Long Live Long Games

For the record, I don't really consider anything under three hours to be "long". "Long" to me is three hours and up.

Of course, my Hellfire Club gang tends to add at least an hour to just about everything we play just from bullshitting, fixing cocktails, impromptu crossbow demonstrations, discussion about occult topics and whatnot.

Agree, for me long is anything over 4 hours.

Shorter games are often forgettable. Sometimes that's become a shorter game just doesn't have the time or even depth to generate much of a narrative. If you can't remember the games you have played even a little while later, then you are just passing time in a specific manner.

Longer games do tend to generate more of a narrative, and people become more vested in their outcomes. And those long games are more likely to generate memorable moments that players will remember long after the game is finished.

It's funny how much of the Barnes post on the end of page one I actually agree with, yet I don't as well in other ways.

I agree, funner is better, no doubt. But that's a pretty subjective statement. Funner will vary wildly from one person to another. I don't know what's funner really, that is very situation dependent. My wife thinks funner is not playing any board games at all. Clearclaw might not even know what fun means.

I'm also not arguing that time equals immersion (although it may, it just wasn't my point) my point has much more to do with how we change over time. How we interact differently over time. I don't think there is anything "manly" about long games (and I despise the idea of wanting to be "manly" anyway, I think this whole macho thing is a bad idea that creates bad, violent men... but that's a different topic all together).

I'm interested in this concept of change over time. I also like the idea of setting up one game and being done with it, I don't need four different games, four different rule sets, four different set ups and take downs... to have fun. But I can roll that way to.

The one thing I do disagree with though is the time I have available based on my personal lifestyle. It could very well be that Barnes or other people on this site have time for long games in their life right now... but I'm not among their numbers. My life is just too damn busy right now, I actually have to not make new friends sometimes and it hurts me. I meet people at work and shows that want to hang out and I'd love to get to know them better but I just don't have the time. I'd like to make the time but my family takes priority over everything else and I don't (nor should) feel guilty about that. Sometime I can tell that they think I'm being arrogant or closed off, but that is not my intention. Time with my son trumps all else at this point. In this city I have very little family, one brother, that's it and no babysitter that we trust. So it's hard to find the time as much as I might like to but if it means robbing that time from my family... it's not going to happen. Also my main hobby continues to be music and that I will not cut.

I'm working eight days a week man, I just don't know how you guys do it.

Wow. Clearclaw. That's a name I've not heard in a while.

JonJacob wrote: Put people in a room for one hour and ask them questions about one another. Do that again but leave them there for six hours and the results will be different. It's just how we are. If you are interested in playing people instead of mechanics than long games offers something no short game can. If you just like the mechanics and whatnot then you lose nothing.

That's a great way to phrase how I feel about long games.

Michael Barnes wrote: Face it. Long games are more often than not a drag. They're a pain in the ass to organize. They're a pain in the ass to set aside a day to get through. And odds are, you're not going to be playing these kinds of games frequently enough to get the most out of them in this day and age, regardless of lifestyle or life stage.

A good long game shouldn't be a drag. Some long games are drags because, and this mostly applies to older games, the mechanics make the game longer than it deserves to be. Game design has come a long ways since Civ/AdvCiv and it shows in the amount of stuff you can cram into a 2-hour game. That doesn't change the way I feel about "event" games like Civ/AdvCiv or Age of Renaissance. Those, and some other long games, are rewarding in their length because of the way the game situation evolves over time. The rest of that paragraph I totally agree with, which exasperates me immensely.

Michael Barnes wrote: It's a myth that longer games are more immersive. What happens isn't immersion, it's that some people commit differently and engage themselves differently because there is a time investment involved. I used to think that a Civilization game HAD to be long in order to capture the feel. I was completely wrong about that. There is no reason for a Civ game to be long, because if the design abstracts time, scope and scale appropriately then the actual playtime doesn't matter, and could actually detract from the game if it outstrips the player's level of engagement.

I don't want to wax philosophical over player dynamics or the way time investment affects play style, but those are important parts of what I like about long games. Clash of Cultures is probably a better civ game than Civ/AdvCiv. But only if "a civ game" is your goal. Outside of that narrow focus they are very different games and provide very different experiences. It's not a matter of immersion. Shifting genres, when I've left my backside open to a supposed ally in hour 5 of Diplomacy there's a level of suspicion, reliance, and tension there that no other negotiation or DOAM game (that I've played) can match. Civ/AdvCiv can provide that as well, but Clash of Cultures doesn't. It's easy to shrug it off when the game's going to end inside of the next hour.

Being functionally eliminated in a long game does suck, and it does happen. Long games also tend to be more delicate than shorter or more normal length games. But I'm usually playing to have fun with/against the other players at the table and not so much to win. A lot of the time (not all of the time) using what happened 3 hours ago in the game as negotiation fodder to make or break an alliance or trade is more fun than playing a bunch of different games in the same time period.

Michael Barnes wrote: As for the whole lifestyle issue...I'm an adult and even though I don't have lazy sundays to do whatever the hell I want all day or anything like that, I can damn well schedule myself that time if I really want to. I have just as much freedom now as when I was 17, I just need to know in advance. Don't call me Friday night to come over Saturday morning, that doesn't work anymore. But this whole idea that adults/people with families or jobs, whatever, somehow "can't" play these kinds of games anymore is bullshit.

Totally agree. Like I said earlier: I can schedule an unorganized game day weeks in advance and get a good turn out, but if I organize a longer game for the day I get crickets. The time frame isn't the issue. I suspect a lot of people share your opinion with respect to long games. So I'll just have my Takenoko pity party over here while I think about how awesome Warrior Knights Game Day would have been.

Gotta call bullshit. The tolerance for longer games is very much related to station in life. Ten years ago when I had four kids under 7 I arrived at game night at 8pm, I didn't have the brain power to go too deep and it wasn't uncommon to be interrupted. That's life, and anyone pretending that they have all the freedom of the world and then couch it with "as long as you schedule six days in advance and nothing comes up" is only trying to convince themselves.

My kids are old enough now that I can go straight from work and get a six hour stretch of uninterrupted gaming in. Fury of Dracula or even TI3 are in reach, and frankly a refreshing change from the fast food of the prior decade. I'm not going to pretend that I'm as free as I was when I was 20, but I do have much more latitude than I did when I was 40.

One of the things the WBC or the gaming weekend a few weeks back gives you is the opportunity to play a "big" game and not be too concerned if it drags at the end. You just crack open another beer and keep on playing.

S.

If it was a different crowd, that crazy consimworld con sounds pretty fucking cool. A week playing the most insane experience wargames, many times in teams? Finishing whole campaigns? Part of me is titillated.

I get together with the same group of friends once every month specifically to play longer games. Usually a single long game. I look forward to those days. I play shorter games and medium games sometimes as well and have no desire to limit myself to one or the other. I seriously don't understand some people here's inability to enjoy more than one genre, length, or style of game. Sure there are games that are a chore to slog through for more than an hour. Easy for me to avoid those games since we plan ahead for what everyone wants. But there are plenty of crap shorter games just as susceptible to a bad session that feels like forever and its harder to avoid those since they tend to come out at open gaming nights.

Not sure what it is exactly about longer games that I enjoy. Maybe putting so much time and effort into something builds more of an emotionally attached immersion rather than just the mental immersion a good shorter game can evoke. Long live long games! Long live choice of games!

Michael Barnes wrote: As for the whole lifestyle issue...I'm an adult and even though I don't have lazy sundays to do whatever the hell I want all day or anything like that, I can damn well schedule myself that time if I really want to. I have just as much freedom now as when I was 17, I just need to know in advance. Don't call me Friday night to come over Saturday morning, that doesn't work anymore. But this whole idea that adults/people with families or jobs, whatever, somehow "can't" play these kinds of games anymore is bullshit.

I'm glad this is said. I agree 100%. I usually get out for one game night a week, which tends to run from 7-11, maybe sometimes 12. That's more than enough time to play any game in my closet. Even (best in class) dinosaurs like TITAN or Warrior Knights. If, for some reason, there needs to be a super long session of something, hey, let me know a few weeks in advance. A few weekends ago I played in an all day BloodBowl tourney. I won't set a whole day aside to game, but once or twice a year, I feel fine with it.

So, yeah, when I read people say they "don't have the time" they usually mean "they'd rather...", and that's totally cool too. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play Nexus Ops, Cosmic Encounter, and bunch of hands of Love Letter if that's want you want.

This also holds when people say they "don't have time for role-playing". Whatever. With all the time we waste online, you mean to tell me _none_ of that time could have gone towards reading a module? You're going to have a couple hours upcoming to game with buddies. Playing an rpg may mean that you surf the web a little less beforehand. Again, if rpgs aren't your thing, no biggie. It's just something I see a lot..."don't have time for role-playing"...

Anyway, about long and short games, I also agree 3-5 hours is a long game, and I prefer games to settle in around the 2-4 hour range.

Playing short games are fine, and fun, but they are in no way memorable. Dropping a Heroine, Winter, Key combo on someone in Condotierre is awesome. However, some else is likely to also do it that game, if not in the following game. When what the game has to offer is on full display in rapid playings, then nothing really sticks out.

A long game, however, is different. One 3-4 hour session is not going to reveal all that Warrior Knights has to offer. in one game, you won't see a large portion of event or assembly cards. One game of Martian Rails you may only see 10-20% of the events. But, the events that do happen have a big impact on the game and leave a lasting impression.

Personally, I play the shorter games with the family or my casual friends, but with the other groups, I prefer the longer 2-4 hour titles.