map after map, should I be creating a physical set of objects that can be nudged around as I see fit?
-
So I was already thinking about this a bit, but what prompted me to post was seeing this show about a guy who designs racetracks. They had this footage of his studio, and I immediately started to wonder, what sort of representations would you use for this? As he pointed out, you need to consider making the course challenging to drive, interesting to watch, you need to work with the topography of the land. They showed these drawings of course layouts, but I didn't see how you could get to those just by drawing squiggle after squiggle and saying 'that looks like a good one!'
About 5 minutes later, I wasn't disappointed. They had built a topographical model of a location out of layers and layers of cardboard, and were using pins with yarn between them to lay out possible course routes. They had multiple routes in different colors, and when one guy placed this red segment, they talked about how it had this nice drop down the hill, and how the cars would really fly down it given the angle and the speed they would have. How cool is that?
The lesson I got from this was how to build prototypes so that you can readily adjust them as you're playtesting. More specifically, don't assume that the approach you're going to use in the final game is the approach you have to use for a playtest: even if you plan to use a static map in the end, tiles might do you good in the meantime. For reasons I won't get into here, I firmly believe playtesting is one of the only good ways to get feedback about a board game design, and ensuring that third "adjusting" step is as easy as possible seems like a good idea.
Is this obvious? Maybe? Its something I overlooked though, and it seems like an observation worth holding onto.
[Finally started adding labels. Will maybe go back and add them to the old ones some day.]
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Stoke of Genius
Another idea I'm haunted by is the stroke of genius, the feeling that there is a wholly unique approach to games that is waiting out there to be happened upon, some utterly elegant, appealing idea, that is just out of reach. I get so excited about looking for it sometimes, but so far I've come up empty.
On a few occaisions, I've had the experience where I'm sleeping, and in my dreams something really good will happen, maybe I'll come into some great sum of money. And while I'm still dreaming, it occurs to me in this vague way that I can't "keep" the money, that its not real. I'm filled this vague, deep sense of loss that I suspect can only be felt by the sleeping mind, my dream's existential crisis, I suppose. And after that flash of recognition, fevered dream logic frantically bargains with reality, thinking there must be some way, and then the whole thing folds in on itself and I wake up, always a tiny bit disappointed that my boon didn't find its way through with me. Its sort of like that when I think way outside convention, looking for that overlooked gem of an idea: this excitement, and then sense of something slipping through my fingers.
I have a game that I respect a lot, and its not really one you'd necessarily expect. Apples to Apples is not a perfect game, and its something of a crutch when the group gets big, and we've played it to death, and the gameplay is shallow in various ways and so on. But it is such a simple idea, it is so utterly clean, and it has no precedent that I'm aware of in games. Its such a pure example of emergent gameplay, where the actual mechanics are absolutely tiny, but the discussions and repercussions of each choice are where the fun lives.
On some level, maybe I get frustrated trying to carve out a game the right way, which is really difficult, and I just hope for that flash of inspiration to free me from my "lack of having even a single game design I'm really happy with under my belt". Its like summing the numbers from one to one-thousand by hand, knowing in the back of your mind that there must be a formula that will let you find the answer in 15 seconds.
And I don't even want commercial success, just something satisfying. I think maybe the answer at the tip of my brain still has something to do with drawing, or maybe it was physical-levels, or maybe... but its always too quick to grab, too smooth to hold, as Kevin Drew says, tbtf, and so on until morning.
On a few occaisions, I've had the experience where I'm sleeping, and in my dreams something really good will happen, maybe I'll come into some great sum of money. And while I'm still dreaming, it occurs to me in this vague way that I can't "keep" the money, that its not real. I'm filled this vague, deep sense of loss that I suspect can only be felt by the sleeping mind, my dream's existential crisis, I suppose. And after that flash of recognition, fevered dream logic frantically bargains with reality, thinking there must be some way, and then the whole thing folds in on itself and I wake up, always a tiny bit disappointed that my boon didn't find its way through with me. Its sort of like that when I think way outside convention, looking for that overlooked gem of an idea: this excitement, and then sense of something slipping through my fingers.
I have a game that I respect a lot, and its not really one you'd necessarily expect. Apples to Apples is not a perfect game, and its something of a crutch when the group gets big, and we've played it to death, and the gameplay is shallow in various ways and so on. But it is such a simple idea, it is so utterly clean, and it has no precedent that I'm aware of in games. Its such a pure example of emergent gameplay, where the actual mechanics are absolutely tiny, but the discussions and repercussions of each choice are where the fun lives.
On some level, maybe I get frustrated trying to carve out a game the right way, which is really difficult, and I just hope for that flash of inspiration to free me from my "lack of having even a single game design I'm really happy with under my belt". Its like summing the numbers from one to one-thousand by hand, knowing in the back of your mind that there must be a formula that will let you find the answer in 15 seconds.
And I don't even want commercial success, just something satisfying. I think maybe the answer at the tip of my brain still has something to do with drawing, or maybe it was physical-levels, or maybe... but its always too quick to grab, too smooth to hold, as Kevin Drew says, tbtf, and so on until morning.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Theme and Mechanic Traps vs. Tension-Resolution
This idea is something that I have had percolating for some time now. I don't know if I can quite bang the whole thing out, but I wanted to get the essence down.
My early game designs fell into two approaches, both "traps", in the sense of leading me down wrong paths and ending up at games that weren't going to work.
The Theme Trap
The theme trap is where you think of an awesome scenario, and want to make a board game that creates the awesomeness of that scenario. For example, my early versions of my Monster-in-the-city games were born from this. I liked the idea of monsters wrecking a city; you could wreck buildings! Stomp tanks! So I started from that point, and let some major, important decisions be made in that spirit.
I.e.: Each player has a monster. But who controlls the city? Well, each player also has a set of army units! What are some appropriate army units, how about infantry, tanks and planes? How should those move? Well, infantry should be slow, planes should be able to move really far in a long line. And monsters should be able to have fire breath and eye beams and...
It sounds really childish, and I am giving myself a hard time a bit, but its really easy to fall into this trap. Some games can pull it off, but they usually do so with an (unpredictable) one-effect-per-card deck, give the cards to the players, and let the whole thing fall out as it may. It sort of can work, but the gameplay is usually pretty unsatisfying.
The Mechanic Trap
This is where you come up with a clever mechanic or interaction, and try to build a game around it. You would think the outcome is a successful game with no theme, but that's not quite it in my experience. For me, it doesn't even turn into a workable game.
A lot of my designs have fallen into this trap. And I think the problem is, I see an interesting interaction of rules, and I build a game around them, but there often isn't any game there. I might call a sub-problem of this the "engine trap", where basically I build an interesting engine that the players can toy with, hoping that their doing so in opposition to one another will lead to interesting gameplay, but it just doesn't. It doesn't lead to good player interaction, there are positive feedback loops of success or failure, the whole thing ends up feeling like its playing itself, or its just not fun for some reason.
I had a game design (lets call this Mistake Explanation #4) where you were a scientist/wizard who was collecting body parts and workers and buildings, and using them to create zombies, which could be used as workers, and made money for more buildings, all powered by some kind of drafting mechanic (which I spent far too long in love with). Basically, one thing lead to the next, lead to the next, lead towards a victory state, and it was up to the players to grab the right stuff. But the game ended up feeling totally arbitrary and frustrating from the player side, and the player interaction was minimal at best.
It ended up feeling like sitting with your opponents at one of those conveyor-belt sushi bars, trying to get full the cheapest (god dammit, that sort of sounds like a doable game). But my point is, it was a clever machine, and you were competing, but it wasn't much of a game.
The 2-Player Monster/City Experience
Recently, its mostly been the theme trap that's been messing with me on the 2-Player Monster/City game (any name suggestions? this is getting ridiculous). I realized I wasn't getting the gameplay I wanted out of the top-down city map, and kept shrinking the board, turning the easy knobs, without looking at the root of the problem. Shouldn't it be more interesting to maneuver around the city? Why wasn't it?
I realized that I had decided on the city unit types/abilities/stats basically for thematic reasons, but not because they actually figured to lead to interesting gameplay. There should be artillery, it should have infinite range. There should be infantry, they should basically be canon fodder to slow the monster down.
Even monster rules came about this way, and I fell into traps of things that seemed to have nice synergy, but that didn't necesssarily contribute to overall gameplay. I want infantry to slow down the monster, and thematically it seems like the monster should be able to stomp right over human units, so I'll say he can kill the first unit he gets to, but then has to stop. This, lead to other decisions that were made in similarly willy-nilly ways.
This wasn't wholly responsible for the failings of the design, but it wasn't the right way to make the decisions. I wanted, at one point, for the game to be about containing the monster, but I made decisions counter to that. Artillery as a unit made no sense at all in this game, but I liked the image of artillery shooting at a monster, and in the unit went.
Solutions?
I've cone to realize that player interaction is crucial as a starting inspiration point and evaluation criteria, especially in a 2-player game, you would think. Further, I've started to see designing in terms of tensions. The core of a game is establishing tension and providing satisfying resolution. You have to create a situation where 1) the outcome is in question, and possible results fall into categories that are more or less advantageous to the player, 2) where the player is able to affect the outcome in a way that makes its resolution satisfying. I won't go into a long string of examples, but I think this is present in nearly any good game I can think of.
Conversely, games where the outcomes aren't forseeable enough to be hoped/pushed for, or where the possibility of outcomes produce tension but the resolution is so arbitrary that the player loses interest, abound - and can blame many of their problems for this failing. I was working on a list/taxonomy of game problems, and many of them fall into here in one way or another. A game with too much luck is an obvious choice, but the runaway leader problem is on a larger scale; it is an inability to maintain tension because while the short term outcomes are still predicatable and affectable, players are so far behind they aren't compelled to care.
So can your mechanics yield tension in the short term, on a move by move basis, and maintain it over the course of the game? And, on repeat plays, does the game remain unpredictable, yet controllable enough that it remains compelling. I think the double-sided loop game Chad and I worked on in Seattle last year was actually well designed in the sense that we put move-by-move tension as a first priority, but its most-pips-wins aspect eventually killed it, since the overall result no longer seemed to resolve satisfyingly (there's still something in that game).
Anyway, this has gone on quite long enough, I'm going to try to rethink this monster game drastically, get back to the kinds of tensions I'm trying to build, and make my choices around supporting them. Interestingly enough, I think there might be futures for both the top-down and side-scrolling games - at least if I get stuck on one I can work at the other for a bit. Cheers to you if you read this far!
My early game designs fell into two approaches, both "traps", in the sense of leading me down wrong paths and ending up at games that weren't going to work.
The Theme Trap
The theme trap is where you think of an awesome scenario, and want to make a board game that creates the awesomeness of that scenario. For example, my early versions of my Monster-in-the-city games were born from this. I liked the idea of monsters wrecking a city; you could wreck buildings! Stomp tanks! So I started from that point, and let some major, important decisions be made in that spirit.
I.e.: Each player has a monster. But who controlls the city? Well, each player also has a set of army units! What are some appropriate army units, how about infantry, tanks and planes? How should those move? Well, infantry should be slow, planes should be able to move really far in a long line. And monsters should be able to have fire breath and eye beams and...
It sounds really childish, and I am giving myself a hard time a bit, but its really easy to fall into this trap. Some games can pull it off, but they usually do so with an (unpredictable) one-effect-per-card deck, give the cards to the players, and let the whole thing fall out as it may. It sort of can work, but the gameplay is usually pretty unsatisfying.
The Mechanic Trap
This is where you come up with a clever mechanic or interaction, and try to build a game around it. You would think the outcome is a successful game with no theme, but that's not quite it in my experience. For me, it doesn't even turn into a workable game.
A lot of my designs have fallen into this trap. And I think the problem is, I see an interesting interaction of rules, and I build a game around them, but there often isn't any game there. I might call a sub-problem of this the "engine trap", where basically I build an interesting engine that the players can toy with, hoping that their doing so in opposition to one another will lead to interesting gameplay, but it just doesn't. It doesn't lead to good player interaction, there are positive feedback loops of success or failure, the whole thing ends up feeling like its playing itself, or its just not fun for some reason.
I had a game design (lets call this Mistake Explanation #4) where you were a scientist/wizard who was collecting body parts and workers and buildings, and using them to create zombies, which could be used as workers, and made money for more buildings, all powered by some kind of drafting mechanic (which I spent far too long in love with). Basically, one thing lead to the next, lead to the next, lead towards a victory state, and it was up to the players to grab the right stuff. But the game ended up feeling totally arbitrary and frustrating from the player side, and the player interaction was minimal at best.
It ended up feeling like sitting with your opponents at one of those conveyor-belt sushi bars, trying to get full the cheapest (god dammit, that sort of sounds like a doable game). But my point is, it was a clever machine, and you were competing, but it wasn't much of a game.
The 2-Player Monster/City Experience
Recently, its mostly been the theme trap that's been messing with me on the 2-Player Monster/City game (any name suggestions? this is getting ridiculous). I realized I wasn't getting the gameplay I wanted out of the top-down city map, and kept shrinking the board, turning the easy knobs, without looking at the root of the problem. Shouldn't it be more interesting to maneuver around the city? Why wasn't it?
I realized that I had decided on the city unit types/abilities/stats basically for thematic reasons, but not because they actually figured to lead to interesting gameplay. There should be artillery, it should have infinite range. There should be infantry, they should basically be canon fodder to slow the monster down.
Even monster rules came about this way, and I fell into traps of things that seemed to have nice synergy, but that didn't necesssarily contribute to overall gameplay. I want infantry to slow down the monster, and thematically it seems like the monster should be able to stomp right over human units, so I'll say he can kill the first unit he gets to, but then has to stop. This, lead to other decisions that were made in similarly willy-nilly ways.
This wasn't wholly responsible for the failings of the design, but it wasn't the right way to make the decisions. I wanted, at one point, for the game to be about containing the monster, but I made decisions counter to that. Artillery as a unit made no sense at all in this game, but I liked the image of artillery shooting at a monster, and in the unit went.
Solutions?
I've cone to realize that player interaction is crucial as a starting inspiration point and evaluation criteria, especially in a 2-player game, you would think. Further, I've started to see designing in terms of tensions. The core of a game is establishing tension and providing satisfying resolution. You have to create a situation where 1) the outcome is in question, and possible results fall into categories that are more or less advantageous to the player, 2) where the player is able to affect the outcome in a way that makes its resolution satisfying. I won't go into a long string of examples, but I think this is present in nearly any good game I can think of.
Conversely, games where the outcomes aren't forseeable enough to be hoped/pushed for, or where the possibility of outcomes produce tension but the resolution is so arbitrary that the player loses interest, abound - and can blame many of their problems for this failing. I was working on a list/taxonomy of game problems, and many of them fall into here in one way or another. A game with too much luck is an obvious choice, but the runaway leader problem is on a larger scale; it is an inability to maintain tension because while the short term outcomes are still predicatable and affectable, players are so far behind they aren't compelled to care.
So can your mechanics yield tension in the short term, on a move by move basis, and maintain it over the course of the game? And, on repeat plays, does the game remain unpredictable, yet controllable enough that it remains compelling. I think the double-sided loop game Chad and I worked on in Seattle last year was actually well designed in the sense that we put move-by-move tension as a first priority, but its most-pips-wins aspect eventually killed it, since the overall result no longer seemed to resolve satisfyingly (there's still something in that game).
Anyway, this has gone on quite long enough, I'm going to try to rethink this monster game drastically, get back to the kinds of tensions I'm trying to build, and make my choices around supporting them. Interestingly enough, I think there might be futures for both the top-down and side-scrolling games - at least if I get stuck on one I can work at the other for a bit. Cheers to you if you read this far!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
NYC Gamer
Just a quick link to another game blog I stumbled upon: http://www.columbia.edu/~tir2101/nycgamer.html
It appears to be defunct, and its mostly session reports, but there are some interesting theoretical discussions in there. In particular, I like his last post, pointing out the dilema of the most-powerful move, and the risk of waiting too long to pull the trigger on it. I wish he had gone into a little more detail about the implications of that mechanic, but then his is a game blog, not a game design blog. It got me thinking just the same - a simple idea with delicious tension.
Also, his photomontage of his collection over time is a feast for the eyes.
Finally, between my last post about dexterity games and Mr. NYC Gamer's post about some custom Crokinole boards, I am closer than ever to pulling the trigger on a board for myself. 150ish bucks seems like a god damned lot, but I continue to hear nothing but good things about this game, and it seems in line with what I'm looking for these days. I doubt I'll bring myself to do it any time soon, though Tumblin-Dice remains a cheaper, similarly intriguing dexterity-oriented proposition.
It appears to be defunct, and its mostly session reports, but there are some interesting theoretical discussions in there. In particular, I like his last post, pointing out the dilema of the most-powerful move, and the risk of waiting too long to pull the trigger on it. I wish he had gone into a little more detail about the implications of that mechanic, but then his is a game blog, not a game design blog. It got me thinking just the same - a simple idea with delicious tension.
Also, his photomontage of his collection over time is a feast for the eyes.
Finally, between my last post about dexterity games and Mr. NYC Gamer's post about some custom Crokinole boards, I am closer than ever to pulling the trigger on a board for myself. 150ish bucks seems like a god damned lot, but I continue to hear nothing but good things about this game, and it seems in line with what I'm looking for these days. I doubt I'll bring myself to do it any time soon, though Tumblin-Dice remains a cheaper, similarly intriguing dexterity-oriented proposition.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Dexterity Games
Oh, nothing nips at the back of my mind like dexterity games. All too often, when I'm playing a real board game, I find myself thinking about how it might be a dexterity game instead (I just had an idea on how to do Masons, while I was typing this). Why is that?
I think the main thing is, in a board game setting, you divide your attention between 3 things: decision-making, enacting, and storytelling. Decision-making is the actual game playing, the actual choosing from among choices, and is usually the fun part when it doesn't become overwhelming. Storytelling is also the fun part, where you associate the events in the game with a larger, thematic, metaphorical plotline that you can derive enjoyment from. Enacting stands in between, its the actual movement of pieces, looking up results in tables, shuffling cards - its not the fun part.
Different games make each of these easier or harder. Some games give you horrifyingly complex decision trees that are no fun to decide. Some games have rules so at odds with reality that its hard to keep your mental story connected to them. And some games make you spend forever screwing around with enacting the decisions that you're making that you're trying to tell a story with, to the point of ruining your fun.
This gets to the heart of what I like about dexterity games - their enactment is handled for you. You make a decision, apply force skillfully (which might be a new step), and stuff just happens. Sure you might have to do some setup and teardown, but during the game, you can work between decision and outcome, and therefore overall story, fairly seamlessly. Look at Pitchcar - rather than having to roll a dice, check your gear, and look up items in a chart in order to see if you make a turn, you flick a disc, and it either does or doesn't.
Its instant gratification, and when it comes to games and play and staying in a flow state of sorts, thats a good thing.
Two developments I'd like to see in dexerity games:
1) More story. Too many dexterity games are just about flicking discs or stacking blocks, without any thematic conceit on them. I like the idea that when a tower falls, that represents a tower of some kind, in some larger world, rather than just "my blocks fell!". Pitchcar remains a notable exception.
2) More real-time dexterity. There's an image in my mind of a game, Crokinole-like, with players sitting around a central area, flicking objects into the middle. They are on two asymetrical teams, and each has a reason to go quickly, generally to outpace the other team in establishing positioning, or achieving some other goal. Thematic punch is attached, and players have to balance rushing with lining up their shots well. This is vague, but its been kicking around in my mind for years - I'll try to dedicate a post to it some time.
I think the main thing is, in a board game setting, you divide your attention between 3 things: decision-making, enacting, and storytelling. Decision-making is the actual game playing, the actual choosing from among choices, and is usually the fun part when it doesn't become overwhelming. Storytelling is also the fun part, where you associate the events in the game with a larger, thematic, metaphorical plotline that you can derive enjoyment from. Enacting stands in between, its the actual movement of pieces, looking up results in tables, shuffling cards - its not the fun part.
Different games make each of these easier or harder. Some games give you horrifyingly complex decision trees that are no fun to decide. Some games have rules so at odds with reality that its hard to keep your mental story connected to them. And some games make you spend forever screwing around with enacting the decisions that you're making that you're trying to tell a story with, to the point of ruining your fun.
This gets to the heart of what I like about dexterity games - their enactment is handled for you. You make a decision, apply force skillfully (which might be a new step), and stuff just happens. Sure you might have to do some setup and teardown, but during the game, you can work between decision and outcome, and therefore overall story, fairly seamlessly. Look at Pitchcar - rather than having to roll a dice, check your gear, and look up items in a chart in order to see if you make a turn, you flick a disc, and it either does or doesn't.
Its instant gratification, and when it comes to games and play and staying in a flow state of sorts, thats a good thing.
Two developments I'd like to see in dexerity games:
1) More story. Too many dexterity games are just about flicking discs or stacking blocks, without any thematic conceit on them. I like the idea that when a tower falls, that represents a tower of some kind, in some larger world, rather than just "my blocks fell!". Pitchcar remains a notable exception.
2) More real-time dexterity. There's an image in my mind of a game, Crokinole-like, with players sitting around a central area, flicking objects into the middle. They are on two asymetrical teams, and each has a reason to go quickly, generally to outpace the other team in establishing positioning, or achieving some other goal. Thematic punch is attached, and players have to balance rushing with lining up their shots well. This is vague, but its been kicking around in my mind for years - I'll try to dedicate a post to it some time.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Mistake 3: The Hand Passing Mechanic
Years ago, I spent a week's worth of inconsequential grad class sessions pondering the idea of a hand-passing game. The basic idea was that you had a hand of cards, each of which could be played to achieve some effect. At some point, you would pass your entire hand to the player on your left, thereby affecting their choices.
The Appeal
At the time I created this game, I was mired in creating game systems that had interesting interactions with the player, but didn't necessarily provide interesting opportunities for interactions between the players. I was finding ways to force this back in.
What a nice, fundamental way to affect someone else than to wholly provide them with all of their options. You would have to balance what you wanted to do against what you were providing them with. You could theoretically set them up with dangerous situations, different combinations of cards that might be disadventagous to their paticular situation.
The Office Idea
The original concept I used for this was that cards were tasks to be performed in an office. The board was, predictably, an office, with a series of spaces representing rooms. Each card told you a place you had to be, and a number of negative points (effort) that were incurred by playing that card. Your goals was to make a move that caused you to move onto another player's token, at which point you could shirk all (or some?) of your cards onto them, absolving yourself of the need to actually take on the negative points you would have gotten if you had played them yourself.
The Problem
Well, the basic problem was that there was no real game here. It was a cute idea, where I lept onto a conceit that took advantage of it, but nothing in terms of gameplay or fun really emerged.
More fundamentally, the problem with this mechanic is decision trees. You have enough on your plate worrying about you want to do, to have to get into another player's shoes, figure out what they want, balance not giving it to them against what you want. Its too much, especially in what is supposed to be a light game. It's not any fun.
Is the idea salvagable? I think maybe so, but I need:
* Very simple cards, which other players might be forced to use
* Your primary goal needs to be to mess other people up. If you're going to have to spend all this time looking at what the other players are going to do, that should be the main thrust. That's hard enough to play your moves, planning what someone else might do is really, really hard. It can't be something that you do as a side goal to advancing your own options.
I'm not sure what that would look like. I'm picturing something like Roborally, where you pass move cards to a player, trying to force them to hurtle into bad situations.
But how much control does the recipient have when they receive cards? If they can order 7 cards as they see fit, its pretty tough to really overtly enact your will on them in any effective way.
And is it any fun to have something forced on you this way?
My verdict for now: its an idea that sounds nice, but its flawed. Its a bad combination: you make basic choices, while another player makes the final choices. Trying to make that fun for the passing player is potentially impossible, and if you succeed, the recieving player is making false "final" decisions, and may not be having any fun.
Maybe its a thematic switch we need. Maybe you pass cards to a player who makes final choices with them, about *your* piece. But still, not all that fun.
Still a nice idea to have in the arsenal, just in case a situation ripe for it arises.
The Appeal
At the time I created this game, I was mired in creating game systems that had interesting interactions with the player, but didn't necessarily provide interesting opportunities for interactions between the players. I was finding ways to force this back in.
What a nice, fundamental way to affect someone else than to wholly provide them with all of their options. You would have to balance what you wanted to do against what you were providing them with. You could theoretically set them up with dangerous situations, different combinations of cards that might be disadventagous to their paticular situation.
The Office Idea
The original concept I used for this was that cards were tasks to be performed in an office. The board was, predictably, an office, with a series of spaces representing rooms. Each card told you a place you had to be, and a number of negative points (effort) that were incurred by playing that card. Your goals was to make a move that caused you to move onto another player's token, at which point you could shirk all (or some?) of your cards onto them, absolving yourself of the need to actually take on the negative points you would have gotten if you had played them yourself.
The Problem
Well, the basic problem was that there was no real game here. It was a cute idea, where I lept onto a conceit that took advantage of it, but nothing in terms of gameplay or fun really emerged.
More fundamentally, the problem with this mechanic is decision trees. You have enough on your plate worrying about you want to do, to have to get into another player's shoes, figure out what they want, balance not giving it to them against what you want. Its too much, especially in what is supposed to be a light game. It's not any fun.
Is the idea salvagable? I think maybe so, but I need:
* Very simple cards, which other players might be forced to use
* Your primary goal needs to be to mess other people up. If you're going to have to spend all this time looking at what the other players are going to do, that should be the main thrust. That's hard enough to play your moves, planning what someone else might do is really, really hard. It can't be something that you do as a side goal to advancing your own options.
I'm not sure what that would look like. I'm picturing something like Roborally, where you pass move cards to a player, trying to force them to hurtle into bad situations.
But how much control does the recipient have when they receive cards? If they can order 7 cards as they see fit, its pretty tough to really overtly enact your will on them in any effective way.
And is it any fun to have something forced on you this way?
My verdict for now: its an idea that sounds nice, but its flawed. Its a bad combination: you make basic choices, while another player makes the final choices. Trying to make that fun for the passing player is potentially impossible, and if you succeed, the recieving player is making false "final" decisions, and may not be having any fun.
Maybe its a thematic switch we need. Maybe you pass cards to a player who makes final choices with them, about *your* piece. But still, not all that fun.
Still a nice idea to have in the arsenal, just in case a situation ripe for it arises.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Social Games
I love the way that games, especially board games, have the power to provide a social experience. The giant joystick in this clip certainly got me thinking about that idea:
http://www.areyouindie.com/showcase/profile.php?id=19
Part of why I'm down on video games lately is that, while they can provide a heck of an experience, its generally not a social one. That often makes the experience empty, somehow, if you ask me.
Mankind's earlier games, from board games to general acts of vaguely organized frollick, were inherently social, at very least by nature of involving one or more people. One could argue that this was out of necessity.
Let me back up a step: one major difference between a game and a non-game activity is unpredictability. You don't know what's going to happen next when you play a game, and trying to affect that outcome, and experiencing the results, is part of the joy of it. This is why we don't play games that are "solved", why we shun the broken strategy, why a game without depth loses its appeal quickly. We don't want to go through the motions, we want the thrill of uncertainty, and the challenge of affecting it.
So, early on, the easiest way to provide challenge and uncertainty was to pit players against one another. You want X, he wants not-X, conflict ensues, the outcome is uncertain.
But computers can do a bunch of stuff under the hood, can cut decision outcomes along time-discretions so fine that our performance is at the mercy of our more base reflexes, they can provide an uncertain outcome in our interaction with them.
And sure, a deck of cards for solitaire can provide uncertainty. A ball-and-cup game, through the finer points of physics can provide the unexpected bounce and twitch.
But for many people, the social end of gaming has become the exception.
Some people are fine with all this, I'd reckon. 'Gimme uncertainty, via a person or a magic box or whatever, I want to impose my will on the world. Thank god I'm not at the mercy of having other people around to get my game on'. I can't imagine anyone actually uttering that statement, ever. But you get the point, I don't think some people see the loss of a human element in games as a problem.
For me though, I feel like I need that social element. Believe it or not, this isn't even meant as some screed in favor of social interaction, its just what I'm finding I want from games lately. When I play video games, I strive for coop gameplay when I can find it. Even when I play a video game alone, I find myself looking for games that are going to promote social interaction after-the fact. I like my ownership-of-experience games (I don't think I've done my rant on this yet here) where I can tell someone a story of what I did that is different from the experience that every player has. I want something where I can compare achievements and high scores. Bioshock's coming out, and I'm stoked to play it, but its at least partially because I want to talk about (what's shaping up to be) a landmark game, with other game lovers.
Side note, I played the demo, god damn. An enormous, abandoned 1950's underwater city, ready to collapse under the weight of the ocean at any moment, filled with period propaganda, magestic architecture, and crawling with maniacs. Abandoned, underwater, 50's, metropolis. Jesus! Best video game atmosphere ever? So yeah, I'm still a sucker for the solo elements.
This comes into board games too. They're inherently social, but I'm finding I want to weild this in ways other than outright competition. Not just because of my game-based neuroses, though I'm sure thats part of it, I feel like there are other kinds of interaction that can be inspired by games than I-win, you-lose. I'd like more cooperative games, and even games that encourage creative expression, for example. That's a lofty enough goal, I'll stop short of games that let you share your feelings.
To get back to the initial inspiration, I love the idea of the giant joystick. It's collaborative, but furthermore, it allows people to choose their own approach to the collaboration. Its cooperative, but there's a negotiation there, I can imagine. Its a creative act, just playing it, just deciding how to play it, and one that multiple people participate in. All this despite being a video game. Delicious.
I can only dream of a board game design like that: one that allows people to choose their own mode of interaction, while providing enough of a framework so that the whole exercise doesn't fall into disarray.
It seems impossible, but as if often the case with these posts, I'm warmed by the promise of the idea's distant glow.
http://www.areyouindie.com/showcase/profile.php?id=19
Part of why I'm down on video games lately is that, while they can provide a heck of an experience, its generally not a social one. That often makes the experience empty, somehow, if you ask me.
Mankind's earlier games, from board games to general acts of vaguely organized frollick, were inherently social, at very least by nature of involving one or more people. One could argue that this was out of necessity.
Let me back up a step: one major difference between a game and a non-game activity is unpredictability. You don't know what's going to happen next when you play a game, and trying to affect that outcome, and experiencing the results, is part of the joy of it. This is why we don't play games that are "solved", why we shun the broken strategy, why a game without depth loses its appeal quickly. We don't want to go through the motions, we want the thrill of uncertainty, and the challenge of affecting it.
So, early on, the easiest way to provide challenge and uncertainty was to pit players against one another. You want X, he wants not-X, conflict ensues, the outcome is uncertain.
But computers can do a bunch of stuff under the hood, can cut decision outcomes along time-discretions so fine that our performance is at the mercy of our more base reflexes, they can provide an uncertain outcome in our interaction with them.
And sure, a deck of cards for solitaire can provide uncertainty. A ball-and-cup game, through the finer points of physics can provide the unexpected bounce and twitch.
But for many people, the social end of gaming has become the exception.
Some people are fine with all this, I'd reckon. 'Gimme uncertainty, via a person or a magic box or whatever, I want to impose my will on the world. Thank god I'm not at the mercy of having other people around to get my game on'. I can't imagine anyone actually uttering that statement, ever. But you get the point, I don't think some people see the loss of a human element in games as a problem.
For me though, I feel like I need that social element. Believe it or not, this isn't even meant as some screed in favor of social interaction, its just what I'm finding I want from games lately. When I play video games, I strive for coop gameplay when I can find it. Even when I play a video game alone, I find myself looking for games that are going to promote social interaction after-the fact. I like my ownership-of-experience games (I don't think I've done my rant on this yet here) where I can tell someone a story of what I did that is different from the experience that every player has. I want something where I can compare achievements and high scores. Bioshock's coming out, and I'm stoked to play it, but its at least partially because I want to talk about (what's shaping up to be) a landmark game, with other game lovers.
Side note, I played the demo, god damn. An enormous, abandoned 1950's underwater city, ready to collapse under the weight of the ocean at any moment, filled with period propaganda, magestic architecture, and crawling with maniacs. Abandoned, underwater, 50's, metropolis. Jesus! Best video game atmosphere ever? So yeah, I'm still a sucker for the solo elements.
This comes into board games too. They're inherently social, but I'm finding I want to weild this in ways other than outright competition. Not just because of my game-based neuroses, though I'm sure thats part of it, I feel like there are other kinds of interaction that can be inspired by games than I-win, you-lose. I'd like more cooperative games, and even games that encourage creative expression, for example. That's a lofty enough goal, I'll stop short of games that let you share your feelings.
To get back to the initial inspiration, I love the idea of the giant joystick. It's collaborative, but furthermore, it allows people to choose their own approach to the collaboration. Its cooperative, but there's a negotiation there, I can imagine. Its a creative act, just playing it, just deciding how to play it, and one that multiple people participate in. All this despite being a video game. Delicious.
I can only dream of a board game design like that: one that allows people to choose their own mode of interaction, while providing enough of a framework so that the whole exercise doesn't fall into disarray.
It seems impossible, but as if often the case with these posts, I'm warmed by the promise of the idea's distant glow.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Random long-held passionate game desire:
Man, I want a decent game that revolves around drawing things. I think it was looking at the latest posts on Mary's blog earlier today that reminded me of how strongly that is the case, and how it has haunted me for years. There are certain ways that playing games and drawing are at odds with eachother, but I feel like there's overlap that lingers just outside my grasp.
I don't want something quite like pictionary, where someone draws and everyone else watches. I think I want something where everybody draws something and then presents them towards some end. I want more drawing time than 1 / (numPlayers) of the time.
And not something where your drawing abitility necessarily gets you the win, as should go without saying. I want to reward creativity, though that's no small challenge, no?
- - Motivation - -
To backtrack my motivations, as they become clear even to myself, what I really want is a game that encourages people to be creative, and to revel in eachothers creativity. To let people share their ideas with one another, to enjoy having their ideas appreciated, and to enjoy appreciating others' ideas.
This already exists, its called conversation. But I think there's the potential for a game to spur people on, to encourage interaction and participation, and even creativity (von Oech reminds us that restrictions spur creativity). I don't want a situation where the game is "The rules say you have to invent something right now!" - it needs to seduce. So I think of those vocal-style parlor games (or my growing repatior of no-materials car games), but that's not quite it - though somewhat in the spirit, perhaps.
Drawings appeal to me much more. There is that explicit phase of thought, creation, elaboration and adjustment, where an idea can be developed in private, before being revealed onto the others at hand. And besides, we talk plenty, and draw far too little. Finally, I like the idea of a record of the game, the fact that the drawings can persist.
- - Competitive? - -
But I don't know of any game that gets it quite right yet. I think the hardest decision is how formal to make this. I feel like some sort of reward system is in order - some concept of success to be achieved. But I don't want something overly competitive either; I expect the game is going to be pretty subjective, and I don't want to necesarily reward the besty artist unduly, and hurt feelings need to be avoided at all costs - a recipe for minimal winner-declaration.
I think that Apples to Apples is a good analog here, where points are gained, but nobody really tracks them or feels a strong sense of victory upon acquiring the most.
- - Success Measures - -
Ah, but the hard part. What do you draw? What makes one drawing better than another? So right now I'm working under the high-level model of "everybody draws, then presents their drawings, some notion of success is assigned". I don't think that having a set judge of the drawings (theApples to Apples model) is quite right, its too flippant for the amount of work a drawing is (vs. throwing out a red card). I also don't quite like the idea of everybody just voting, it seems too subjective still somehow. And yet, I don't quite like the just "Yay! We're all winners! Lookit our radsome drawings!" model either. I think a little bit of structure is needed to inject some drama into the situation.
A nice semi-subjective approach is still the "can I successfully convey something with this picture" measure, as employed in pictionary. You need to motivate the guesser and the drawer, and I vastly prefer the informal pictionary model of "correct guesser gets to draw next" / "a point to the guesser, a point to the drawer, upon success" - as opposed to just putting the drawer and guesser on a team as with pictionary proper.
- - The Taboo Effect - -
I think of the most satisfying pictionary moments I've had, and many of them revolved around a certain amount of outside the boxism, where people go "I see what you did there! Delightful!" The latter part not so much said, as implied by the curious, outright glee that squeaks out in these moments. The party game Taboo is a word-based game that accomplishes this nicely. Sometimes people tiptoe around the forbidden words with various synonyms and do ok. But the game was much more fun when people would just come at the problem from outlandish, personal angles. "We had a great one of these at June lake... - Cobbler! Hey man, nice... - Shot! Being one of these totally sucks ass! - Pilgrim!".
I don't necessarily want to find the direct drawing analog, but I like the way this encouraged creativity and quick thinking by knocking people out of their comfort zone. They couldn't take the road, so they had to improvise. I think a similar factor might be at play in trying to encourage creativity and avoid over-rewarding the best artist.
- - Some game sketches - -
Multiple word, round-robin guessing
(somehow) each player gets 3-5 words from a very large pool of possible words. A timer is set, and everyone draws. Time runs out, everyone reveals, looks at eachothers pictures for a bit, ideally laughs. Time to analyze player A's picture. The player on their left says one word, and if it's one of the drawer's designated words, the guesser and drawer get points. Then, continuing clockwise, each player says a word, trying to guess the drawer's words.
Why do I like this better than a single word? First of all, it means that multiple people can guess and participate in the judging. Even if one person guesses a word, others remain to be guessed. Also, I like the idea that the drawer has to create a drawing that sums up more than one word, that has to incorporate more than one concept.
The main pitfall here is, of course, that people will just draw 3 different sub-scenes, one for each word. Ideally it would be something cohesive. Several possible solutions. There could be an initial vote for which scene is most cohesive, the winner getting a bonus, anyone failing to get at least one vote being ineligible for the (big) got-all-your-words bonus. Not great though. The answer might also be in word selection - that is to say that you get some mix of nouns, actions, settings, moods, styles, background events, whatever, lending the proceedings towards a single scene trying to evoke many angles. Or there might just be an honor system of trying to make a cohesive scene of some kind.
I feel like its not quite right, that its still going to lead to score-mongering and precision rather than innovative approaches. This might work as a seed of an idea though, or when combined with some of the other ideas below.
Also, its probably too hard, perhaps people get multiple guesses, or the words are kept simple, or its multiple choice, or you're allowed a caption, or - not sure, would have to playtest probably.
(Splashier scoring)
The first time one of the designated words is said, both players get 1 point. The second success awards 2 points to the guesser and drawer, the 3rd 3, and so on, with a possible non-linear big bonus for guessing the last word / getting all your words guessed. So guessers are rewarded more strongly for getting the less obvious words, and the rewards to the drawer ramp up for great success.
(Cooperative Gameplay)
Man, I love cooperative gameplay. In this case, it might be a nice way to bring drama and inspire performance, but without the negative effect of competitiveness and bitterness. What theme could a super-round of guessing-each-player's-pictures-rounds be couched in?
I love the idea of a simple board where the players (individually, or a single group token) are represented in a dreamlike world, where only their ability to create otherworlds that evoke the correct notions can allow them to escape eldritch horrors that pursue them. The handicaps I discuss below could play into this too. I see a scene where the players have moved across the dreamworld board, are near the end, with darkling creatures in pursuit, and know that they need to have X much success in communicating their drawings to one another if they are, as a team, to escape and win. Maybe that's just Mary's blog talking, though. I can't quite articulate it, but I have an image in mind that is extremely compelling to me right now.
My initial thought of drawing rounds as holes of golf (surprisingly frequent as my initial thought in games), seems downright stupid by comparison.
Handicaps
Some editions of Pictionary have a dice that incurs handicaps, like drawing with your off hand, drawing with your eyes closed or not lifting your pencil. I've always liked this idea, and have flirted with incorporating it as "injuries" in my cooperative swashbuckling pictionary/charades game.
In this case, I like the idea of a deck of cards, each with a penalty on them. I might add to the above list such things as: no curved lines, no stick figures, reduced time, smaller piece of paper, big fat crayon as tool, random portion will be obscured upon completion (I have a couple mechanisms in mind), viewers can only see it for a moment before guessing, guessers can't hear eachothers' guesses. You get the idea.
As cards, they have a lot of power; they could be used in a number of ways: Maybe you draw one at some point as a penalty for everybody on a given round. In the competitive game players might get them and be allowed to keep them face down, to be incurred on another player, handicapping the target for a single round. They might be automatically evoked on a runaway leader, distributed as special rewards, or given to a losing player as a consolation. In the cooperative game, monsters might attack the players, causing a given handicap to be incurred on one or more of the players, rachetting up the tension and forcing people to improvise.
But broadly, why do I like these? I like that they put people outside their comfort zone. They will sometimes (hopefully) result in drawings that are delightful in their clumsy, clever attempt to work around the restriction. They help to keep the game from getting predictable.
I especially like them in the cooperative version, where trying to overcome adversity and still have a productive round of drawing and guessing could be quite dramatic, I think. At its most ridculous I see it like "Oh no! The spitting lizard of self-doubt caught up to you, and has sprayed you in the eyes! Can you still convey your thoughts without your ability to reflect on them? Draw with your eyes closed this round."
They might be really obnoxious, and be more frustrating than they are fun to work with, but its an idea with promise, I think.
- - - -
Most of this came to me just as I was writing what was meant to be a single paragraph. Not sure if any of this is quite what I'm looking for. But I think the power of games to nudge and inspire, and the power of drawings to express and delight, have not yet been symbiotically harnessed to the fullest of their potential. I sense there's a really original, interesting game out there somewhere.
I don't want something quite like pictionary, where someone draws and everyone else watches. I think I want something where everybody draws something and then presents them towards some end. I want more drawing time than 1 / (numPlayers) of the time.
And not something where your drawing abitility necessarily gets you the win, as should go without saying. I want to reward creativity, though that's no small challenge, no?
- - Motivation - -
To backtrack my motivations, as they become clear even to myself, what I really want is a game that encourages people to be creative, and to revel in eachothers creativity. To let people share their ideas with one another, to enjoy having their ideas appreciated, and to enjoy appreciating others' ideas.
This already exists, its called conversation. But I think there's the potential for a game to spur people on, to encourage interaction and participation, and even creativity (von Oech reminds us that restrictions spur creativity). I don't want a situation where the game is "The rules say you have to invent something right now!" - it needs to seduce. So I think of those vocal-style parlor games (or my growing repatior of no-materials car games), but that's not quite it - though somewhat in the spirit, perhaps.
Drawings appeal to me much more. There is that explicit phase of thought, creation, elaboration and adjustment, where an idea can be developed in private, before being revealed onto the others at hand. And besides, we talk plenty, and draw far too little. Finally, I like the idea of a record of the game, the fact that the drawings can persist.
- - Competitive? - -
But I don't know of any game that gets it quite right yet. I think the hardest decision is how formal to make this. I feel like some sort of reward system is in order - some concept of success to be achieved. But I don't want something overly competitive either; I expect the game is going to be pretty subjective, and I don't want to necesarily reward the besty artist unduly, and hurt feelings need to be avoided at all costs - a recipe for minimal winner-declaration.
I think that Apples to Apples is a good analog here, where points are gained, but nobody really tracks them or feels a strong sense of victory upon acquiring the most.
- - Success Measures - -
Ah, but the hard part. What do you draw? What makes one drawing better than another? So right now I'm working under the high-level model of "everybody draws, then presents their drawings, some notion of success is assigned". I don't think that having a set judge of the drawings (theApples to Apples model) is quite right, its too flippant for the amount of work a drawing is (vs. throwing out a red card). I also don't quite like the idea of everybody just voting, it seems too subjective still somehow. And yet, I don't quite like the just "Yay! We're all winners! Lookit our radsome drawings!" model either. I think a little bit of structure is needed to inject some drama into the situation.
A nice semi-subjective approach is still the "can I successfully convey something with this picture" measure, as employed in pictionary. You need to motivate the guesser and the drawer, and I vastly prefer the informal pictionary model of "correct guesser gets to draw next" / "a point to the guesser, a point to the drawer, upon success" - as opposed to just putting the drawer and guesser on a team as with pictionary proper.
- - The Taboo Effect - -
I think of the most satisfying pictionary moments I've had, and many of them revolved around a certain amount of outside the boxism, where people go "I see what you did there! Delightful!" The latter part not so much said, as implied by the curious, outright glee that squeaks out in these moments. The party game Taboo is a word-based game that accomplishes this nicely. Sometimes people tiptoe around the forbidden words with various synonyms and do ok. But the game was much more fun when people would just come at the problem from outlandish, personal angles. "We had a great one of these at June lake... - Cobbler! Hey man, nice... - Shot! Being one of these totally sucks ass! - Pilgrim!".
I don't necessarily want to find the direct drawing analog, but I like the way this encouraged creativity and quick thinking by knocking people out of their comfort zone. They couldn't take the road, so they had to improvise. I think a similar factor might be at play in trying to encourage creativity and avoid over-rewarding the best artist.
- - Some game sketches - -
Multiple word, round-robin guessing
(somehow) each player gets 3-5 words from a very large pool of possible words. A timer is set, and everyone draws. Time runs out, everyone reveals, looks at eachothers pictures for a bit, ideally laughs. Time to analyze player A's picture. The player on their left says one word, and if it's one of the drawer's designated words, the guesser and drawer get points. Then, continuing clockwise, each player says a word, trying to guess the drawer's words.
Why do I like this better than a single word? First of all, it means that multiple people can guess and participate in the judging. Even if one person guesses a word, others remain to be guessed. Also, I like the idea that the drawer has to create a drawing that sums up more than one word, that has to incorporate more than one concept.
The main pitfall here is, of course, that people will just draw 3 different sub-scenes, one for each word. Ideally it would be something cohesive. Several possible solutions. There could be an initial vote for which scene is most cohesive, the winner getting a bonus, anyone failing to get at least one vote being ineligible for the (big) got-all-your-words bonus. Not great though. The answer might also be in word selection - that is to say that you get some mix of nouns, actions, settings, moods, styles, background events, whatever, lending the proceedings towards a single scene trying to evoke many angles. Or there might just be an honor system of trying to make a cohesive scene of some kind.
I feel like its not quite right, that its still going to lead to score-mongering and precision rather than innovative approaches. This might work as a seed of an idea though, or when combined with some of the other ideas below.
Also, its probably too hard, perhaps people get multiple guesses, or the words are kept simple, or its multiple choice, or you're allowed a caption, or - not sure, would have to playtest probably.
(Splashier scoring)
The first time one of the designated words is said, both players get 1 point. The second success awards 2 points to the guesser and drawer, the 3rd 3, and so on, with a possible non-linear big bonus for guessing the last word / getting all your words guessed. So guessers are rewarded more strongly for getting the less obvious words, and the rewards to the drawer ramp up for great success.
(Cooperative Gameplay)
Man, I love cooperative gameplay. In this case, it might be a nice way to bring drama and inspire performance, but without the negative effect of competitiveness and bitterness. What theme could a super-round of guessing-each-player's-pictures-rounds be couched in?
I love the idea of a simple board where the players (individually, or a single group token) are represented in a dreamlike world, where only their ability to create otherworlds that evoke the correct notions can allow them to escape eldritch horrors that pursue them. The handicaps I discuss below could play into this too. I see a scene where the players have moved across the dreamworld board, are near the end, with darkling creatures in pursuit, and know that they need to have X much success in communicating their drawings to one another if they are, as a team, to escape and win. Maybe that's just Mary's blog talking, though. I can't quite articulate it, but I have an image in mind that is extremely compelling to me right now.
My initial thought of drawing rounds as holes of golf (surprisingly frequent as my initial thought in games), seems downright stupid by comparison.
Handicaps
Some editions of Pictionary have a dice that incurs handicaps, like drawing with your off hand, drawing with your eyes closed or not lifting your pencil. I've always liked this idea, and have flirted with incorporating it as "injuries" in my cooperative swashbuckling pictionary/charades game.
In this case, I like the idea of a deck of cards, each with a penalty on them. I might add to the above list such things as: no curved lines, no stick figures, reduced time, smaller piece of paper, big fat crayon as tool, random portion will be obscured upon completion (I have a couple mechanisms in mind), viewers can only see it for a moment before guessing, guessers can't hear eachothers' guesses. You get the idea.
As cards, they have a lot of power; they could be used in a number of ways: Maybe you draw one at some point as a penalty for everybody on a given round. In the competitive game players might get them and be allowed to keep them face down, to be incurred on another player, handicapping the target for a single round. They might be automatically evoked on a runaway leader, distributed as special rewards, or given to a losing player as a consolation. In the cooperative game, monsters might attack the players, causing a given handicap to be incurred on one or more of the players, rachetting up the tension and forcing people to improvise.
But broadly, why do I like these? I like that they put people outside their comfort zone. They will sometimes (hopefully) result in drawings that are delightful in their clumsy, clever attempt to work around the restriction. They help to keep the game from getting predictable.
I especially like them in the cooperative version, where trying to overcome adversity and still have a productive round of drawing and guessing could be quite dramatic, I think. At its most ridculous I see it like "Oh no! The spitting lizard of self-doubt caught up to you, and has sprayed you in the eyes! Can you still convey your thoughts without your ability to reflect on them? Draw with your eyes closed this round."
They might be really obnoxious, and be more frustrating than they are fun to work with, but its an idea with promise, I think.
- - - -
Most of this came to me just as I was writing what was meant to be a single paragraph. Not sure if any of this is quite what I'm looking for. But I think the power of games to nudge and inspire, and the power of drawings to express and delight, have not yet been symbiotically harnessed to the fullest of their potential. I sense there's a really original, interesting game out there somewhere.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Predictable vs. Unpredictable Decks
Can't sleep tonight, and I definately don't have the patience for finishing my big theoretical thrust. But I did want to jot down some thoughts about decks of cards.
When you want to simulate a variety of effects, its tempting just to assign each to a card and throw them into a deck. Want to make a game where players can attack eachother with fire spells and lightning bolts and mind control? Make a deck with one card for each of those with the details, and let players hold a hand of them!
My trouble is with unpredictable decks. In particular, I have a problem because I'm lately rather taken with the mechanic where the success of a given strategy relies on your opponent not having a given card or type of card. Lost cities is an example, where your willingness to discard a given card or start on a given color depends on what your opponent has. Gin Rummy has a similar dynamic. I like decisions that are nearly-calculable. That is, those decisions where you can derive some heuristic of the expected overall value of a given move, but can't truly know much anything. Your opponent "probably" doesn't have that card, but you likely can't math out the exact odds, much less use them to determine your "best" move. And what has your opponent told you by the way they've played thuse far? Are they playing like they have that card? Are they cagey enough to be actively deceiving you on this matter?
I think its a rich class of effects, and it fits nicely with my own sensibilities as a player, in terms of what kind of games I can play without overanalysing them.
But these rely on some easily considered concept of the deck's makeup, usually summarized in terms of a number range and suit range. As soon as you have a deck of random effects without overriding rules governing them, it gets a little more complicated. The guesses so thoroughly defy calculation as to step outside the realm of reasonable guesses. And furthermore, and perhaps most damningly, your ability to make any kind of guess depends on knowing the deck. Someone can't just tell you what the spread of values are, you have to know the fireball, the mind control, the lightning bolt and the summon: troll. Its difficult to reason with, and the experienced player holds a huge advantage, if this "what's he got" comes into play strongly with decks like this.
(More broadly, this is another of my themes, immediate accessibility of strategy)
I guess my point is, the custom deck, with an effect-per-idea is an easy out, but there's something to be said about a deck with easy description, and easy understanding. Suit-value decks are the obvious answer, but 7-Nimmt and No Thanks! have just-number decks that work. An even better example is Heave Ho! There's a learning curve there, but mostly you just need to know the basic spread, that there's a dragon, and a kill-you-if-you-got-the-dragon card. Knowing about the switch sides card helps to. But my point is, there's a deck that is heterogeneous, but that has a readily describable distribution, and that lends itself to the immediate engagement in the sort of has-he-got-it strategizing that I'm seeking.
Definately a tradeoff, and I think the virtues of a predictable deck are often underappreciated.
When you want to simulate a variety of effects, its tempting just to assign each to a card and throw them into a deck. Want to make a game where players can attack eachother with fire spells and lightning bolts and mind control? Make a deck with one card for each of those with the details, and let players hold a hand of them!
My trouble is with unpredictable decks. In particular, I have a problem because I'm lately rather taken with the mechanic where the success of a given strategy relies on your opponent not having a given card or type of card. Lost cities is an example, where your willingness to discard a given card or start on a given color depends on what your opponent has. Gin Rummy has a similar dynamic. I like decisions that are nearly-calculable. That is, those decisions where you can derive some heuristic of the expected overall value of a given move, but can't truly know much anything. Your opponent "probably" doesn't have that card, but you likely can't math out the exact odds, much less use them to determine your "best" move. And what has your opponent told you by the way they've played thuse far? Are they playing like they have that card? Are they cagey enough to be actively deceiving you on this matter?
I think its a rich class of effects, and it fits nicely with my own sensibilities as a player, in terms of what kind of games I can play without overanalysing them.
But these rely on some easily considered concept of the deck's makeup, usually summarized in terms of a number range and suit range. As soon as you have a deck of random effects without overriding rules governing them, it gets a little more complicated. The guesses so thoroughly defy calculation as to step outside the realm of reasonable guesses. And furthermore, and perhaps most damningly, your ability to make any kind of guess depends on knowing the deck. Someone can't just tell you what the spread of values are, you have to know the fireball, the mind control, the lightning bolt and the summon: troll. Its difficult to reason with, and the experienced player holds a huge advantage, if this "what's he got" comes into play strongly with decks like this.
(More broadly, this is another of my themes, immediate accessibility of strategy)
I guess my point is, the custom deck, with an effect-per-idea is an easy out, but there's something to be said about a deck with easy description, and easy understanding. Suit-value decks are the obvious answer, but 7-Nimmt and No Thanks! have just-number decks that work. An even better example is Heave Ho! There's a learning curve there, but mostly you just need to know the basic spread, that there's a dragon, and a kill-you-if-you-got-the-dragon card. Knowing about the switch sides card helps to. But my point is, there's a deck that is heterogeneous, but that has a readily describable distribution, and that lends itself to the immediate engagement in the sort of has-he-got-it strategizing that I'm seeking.
Definately a tradeoff, and I think the virtues of a predictable deck are often underappreciated.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Try-and-see test
Tonight I sat down with some components from various games, jamming them against eachother, testing any sets of rules that seemed promising. I ended up working with the following:
Triominoes: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/104712
Cards from Rage: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/91475
Cubes from El Grande: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/167025
I started off with just the triominoes and cards from Rack-o, letting 2-digit numbers 0-5, 10-15, etc coorespond to pairings of the 0-5 numbers on the tiles. Nothing really great there. Also, there was no actual 0 cards, which got me thinking about card decks that do go to 0. How about Rage? I've used those cards in a lot of experiments before. But they have 6 colors, might as well do something with those.
So I tried this, pretty much off the top of my head, with only a little misstep or two requiring adjustment.
Rageominoes: A game for 2 players
Setup
- Use a deck made of red, green, blue and yellow Rage cards from 0-5, 12 cubes of each of those colors, and all the tiles.
- Each player gets 5 cards and 4 tiles, hidden from their opponent. One tile is placed face up in the play area, the others are all face down.
Game Play
- Each turn a player plays a tile adjacent to an existing one. If both numbers on the tile match the adjacent numbers (ie, a legal play in triominoes, if I remember correctly), then a card with one of those matching numbers may be played. The card is discarded, and a cube matching its color is placed on the played tile. The player takes a cube of that color.
- Then the player draws up to 4 tiles and 5 cards, as necessary. Play passes to the other player.
Game end and Scoring
- The game ends when a card must be drawn, but there are none left.
- Each set of touching tiles that have cubes of the same color on them form a group. Cubes of a given color are worth one point for every tile in the largest group of that color. Players add up the points provided by the cubes they have taken, the highest score wins.
I like the simple ruleset, and the way that you must manage both tiles and cards. I like the potentially explosive scoring of rattling off a large group and collecting the cubes necessary for that group.
It didn't really work though. You were too often just at the mercy of the cards and tiles you had, without enough information about your opponent to work with. That said, there's already an information overload, an artifact of using the triominoes tiles. Too often, I would look at the colors and cards I had, and just try to find a way to place that card, looking for a matching tile space. Plus its an annoying, unfun kind of decision search, with limited options in a Knizia-ish sense, but requiring a lot of visual scanning.
I'd been envisioning lots of designs with those triominoes tiles, but I learned something important: that the basic search of matching tiles is annoying as hell already, and tacking a game on top of it is likely a bad idea. Good to know, sealing off directions that have a low chance of bearing a good idea, so that I can focus my thoughts elsewhere, is very productive. I may still use them face-down though, as movable triangular spaces. There are sort of cool "swinging" moves you can make.
I was watching the Phillies lose their 10,000th game today, and someone had a sign referencing a famous Edison anecdote. Basically, he said he made 10,000 mistakes on his way to creating the light bulb, but considered it a 10,001 step success. In my thoughts about design fields and their points of difficulty, I become frustrated at my inability to tell what's going to work in a board game design; the difficulty in mapping designs to outcomes before implementing them. It might just be one of those fields where the only way to know is to try try try over and over again. It took one mistake to learn some properties of triangular dominoes, I guess after 10,000 lessons I'd probably have a handle on things well enough to publish a game. One a night for 30 years I'm there. Mistake 1.
Triominoes: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/104712
Cards from Rage: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/91475
Cubes from El Grande: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/167025
I started off with just the triominoes and cards from Rack-o, letting 2-digit numbers 0-5, 10-15, etc coorespond to pairings of the 0-5 numbers on the tiles. Nothing really great there. Also, there was no actual 0 cards, which got me thinking about card decks that do go to 0. How about Rage? I've used those cards in a lot of experiments before. But they have 6 colors, might as well do something with those.
So I tried this, pretty much off the top of my head, with only a little misstep or two requiring adjustment.
Rageominoes: A game for 2 players
Setup
- Use a deck made of red, green, blue and yellow Rage cards from 0-5, 12 cubes of each of those colors, and all the tiles.
- Each player gets 5 cards and 4 tiles, hidden from their opponent. One tile is placed face up in the play area, the others are all face down.
Game Play
- Each turn a player plays a tile adjacent to an existing one. If both numbers on the tile match the adjacent numbers (ie, a legal play in triominoes, if I remember correctly), then a card with one of those matching numbers may be played. The card is discarded, and a cube matching its color is placed on the played tile. The player takes a cube of that color.
- Then the player draws up to 4 tiles and 5 cards, as necessary. Play passes to the other player.
Game end and Scoring
- The game ends when a card must be drawn, but there are none left.
- Each set of touching tiles that have cubes of the same color on them form a group. Cubes of a given color are worth one point for every tile in the largest group of that color. Players add up the points provided by the cubes they have taken, the highest score wins.
I like the simple ruleset, and the way that you must manage both tiles and cards. I like the potentially explosive scoring of rattling off a large group and collecting the cubes necessary for that group.
It didn't really work though. You were too often just at the mercy of the cards and tiles you had, without enough information about your opponent to work with. That said, there's already an information overload, an artifact of using the triominoes tiles. Too often, I would look at the colors and cards I had, and just try to find a way to place that card, looking for a matching tile space. Plus its an annoying, unfun kind of decision search, with limited options in a Knizia-ish sense, but requiring a lot of visual scanning.
I'd been envisioning lots of designs with those triominoes tiles, but I learned something important: that the basic search of matching tiles is annoying as hell already, and tacking a game on top of it is likely a bad idea. Good to know, sealing off directions that have a low chance of bearing a good idea, so that I can focus my thoughts elsewhere, is very productive. I may still use them face-down though, as movable triangular spaces. There are sort of cool "swinging" moves you can make.
I was watching the Phillies lose their 10,000th game today, and someone had a sign referencing a famous Edison anecdote. Basically, he said he made 10,000 mistakes on his way to creating the light bulb, but considered it a 10,001 step success. In my thoughts about design fields and their points of difficulty, I become frustrated at my inability to tell what's going to work in a board game design; the difficulty in mapping designs to outcomes before implementing them. It might just be one of those fields where the only way to know is to try try try over and over again. It took one mistake to learn some properties of triangular dominoes, I guess after 10,000 lessons I'd probably have a handle on things well enough to publish a game. One a night for 30 years I'm there. Mistake 1.
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