Rule 0 or Playing Within the Spirit of the Game

repoman wrote: In the specific example of Malloc's Republic of Rome game, I still stand behind his play as being within the spirit of the game. I suggest that the proper response would have been for the rest of the table to appease him at the time of demand and then collectively agree to never allow him into a position where he could make that threat again. See, in RoR it isn't arbitrarily decided who gets put into power. It happens through player decisions and that is the huge difference between it and Dead of Winter..

The game makes some attempt to be a simulation, in the case of RoR.
One COULD reasonably argue that there is a flaw in the game, under that understanding,
by not appropriately penalizing someone for taking actions that assuredly would destroy Rome.
To do so though, would probably add several pages of rules. It's far easier to just follow the game's context, as well as the specific state changes outlined in the rules, instead of some preconception about the game being nothing but a competition between the players involved - which is not supported by the rules.

In the end though, the losing condition in that game means the destruction of the Patrician class. With some hand-waving, one could argue that the player making the threat is some sort of Lafayette or Louis Phillipe pandering to the masses and swept up in the spirit. Anachronistic as hell, and laughable, but hey, it's not like it actually damages play - just the simulation side of things. I think the fact that some people would prefer a Junta-style game to the simulation is a part of why the point is not really hammered in. It can appeal to both those wanting to play something believable, as well as those wanting something where such threats work.

I'd play with either type of group, but prefer one with more willingness to accept what the game seems to imply than those not buying into the simulation at all.

The thing is tanking Rome is so easy and so uninteresting. I mean you can just spam assassinations every turn and make the experience miserable for everyone. So to me it's as part of the game as The Halifax Hammer is part of A Few Acres of Snow

Erik Twice wrote: The thing is tanking Rome is so easy and so uninteresting. I mean you can just spam assassinations every turn and make the experience miserable for everyone. So to me it's as part of the game as The Halifax Hammer is part of A Few Acres of Snow

But doing so isn't a path to victory whereas a power play, like Malloc's, most certainly can be.

Spamming assassinations is (I think) the only way to end up out of the game, by the rules.

Once you're low of senators, you're playing with fire doing that
The game corrects that behavior.

A few people have mentioned Terra. I got this a few years ago but have never played it. Is it worth trying to get to the table?

Legomancer wrote: A few people have mentioned Terra. I got this a few years ago but have never played it. Is it worth trying to get to the table?

Most people I know hate the game. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the same joke: "This game is terra-ble." But most gamers hate semi-cooperative games, period. So the response is completely natural.

Our group has never completed a game, and we never will. It's a running joke that we all enjoy. I can't tell you how many times we've destroyed the Earth will glee.

What's tough is that it's a semi-coop where players really do need to play selflessly (occasionally) for the game to be completed. Multiple times, you will need to play a card that helps no one but the winner (which is hidden, in part) and will likely cause you to lose.

As others point out, characteristic of semi-coops, if it gets to the point where there is a probable clear winner, people stop helping and there is absolutely no hope of surviving the global apocalypse. Unless you treat it as a pure coop, which no one should.

Anyway, it's not complicated and plays quickly. So it's worth a shot regardless.

wkover wrote: As others point out, characteristic of semi-coops, if it gets to the point where there is a probable clear winner, people stop helping and there is absolutely no hope of surviving the global apocalypse.

Sounds like a remarkable simulation of its subject matter.

S.

The reason I love Malloc's play because the ripples will be felt outside of that specific game session. So next time he sits down with those people in Republic of Rome or another game for that matter, that action will linger in the back of people's minds and play into negotiations.

So at what point does playing the game go beyond just playing the game session and playing for the next game? Is it reasonable to play like a dick in order to influence and impact play down the line? This by the way is one reason why I love, love, love Risk: Legacy...There are elements outside the specific session that you start to game.

But it is a risky move and could cause people to never play the game with you again.

VonTush wrote: So at what point does playing the game go beyond just playing the game session and playing for the next game?

I don't know if I'd read that much into it. I don't think anyone thinks "I'm going to take this socially-edgy move here because we're playing Imperial next and I want to set the tone ahead of time." I think it's more about the nature of the player, and what it says about the way he will play because of that. The next game provides a back-pressure to the move, but that's the same feedback you get in all social interactions. It's not strategy, it's nature.

I got a guy I play with that's competitive, and he stays within the rules all the time. But, we were playing that game that has the all the people on the cover (the one where the guy in the middle is holding a pig . . . a card game where you make sets . . . dancers and shit . . . apparently didn't make an impression on me) and he was putting his complete sets behind my elbow a bit on the table so they would be harder for other players to see. It's not cheating, but it's not exactly white-hot honest either. Where do you draw the line? He thought it was fine. I made it a point to keep drawing attention to those cards and moving them out in front of him (as a courtesy) so that he wouldn't forget to score them at the end of the game. I could argue he was being a dick for trying to obscure his position in the game, but he could argue that I was being a dick for repeatedly drawing attention to his score.

The takeaway from that game 18 months ago is this -- now when he does anything that downplays his score in any game, I can just start to speak and then pause and look at him, more or less accusing him of soft cheating and drawing everyone's attention to it without completing a word. I can see pretty clearly that I've changed his behavior. So am I a manipulative dick or not? Both of our personalities are in play here and we're using our personal skills and our opinions of the boundaries of proper social behavior to exert an advantage on the game at hand. This is all in the mix. You can pretend different perceptions of the "boundaries of proper social behavior" don't have an influence on the game currently on the table, but I don't see how you remove them.

S.

Calandale wrote: Spamming assassinations is (I think) the only way to end up out of the game, by the rules.

Your faction leader cannot die so you can keep doing it for as long as you need, namely the rest of the game. I really doubt you'll make it out of the Early Republic if every turn there's a 33% chance a general will die, though.

wadenels wrote:

Erik Twice wrote: The thing is tanking Rome is so easy and so uninteresting. I mean you can just spam assassinations every turn and make the experience miserable for everyone. So to me it's as part of the game as The Halifax Hammer is part of A Few Acres of Snow

But doing so isn't a path to victory whereas a power play, like Malloc's, most certainly can be.

My point is that both are uninteresting, unfun, game-ruining strategies those games would be better without. (I'm also confused because The Halifax Hammer is certainly a path to victory. In fact, it's the best path to victory)



I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this, though.

wadenels wrote: Also, in Republic of Rome you aren't really trying to save Rome. You're trying to win. In Dead of Winter survival is the ultimate goal and even if you can't win you can help others win, which would be a horrible way to play Republic of Rome. Archipelago is somewhere in between two, which is probably the reason some people have so much trouble wrapping their head around it.

I'm not sure what game you got in your box of Dead of Winter, but in mine, there's a winner or group of winners, and there is a loser or group of losers, and the winners are ahead of the losers. There is no such goal as survival, or the "colony win", or any other bullshit. There's winning, and there's not-winning, and each person can have one of those two outcomes.

I have a long-standing belief that there is an order of victory that goes something like this:

Solo Victory > Shared Victory > Shared Loss > Solo Loss

Other people may disagree with that - but my definition of doing my best to play to win involves moving as high on that ladder as possible. If that means I drag everyone else down with me, then I've moved up from a solo loss to a shared loss, which is an improvement in my state relative to everyone else. If everyone else doesn't like that, then maybe they should play in such a way as to prevent me from doing that. The folks I play with seem to share this standard, although we've never really stated it - it's part of why we have yet to successfully complete Tomorrow. Everyone starts throwing nukes when they find themselves mathematically out of it.

This whole discussion only makes sense in relation to DoW as long as there's no betrayer. If there is, tanking is stupid, because you just possibly handed him/her the game.

madwookiee wrote:

wadenels wrote: Also, in Republic of Rome you aren't really trying to save Rome. You're trying to win. In Dead of Winter survival is the ultimate goal and even if you can't win you can help others win, which would be a horrible way to play Republic of Rome. Archipelago is somewhere in between two, which is probably the reason some people have so much trouble wrapping their head around it.

I'm not sure what game you got in your box of Dead of Winter, but in mine, there's a winner or group of winners, and there is a loser or group of losers, and the winners are ahead of the losers. There is no such goal as survival, or the "colony win", or any other bullshit. There's winning, and there's not-winning, and each person can have one of those two outcomes.

I have a long-standing belief that there is an order of victory that goes something like this:

Solo Victory > Shared Victory > Shared Loss > Solo Loss

Other people may disagree with that - but my definition of doing my best to play to win involves moving as high on that ladder as possible. If that means I drag everyone else down with me, then I've moved up from a solo loss to a shared loss, which is an improvement in my state relative to everyone else. If everyone else doesn't like that, then maybe they should play in such a way as to prevent me from doing that. The folks I play with seem to share this standard, although we've never really stated it - it's part of why we have yet to successfully complete Tomorrow. Everyone starts throwing nukes when they find themselves mathematically out of it.

This whole discussion only makes sense in relation to DoW as long as there's no betrayer. If there is, tanking is stupid, because you just possibly handed him/her the game.

I'm not even sure that the situation you describe in your last paragraph (there is a betrayer) changes too much. As far as I see it, losing to the betrayer is still in the "Shared Loss" category, which is better than "Solo Loss". More precisely, it's a choice between losing the game to many others or to a single player, and I can see how some would see the former as more humiliating. Not to mention that throwing the game is only a potential win for the betrayer.

To me it's the biggest problem with semi-coops like this: there is a big disconnect between the win/lose conditions of the game and the real life setting they try to depict. In reality, no-one in their right mind would consider surviving the zombie apocalypse (without fulfilling some random personal goals, even if others did fulfill theirs) worse than dying (as long as all the others die as well).

Frankly, I'm not sure what (if anything) could be done about it. The best idea I can think about is the following: before the game, buy twice as many bottles of fine beer (or whatever treat you collectively agree on) as there are players. If the colony survives, everybody in the colony (except the betrayer, if there's any) wins, regardless of the fulfillment of their personal goals: they all get one bottle each. Those, who fulfilled their personal goals get to share the remaining bottles between themselves as they see fit. If the betrayer wins, he/she gets three bottles, and the rest is put away for the next game. If no-one wins, put away all the beer for the next game.

Alternatively, take all the beer that was not won, find the closest homeless person, and give them to him.

Gambling, as Kingput said, would induce the true spirit of the game if players played in a non-meta fashion.

Same is true with poker. Ever played poker for non-money stakes? Lots of crazy shit happens but as soon as you introduce each person putting up 30 dollars you almost immediately start to see real, strategic, poker.