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.

Game Design Philosophy: Translating The Controlling Idea Into Theme and Mechanics

Game Design Philosophy: Translating The Controlling idea into theme and mechanics.

At the base of any game is a simple structure.*

Every turn players do X, so that they can sometimes do Y, which eventually achieves Z (usually winning the game).

examples can be simple.

Chess

X= move a piece

Y= Capture pieces

Z = Capture King

Or more complex with multiple X's and Y's.

Sid Meier's Civilization: the Board Game (2010)

X= Build Technology buildings -OR- Build culture buildings -OR- Raise Armies -OR- Seek gold

Y= Gain technology -OR- Move up the culture track -OR- Attack enemies -OR- Get gold

Z = Get 15 technology -OR- Reach the end of the culture track -OR- Take another persons capital -OR- gain 15 gold

When designing a game it's very important to remember that every time you give players a new X, you have to have a corresponding Y and Z. It's too easy for designers to create many X's and leave out the rest, or design an exiting Y with no way to build to a Z.

I will use this structure as a guidepost to turn the controlling idea of Snowboard cross into something resembling a game.

The X, Y, and Z of Snowboard Cross

This stage is the where the first thoughts start to jell. During this phase I am looking at the controlling idea, theme, mechanics, and seeing how to best to translate it into an X, Y, and Z.

The controlling idea I want to capture the most is the element of risk vs. reward in the jumps. I noticed that when a snowboarder lands a jump poorly they stall, when aggressively they gain speed but become unstable, when they land it perfectly they don't immediately move forward, but gain momentum into the next jump.

X= roll dice

The basic mechanic then is a dice rolling push your luck game, where players use and loose dice to make jumps, but need to last through several jumps.

Y= gain dice

Each jump will have a target number, and players will use the result of a number of dice to make the number. If they choose an amount below, the player will slow, if above they will speed up, but if they have the exact amount they get a die back. To make gaining dice meaningful the player does not start out with enough dice to complete all the jumps.

Z= pull ahead

If a player tries to conserve too many dice they will slow down and their racer will drop out, and if they are too aggressive and go too fast they will crash, potentially taking others out with them. A player will need to use timing and luck to stay in the race.

This is far from over, and next time I’ll go into the refinement of this idea.

*As with any creative formula it can be broken. But to break it you need to understand it, and know how breaking it will benefit what you are trying to achieve.

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.