Board Game Narrative part 2

And so begins Part 2 of Board Game Narrative Stuff. Once again, I lead with the following disclaimer:

It should be noted that I’m just collecting random thoughts on this subject. Various thoughts as described herein probably have many fallacies when viewed through the lens of different types of game, and I'm sure that anyone could find a particular game that refutes any thesis that I'm providing (heck, I can do that on my own).


Part 1 can be found by clicking this link.

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IMMERSION OF THEME
Since a main component of the narrative story is the theme, there is a need to somehow get the player immersed into the theme. Immersion can come from many areas, one core relation is that choices and performance of actions actions that seem natural within the world of the selected theme is necessary for this to happen.

Probably one of the biggest disappointments in this regard is the co-operative Lord of the Rings games. Here’s a case of a very rich theme in which the game itself seems to have very little to do with the exciting themes that surround it. It just feels like you are carefully playing cards to move your little tokens along various tracks, racing against another token on another track. There is no sense of defeating various villains or moving logically throughout a world; the players are just moving on to the next board as quickly as possible.

It’s a tricky thing. Usually, to get one immersed into a theme the design should try to hide it’s mechanics as much as possible, getting the fiddliness out of the way, trying to make sure that players are involved in the story of the game, and not the rudimentary bookkeeping actions that all games have. This would normally require that the game be kept simple in some regards. But often, that is usually not the case; the Lord of the Rings game example above is probably as easy as you can get, but since the game is reduced to merely “play XX amount of icons to move on a track” it loses almost all of the flavor that the theme represents. A game like Arkham Horror, which contains many components and reading of cards and various interlocking rules becomes much more complex, flavorful, and immersive.

Not that I’m inviting the idea that flavor text as an answer. In most cases, I hate flavor text. But if the individual rules and flavor text somehow merge as the same thing, then I’m all for that. Ideally, flavor text SHOULD be the unique rules, or at least describe the “what and why” of the unique rules given a certain representation on the card.

Additionally, I completely understand the idea to iconize all components as much as possible. This reduces the cost of a game significantly, being that the game doesn’t require multiple printings across multiple languages. But I feel that there is a cost to this; the game becomes, again, a mere shuffling of iconography around as efficiently as possible.

Again, following this thread of thought, the "tangible representation" of what is supposedly going on in the game should have some attempt at feeling like a real world representation. A game like Caylus completely fails in terms of feeling like an actual castle is being built. Additionally, as much as I like Princes of Florence, the game never really feels like fantastic works of art are being created which is what the game promises. Instead, the game is merely collecting points off of various menus.

FIGHTING THE SYSTEM
With regards to how players compete with each other, games can fit on a sliding scale with one end being competitive, while the other end being co-operative. Strangely, over the scope of most games, this result in an inverted bell curve of either-or possibilities; it is not very often that a game comes along that shares a compromise of being both competitive AND co-operative, unless you consider “traitor” games, when one of more players are secretly plotting against the rest of the players to help the system win.

While games on both ends of the spectrum can be narrative, games where the players must fight the game system tend to be more narrative, as opposed to pure competitive contests. Unless the system allows for the players to invoke thematic, creative “elements” into the game as the game goes along, pure competitive struggles focus solely on winning the game, and trying to derive the most efficient ways to do.

By adding systematic elements for the player to fight against, in addition to the players, the designer has time and creative effort to add thematic elements into the struggle. Ultimately, the game system becomes another player, who isn’t so much involved in “winning” (even though this can certainly be the case, especially in co-op games), but this virtual player is instead adding thematic flavor to the game, in the form of obstacles that are jointly being added against each player.

However balanced or unbalanced these events are, this does add randomness to game. Randomness, it can be concluded, is a prime factor for narrative, provided it is thematic and not random for random's sake. Events that are known to be coming or are scripted to happen, are things that can be planned for. Things that can be planned for then become mathematical exercises. Which reduces the thematic impact of such events.

This does not mean that things should happen completely chaotically or willy-nilly. Logic still needs to dictate these random elements. If a game’s monsoon season starts in late summer, then it shouldn’t happen in winter. But that doesn’t mean a player should know the exact date as to when the monsoon is coming. An even better approach would be including elements of foreshadowing that, yes, the monsoon is coming…the clouds are growing darker, but it’s still an unknown as to when the skies will open.


to be continued...

The Natural Migration of Sea Monsters

My definition of a game is broader than the typical game geek. It is, simply, "a set of rules the paticipants agree to follow for primarily their enjoyment." This pretty much encasulates things like Chutes and Ladders and slot machines, which the geeks would disallow since there is no control over the game, and things like Rubik's Cubes and The Sims, which geeks would argue are toys.

Anyway, games are pretty much rules with parts. It is up to the other players in the game to provide the competition. The game, itself, usually doesn't provide any competition, aside from getting screwed by a bad random event. The standard bearer for this seems to be the "Settlers of Catan bad dice roll syndrome." But even that, I don't really consider to be "competition," the game is just doing it's thing; it's not out to get you. That's the odds.

To make a long analysis short, since board games really can't do the artificial intelligence (coming up with a battle plan or strategy based on player actions) like a computer game, it's generally hard to pull off any some of semblance of "Game versus Player." But they can do something that I have termed, for lack of something better, "Automatic Intelligence" (or a.I. for short). This is basically where a game is pre-programmed, or in the case of a board game, somehow designed, to get harder or more challenging as the players progresses. Since the game can't do much in terms of creating alternate stratagems to whatever the player is doing, all it (and it's designer) can do is make educated guesses that at certain points in the game, the player will be at a strength of X and therefore the game needs to somehow combat this at some level.

To be honest, I can't think of too many competitive games that actively work against the player(s) using some sort of a.I. mechanism. The few examples that I can think of would be the co-operative Lord of the Rings game and it's sister Beowolf (with it's funky 3 paneled folding board), and strangely enough Prince of Florence. I'm sure there are others, and people who are much more versed in many more games than I can come up with them. Again, since most games are designed to be player versus player, there's really not much reason to spend time and effort on a.I.

In the PoF case, the a.I. mechanism is the ever increasing minimum value that a work of art must need to be completed in that round. One of the things that strike me most about this part of the game is this: I can't fathom a reason as to why it's there. Winning games of PoF HAVE to include creating art well above these minimums. I assume this fixes something that was found to be broken in the playtesting at some point. Since you have a limited amount of actions to use to create artwork anyway, just whipping out a bunch of crummy 5 VP creations is a path to failure. I'm left to ponder what happens to the game if you just don't follow that rule.

Beowulf does a really good job of implementing the LotR mechanic of collecting and playing cards along a definite path, but turning original game on it's ear by making it competitive auction game. It uses a.I. well, as various auctions get more interesting as time goes on, leaving players with a lot of decisions regarding "Do I play these cards now, or get bloodied now while holding on for future rewards."

I have trouble including LotR in this list, as it is co-operative, and strangely enough, it usually becomes somewhat of a solitaire affair, with one player making all the decisions for everyone. As a solitaire game (which again, it often turns out to be a solitaire game with three friends helping hold cards for you), it is a pretty fascinating usage of a.I.

Which leads me to this...

Solitaire games, I feel, need some semblance of a.I. to make them have any kind of fun. Just doing something and then rolling dice for some random event doesn't seem to cut it, as a player can't really plan against pure randomness. The player needs to have some feel that he can control his destiny against the game with some amount of strategy. Something logical.

A lot of the design in PocketCiv went towards the Event Cards to make it seem like there was something evolving in the world around the player, that within the randomness of the card draws, there was some logical plan to the chaos. Looking at an excel sheet of all the cards, one can see a progression to the events.


Early Eras have fewer Events, hopefully allowing the player to get a foothold into the game. Later on, Events come nearly every turn; hopefully, the player has built up the resources to protect him from them.

Additionally, the types of Events change over time. Early Era Events are mostly natural disasters, with a few Visitations thrown in for good measure. As the game progresses, so do the Events, in their complexity, the damage they can cause, and within some amount of relationship to where the player should in his civilization at the time. Additionally, the scaling of the scalable Events also helps the game keep up with the player as he grows more powerful, but that's a more obvious effect.

Just throwing dice and looking up Event XX wouldn't be the same. Getting dumped with a Civil War before you have a chance to actually HAVE civility doesn't make much sense.

Actually, the whole Event concept, as originally created in (and, I admit, borrowed from) the grand-daddy Civilization is a nice example of "a.I.-lite," in that it does a good job of throwing out the desired calamities into the mix as the players advance. The rule about secretly trading the calamities to other players somewhat lessens it's a.I. usage, however. Even though I think that themewise it works; as a civilization trades more with other civilizations, foreign ideas can pollute the nirvana that was once a well planned group. But isolation is hardly a good answer as outside ideas and trade also can help foster ideas and speed along civilizations in many ways. So, you take your chances, I guess.

Which brings us to Leviathan. The game as it stands now, in it's simplest terms, move to a sea area, and then see if there are any ships that you can attack. It would be reasonable to simply just roll some dice and look up some ship data in table.

But I want the game to have some intelligence. It needs to have some a.I.

I want the player to have to reason to move about the board, to move to different areas. In order to make this work, I need to have the Fleets change their locations during different parts of the game. Weather and seasonal changes give me a logical reason to do this; during the Winter, ships travelling across the Altantic (especially in the north) will be few and far between, and ships will most likely follow the coast lines; in the Summer, voyages crossing the Atlantic become more plentiful.

I want the game to start being more aggressive as the player become more powerful, and if enough Tales reach land about the fearsome beast that lurks in ocean blue, I want the game to be actively searching for the player.

And, at least for now, here is how I am doing it. Of course, at any point I can change this, but this is my first pass at making this all work.

The Discovery Phase

The Discovery Phase is derived from a small deck of Discovery cards. Each card of the Discovery deck shows all 7 areas of the Atlantic Ocean that the player can occupy. Each card has a different psuedo-random order to the ocean areas. In order for me to better "control the randomness" of the game, ocean areas that are more northernly tend to hang out at the top of the list on the card; southernly areas tend to be on the bottom.










Additionally, there is a Discovery Board (labelled by Years) that Discovery cards will be placed on, one per turn. The placement of the card moves one notch over for every turn. When a card is placed, a player can look up data from the board that is directly to the left and right of the ocean area the player currently occupies. As the player progresses through the board, the type of data changes, simulating the changes that the "world" would be experiencing during those seasonal changes.






The data itself is two codes (a letter and a number) which is derived from referencing the current ocean area that the player is in. The letters determine a Weather Event, or a fleet's Port of Origin and Destination, and the numbers determine the size and strength of the fleets that the player will interact with. Much like the Discovery card and their "sorted-randomness," the data on the board points to Ports that roughly correlate to Northern-to-Southern Ports.

A lot of this organization of Northern-to-Southern stuff has to do with trying to make sure that there are no goofy weather conditions, such as snowstorms in the Carribean, and to make sure that Port Destinations and Origins also make some reliable sense, such that a fleet wouldn't be travelling in the North Atlantic while going on a route from Port Royale to Sierra Leone (a typical southernly route). However, there is enough random slop in the system to keep it from being too predictable.

So, if a player is desperately trying to get more Tales (Tales are the main point system of the game, which are awarded when you take down ships) in Halifax, he can make some informed decisions as to when, and where he should be for his most likely chance of success; but there is no guarantee.

While it's a confusing system from a design standpoint (and involved a lot of excel charts to figure out "the math" behind the numbers), to the player it should play fairly straightforward:

1. Draw a card, place it in the "slot" of the current turn.
2. Based on his current location, look up the letter that is to the left of the card in the Ports Chart to determine the ports of Origin and Destination for a Fleet (I'll describe the importance of ports of Origin and Destination in a later post). Place the appropriate Origin and Destination markers on the map as a reminder. Or play out the Weather event.
3. If he has found a Fleet, look up the number on the right side of the card (again, based on the player ocean location) in the Fleet Chart, which will reveal the composition and strength of the Fleet, and then the battle may or may not begin.
   

But what does this really mean to the player?

Since the main point system is based on getting Tales "told" in Ports. A player's score is, right now, derived from the port with the LOWEST amount of Tales told. So players will want to naturally target fleets that come and go from all Ports equally, as getting a lot of Tales in one Port is worthless if another Port has zero. However, all Ports are not treated equally due to seasonal adjustments (and, well, map locations). Hopefully, the player can latch on to this, and learn to best adapt to the a.I. of the Seasons to help him focus on the Ports where he needs more Tales. He will need to learn to naturally migrate with the seasons.

At least it is my hope he will.