The Tao of Gaming

Since we've seen a published paper on cooperative games, and I've been playing some "semi-cooperatives" recently, I'm thinking about how to make one that just glows. Obviously, I don't know exactly what to do, but here's what I've got:

1. The "Cooperate/Compete" decision should be a spectrum, not just binary. Sabotuer gets this right. All of the "good" dwarves want to find gold, but they don't want to enable the next player to be the finder (then they get the least gold).
2. Parts of the "good" group can win without the full group.
3. Players must have strong incentives to act differently. These incentives should not be obvious to other players.

Let's apply these criticisms to Shadows over Camelot. The decision is binary. Either you are a traitor, or you aren't. In fact, loyal knights win even if dead. The players, via their special abilities, do have reason to act differently. But this doesn't help the traitor or add tension, because everyone knows why. Sir Kay should go to the fight-total quests, etc.

OK, let's imagine a variant. Each player is dealt a "loyalty" card as before, but also a "motivation" card. The motivation what your victory conditions are. (Motivation cards may not be shown). For simplicity, we'll assume that the traitor ignores his motivation card. For a loyal knight to win, camelot must survive (as per the normal game) and they must fulfill their card. These may not be balanced. (I'm literally making these up as I type).

• "Warrior" — You crave the fight. You only win if there are 8 or more siege engines in play at game end.
• "Collector" — You seek an artifact. You only win if you are in possession of Excaliber, Lancelot's Armor, or the Holy Grail at game end. (You may be dead and still win, assuming you had the item when you died).
• "Judge" — You punish the guilty. You lose if the traitor was not revealed during the game. (No effect if there was no traitor).
• "Power-Monger" — You crave leadership. You only win if you have 15+ fighting in your hand at the end of the game.
• "Champion" — You must prove your worth. You only win if you have personally defeated the Black Knight at least once during the game.
• "Apprentice" — You want mystic knowledge. You only win if you have two (or more) Merlin cards in your hand at the end of the game.
• "Flawed Knight" — You are just ornery. You only win if have been accused of being the traitor. You may not make an accusation during the game.
• ??? — You have a healthy sense of self-preservation. You only win if you end the game with three or more life.
• ??? — You think there are too many knights. You must be alive to win, and you only win if one (or more) loyal knights died during the course of the game.
• "Druid" — You seek balance between good and evil. You only win if there are 3 or more black swords on the round table.

You could easily have 15 or more roles (for real variety), but I'm out of time. Adding these makes the game harder; perhaps you should start each player with an extra card. The Judge and Flawed Knight can really add pressure to the game, but all of these gives players some incentive to snipe on each other and give the traitor room to manuever.

Now, there's a (valid) accusation that these rules constrain the players. But that's the point. The players don't have enough individual constraints that aren't obvious to other players.

Perhaps I'll print these out and try them soon. Others are welcome to, as well. And add roles/names in the comments.

Update 3/12 — I've uploaded a rules file and a list of the cards (to be cut out). I upped the motivations to 16. Who knows if they are balanced?

I've also added a rule — the super taunt. Simply, a revealed traitor may guess someone's motivation. If they are wrong, the knight loses nothing (not even the card). But if the traitor is correct, the knight loses a random card and a life. So, Knights will be loathe to reveal their motivations. I may also allow a traitor to ask for a card in hand instead of a random card, but that has issues with the Dragon/Picts/Saxons. In any case, I don't need to write up rules on what can and can't be revealed, as there is an in-game cost to openness. I wish the rules on other communication had some way to make a traitor punish knights, instead of a blanket declaration of "No naming cards" (Especially one that is easy to circumvent).

Perhaps the traitor should be allowed to self-reveal (without the "Fate" card) just to allow them access to the super-taunt. Off the top of my head, I think I'd allow it, as long as it was their sole action that turn (no accusation, then reveal). Actually, on second thought, no. The knights who want to keep X cards in their hand somewhat want the traitor hidden (since he may knock a needed card out of their hand). That's enough reason to keep the traitor from being able to reveal without a card.

I just realized that the "Keep X cards" in hand knights also have an unwritten condition ... stay alive. Since you discard your hand. Perhaps I need to allow them to win if they had the cards in hand when they died. But the basic idea is still sound.

It's a rare week when I play four new games, but Saboteur rounds out the quadfecta. It's another 'semi-cooperative' game, and part of Z-Man's line of cute filler card games. The players are dwarves digging for gold, but a few of them are Saboteurs. These roles are dealt out ala Shadows over Camelot. There's a start card and three goal cards. One is sweet, sweet gold. Two are lumps.

It's the standard "Play a card, draw a card." Most cards fill in the dig, which is an empty grid. You need to walk at least seven cards to get to a goal, so it will take a while. Cards can also hinder your opponents (broken tools), repair breaks, discard a previously played card on the grid, or peek at one goal card.

If the dwarves exhaust the deck (and cards in hand), then the saboteurs win, and each get a flat amount (based on the number of saboteurs). If the dwarves find gold, the 'good' dwarves draft a number of gold cards ... with the finder getting first pick, and usually an extra pick. You draw gold equal to players, but skip over any saboteurs, so a few players will get gold.

The last part is clever, in that it encourages you to aim for the gold, but in such a way as you don't get last pick. This blurst the line between betrayal and simple greed. In fact, I don't think anyone really caught onto it until after a round or two, so the dwarves always found gold. This made the game fall a bit flat, but I'd like to try again.

We also played Shadows over Camelot. Unlike last time, we did have a traitor, who managed to get lancelot's armor without arousing much suspicion, but he outed himself in the endgame, when things looked desperate. Another loyalist win.

Now that I've played a half-dozen times, I have to say that Camelot works well in theory, but in practice it's a bit off. The game just isn't as tense as expected. I had suspicions about the traitor, but they were wrong. In any case, I think this game is "OK." It's a change of pace, certainly better than Arkham Horror. I should pull out Lord of the Rings.

Also hitting the table:

• Geschenkt!
• Medici
• Celebrities

Update: I've been informed that the gold is distributed counter-clockwise, which changes things.

Someone posted that the Combat Commander rules were available on GMT's page. A ~90 minute wargame, reminiscent of Up Front, but with a map, hidden victory objectives and the like? I've pre-ordered.

Via Newmark's Door, I skimmed an interesting book available online: Markets, Games, and Strategic Behavior: Recipes for Interactive Learning, an economics text on game theory and the like. I just skimmed it, but there were some interesting experiments on market bubbles. As usual, the games are theory, not fun. But I now think that someone could make a great game about stag hunting.

Got in a nice game session last night, with a trio of new (to me) games.

Mall of Horror seems similar to Rette Sich Werr Kann (aka The Lifeboat Game), except you are now throwing people to the zombies instead of the sharks. In fact, there are many rules differences, small and large. Interestingly, the smallest change dominates. Forget the special action cards or now how the zombies attack randomly. Two things differentiate this -- each player only has three pieces (instead of six), and the piece with two votes is worth less, not more, if it survives.

These completely change the dynamics, and not for the better. In Rette, people will often team against the bully because a) he outvotes them, b) it's a bigger point swing to kill him. But now the bully is worth less points, so all non-bullies have a stronger incentive to defect. That, and halving the number of pieces means that that one extra death matters even more.

Compared to that changes, random cards and zombie appearances are just chrome. My gut feeling? A noble effort, not up to the (admittedly high) standards of the original, but OK.

A large game of Arkham Horror broke out. Everyone but me had played, so (since it's just a cooperative game), I skipped the rules and let people guide me. It did nothing for me. If you remember that paper on cooperative games, I'm not sure I agree with everything in it, but Arkham Horror violated a few of the lessons that I thought were good advice:

• There wasn't much tension between what one person thought was best, and what others thought. [Admittedly, it was tough for me to judge this, but that's my gut feeling].
• There was no hidden information between players. Each player knew what everyone knew.

More importantly, the system just seemed damn cumbersome. Over a dozen decks of cards (I am not joking), lots of special cases, etc. Full of flavor, but nothing that grabbed my attention.

So I bailed and played Blue Moon, which I've always wanted to try. It's easy to dismiss a game after a single play; it's tougher to give a thumbs up. But I tenatively like it, with the caveat that it's tough to judge the full system playing only a single game. I could see going through phases of just playing the decks, then tinkering with deckbuilding, etc. Warrants a few more plays.

Apart from the new games we also got in some, Ra, Fairy Tale, No Thanks and Shadows Over Camelot. Since it was late and I was the only person who played, we lighted up (used all 8 cards for a 4 person game), which meant that there was no traitor. So a player victory, but one that had some tension.

Overall, a good night.

Valeria Putnam writes about games being "Solved." For the most part, I don't disagree that the solving is the interesting part, but there's the following:

But as soon as my fellow players start commenting that I haven’t made the “right” play—my interest in a game plummets. So I enjoy solving a game, but I don’t enjoy playing games that my opponents perceive as solved. Just the other evening a Caylus opponent commented that he was “surprised” by a move someone made and my heart sank. It looked like a reasonable play to me.

A surprising move hardly indicates a game is solved. The commenter may be wrong. Novice chess players are often surprsied by knight forks, discovered checks and the like. Now, assuming that the speaker is a strong player, it could mean that you've missed a much better play. Surprised is a euphemism for "Wow, what a boneheaded blunder." I was surprised by a player earlier today (in Caylus) when an opponent brutally punished my mistake.

But leaving aside all of that, there's plenty of surprise in unsolved games. Many chess games have surprising moves, even at the highest levels (grandmasters get caught, just like novices). I was also surprised (kibittzing) when one player with a known style switched styles midgame. (I was also intrigued by one particular building choice he made, when another seemed obvious to me). In this case, surprise indicates that the game is still an open issue.

Now, I'm not saying Caylus is as deep as chess, but I think the same things hold.

But overall I agree with Valerie. Some games are solved, and once I understand the solution my interest plummets. One worrying aspect (for Caylus) is that after my close game my opponent called it "kinda boring." We both played a main-line game, with a few mistakes on either side. We were both using the same style, and I suspect we could have predicted 90+% of our opp's moves.