Here's something weird. The RPG designers over at MCDM like to relax by playing Codenames together. Recently, they experimented with a super-sized game of Codenames, four times the size of a regular game. You can watch MCDM play Codenames here and "Super Codenames" here.
For "Super Codenames," MCDM bought four copies of the game, in order to have enough agent cards. Instead of a five by five array of cards, the 'board' is ten by ten. Each five by five quadrant coincides to a regular key card. Two of the quadrants are blue-bordered keys and two are red, resulting in an even number of red and blue words on the board.
Some rules had to change. Because of the even number of clues, the team going second picked one of their cards to cover before the game started. Due to the increased opportunity to pick an assassin, a team would not lose unless they hit two assassin spaces. Additionally, MCDM normally plays with house rules that don't allow for note-taking of any kind, however that is untenable for Super Codenames. On their first play-through, the spymasters took notes; on the second, everyone did.
Playing Codenames at this scale brought about a number of changes in dynamics. Spymasters very quickly changed clue-giving strategies to worry less about avoiding bystanders and even the other teams cards in favor of covering as many of their cards as they could. This was a valid strategy because each team started with over thirty cards on the table. This unconcern with wrong answers resulted in a loss of tension that a regular-sized game has. Even the assassin, who now required two hits to be deadly, was no longer a significant source of tension.
The sheer number of cards also made the game feel more fair. A regular game always has the chance that one team has a whole bunch of easily relatable items and the other team does not. Playing four sets of cards at once evens out the chances of relatable items, especially since clues could span across the boards. A tangible result of this was that there were multiple instances of clue words given for six or seven cards, something incredibly difficult in a normal game. For less impressive clues, the clues were more straightforward, with fewer logical leaps. As field agents became used to more straightforward clues, they began to miss clues they would have had no trouble connecting in a regular game of Codenames (such as connecting heart to attack).
The drawback to the number of cards (and clues given over the course of the game) was information overload for both spymasters and field agents. This was reduced somewhat by note-taking. However, gameplay shifted considerably with the introduction of note-taking (especially in game 2) towards a logic puzzle rather than a competitive game. The loss of competitive feeling became most evident when players from both teams, at times, would cooperatively brainstorm about what a clue might mean.
MCDM plays with a meta-dynamic they call "signal jamming," which is where members of the opposing team try to persuade the guessing team to guess an answer that they believe is wrong. It adds a delightful level of subterfuge to the game, getting more complex as a player might suggest an answer they believe is correct in order to steer a team away from it. Signal jamming is completely lost in Super Codenames. The field agents are so overwhelmed with figuring out their own clues that they don't have the mental space to figure out opponents clues AND steer them in the wrong direction.
Another meta-dynamic MCDM plays with is the "unconnectable clue" guess. In the rules of Codenames, teams can always guess the clue number plus one. However, if there isn't a leftover clue to guess, most players will pass to the other team. Some of the MCDM players have made an art trying to get inside the spymaster's head and guess which word on the table was so different from the words they guessed correctly on that turn that it must be one of their words. This move has worked at least once, but shows up more often as a strategy to consider before discarding for safer plays. In Super Codenames, the unconnectable clue, like signal jamming, is lost.
In fact, Super Codenames has such different dynamics that it started to build its own meta after only two plays. In set up, the four sets of clues were divided by a cross of black ribbon on the table to help the spymasters more easily see which quadrants they were looking at. However, because the field agents knew how many of their cards might be in each quadrant (8 or 9), they were able to eliminate quadrants late in the game, significantly narrowing down the number of cards they had to consider for a clue.
I was not expecting how the gameplay shifted while still maintaining the basic rules. Super Codenames is a harder game than Codenames because of the amount of information needed to be processed by all the players. Super Codenames is an easier game because the connections are simpler to make and the tension is lower around possible mistakes. There is more room for expert clues (clue:0 and clue:infinite) and coming back from behind. Super Codenames is a much, much longer game. The game length became overly long from a viable product standpoint. But the added length gave more room for meta-guesses within a single play-through based on table talk and previous guesses. However, if a team were to fall behind significantly, the game could drag on for over an hour before the chance of a reset.
In Principles of Design #7: Scale and Proportion, we talked about scale being the actual size of objects. For Super Codenames, the object that increases in size is the 'board'. The bigger an object, such as an oil painting, the more room for additional information to be presented to the viewer. (The Garden of Earthly Delights is twenty times larger than the Mona Lisa.) Making the 'board' larger increased play time, cognitive load, and drastically changed dynamics. By changing the scale, we see how the addition of more information in the form of components can both simplify and complicate a game, make a game both easier and harder, and make a game feel both more balanced (greater fairness in clue giving) and less balanced (an overall messier game with greater possibility of an uncatchable leader). The shift in dynamics was solely because of the increase of information presented to players as a result of a change in scale.
For "Super Codenames," MCDM bought four copies of the game, in order to have enough agent cards. Instead of a five by five array of cards, the 'board' is ten by ten. Each five by five quadrant coincides to a regular key card. Two of the quadrants are blue-bordered keys and two are red, resulting in an even number of red and blue words on the board.
Some rules had to change. Because of the even number of clues, the team going second picked one of their cards to cover before the game started. Due to the increased opportunity to pick an assassin, a team would not lose unless they hit two assassin spaces. Additionally, MCDM normally plays with house rules that don't allow for note-taking of any kind, however that is untenable for Super Codenames. On their first play-through, the spymasters took notes; on the second, everyone did.
Playing Codenames at this scale brought about a number of changes in dynamics. Spymasters very quickly changed clue-giving strategies to worry less about avoiding bystanders and even the other teams cards in favor of covering as many of their cards as they could. This was a valid strategy because each team started with over thirty cards on the table. This unconcern with wrong answers resulted in a loss of tension that a regular-sized game has. Even the assassin, who now required two hits to be deadly, was no longer a significant source of tension.
The sheer number of cards also made the game feel more fair. A regular game always has the chance that one team has a whole bunch of easily relatable items and the other team does not. Playing four sets of cards at once evens out the chances of relatable items, especially since clues could span across the boards. A tangible result of this was that there were multiple instances of clue words given for six or seven cards, something incredibly difficult in a normal game. For less impressive clues, the clues were more straightforward, with fewer logical leaps. As field agents became used to more straightforward clues, they began to miss clues they would have had no trouble connecting in a regular game of Codenames (such as connecting heart to attack).
The drawback to the number of cards (and clues given over the course of the game) was information overload for both spymasters and field agents. This was reduced somewhat by note-taking. However, gameplay shifted considerably with the introduction of note-taking (especially in game 2) towards a logic puzzle rather than a competitive game. The loss of competitive feeling became most evident when players from both teams, at times, would cooperatively brainstorm about what a clue might mean.
MCDM plays with a meta-dynamic they call "signal jamming," which is where members of the opposing team try to persuade the guessing team to guess an answer that they believe is wrong. It adds a delightful level of subterfuge to the game, getting more complex as a player might suggest an answer they believe is correct in order to steer a team away from it. Signal jamming is completely lost in Super Codenames. The field agents are so overwhelmed with figuring out their own clues that they don't have the mental space to figure out opponents clues AND steer them in the wrong direction.
Another meta-dynamic MCDM plays with is the "unconnectable clue" guess. In the rules of Codenames, teams can always guess the clue number plus one. However, if there isn't a leftover clue to guess, most players will pass to the other team. Some of the MCDM players have made an art trying to get inside the spymaster's head and guess which word on the table was so different from the words they guessed correctly on that turn that it must be one of their words. This move has worked at least once, but shows up more often as a strategy to consider before discarding for safer plays. In Super Codenames, the unconnectable clue, like signal jamming, is lost.
In fact, Super Codenames has such different dynamics that it started to build its own meta after only two plays. In set up, the four sets of clues were divided by a cross of black ribbon on the table to help the spymasters more easily see which quadrants they were looking at. However, because the field agents knew how many of their cards might be in each quadrant (8 or 9), they were able to eliminate quadrants late in the game, significantly narrowing down the number of cards they had to consider for a clue.
I was not expecting how the gameplay shifted while still maintaining the basic rules. Super Codenames is a harder game than Codenames because of the amount of information needed to be processed by all the players. Super Codenames is an easier game because the connections are simpler to make and the tension is lower around possible mistakes. There is more room for expert clues (clue:0 and clue:infinite) and coming back from behind. Super Codenames is a much, much longer game. The game length became overly long from a viable product standpoint. But the added length gave more room for meta-guesses within a single play-through based on table talk and previous guesses. However, if a team were to fall behind significantly, the game could drag on for over an hour before the chance of a reset.
In Principles of Design #7: Scale and Proportion, we talked about scale being the actual size of objects. For Super Codenames, the object that increases in size is the 'board'. The bigger an object, such as an oil painting, the more room for additional information to be presented to the viewer. (The Garden of Earthly Delights is twenty times larger than the Mona Lisa.) Making the 'board' larger increased play time, cognitive load, and drastically changed dynamics. By changing the scale, we see how the addition of more information in the form of components can both simplify and complicate a game, make a game both easier and harder, and make a game feel both more balanced (greater fairness in clue giving) and less balanced (an overall messier game with greater possibility of an uncatchable leader). The shift in dynamics was solely because of the increase of information presented to players as a result of a change in scale.
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