Talked Victory Point Journey vs Point Salad on Who, What, Why Podcast

On the Who, What, Why Podcast Episode: What's the Point with Dr. Wictz I dive into the impact Point Journey and Point Salads have on player experience in Boardgames. 

Highlights includes how certain games, like Robotech: Reconstruction combines Point Salad and Point Journey.  Where does Burgle Bros fit into the Point Salad and Point Journey dichotomy.  And why Point Journey is a better description then calling something a Race game.   

Victory Point Architecture: Oversimplified Point Salad vs Point Journey

There are stereotypes of what experiences take place within a Point Salad and a Point Journey.  Neither of these victory point architectures have to meet their stereotypes, but certain design decisions within either framework increases the likelihood the games will match their stereotypes.

Point Salads and Point Journeys have natural flavors that alter players experience.   A stereotypical Point Salad, say Agricola, gives players freedom to build in their sandbox a series of decisions to maximize your points.  The interesting part of that statement is not point maximization, but sandbox.  I am building my own world in the way I want to view it. That means I am making my own special brew in VivaJava, neutering my bird sanctuary in Wingspan, and running my brewery my way in Brew Crafters.  

Points award me for what I build, but at the end of the day, what I construct drives my enjoyment of the game.  In any building point salad, say Suburbia, Chinatown, or Tiny Towns, joy is found in whatever you are able to construct.

Point Salads lend themselves well to games where you really want players to feel like they created something.

Having an open ended point salad with many ways to score points lends to the feeling of building something.  That experience is magnified by the popularity of building themes within Point Salads.  

Point Journey lends well to narrative experiences where there is a start and an end.

Chess is all about the struggle players undertake to capture each other's Kings.  Formula D is a journey where you race to be first.

What Design Choices Contributes to Stereotype

Point Salad: More Freedom, More Options, More Custom Sandbox. 

The more legitimate options provided for players in a Point Salad, the more players will have the opportunity to create their own custom world.  Imagine playing New Bedford without the town building element.  New Bedford is a town building and whaling game, where players can invest in expanding the town or in their whaling expeditions.  When players expand the town, they receive ownership for their particular part of town.  To expand the town, players must collect the resources required to build a particular building.  Each building added is unique, and will add a different character to the overall town.  Removing the ability to legitimately win by adding on to the town, dampens players ability to create a custom world where the player feels they are contributing to the development of New Bedford. 

The creative space in Point Salads can be enriched with game expansions.  More legitimate paths an expansion creates, the more a player can customize their own custom world.  Terraforming Mars base game begins with 208 cards representing a project the player’s company can undertake. The projects the players choose to undertake, and the timing of their projects enables them to create their own custom version of Mars.  The Terraforming Mars expansions broaden the possible ways for players to create their own custom world.  Now, players can not only choose to Terraform Mars, but also affect the colonization of other planets, interplanetary shipping, and the outcome of solar system’s politics.

Ironically, Point Salades can also create different flavors each game by limiting your ingredients. Beginning each game with a different subset of options allows players to experiment with combinations that may be lost if all everything was available.  The Quacks of Quedlinburg limits the types of ingredients available each game to all players, quak doctors, to make their custom brew.  Working around this limitation results in players exploring custom combinations that would not exist if all ingredients were available every game.  Similarly, Dominion creates a different flavor each time you play by varying which card types are being used each game.  The limitation encourages players to explore different card combinations since the relative effectiveness of card combinations is alter, a different flavor I will say, because of what other cards are or not available.

Point Journey: Detail Narratives or Clear Overarching Narratives

Providing players with Detail Narratives or a Clear Overarching Narrative enhances player connections to the Narrative experience in a Point Journey.  Each location in Arkham Horror draws a location encounter that weaves a narrative to that moment, at that location, in the overall story of the game.  Players do not need to create the narrative when a detailed Narrative is provided, they just have to embrace the story they are experiencing from the game as the game tells them the story.

Point Journeys that rely on Clear Overarching Narratives use the clear objective of the Journey to propel players to create their own narratives as they seek to fulfill their predestined purpose.  Pandemic makes it clear, you are on a mission to save the world from a series of deadly diseases.  When players see an outbreak spread across North America, the players create a story about the gravity of the situation and how they will respond.

When a Clear Overarching Narrative is missing, it becomes harder for players to create narratives as they play.  Compare Checkers with Chess.  Both are Point Journeys where a player wins under very specific conditions.  Yet in Chess, I have the goal of capturing a King, with pieces based on positions that existed in real life.  That means my pieces can have personality, a story.  In checkers, there is no Clear Overarching Narrative.  I win if I take all of your pieces.  The pieces are not mystical bears fighting wise but overconfident unicorns.  There is no accomplishment of destroying my opponent’s Kingdom at the end of the game.  Just a piece on the board, and then a piece off the board. No story to help lean players into the natural tendency to develop a narrative as they undertake a Point Journey.   

Colloquium on Games of Strategy: Chapter 2

Click here to directly download the MP3

Click here to watch the unedited version on Youtube

Welcome to the Colloquium on Games of Strategy.  Games of Strategy is a textbook on game theory written by Dixit (not the game), Skeath, and Reiley that we are reading to help improve our analysis of board games and board game design.  Paul Owen (owns 3rd edition) and I (own the 2nd and 1st editions) record a discussion about a chapter or two from the book every two weeks.  

In the second episode we talk about their discussion on sequential games in Chapter 3 (they are the same in all editions).  Highlights include a discussion on the limitation of anticipated payouts predicting player behavior and ways to ensure a sequential board game is unpredictable enough to remain relevant for players. 

You can find our previous discussion on Games of Strategy here and the next episode here.

You can also find a write up of Paul Owen's notes from our discussion here.

A Dr. Wictz List: 10 Ways to Procrastinate within a Board Game

After having a hard time getting this weeks post down on paper I decided in a moment of panic to think of all the different ways I could procrastinate writing this post within a board game.

1. Engage in no trades in the game of Monopoly.


2. Only conquer one territory a turn in Risk.


3. After castling in Chess only move your king back and forth for rest of the game.


4. Hoard resources in Settlers of Catan by never turning in any cards to get anything.


5. Never move your back line in checkers.


6. Order all units to support in Diplomacy.


7. Every move of Clue goes between the Kitchen and the Study.


8. Shoot no one in Bang!


9. Do not complete any objectives in Firefly.


10. Play Twilight Imperium.

Classics Lecture Series: Dexterity- Hungry Hungry Hippos, Pick up Sticks, and Jenga

The innocent marble takes a pleasant stroll not knowing a great herd of hungry hungry hippos are carefully stalking its movement.  As the marble thinks to itself, “boy the sun sure looks nice today,” it finds itself in the bottomless stomach of a very hungry, hungry, hippo.

Hungry Hungry Hippo teaches us that board games do not have to be limited to games of mental strategic interactions.  Board Games are also a place where we can hone our skills to achieve a physical feat.

Why expand beyond strategic games?  What do designers get out of adding competitions of physical dexterity?  

Not everyone wants to compete over who is the best thinker.  In Hungry Hungry Hippos there is no ambiguity to the goal of the game.  You see the marble, you eat the marble.  People can play it when their mind is not fresh enough to handle complex calculations or strategy without feeling the game is a fancy coin flipping game to see who wins.  Players get to compete over who has the best hand eye coordination.

Games based on achieving physical goals let designers build new games with limited parts.  Take the game of pick up sticks.  The game is literally just a collection of sticks.  Yet by dumping them on the floor you have created a large minefield for the players to defuse.  

Being a game of physical skill does not mean the game has no strategic mental skill.  Winning Jenga is not just about who can best identify which piece to take and having the hand motor skills to successfully take it.  The game is also involves strategizing over which piece to take to make your opponent's turn harder while still leaving you a block to grab in the future.  The same sort of thinking ahead that someone uses in a game of Chess or Checkers.   

All games are made up of mechanics that award one skill over another, be it your ability to do math in your head, read your opponents, or memorize what cards are still in the deck.  Games that combine mechanisms push board game players to embrace strategies that play to their strengths and compensate for their weakness.  

When I play Loopin’ Louie I compensate for my lack of hand eye coordination by just focusing on defending my chickens.  I let the other good players knock each other out and take my chances with the last remaining player.  The moment is tense, yet my fingers hunger to strike the lever for the crown just like a hungry hungry hippo yearns for one last delicious marble.

Classics Lecture Series: Introduction - Learning to Think Ahead - Tic Tac Toe, Checkers, and Connect Four

We are alpha board gamers.  Alpha gamers have grown beyond old standards with inferior mechanics.  We decry them as being poorly designed and loath the uninformed for still insisting we play these mass market "classics."

 

Well stop your loathing!  Today I kick off a new series called Classics Lecture Series where we look at the positives of classic games.  Classic games are "classic" because the designers did enough things right that people want to play these games even today.  Whether we like to admit or not, a number of us got into board gaming by playing these games.  Nor should we forget that classic games have inspired the mechanisms and qualities we cherish in today’s modern board games.

 

By breaking down the good parts of classic games I will be identifying the qualities and mechanics that we should be utilizing as modern board designers.  Where shall we start, well with the first game I ever learned...Tic Tac Toe.

 

I cannot estimate the countless hours my parents were spared trying to find a way to entertain my sister and me while we played with a simple piece of paper and a pen.  The classic knock against Tic Tac Toe is that if everyone plays the correct strategy then no one should ever win.  Well go try and tell that to a five year old.  Go ahead...I can wait...the article will still be here after you get back.

 

Don't believe you do they?  As a kid, predicting your opponents next move is like predicting what the stock market will do tomorrow.  Only through many...and I mean many...games of Tic Tac Toe we learn no one should ever win the game.

 

Why does it take many games for little kids to realize the futility of playing Tic Tac Toe?  Because little kids are learning the skill of thinking ahead.  When kids first start playing Tic Tac Toe the game feels more like flipping a coin to see if the person who called heads wins.  I put an X in the left corner, my sister puts an O in the middle, neither of us are initially thinking about the next strategic move.  All we know is that sometimes something magical happens and one of us magically wins the game.

 

Instincts driven by sibling rivalry pushes us to start looking further ahead in game play to increase one's likelihood to win or at least prevent the other sibling form winning the game.  Trial and error will teach us that certain combinations of X's and 0's will ensure a victory over the inferior sibling.  But as soon as the other sibling learns to recognize our tactical secrete our competitive edge will be lost and every game will end in a tie.

 

By playing Tic Tac Toe and competing we learned our decisions have consequences and we need to think ahead in the game to ensure the game ends in a tie.  We are now ready for bigger and better games.

 

Depending on your household that game is either Checkers or Connect Four.  The drawback to both games is that the conclusion is pre-determined for perfect players.  The great thing for young board game players is that no matter what our parents may think, we are not yet perfect.

 

Like Tic Tac Toe, good Checker and Connect Four players look to set up traps that guarantees their victory no matter what move their opponent makes.  Achieving this requires thinking ahead and anticipating your opponent's moves.   Checker and Connect Four provide a whole new universe of traps to be sprung onto your opponent.

 

Traps that are discovered partly through trial and error, but partly through the lessons learned in Tic Tac Toe.  Once a player masters the concept of looking ahead, then players can start looking ahead in new surroundings like Checker and Connect Four without even playing their first game.  They start asking themselves before their turn what their opponent will do if they make a particular move.

 

Looking ahead is a key part of what makes any modern game fun.  Having a strategy to win a game of Agricola means that you are anticipating which resources your opponents are going to take before you make your move.  You, as well as your opponents are looking ahead.  In repeated play you are competing by seeing which one of you does the best job of reading the board and looking ahead.   Without looking ahead there is no strategy.  There is just a random dice roll to see who wins the game.  That is the lesson of Tic Tac Toe, Checkers, and Connect Four.