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Co-Opportunistic Game Questions

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14 Nov 2017 18:25 #257649 by SuperflyPete
So, if you’re invested in the game, and you have the choice between allowing 10 billion people to die and a planet to become uninhabitable, or simply not becoming Prime Minster, your choice is nuking the planet?

Not being snarky, just asking.

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14 Nov 2017 20:04 #257652 by birdman37
Wow, I can nuke a planet in your game? Sign me up!

More seriously, I like how Archipelago addressed the "everyone loses" issue, by making it a potential win condition for one player. By deliberately tanking the game, you might actually be handing the win to someone else...
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14 Nov 2017 20:34 #257653 by SuperflyPete
You can, in a roundabout way.

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14 Nov 2017 20:40 #257654 by ufe20

SuperflyTNT wrote: So, if you’re invested in the game, and you have the choice between allowing 10 billion people to die and a planet to become uninhabitable, or simply not becoming Prime Minster, your choice is nuking the planet?


Yes, I'm nuking the planet.

I'm with RobertB on this. "Everyone wins" "everyone loses" and "everyone ties" are all essentially ties. Yes, on a rational level it can be explained that thematically those three all represent different end states, but on a gut level they feel the same.

So if the options are to let Steve become Prime Minister (he wins, therefore I lose) or to nuke the planet (we all lose, aka a tie), I'm picking a tie every time because fuck Steve. It's not about being a table flipping douchcanoe, it's just that if I'm playing a game where somebody's the winner my number one goal is to make sure that it's not the other guy, thematic trappings be damned.

So yeah, not sure you need to go full on Legacy with this, but like Sag suggested maybe a campaign mode? Something to give me longer term repercussions for recklessly tanking the game.

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14 Nov 2017 22:19 #257658 by SuperflyPete
So, basically, if you’re in distant last place, you’d tank the game to ensure you don’t lose?

I’ll never understand that mentality, so I can’t really wrap my head around tanking a game and ruining everyone’s chances to win ( and good time) simply because I am losing. That’s imconmprehensibly selfish.

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14 Nov 2017 22:28 #257659 by Sevej
Worth repeating:

Single Victory > Some Victory > All Victory > Tie > All Defeat > Some Defeat > Single Defeat

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14 Nov 2017 22:52 #257662 by ufe20
When I'm talking about tanking the game in this situation, I'm not talking about sulking in the corner (ruining everyone's fun) or kingmaking my wife who's in third place just because I happen to be losing. We're talking about taking a loss and turning it into a tie.

You asked, so I'm just letting you know how I'm going to play it. Other people will probably play it in a similar fashion. I'm not trying to get into a philosophical debate on the correct way to play board games.
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14 Nov 2017 23:26 #257667 by engelstein

ufe20 wrote: When I'm talking about tanking the game in this situation, I'm not talking about sulking in the corner (ruining everyone's fun) or kingmaking my wife who's in third place just because I happen to be losing. We're talking about taking a loss and turning it into a tie.

You asked, so I'm just letting you know how I'm going to play it. Other people will probably play it in a similar fashion. I'm not trying to get into a philosophical debate on the correct way to play board games.


I think plenty of people feel this way, and plenty feel the opposite, and there's no 'right' anwwer. Are you playing this as a competitive contest or a light role-playing experience? As long as the game has all 'type A's' or 'type B's' it can work. The problems start if you have a mix of the two, and they don't know that going into the game. Then punches get thrown.
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14 Nov 2017 23:35 #257668 by RobertB
SuperflyTNT wrote:

So, basically, if you’re in distant last place, you’d tank the game to ensure you don’t lose?


If I can do that in the game, I'm not in distant last place; we're all tied. Unless the game is really poorly designed, forcing a tie is part of the game, and is meant to be dealt with in the game by the players.

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15 Nov 2017 00:56 - 15 Nov 2017 01:08 #257670 by SuperflyPete
Worth pondering a solution, but I don’t know that there is one. When the social contract is nonexistent and you can’t expect a player to either concede or give their all, any game that has a “all lose” (the game beat you) can never have a winner at a table when all players go into it with the strategy of “I win or we all lose”.

That’s Trump strategy LMAO. May have to rethink some things. I honestly never considered this as a viable strategy. To be clear: I am not being snarky or shitty. I just don’t play games with people that have exhibited shitting on the table after an hour to earn a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. This is kind of a new thing in my experience so I just want to understand the motivations and design mechanisms which can stop those sorts of people from having that as an option while still having a fatal conclusion possible for the planet.

The management of various connected systems is a key, integral part of the theme and losing that is a non starter. I just have to figure out how to avoid it. I’ve considered a veto where the majority could veto a move if it was not supported by reasoning by the actor, but that seems to be an invitation to a really bad experience.

The game needs to have a balance where advancing a person’s position relative to the score is only slightly penalized when making moves that are detrimental to the game state, encouraging the decision to potentially lose everything by taking risks. Luck pushing is fun. The setting is political and socioeconomic in nature and thus I want to reward selfish play but not as much as selfless or neutral play.

The 1/2/3 point system has worked thus far but with the advent of the spoiler this complicates that notion.

Erik: was 5 but to keep cost down I have to go 4. >= 60 minutes MAX with 4, 45 after strategies are understood.
Last edit: 15 Nov 2017 01:08 by SuperflyPete.

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15 Nov 2017 06:24 #257671 by Erik Twice

RobertB wrote: If I can do that in the game, I'm not in distant last place; we're all tied.

Even if the rules state otherwise? The rules of most games with this kind of mechanics do not say there's a tie, they say you lose, to the game just like you would lose to another player. I mean, when you lose at Pandemic, do you lose or do you "tie" because the non-human opponent doesn't count? Same concept.

It's harsh, but the cold hard truth is that one must either accept that or not play this kind of game.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Worth pondering a solution, but I don’t know that there is one. When the social contract is nonexistent and you can’t expect a player to either concede or give their all, any game that has a “all lose” (the game beat you) can never have a winner at a table when all players go into it with the strategy of “I win or we all lose”.

There is no solution. The winning player would be playing alone against every single other person on the table and that's simply impossible to balance for. I would simply make it explicit in the rules that all players lose to the game and hence end up in last place compared to, at worst, penultimate place if they didn't tank the game.

Re: Player count. That looks great. I don't have 4 players very often, but it's more than reasonable for me. So I look foward to it :)

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15 Nov 2017 07:46 #257672 by hotseatgames
A good solution to this issue, and it's been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, is hidden information. If a person doesn't know exactly where he stands score-wise, he will be less likely to tank the game. Sons of Anarchy does this via hiding your money, drugs, and guns. Cthulhu Wars has Elder Signs that you randomly draw; you might get a 1, 2, or 3 point token, and no one will know but you until the end.
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15 Nov 2017 08:08 #257673 by SuperflyPete
Wasn’t hidden, it just didn’t register to me as a viable solution for this product.

If I replaced a 1/2/3 score with random 2/3 tokens, shown 1 tokens, and shown -1 tokens, that players hold face down, that might work but I think determinism in scoring is important to games that are pure strategy. Playing really well but losing because your shit luck drew you all 2’s vs 2’s and 3’s is a truly shitty way to lose and, I’d argue, a weak design in a game that relies solely on them.

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15 Nov 2017 09:43 #257674 by RobertB
Erik Twice wrote:

The rules of most games with this kind of mechanics do not say there's a tie, they say you lose, to the game just like you would lose to another player. I mean, when you lose at Pandemic, do you lose or do you "tie" because the non-human opponent doesn't count? Same concept.


I don' t think a Pandemic loss is a tie, because all the humans are on a team. For me, Nuclear War is a good example of what I'm saying. If all my people get killed, I get to use all my remaining warheads. If that kills another player, they get to use theirs, and so on. I played a ton of 3-player Nuclear War, and "everybody dies" was pretty common. What never happened was the last victim saying, "Darn, I lost. Guess I'll sit on my hands and not shoot off this pile of warheads, because killing my opponent would be Wrong."
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15 Nov 2017 09:52 #257675 by Sagrilarus

SuperflyTNT wrote: Playing really well but losing because your shit luck drew you all 2’s vs 2’s and 3’s is a truly shitty way to lose and, I’d argue, a weak design in a game that relies solely on them.


That rules about about 90% of all games in existence, including most of what are considered the best of breed.

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