Goal Categories

In the last post, I mentioned the project management triangle, i.e. good, fast, cheap; pick two. This post continues that musing. 

If we pair off the three sides of the triangle, we get good/fast, good/cheap, and fast/cheap. This is one way to look at possible goals in games. However, if we massage these categories and squint a little we can perhaps extend our understanding of goals in board games. 

If I were to assign the title 'efficiency' to one category, it would be fast/cheap. To me, that speaks to real world efficiency systems, even though good/fast could also be viewed as a type of efficiency. We are familiar with efficiency goals in board games. Some concepts within efficiency-goals are speed, least cost, puzzle solutions, putting items in order, performing actions in order, and developing heuristics. We certainly see the concepts of cheap and fast within efficiency, but also other more emergent concepts. 

Efficiency is so baked into our concept of board games that it is hard to get away from. The timing element becomes necessary because games must have an end and a winner declared at the end. Winners that are determined either by scoring or by first to complete an objective encourage efficient play. There is something delicious about inefficiency but it is difficult to capture in board games as we currently understand them. 

I am giving good/fast the label of achievement. Achievement is often about being the first and/or the best. This echoes C. Thi Nguyen's concept of achievement play which places the focus on winning over enjoyment of the process of play. Concepts found within achievement-goals are recording high scores, domination of other players, themes of status and power, but also voting and negotiation as a form of social leveraging. Combat games often blend efficiency puzzles with domination goals. 

Like efficiency, achievement is deeply ingrained in board game design. We declare winners; we keep score. In the contemporary hobby, we log plays and attend tournaments. Steam achievements keep players returning to video games that they have already 'completed' in order to be able to display their mastery by completing objectives that few other players have completed. 

There isn't anything wrong with efficiency play or achievement play. However, by focusing too closely on these driving goals, we fail to develop other enriching kinds of play. 

I approach good/cheap a little differently than the other traits. Firstly, my understanding of cheap in the triangle is not 'poor quality' but rather solutions that didn't require tons of money. What really makes good/cheap stand out is the absence of 'fast.' This goal category is about slowly developing quality solutions. Therefore, I label this concept growth. An acorn growing into a tree is a good metaphor for this category. I also view this category as the least economically motivated, because efficiency is not present in any form. Concepts found in growth-goals include personal development, discovery, cooperation, and creativity. 

Two subsets of board games leap out as having growth-goals, and they couldn't be more different. Party games are often played for the joy of creative discovery and any scoring mechanisms are ignored. Achievement-goals are not fully left behind, because correct guesses can allow players to 'win' a round. Likewise, efficiency may still be present in party games with timed elements. However, party games are unique in the hobby in that playing for a set time and declaring a winner are routinely ignored. 

The other type of game that focuses on growth-goals is the narrative-driven sandbox game (and other narrative-driven adventure/campaign games). These games are long and full of discovery. Players play a sandbox board game primarily to experience it. The focus on winning has more to do with avoiding loss of progress. Because if you lose, you won't be able to experience the next bit of the game, at least not without some tedious administrative actions. I'm not sure this is the best model for growth-goals because the amount of content required to create this kind of experience doesn't lend itself to shorter, smaller games.

I don't propose that efficiency, achievement, and growth are the only types of goals that can or do exist in board games. I'm merely using the project management triangle to point out the area that I feel is most ripe for experiment, which I have labeled growth. I think the easiest way to implement growth-goals in board game design will be to continue to blur the lines between TTRPGs and board games. RPGs have been exploring this space since their inception. Video games also have some lessons to teach but they may be less directly portable into board games. 

Periodically, people will say that we have exited the innovation phase of board game design and have entered a refinement only phase. This is pure silliness. Board games look nothing like what they did a century ago. In another century, they will look nothing like they do today. And we get to participate in that evolution, by finding underdeveloped areas to explore in our designs. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.

On Victory Points

Victory points are a weird thing. They are almost always used in themed games, but they often aren't themed. Instead, they are representative of value accumulation. This sushi dinner in Sushi Go! has this much value; that dinner has that much. 

Value is different from worth. How much something is worth implies a consensus for an exchange rate. Put more simply, worth implies cost or price. Value can be more individualized. I have many possession that are not worth very much, but I value them highly. Value can also apply a moral or ethical component: this action aligns with my values. 

When a game assigns points to objectives, those points represent how highly each objective is valued. The real world cost of resources is less important within the value system of a game than the overall player experience. "Is sashimi more or less expensive than a maki roll?" is not a question I ask when playing Sushi Go!. Instead, I ask "What card will give me the most value for my turn?" 

When we assign points to objectives, we assign in-world values to those objectives—"This piece of sushi is more valuable than that piece." Sometimes the values we assign are conditional; wasabi only has value when played at the right moment. Values can be interrelated, affecting one another. 

Assigning values conveys cultural information to the players. We are saying that in the world of the game, certain actions or resources are more culturally important than others. For example, in the real world we have artificially restricted the supply of diamonds to the market in order to preserve their perceived rarity. And in our culture, rare things are valued more highly, regardless of usefulness. 

Most Euro games place high value on efficiency. I am reminded of the so-called project management triangle: "cheap, fast, good—pick two." Many Euros focus on cheap and fast, but what if we let players pick which development path to take at the beginning of the game? Some games do this, allowing players to focus on producing fewer, more expensive resources or more, cheaper resources. But what about taking longer to produce better quality for less expense? I'm sure it's been done, but I'd like to see a game that really leans into the choices inherent in this triangle. 

A system of values is also a values system. Is efficiency the most important moral value in the game? The game Kanban EV is self-aware that the values inherent in a hyper-efficient system are perhaps not the most ethical and leans into it. Some games ask players to make clear moral trade-offs in order to win, asking players what they are willing to sacrifice for victory. Other games do away with victory points (and the value judgments they incur) altogether, but these games are often still efficiency puzzles that have similar values systems despite not having victory points. 

Designers should be aware of the value systems they design into their games. Simply renaming victory points to honor points, etc, doesn't bypass the issue. Using currency instead of points allows for more ethical flexibility (we are all used to the idea of money being used for unethical purposes), but still conveys the value of importance and worth. Of course, objectives and win conditions also convey values, but in a less granular and relative way. When victory points are assigned, each objective can be ranked against the other objectives, producing relative values. 

So, should you use victory points? Sure! But be aware of the value system you create by doing so. I, for one, would not use VPs to represent humans lives. And I designed a game about murder.

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays. 

Evil PCs in TTRPGs

...Or how the medium affects the message. 

General wisdom states that it is easier to present well-crafted dark, sensitive, or even controversial themes in a TTRPG than a board game, because the medium of a source book and more open, extended play allows for more cultural context, safety tools, and thematic nuance. On the whole, this rings true. But I am writing this post to explore some thoughts I have about when board games might be better at exploring some of these topics. 

I have no interest in playing an evil character in an RPG. When I role play, my favorite part is the creative problem solving. I create characters with different ethical bents to help me explore how different personal strictures lead to different solutions to problems. I'm not ruling out ever playing an evil character, but I'm not very interested in how to creatively solve a problem evilly. 

I'm more open to playing evil characters in board games. I've written before about how and when this can work as a design. In this post, I'm going to focus on the unique issues that RPGs face. (I'm folding LARP into RPG for this discussion.)

RPGs are storytelling experiences where the storytellers are also specific characters in the story. As a result, RPGs are uniquely immersive/transportive (in a way that board games are not). The emotions and choices are more personal than in other forms of entertainment. 

Which would be fine if the act of play were truly separate from the real world. But inasmuch as the magic circle exists, it is permeable. We bring our morals and ethics and histories with us into play. When a game offers a moral choice our first instinct is to act according to our own morals. This can be overridden if we go into the game with a clear plan to act other than how we normally would. How the particular game is pitched or framed will also have an affect on our actions. If I sign up for a D&D game set in Dis, I will go in with different expectations than I would my usual game. 

Even if expectations are set, there are certain issues to take into account. Many of these apply to both RPGs and board games. 

Firstly, there are levels to how bad an evil action will feel depending on a number of variables. Asking a player to literally lie to another player (Sheriff of Nottingham) is a hard 'no' for some of my friends. Player characters are always going to be more 'real' than NPCs in the minds of players, so player to player conflict in RPGs is more fraught. GM-voiced NPCs will in turn be more real than unnamed, background NPCs (or board game NPCs). How real and present a character feels affects how bad you will feel mistreating them. 

This leads into the point that the more in depth the simulation/scenario, the more resistant players will be to making the evil choice. As I have written previously, abstraction allows designers to explore the psychology of evil while still having an enjoyable game. 

Lastly, I want to explore the idea that some stories are better suited to certain forms of entertainment over others. 

The Sondheim musical Assassins is a serious exploration of evil wrapped in catchy music. The music broadens the appeal of the show, but also makes the topic feel less serious than it is. Board games, with their art and abstraction, can do the same thing but not necessarily with the same subjects. Because the main event in Assassins takes place in living memory, it would be a terrible board game. Board games and RPGs are about player interactivity. When considering evil characters of history, a certain amount of historical distance is necessary for players. (This is not the only consideration, and war games operate by their own rules that I'm not qualified to speak on.) Deadly Dowagers goes a step further by not having historical figures/real people depicted at all, while still using historical distance. 

Returning to Assassins, sometimes levity is useful, sometimes not. Board games can control the nature of satire in a game. I'm not sure RPGs can produce reliable satire. There is something very earnest about inhabiting a character. Both RPGs and board games can employ absurdism which also creates emotional distance from actions. 

I believe games can be powerful forms of storytelling, but they have unique issues because of their participatory nature. Good movies often don't make for good plays. They each have different strong suits. The same is true for board games and RPGs. I don't have a particular interest at this time in developing a Deadly Dowagers RPG. The card game explores the choices to a level of abstraction that I am comfortable with. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.