Category: Notes

I purchased this game because it was accidentally shipped to me and Time Well Spent Games gave me a discount to purchase it outright instead of paying me to ship it back to them. It seemed like a nice light game that would fit in my sister’s wheelhouse and so it became an early Christmas gift when we had a mini-family reunion this past weekend. Since my girlfriend was a non-gaming mood, I ended up playing lots of boardgames with my sister. After about thirty 2P plays of this game, I think I am qualified to say something about Nefarious as a 2P game.

Because my all the plays of this game were with my sister, so her preferences should be put up front. She and her husband (who did not come) are gamers, so she is perfectly capable at playing heavier games like Agricola, but she strongly prefers lighter games. Even a simple 2P abstract game like Let’s Catch the Lion was way too heavy for her tastes. She enjoyed Too Many Cooks (I think in part due to the art) but wasn’t totally enamored with it, nor with Indian Chief. Nor Parade, which can be a surprisingly thinky filler. I suspect No Thanks would have been played in regular rotation except we need a third player and my girlfriend was having none of that. The light Russian beating game Durak and Korean fishing game Go Stop both worked nicely as did Plato 3000 (which is a little too light for me).

As for me, I typically prefer slightly meatier fare, but if I’m having fun why not? My 10’s are typically fillers because the great ones are reliably good in any situation where as medium / heavier games require the right crowd and mood. That said, my current hotness is Container, In the Year of the Dragon, Nefertiti, and Troyes.

In Nefarious, each player is an evil genius trying to take over the world by creating new wicked inventions. Since this is a Eurogame, taking over the world means getting 20 VP’s before your opponents (of course!). Mechanically Nefarious is is a simultaneous action selection game where you collect money, draw invention cards into your hand, and gain VP’s by purchasing these cards in your hand and playing them to the table. You earn money by “Speculating” what actions your opponents will select (that is the only use of those minion meeples) as well as selecting either the “research “($2) or “work” ($4)actions. You gain cards into your hand by taking the “research” (one card) action. To play the invention cards to the table you “invent” them spending your money to get them into your tableau. Along with VP’s, most invention cards have instant effects on you and/or other players for good and/or bad

This is a very nice clean design. Everything in this game has their place and there are almost no “exceptions”. Minions do ONLY one thing (earn you money through speculation). Inventions get played to the table ONLY via the “Invent” action. You gain VP’s ONLY through invention cards in your tableau. Effects from invention cards are ONLY instant and are not permanent. Effects from inventions affect you or ALL players (no selective attacks against other players). Money and cards in hand are more fluid, but of course these are the two resources you have to manage well to win the game

The only thing that seems complicated is Invention Card effect resolution — but even then the rules are pretty clear. All players resolve invention effects simultaneously. Each player will resolve all personal effects (green arrow) first (from top to bottom). Then they will resolve effects from other players (red arrows) in player order relative to their own seat. It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. And of course in a 2P game this is completely not an issue.

Of course, such a nice clean simple game can get pretty dull pretty fast. Even so, I think the first two or three plays with the base mechanics was still quite fun. But right as we began to tire of it, we opened up the pile of 36 “twist” cards that selectively modify the game slightly and every game should be played with two of these. Some of them are pretty simple, like giving you more money to start the game or increasing the victory VP requirement but some of them can make things pretty wild, like making the effects of your invention happen twice or letting you take two actions a turn. We played the twist deck once through and with two cards played per game there are definitely a lot potentially cool twist combos still out there (though of course there are also a few boring ones also).

I’m by no means an expert Dominion player, but whenever I play with expert dominion players, they look at the table and they know what they want to do for the whole game, which thus essentially boils down to a shuffling exercise. There is a bit of that feeling in Nefarious once you get a little experience. At the start of the game you will you look at your hand, look at the twist cards, map out a strategy and execute. Ultimately, this is a race game to 20 points so messing around isn’t gonna get you anywhere but last place – and there isn’t that much game space to explore anyways. Maybe there is a bit more interaction with more players (I suspect the red arrow effects are a bit underpowered in a 2P game) but otherwise, it’s really is just a race to 20 points.

As fitting a lighter game, there is a decent amount of luck of the draw which can doom you. But even then, it isn’t about getting the killer card XYZ, but a case of a series of bad draws that do not interact well with the initial strategy you chose to start the game. The deck is nicely balanced which gives you room to do some optimization and well as make make mistakes which will doom you. Then again being doomed isn’t that big of a deal, after a few plays, we were knocking out a game every 10 minutes.

In short, Nefarious is a fun game and in the right crowd (such as say, hanging with your sister who doesn’t like heavy games).

But do I love it? Not really. I don’t hate it, but I just don’t see much more there to explore, and I don’t usually find myself in a context needing a light multiplayer game. The multiplayer aspect sounds fun, but after a lackluster attempt at King of Tokyo, I’m not sure a lighter, silly, interactive game of this type is going to be normally a right fit for me. Currently I rate it a 6, however I suspect that it may slip down to a 4 as time slips by.

That said, Donald X. has cemented himself as a top notch designer. His games don’t grab my attention, but he has two popular and critically acclaimed hits with Dominion and Kingdom Builder. For Nefarious he clearly wanted to design a lighter filler that was fun to play repeatedly. After thirty plays it’s hard to argue he did not succeed again, splendidly!

One more note: I know it sounds like taking hatred of paper money to an absurd level, but this game is greatly improved if you replace the cardboard money tokens with full size poker chips. Once you get used to it, it’s easier to keep track of money with white=1, red=5, blue=10. During the game there will be a lot of single dollars coming into your system. In a 2P game you’ll be getting 2 or 4 bucks almost every round just due to speculation via your minions. Furthermore if you “research” or “work” you’ll get either 2 or 4 bucks. That’s a lot of singles, and it is a lot easier with poker chips to keep exchanging the big red and white chips instead of fiddling with the smaller cardboard money tokens.

Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com

I am a huge fan of Mark Johnson’s podcast Boardgames to Go. He has one particularly epic episode on boardgames and themes. He just followed up with another episode where they “focus” on fantasy versus realistic themes. I use focus in quotes because it was a particularly disjointed episode, but if you are at all the type to listen to podcasts both are well worth your time.

The first podcast discussion had a lot of discussion of theme as metaphor and narrative, with them being plotted on an XY axis. Feldmafx did a nice little diagram of that graph.

While it feels like it makes sense, the graph doesn’t work once you try to locate games within the chart. Snoozefest proposed an alternate chart.

I also jumped in with my own chart trying to grapple with individual games on a narrative/mechanism slice of the world

In the end, no one ended up with an exciting model and the conversation just kind of died.

But this latest podcast got me thinking. Maybe the problem is that the word “narrative” and “metaphor” are confusing. What if we went to more easily grasped ideas of “modeling” and “setting”. Using an XY graph you would have Modeling, Abstract to Specific, and Setting would be Fantastical-None-Historical. As I write this, I realize this doesn’t account for the story telling aspect of gameplay.

Hmmm…back to the drawing board, but before I go here is a draft of what a chart might look like:

Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com

Well lets start with the easy stuff, the straight autobiography. I’m an architect in Houston, Texas, who grew up in California, Orange County, San Jose, and Berkeley. I went to school at Berkeley. After working a few years, I moved out to Houston for grad school and have been there since, even though we would like to move back. I live with my girlfriend and two rabbits. I waste a lot of time on picking up an dropping hobbies, currently, board games (and talking about them), Tai Chi, Harmonica, and Rock Climbing. Previous victims were an abortive attempt with the Banjo and Photography.

Boardgaming has been a recurring hobby in my life. I’m not sure where it got started, but I suspect it was because I grew up with very limited TV in the house. We had some computer games, but that was also quite restricted. I definitely read a lot and we played some boardgames. That said, it was just me and my sister so we didn’t play that much because she wasn’t so into heavier games. I remember playing a bit of Parcheesi and a little Rummikub and Egyptian Ratscrew. I think at some point my dad taught me Nine Men’s Morris, which I took to junior high and played a with a friend. I didn’t play a ton with my parents, but I played a little bit of Xiangqi with my dad and grandfather. I never got good at that game. I remember hearing about Weiqi (Go) but I don’t think they ever played it. The other game I learned from my grandparents was Mahjong, which is still one of my favorite games – though only with people who play at a HK style 3 point minimum.

Aside from that however, I didn’t get to play too much as I grew older because my parents (dissatisfied with both public and private schools) pulled us out to be homeschooled furing high school which limited the crowd I could hang with. During this time I came across Avalon Hill through the old chain Game Keeper. With a couple old junior high friends, I had limited play with Blackbeard, Civilization, PanzerBlitz, and Squad Leader. I still own them and the two that would still keep my interest are Titan and A House Divided. Even if I didn’t get much play I definitely picked up the “new game box” buzz and the joy of reading rules. Well actually I think the joy of reading came first, the rules were just really fun things for me to read – and not just the rules for designer games but all kinds of rules. In fact I find traditional game rules more interesting because the games are tied into a culture group. They provide a glimpse into another life.

My last couple years of high school I attended the local community college where I learned and played Thirteen between breaks. I don’t think this was my introduction to climbing games – I learned Big Two before that – but this is the beautiful game, just constantly flowing. Each deal and hand shaping up in front of you, a quick assessment and then the card play. Repeated again and again. I also learned the rules to Magic the Gathering, but I never really got into cardboard crack. I saw the expense of the game from afar and I didn’t have the funds!

College at Berkeley was a pretty quiet time for gaming. Architecture school is an intense experience, and I hung out with artists, chatting through the night about life the universe and everything. There were a couple forays into games, but the pressure to perform in school that kept me from really enjoying games. Maybe there was a level of misplaced Avalon Hill snobbery, so I didn’t even bother to try Settlers of Catan even though I had heard about it. I suspect I also avoided this popular game because I knew that a lack of funds would be a constraint and didn’t want to get sucked back into a world of shrink wrapped boxes, each promising a new gaming experience when I didn’t have any disposable income. I did make an impromptu chess set with spray painted bottle caps, which got a good amount of use with a couple studiomates. But I could never grasp the spatial nature of that game. My mind is wired for card games where there’s more of a back and forth and semi-expected ups and down. Chess games require long term look ahead and serious planning, neither of which I enjoy in my games. I like my games with tactical with twists and turns, as long as the game provides ways to pivot amidst the chaos.

I did have one abortive attempt at getting into Magic while at Berkeley. I heard about drafts and thought it would be a good way to play the game without going broke, but after one Friday Night Draft, I realized the amount of skill it required and I had no interest in getting that good at the game. I still do enjoy the general system, but not that much.

When I went to Rice for grad school, and the situation stayed the same – tight on cash and tight on time. However, Rice is a much smaller university, and with the claustrophobic environment, I needed to get out, spending my little bit of free time hanging out at a local gamestore. The kids were really into Magic, and I tried to get back into it, but once again the skill level was too much. I did meet a fellow student that had a shoebox full of cards, and we did have a lot of fun with that. I also tried playing Munchkin, which is actually a fun enough game with the right crowd, and Chez Dork which is a really fun game but I soon realized that if I wasn’t going all in on MtG, there just wasn’t much reason to hang out there and so I slipped back out of gaming.

During grad school I also met my girlfriend and we picked up a couple games, Trias and Carcasonne Hunters and Gatherers, but we didn’t play them aside from chasing her during a three year losing streak in H&G. I also picked up Alhambra around the end of grad school. I was still gun-shy about jumping fully into gaming due to the cost, but also because a lot of these games just aren’t that great for two. You’d think I’d have learned how to use BGG since I had joined this site almost as soon as it had opened, but the user interface on the site really is a major barrier to full entry, and even worse, every popular game invariably has a fairly convincing thread where someone states that game XYZ actually works great for 2P even if it really isn’t a good 2P game!

The one game that got regular play during that time was Cribbage. I have no earthly idea why I decided to learn the game, maybe just because it was a classic game and the convoluted rules made it an interesting challenge. But once we got into it, we were hooked. I doubt either of us were great at it, but I think we got pretty good playing by feel. Kind of like my climbing game obsession, I play the game but without counting cards, and that only gets you so far – but far enough to have a lot of fun.

And so it stalled for a while, until we picked up Ticket to Ride. Wow. That game caught fire. We played it maybe every other night, so much so that I burned out on it. I was starting to get hooked, I got more serious about BGG and I also found out about all the published game rules that are available online. This was so freaking cool for me cause I love reading them, but I was still constrained by our 2P requirement. So I pretty much just stuck with TtR which we played every other day all year until one fateful weekend in early 2009. My buddy from LA was going to come out to Texas on a business trip. At the last minute, her company canceled the trip and so I suddenly had a free weekend. It was the weekend of OwlCon – the annual gaming convention at Rice University. So I thought, well crap, for $18 I’ll get to try out some games, hopefully avoid buying some bad ones and maybe meet some people. I did. There isn’t much open gaming out there, but there is a little and I met a woman who told me about the Friday Night Group which happened to meet a few blocks away from my house.

And so its been ever since. I have my “church” on Friday afternoons….with plenty of gamers to commune regularly, I’ve become seriously addicted to this hobby.

I have no idea how long it will last, presumably as long as I have fellow players. If we end up moving then who knows, but interest has stayed at a fairly high level, except for when I went though a recent foray into indie story games which lasted until I realized my girlfriend was not into them. Once that happened, I was fully back on the BGG bandwagon. To me, there are few consumer purchases that are as gratifying as opening up a new box of games imagining and hoping for all the fun you’re gonna have. Even though I am so often disappointed (I’d be lucky if 1 out of 5 games was a hit), I just keep coming back.

Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com

This was my contribution to the now infamous Why are not everyone playing Magic? thread. It got locked soon after, but I think I was on to something here. Most games don’t involve a pre-confrontation aspect, this one does. The key is to find a way of playing where you will enjoy both the pre-game and the cardplay without going broke.

And i have also been destroyed by a less skilled player in a magic tournament because he had a deck with better cards…

Apparos Achaparos

I’ve been destroyed by less skilled players in other games because they had a better dice roll :-) It is, of course, an acceptable preference to say, “I don’t mind if a game has major non-skill influences, but I do mind if they are financial rather than random.” This preference can still be exercised within the game of MTG by playing more restrictive formats, though, so it is still a matter of personal choice rather than game mandate.

astroglide

You mean i preferred to have my b*tt handed to me because i liked the constructed format? That is a terrible misconception!
What do you mean more restricted formats? Draft? i hate draft! Why should i be forced to play a version that i don’t like just to eliminate the implications of not affording to buy more expensive cards?
Still draft introduces even more luck in the game since you own 1 or very rarely 2 copies of each card in your deck and you have no idea how the boosters in the booster will behave (i mean you don’t have a clue what they contain).

Apparos Achaparos

Maybe I’m a bit slow if everyone else already “got it” but I just realized that we need to stop thinking of Magic the Gathering as a game, but as a Game System.

Off the top of my head there are Booster Drafts, Constructed Casual, Constructed Tournament, Preconstructed Purchased Decks, Type I, II, Vintage, Cube Drafts, and (my favorite) “shoebox” casual deck building. That’s just the two player versions with “normal” decks. The cardplay mechanics are all completely the same, but the “meta-game” (pool of allowable cards) are drastically different for each format. I propose that what we have been incorrect in calling different “pools of allowable cards” just different “meta-games of the same game”. Since most of us would agree that building decks is a big part (maybe the main aspect) of the enjoyment from MtG, then maybe we should consider each different format with a distinct sets of allowable cards as different games that share the same card-play mechanics.

This is the mirror opposite of traditional playing cards. A French suited deck of 4 suits with 13 ranks that blossoms into card games of totally different mechanics (Trick Taking, Bluffing, Fishing, Climbing, Rummy, etc.). In MtG, all the players expect the same mechanical card-play, but the deck construction differs drastically. The confusion of this thread is due to a disconnect between the pre-cardplay restrictions that each of us prefers. The passionate disagreement arises because we all feeling pressured to endorse all of the different possible deckbuilding games that come with this MtG system, when most of us only prefer a couple ways to constrain our deck building.

I certainly don’t give MtG an unqualified endorsement. I have no problems with paying an entry cost to get into MtG, just like purchasing any other board game. I also agree there are many fine deck building games within the MtG system. However I dislike our competitive consumerist culture, so I cannot endorse any version MtG game that taps into the players’ psyche to create an arms race that encourages people to spend significant amounts of real money.

Even though blowing lots of cash on cards may be perfectly normal for those that love the ultra-competitive game within the MtG System, such a fanboy should expect pushback on Boardgamegeek.com if they propose that “spending lots of money to acquire high powered game equipment” is a perfectly fine game mechanic. That’s just not reading the room.

However, there are different games that use Magic cards, some of which don’t require burning cash to keep up. These games with a restricted pool of available cards are incredibly fun (“lets make decks from my shoebox of cards!”). I’ve had more fun playing this type of MtG game than Dominion (I found the shoebox’s unstructured deck building “mechanic” a more creative activity than Dominion’s deckbuilding system).

However, I fear that as long as all the different Magic formats (games) continue to be combined and interchangeably in a polemical discussion, the participants will invariably spend the effort talking past each other.

PS. I don’t have a problem with people burning piles of cash on MtG, but it’s not for me. I don’t have a moral problem with gambling or even with the casino industry, but I know my addictive self well enough that I can’t go there. One of my best game nights was a Poker night at a friend’s house, and it was the night I realized I could never play Poker again.

P.S. I guess I was late to the party (though his definition of system is slighlty different) It’s not a game! It’s a System! Honest, I didn’t read his essay before writing mine!

I picked up a copy from Nekomado. The cost after shipping (airmail) was about $25 a game and it took exactly 3 weeks to arrive.

It was extremely well packaged – not a surprise if you’ve ever been to a Japanese supermarket. The shipping box itself was a little beat up, but inside the three games were “giftwrapped in bubble wrap. Lovely.

The game itself is exactly as “advertised”. The wooden pieces are nice and the board in fine shape.

Is $25 a bit much for a box with 8 wooden pieces (with stickers), a board, and two cardboard inserts to keep it from bouncing around? Yes and no. The art is cute as hell, the board does the job. It’s certainly nicer than my clumsy DIY set that never gets played. This will make a perfect present for my gamenight hosts and also my sister, so yes, totally worth it.

The rules are simple, you move your pieces one space according to the dots on the pieces. If the chick moves into the last row it can flip over to a chicken with additional movement. If you capture a piece, you can spend a turn dropping it anywhere on the board instead of moving a piece (a previously captured chicken comes back in as a chick and won’t get automatically upgraded if you drop it in the last row).

The goal is to capture your opponent’s Lion or to get your Lion to the opponent’s row (and not be immediately captured the turn after)

And how does the game play? I put it in a similar category as Nine Men’s Morris – a light two player perfect information abstract. I suspect it is too light for hardcore people who love the GIPF series or traditional abstracts. I shy away from such epic affairs, so this is a perfect fit. Simple to teach, cute art, and the gameplay is really fun. There are tough decisions, and the capture and drop mechanic makes for an “foreign” game experience for those of us who haven’t played Shogi.

Again, is it worth it? As I mentioned earlier, I made my own DIY set before jumping in and importing it from Japan, and I strongly encourage you to do the same. Or try out one of the phone apps out there. If you enjoy the game and would appreciate the better production, then yes, it’s a good value even if you have to import it from Japan. It’s not a steal, but certainly a fair exchange.

P.S. I also bought a children’s problem book when I got the games – physically it’s a nice little book, the graphics are well done and match game. However, the problems are so simple that you don’t get anything out of it that you wouldn’t learn in your first play of the game. Even so, it makes for a nice gift set.

This came at the end of a vigorous back and forth with a fairly stubborn conversation partner who was unwilling to explain what he meant by “good” with any definition more specific than “high quality” (and rants against relativists). It almost devolved into an exercise in futility, but turned out to be worth the effort because someone else jumped in and threw in some interesting ideas. It pulled the conversation out of its tailspin and it was good to be reminded that things aren’t that complicated, many thanks to mathaos42.

Although you both have likely achieved a higher degree of education than me I will still offer a suggested definition for potentially good art. I enjoy reading and visual arts, these are my relatively simple observations for how I understand what I read and view.

For me, good art meets three criteria (and employs them consistently within itself):

– Form/Technique – The work of art successfully implements the technique utilized in its creation. This could be a certain style of brush stroke or a syntax and writing style.

– Function/Concepts – Art should stimulate an emotional response and in some way speak to what it is to be here to be human. The intended message of art is important.

Form and function should inform one another, doing it ironically is fine. You can break the rules as long as you know them.

– Context/Culture – Some art is in a language I don’t speak. I would not recognize “good” abstract art but I accept it exists. I believe I am simply not educated in its language and part of the community. For me art builds on previous art, is influenced by the society it exists in and speaks to the context in which it was created. Art is a continuation of dialogue between the artist, their community, their peers and their predecessors. Good art may not be recognized by all but it is recognized by those fluent in the appropriate language.

Ultimately art is a medium for communication. Good art at least successfully communicates to those who are part of the intended culture and understand the context in which it is to be viewed. One of the fun
things about being human is that so much of our context is shared. While I don’t understand or appreciate abstract art due to my lack of desire to educate myself in its particular language I appreciate the Sistine Chapel and Shakespeare (with all respect to the great Russian writer). I also appreciate some art styles with less mass appeal, such as outsider art. Bad art exists. I know, I can create it. Art can also be good without my liking it.

What a great response! I had spent much of the conversation asking for a definition of art partly because I haven’t really been able to think it through clearly myself. I don’t know if the response would be unsatisfactorily relativist for the other guy, but I suspect this very closely mirrors my approach in “judging” a piece of art.

My summary if mathos42 posts would be:

1. Is a well crafted?
2. Did the artist say anything?
3. Does it touch the audience?

In response, I would simplify the list.

• Is it well crafted?
• Does it touch the audience?

For the first we judge the artist against their available tools, information, and contemporaries. We can judge their skill in producing the the art against their context.

For the second, we examine the effects their work has brought on this earth. Did it touch the people who the artist wanted to reach; does it touch people today? The stereotype of the unacknowledged genius reminds us that the initial reaction to a piece of work may be quite different from its long term legacy. The people of Shakespeare’s time clearly didn’t appreciate his genius as much as we do today – otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about missing plays.

The reason I would omit the middle criteria is because I feel that the artists’ intention is not important once they send it out in the world. The public statements of an artists might might inform the audience reaction, but only as one among the billion things that end up affecting the audience reaction. Ultimately, the reaction is owned by the audience.

There’s a story that Isaac Asimov mentioned in his book Opus 100

I once listened to a German philosopher discuss one of my stories in detail when he didn’t know I was in the audience. After his lecture I cam up to dispute the points he had made in his interpretation and presented him with what I felt was a blockbuster when I said, “After all, I happen to be the author of the story.”

“Oh,” said he, “are you Isaac Asimov? I’m pleased to meet you and I admire your work, but tell me – What makes you think, just because you wrote the story, that you know anything at all about it?”

I’ve never tried to forget that little lesson.

For what its worth, the other guy also agreed. He felt the 3 point criteria was just a long way of saying “high quality”. I’m still puzzled why he was so uncurious to work on developing a better working definition of “good” beyond the circular and inadequate phrase “high quality”, especially since he was trying to say there are things that are “universally good”.

I hope this post isn’t just a rationalization for not buying games. I almost never touch my DIY games, and if a DIY project only played only once or twice, I don’t feel like I’ve stolen anything from the designer or publisher.

Conversations about DIY games are always tricky because because it becomes a questions of morals. And its hard to argue morals especially in this world where the physical and intellectual properties collide.

The first group says “this is theft!”

The second group responds, “its not theft, I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine.”

The first group says “well maybe not physical theft, but intellectual theft.”

The second group says, “hey they gave out the rules freely, what I do with this copy of the rules is my business not yours.”

The first group says “you’re depriving the publishers of possible income from the game.”

The second group responds “by going out and getting the game played and helping add to the buzz for it, I’m doing my fair share in marketing and selling the game” (this is not mere theory by the way, I just purchased the game Nefertiti based on the recommendation of Gary Garrison. How did I find out he had played the game? He uploaded a picture of his DIY set on BGG)

The first group says “well it still feels wrong even if its not illegal…grumble…grumble…”

And the second group responds “who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do….grumble…grumble….”

Rinse lather repeat.

Our society is having difficulty coming to a consensus about the nature of intellectual property. I think everyone is fine with a dude profiting from his ideas. But how much leeway should the audience have for making derivative works based on these ideas? At what point does the derivative work impinge on the right of the originators to profit from their efforts? Should the recipient of ideas that are freely given away be allowed to make a derivative work based on these ideas instead of purchasing the product that was being marketed through the distribution of these ideas?

To me, some DIY scenarios are no brainers. If a game is out of print, and the neither the publisher nor designer would see any of the money I might spend on the secondary market for a used copy, then I have no qualms making my own copy. But I think most of us would agree that would be wrong to start a business producing and distributing reproductions of another designer/publisher’s out of print titles without getting the proper permissions. If a publisher chooses to keep their rules on lock down, I don’t think it is be right to circumvent that desire, obtaining a copy of the rules through back channels in order to make a DIY version of the game.

But those are the easy scenarios. The interesting questions are in the grey areas. 

• How about a case where the art is just ugly as sin with shoddy components?
• What if the game is an import and the shipping costs dwarf any money the publisher might realize from the sale?
• Or if its just a barely modified card game that could be easily played with a poker deck? 

I am perfectly fine making DIY sets in each of these scenarios. A games publisher is not merely selling rules, they are also selling components – if they chose to give the rules away for free as marketing but they fail to back it up with a compelling product at an appropriate price point with a proper distribution network, then I think there is nothing wrong with taking the rules they freely gave away and spending my own time, energy and money to build my own set.

However, I am not a perfectly rational human being. And so yes, I will admit that the second set of scenarios do feel like a gray area for me. I do kind of feel like maybe I stiffed Sean David Ross by trying out a couple games of Haggis by with a cobbled set of poker decks. I wouldn’t proudly walk up to Tom Lehman and tell him that Zman’s art for Middle Kingdom was so ugly that I decided to spend a weekend making my own cards without purchasing the game. This slight emotional conflict does make me wonder at times if maybe I am doing something wrong.

But when I think about it, it just doesn’t make sense. If I bought a used copy of Haggis, is it suddenly OK to play the game guilt free? Would I ever be ashamed to tell a designer or publisher that I loved their game even if all I did was play on other people’s copies? I don’t feel even the slightest hint of guilt that Andreas Seyfarth never got compensation from the used copy of Puerto Rico I purchased. Or even worse all those free plays of Ra that cost me nothing at my friend’s house. Is Reiner being ripped off any more or less than Sean David Ross?

I think we are at an interesting point in time. We grew up in a physical world. I give you an item in exchange for something that I want. In the past where everything was physical, it was easy to keep track of exchanges. You bought a game and got both the components and the rules. If you stole the rules, you were literally taking them out of the box and walking away without paying for them. But now its cheap and easy to share information. And in this brave new world some publishers have decided to give away the rules in hopes that people will purchase the components that are custom built to go with these rules.

They give these rules away knowing that most people who download their rules will read them and then do nothing. And no one would say that reading the rules and walking away is morally questionable wrong even though clearly that was not the outcome the publisher was hoping for. So is it really all that wrong to put together a set of components to play the game with these rules? It is not what the publisher would prefer, but we’ve already established that not obeying the publisher’s preferences is not inherently wrong.

We are adjusting to this new world of bits and information, freely passed around. I think our feelings and morals are catching up to this new paradigm. That’s why my rational side sees no issues with DIYing but my emotional side sometimes gets hesitant about DIYing. But whenever I think it through, I realize that I still have no rational issue with DIYing, so I again conclude its all right.

But I’m not a hardliner, I see why other people might default to saying “not cool” and I’m not going to demand that someone accept the way I enjoy this hobby.

What is right and what is wrong? Hell people have been arguing about that shit for millennia.

Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com

A few months ago when I was on an indie RPG kick, I came across the lovely forum story-games. Its a great place. One of the first posts I did there was part of a “5-minute” RPG challenge. Just come up with a new game…Quick!

The game I came up with is not worth mentioning (few 5-minute ideas are) but I wrote a couple posts that rehashes things I talk about regularly in real life but I don’t mention much online. Because of the length of the exchange I am breaking them into two blog posts. This first one dealt with the importance of playing with game design but though a very meandering path beginning with ruminations on my profession. This post deals with why I so greatly value design development.

TomasHVM, the initiator of the 5-minute challenge:
Hi Justus! Thank you for posting those thoughts (in the earlier post); very interesting.

You are right, of course; ideas are cheap. But you do not find the good ideas if you don’t dare to play around a bit, with ideas of all sorts. That’s what we have done in the 5 minute thread.

Having people learning something from dabbling in game-craft is very nice, even though most of them don’t go further with it. Their ideas are still out there, in the form of games posted, and in thoughts had by the people who read those games.

Such a practice is very nice for the culture of game-craft.

My Response:
Tomas, I very much agree, I hope I did not seem too harsh…I guess an unspoken assumption that I didn’t make clear is that I believe all initial ideas are crap. Even if you have a moment of of genius, the slightest bit of prodding at that nascent state would show major problems that could easily derail the initial idea. Whatever the creative endeavor, it is the refining process that takes brilliant notions and turns them into complete “thoughts”…and generally the refining process entails taking the idea-spark and doing a lot of bad iterations, developing the idea until something halfway decent come out.

I think this is an issue of unnuanced internet tone, but when I say ideas are cheap and generally crummy, I mean to say it in a very fond way – in that you gotta start somewhere, and it’s rarely pretty. But that’s where we all start. The next step – and out of the scope of the 5-minute game exercise – is to flesh out these ideas.

By the way I quite like the idea of “game-craft”. Reminds me of a book, How Buildings Learn. Its not written by an architect, but I really like his provocative theory that one of the major problems of the profession of Architecture is that it wants to view itself as an art or a science, but one is too capricious and the other too rigid. He felt it would be a much better approach to view architecture as a craft. It’s an interesting book, worth checking out (though I’m not sure how applicable it would be to game-craft, though maybe the ideas of accretion and changes over time might be particularly relevant to RPGs as opposed to other types of game).

TomasHVM:
I’m quite comfortable viewing game-design as both craft and art. Those terms are not at odds with each other.

As for viewing “all ideas as crap”; why take such a position; it lacks the nuance of reality. And I do not see it as very constructive either; you may work as hard to make your ideas grow into a beautiful work of art, even if you consider some ideas to be the golden nuggets you need to believe in your work.

My final response:
Ahh, I think it is empowering to think that all ideas start off weak. I believe all strong ideas start as weak ideas that have been carefully developed and nurtured. It’s a mindgame for me. The problem in thinking that there are “great concepts” to be discovered, is that I end up constantly seeking “better” design concepts in lieu of actually taking a “good enough” design concept and developing it into something “great”.

To be clear, I’m not saying all ideas are *equally* crap. I’m just saying that all initial concepts have major problems that need to be resolved through hard work and diligent development. Of course, some ideas are worth developing and some are just completely dead on arrival – recognizing what idea has potential is a fundamental task of an effective designer. But after having found a decent starting concept, continually looking for a “better idea” is a recipe for going nowhere. Such a designer just constantly starts over, he will continually waste his time chasing his tail while someone who spends their efforts developing a decent idea will go much further.

Funny thing is that this approach to architecture design in school also applies to architecture craft in professional practice. Its most obvious when you draw up construction details for a building – which is inherently an intimidating task because that is where one’s knowledge (and lack thereof) is most on display. When someone is new to the practice, they won’t know how something is assembled. So when they are tasked to detail something, it is really easy for them to freak out and freeze up while staring at the blank page! I always tell my less experienced colleagues (and often to myself) the first detail is going to be a fucking mess, in fact you’ll most likely draw three or four shitty versions of the same detail before you get it right. But that’s just the way it is, and the sooner you draw the crappy details the quicker you’ll develop a good one.

As I write it out it sure does sound like a strange pessimistic design philosophy…but its worked well for me. Design is a mind game, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other folks have a more optimistic mind game that is better suited for their design process. But mine mindset is all about embracing initial failings and avoiding the a stalemate of overthinking things.

Funny thing is that I don’t at all intend to sound dismissive of the 5-minute exercise – there is a powerful energy in great brain storming sessions and a joy of discovery with all these ideas coming from all directions! All projects start somewhere and loose free-flowing brainstorming sessions are one of the best ways of getting a lot of ideas on the wall. The more ideas you throw up, the more likely you’ll find one that will be a good starting point.

But I’m also keenly aware that the next step will take a lot of work. But hey! The next step always takes a lot of work, so why be a downer? In my last paragraph of the initial post I meant to acknowledge that “yes, I am certain that all those games in the thread had serious issues, but it seems silly to dismiss the 5-exercise for what it isn’t.(a practice of fully developed thorough game design).” I certainly enjoyed the exercise for what it actually was, a collective creative push in throwing things ideas up into the air, a maelstrom of community brain activity.

Also Posted on Boardgamegeek.com

A few months ago when I was on an indie RPG kick, I came across the lovely forum story-games. Its a great place. One of the first posts I did there was part of a “5-minute” RPG challenge. Just come up with a new game…Quick!

The game I came up with is not worth mentioning (few 5-minute ideas are) but I wrote a couple posts that rehashes things I talk about regularly in real life but I don’t mention much online. Because of the length of the posts I am breaking them into two blog posts. This first one deals with the importance of playing with game design but though a very meandering path beginning with ruminations on my profession. The next post deals with why I so greatly value design development.

Late in the discussion TomasHVM, the initiator of the 5 minute challenge wrote:

I have the impression that a lot of those posting a game in the challenge, “published” their first game in that thread. And that too, to me, is significant. Putting a game out there is something very special to do. Having finished and published a game, however small, brings you to a new level of thought as a game-smith.

From this I take that a bunch of game-smiths have taken a small, but significant, step further by meeting the challenge. And that makes the challenge a small part of the greater movement of developing role-playing games for the future. To make role-playing games grow as a form, we need to have a good supply of new blood. Challenges and competitions are ways of inviting new blood into the ranks. Having more game-smiths actually turning out games for people to see, is great for the culture. It infuses it with new thoughts and greater confidence, and helps raise the intellectual level of discussion. Being peers with hands-on experience in design, is a good fundament for constructive dialogue.

Here was my initial post to the discussion:

Like all architects, I have an tortured relationship with my own profession . On the one hand, I have a very strong professional pride, with specialized skills and knowledge which I utilize to proudly earn a living. On the other hand, there are enough atrocities in the built environment, usually by architects, that I question the value of our profession when it comes to pure design. If you boil things down, the government recognizes us as a special profession because they think it is important that buildings are designed in a way to give its inhabitants an opportunity to safely escape the structure in the event of a fire. Officially, aesthetics isn’t a factor.

But still, I want to think that all my years in school and aesthetic training means something more than expeditious fire escapes! In my travels I have been to some awesome spaces designed by justly famous architects…but I have also been to some awful spaces designed by equally famous architects. My current office is in a skyscraper by I. M. Pei with cramped lobby and an insipid urban plaza! When I think about the built environment, the places that evoke my fondest memories are organic vernacular growths – the market street near grandma’s apartment in Hangzhou, a quiet residential street in Berkeley, the surging density of Manhattan, a nondescript cafe in Paris.

What’s missing in architecture school – and thus in much of our professionally designed environments – is a healthy respect of the fabric of our environments. The occasional iconic structure is important for our civic pride, but a city of icons is nothing but a jumbled mess – a jumbled mess that suppresses the expression of a vital social life.

However, other arts are not concerned with the vernacular fabric that surrounds it. We go to an art museum to experience great iconic paintings, not to ponder the torrents of mediocre visual productions that fill our dentists’ office. You don’t need to worry about audience participation, you don’t want the fat drunks in the stands to actually affect the results on the basketball court. It means nothing to the great artist when the random plebe dabbles in their art, Kobe doesn’t give a shit if you shoot hoops in the driveway after a long day at the office. In some ways, games fit in this type of individual art. There are great iconic games with great designers, and it doesn’t really affect their lives nor change their art if their audience occasionally dabbles in game design.

Then again, story games are not a passive art. This is a social activity, you don’t sit there and just watch pixels dancing on the monitor, you have to get in and participate to make it worth everyone else’s while. A great movie is still awesome in a half empty theater, but with these games, if the audience is flat the end product will be weak – no matter matter how awesome, how elegant, how conceptually beautiful the game design. Understanding rules and mechanics is merely scratching the surface, and the beauty of these games is found in the moment of emergent wonder when everything snaps together to create a memorable experience. For that to best happen, you need an active, educated and involved community of people who invest themselves into the art.

I presume that the most important way to become a good game player is to practice gaming, but I also believe that it is a useful exercise for everyone to dabble in game design. Instead of working with material that is handed to you, one should occasionally confront a blank page and be forced to come up with something, anything! You learn through designing; things you can’t notice by just playing games. The act of design is a powerful exercise, and even if someone decides that game designing is not to their liking, at least they will walk away with some insight into what it takes to create a game.

I think the difference between some of the earlier, downer comments and Tomas’s enthusiasm boils down to this. Yes, ideas are cheap, and if one was to look carefully at the actual 5-minute games I’d suspect most of them are pure crap. It takes a lot of work to turn an idea into a decent game and even more to turn it into a product worth publishing. But to completely dismiss the exercise is overstating the case. Very few people have the dedication to go through the effort to become an accomplished game designer – this comes with real personal cost. However there are valuable lessons to be learned in designing a game, even in just a few minutes.

This paradox is the essence of the exercise, let’s make the act of designing a game as non-intimidating as possible in order to encourage people to play with the process of designing game. Of course one will earn more valuable lessons with sustained effort, but you gotta start somewhere, and the 5 minute game design was about exactly that.

Also posted on Boardgamegeek.com

For context, I’ve only played this game twice on my homebrew set, and only with my girlfriend. I rarely write reviews unless it has been bouncing in my head for a few days, so I think there is something here.

This game won the first Spiel des Jahres, way back when there weren’t any other SDJ winners. However most folks don’t recommend this game for 2 players, even though the box says 2-6. Even David Parlett thinks his game is best with 4-5. Here is the two player variant on Parlett’s website.

You each start with 95 carrots and 5 lettuces, and move two runners round the board. The winner is the first to get both runners home.
You each play in turn, and at each turn are free to move either one of your runners, but not both. When one of your runners lands on a lettuce square, however, you must use your next turn for chewing a lettuce and the turn after that for moving it away. When bringing your first runner home you may have any number of carrots and lettuces left over, but the usual rules apply to bringing your second runner home. That is, all five lettuces must have been chewed, and the number of carrots left over must not exceed 20 if it comes home second or 30 if third.

I cringed when I read that variant. I hate two player variants that include dummy players or playing two “sides”. It’s inelegant and almost insulting – you’re too lame to get more buddies over so we’ll cobble together this variant for you! Spare me your pity and just print 3-6 on your box! Even worse, two player Hare and Tortoise is anti-thematic. The multiplayer race makes simple sense – get in as early as possible! … But goal of this two player game is to get your second guy in before the other guy gets his second guy in. So first place doesn’t matter?*

_{*This brings up an idea. What if there was a series of races and you scored points for the position? Whoever had the most points after a set number of races wins. Maybe 5 points for first, 3 for second, 2 for third. Or to go with the race idea, whoever gets to set number of points (31?) wins.}

But once you get past all this, you’ll find a game that works very nicely with two players. Let me reframe 2P Hare and Tortoise as a highly tactical resource management, action selection game with a slight chance element. The board is made up of a limited number of action types, mirroring the limited number of action types available in typical action selection game. Each turn, a player choses an action, resolving any resources they may collect from their previous action, moving their piece, paying for the movement costs, and then resolving any actions that are activated upon to their arrival in the new space. During the race, fighting for race placement can have significant effects on your resource generation. There is no engine building, but this game is all about carefully timing the production and expenditures of resources. Instead of racing for the most victory points, you are racing to get your two pieces to the end as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I think that the game’s two player reputation has been hurt by earlier versions of the Hare event cards (unfortunately including the current the Rio Grande release). However, the latest incarnation of the event cards (published in 2008, 2010) has eliminated random movement of pieces – you won’t land on hare space and then get thrown away somewhere else. For a multiplayer game, this type of randomness can be overlooked since you only have one bunny and it’s a more “social” game, but the two player game is all all about manipulating your two bunnies to be in the right spots to cash in on their race order positions. Furthermore, a two player game is directly confrontational and you must be able to get in there and mess with the opponent’s plans. If you cannot predict where your piece will be after it lands on a space, then you can’t plan ahead and there goes the game.

_{For those with the older version of the game I would suggest using the Parlett Strategic variant where landing on a Hare space results in losing a turn. This is a high price to pay, but it may be worth it to mess up the race order and force the other guy to adjust his plans. Please note that this variant turns the game into a perfect information abstract. As such, I prefer the new cards since I like little lighter games and I appreciate how the hare cards have a slight catch the leader mechanism baked in.}

After a couple plays, I can confidently say this game is a great two player game that fits perfectly in that SDJ sweet spot. Sometimes the committee goes heavier and sometimes much lighter, but Hare and Tortoise was well deserving of the honor of being the first SDJ winner and holds its own even after thirty years of game design innovation. For those who have played this game with many players, I hope to join your ranks soon.

Until then, I contend this is a perfectly fine two player game. It is a tight tactical game: it forces you to make tough decisions, gives you room for dramatic moves, but is balanced enough to keep the game close. It doesn’t outlast its welcome, just the right length for its medium low weight while still rewarding skilled play. I might not know how well two player Hare and Tortoise stacks up against its multiplayer version, but I’ve played plenty of two player games and this is a great one.

Update
I have now played a few multiplayer games and find it quite good. I’ve also developed my own variant for the hare cards, using a six sided die instead of cards.

1. Give 10 carrots to each player lying behind you in the race (if any) If you haven’t enough carrots, give them five each; if still not possible, one each. A player who doesn’t want extra carrots may throw them to the carrot patch.
2. If there are more players behind you than in front of you, miss a turn. If not, play again. (If equal, play again)
3. Restore your carrot holding to exactly 65. If you have more than 65, pay extras to the carrot patch; if fewer, draw extras from the carrot patch.
4. Draw 10 carrots for each lettuce you still hold. If you have none left, miss a turn.
5. Free ride! Your last turn costs nothing. Retrieve the carrots you paid to reach this square.
6. Lose half your carrots! If an odd number, keep the odd one.

Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com