Deception, Betrayal in the Cards

If you've talked to me recently, you know I'm quite enamoured with the Battlestar Galactica boardgame. If you haven't played it, you really should. It's one of the best games I've ever played, digital or cardboard. It's a game about paranoia, suspicion and betrayal, which are disappointingly rare experiences as far as games are concerned. It evokes those feelings with both excellence and ease. And perhaps most importantly, it does so exclusively through the game's mechanics.

I've never seen the Battlestar Galactica show (I know, I know, I'm planning to watch it as soon as my wife and I finish Rome), so the feelings the game evokes are not due to the game's fiction. Although by all accounts, the game does replicate the feeling of the show quite well. But the BSG fiction is just a supporting element and a way to tie the game into something people are already familiar with. The feelings the game evokes are entirely due to its design.

I'm going to try to break down specific mechanics that help the game foster the atmosphere that it does. For those that haven't played, this likely won't make much sense. But hey, that's just another reason to go play the game. As I thought about this, one commonality is how much depth many of the mechanics have. Even once the mechanic is understood, clever players can find unexpected ways to utilize it and, especially if they're a Cylon, find ways to manipulate the perceptions of other players. So without further ado:

Anonymity and Randomness in Crisis Skill Checks: Cards played in skill checks are played face down, and two random cards (of a finite deck of two of each kind) are added (unless a special card is used to force them all to be played face up). Unless there are three negative cards, the humans cannot assume the skill check has been sabotaged by a Cylon.

If there are more than three negative cards played, which players can draw those colours comes under scrutiny. If all the negative cards are green and yellow, suspicion is going to fall on the Political characters. Of course, there are ways to get colours your character cannot draw. So the behaviour of characters for the past few turns comes under scrutiny. Has someone been playing a lot of Consolidate Power cards, getting two cards of any colour? What were those colours? Has someone been spending a lot of time in the Press Room, drawing yellow cards? A clever Cylon might have encouraged someone to hit up the Press Room, just to then spike a skill check with yellow cards and try to cast suspicion on them. In short, the anonymity and randomness in the skill checks end up not only allowing for higher order thinking, but suspicion is almost always the outcome if they go wrong.

Character Access to Skill Cards: The types of cards characters have access to creates interesting depth in how they can affect skill challenges. In some ways, Pilot characters (and Giaus Baltar) have the easiest time of sabotaging skill checks. With access to three or four types of skill cards, it's more difficult to pin them down as playing against a skill check. But with limited access to leadership and politics cards, it's difficult for pilots to participate in the shipboard skill checks of sending someone to or freeing them from the brig, and changing the presidency. Also they won't ever start the game as president or admiral.

Voting: Since it's difficult for any one person to accomplish a skill check, many skill checks (especially those involving the Brig or the presidency) end up seeming very much like votes. Whether a character participates or abstains can potentially shed insight into their true nature. This has the secondary effect of potentially creating alliances between players. If I helped keep you out of the Brig, you're probably at least a little more likely to trust me. Similarly, moving the Presidency from one character to another (rather than to yourself) has essentially created one ally and one enemy.

As a Cylon player, the ideal situation is to keep the humans factionalized. By allowing for "voting" in the skill checks, not only are player's motives called into question (creating suspicion), but alliances can potentially be formed. Should those alliances then be betrayed, and it's very much in the Cylon player's interest to do so, the feeling of being mislead is inevitably heightened.

Players being forced to make decisions: Certain Crisis cards give the option to either attempt a skill challenge and risk a very negative outcome, or simply choose a slightly less awful outcome without any chance of success. Other cards simple force the current player, the admiral or the president to choose between two unpleasant options. By forcing players to make a decision with real severe consequences, it creates stressful moments where that player's judgement is called into question. It provides the opportunity for a Cylon player to make the obviously worse decision if it's really damaging to the humans.

But most importantly, it plants the seed of doubt in other players' minds. If you're suspicious of someone, you don't want them to have an opportunity to do grievous harm. Putting them in the Brig means they'll not draw Crisis cards and they'd lose the Admiral title. But putting someone in the Brig unnecessarily can do major harm to the humans' chances of success, so it's not a decision to be made lightly.

Positions of Power: Beyond the decisions they're forced to make in the above circumstances, the Admiral and President also have two very important roles. The President has access to the Quorum cards, which afford a number of powerful abilities, including sending someone to or free them from the Brig without needing a skill check. The Admiral decides where the Galactica goes when it jumps, which can greatly help or hinder the humans. These roles are not balanced with respect to the other player's abilities.

This means it's very important to make sure the Admiral and President are trustworthy. I can tell you first hand that if one person is both the Admiral and the President and they turn out to be a Cylon, the humans are in a bad way. The Admiral and President end up heavily scrutinized, but the humans have to be very careful about changing those roles, lest they change it from a human player to a Cylon.

Cylon Reveal Abilities: Should a Cylon reveal themselves and not be in the Brig, they get to deal extra harm to the humans players. This encourages the Cylons to play subtly until they can position themselves for a devastating reveal. Engaging in a scorched earth policy from the outset will get that Cylon dropped in the Brig. As damaging as the Cylon can be, it's distrust and suspicion amongst the humans that will do the most damage. A good Cylon will foster that distrust, ideally sowing as much dissent as they can without revealing themselves. And only then should they pull the ultimate reveal. Without the advantage of reveal while outside of the Brig, Cylons would be less penalized by openly sabotaging the humans' efforts.

Imperfect Information: Fundamentally, Battlestar Galactica is a game of imperfect information. Whenever the Admiral looks at the destination cards, he isn't allowed to share their contents. If he selects something harsh, it's up to the other players to believe when he says the other thing was worse. Players can occasionally look at another player's loyalty cards, but again that information is for their eyes alone. When they claim that person is a Cylon (or not), the other players can act on that information or not depending on how trustworthy they feel that player is. The only time any perfect information is ever allowed is when a Cylon reveals themselves. Otherwise, it's just trust. And having to rely that much of trust means suspicion is an inevitable consequence.

This is by no means thorough. But it does reveal some trends (build mechanics that result in suspicion, making trusting other players dangerous) that fosters the atmosphere of paranoia and tension that makes BSG such a novel experience. I really encourage anyone who hasn't played it to find a way to do so. Given how well established certain experiences in games are (as excellently as they may be implemented) the feeling of a good game of BSG is really quite novel. Plus, it's hard to offer higher praise than saying it's almost guaranteed to make you hate your friends, in the best of ways.

Of Mice and Dice

As promised last week, this post is all about German-style board games. I'll skip detailing their characteristics; the details and examples in the aforementioned Wikipedia link are solid. These games are sometimes called Eurogames, but I think that moniker does mild discredit to the handful of American companies like Rio Grande Games, Fantasy Flight and Avalon Hill that do produce excellent, substantive games. By and large though, the best games are European.

While obviously much smaller, the audience community for these games is much closer to what many would like the digital games community to be like. Audiences are quite aware of the games' designers and the release of a new game by a recognized designer is an anticipated event. In fact, in German these games are called Autorenspiel, literally "author games." The best new games are recognized with several prominent yearly awards, none of which are fueled by Mountain Dew.

There's a lot digital game designers can learn from board games, but translation often isn't direct. Many board game mechanics thrive on face to face interaction, which is becoming increasingly rare in an era of networked gaming. And by their nature, board games are turn-based multiplayer affairs, another rare combination. Still, there is plenty to learn if you're willing to take the plunge. Ahead are five of my favourite board games and compelling mechanics from each I'd like to see more of in digital games.



Diplomacy - Allan B. Calhamer
Interesting Mechanics: Complete lack of randomness, hidden actions, alliances and betrayal

One of the oldest games of its kind, Diplomacy was created in 1954. Players control one of seven pre-WWI imperial powers and seek to gain dominance over Europe. Diplomacy is interesting because it's entirely a strategic game, no dice to be rolled, no cards to be drawn. In Risk-esque fashion, player direct military forces. However, the actions for their units are submitted in secret and are only resolved once all players have turned in their orders. This means each turn consists of fierce negotiation, conspiracy and politicking. The game can be won by a single player or an allied pair, but no more. While some digital games like Civilization and Alpha Centauri have had some similar mechanics, they're often far more random and the other players' forces are largely hidden. In Diplomacy the board is laid entirely bare, and the real game takes place in the interactions between players. A serious game of Diplomacy is a rare experience and one I highly recommend (with scotch ideally, it just seems so appropriate).



Ticket to Ride - Alan Moon
Interesting Mechanics: Indirect competition

In contrast to Diplomacy, Ticket to Ride involves a great deal of randomness and only indirect competition between players. The game take place on a railway map and each player's objective is to create train lines between certain locations. Different lines require a specific number of coloured train cards, drawn semi-randomly. The routes are also cards drawn randomly and remain hidden from other players. The risk/reward decisions are very good, as each route card is worth a specified amount of points that increases with length, but that amount of points is lost if the route is not complete by the end of the game.

As your primary objective is to complete routes, it's rarely beneficial to aggressively attempt to block other players' possible routes. Occasionally it's advantageous to cut off a route another player is looking to complete, but doing so often jeopardizes your own ability to complete routes. Few digital games allow for success through indirect competition; at best it's an alternative to direct competition and aggression. I'd be very curious to see a digital game whose dynamics make indirect competition the only real option.

Of all the games mentioned here, this is one of the easiest to get into. It's quick to play and simple enough to have broad appeal. I recommend it highly, with the caveat that one should not get the North American map version of the game. It was the first released and after being played a few times, it's clear there are some more dominant strategies. The European and Nordic countries versions that came after are substantially improved.



Citadels - Bruno Faidutti
Interesting Mechanics: Scourge, shared actions

Citadels involves building a vaguely medieval city from a deck of district cards. Each turn, players choose one noble from a semi-random deck as their character for that turn. Nobles have different abilities (detailed here) that affect players' actions. There's a whole lot of getting into other players' heads, guessing at which noble they may have selected given their current money, districts, etc. Getting too far ahead too early is dangerous, as all the other players can easily gang up on a single clear leader. The game also supports up to nine players, but the most I've played it with is five. A nine player game would be madly, but wonderfully, chaotic. The game only uses cards and a few small tokens for money, so it's probably the most portable game I mention here.



Taluva - Marcel-André Casasola Merkle
Interesting Mechanics: Every action alters the game space

Taluva plays somewhat like a combination of Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne, but with several fantastic twists. The game consists of creating and settling a primitive tropical island. Each turn a player draws and lays a new geographic tile (a triangle of hexes, if that makes sense) with some conditions. The goal is build a certain number of settlements, but laying new geography can destroy existing settlements. Additionally, tiles can be played on top of other tiles (again, with certain conditions), allowing the game to expand in two dimensions. What's fascinating about this is as the game is played, the island begins to look remarkably like a proper island. Ridges, plains and valleys all emerge naturally through gameplay, as do the locations of villages and temples. At first the game seems simple, but about halfway through the first game, the full scope of its complexity starts to be revealed.


Betrayal at House on the Hill - Avalon Hill
Interesting Mechanics: Betrayal, dynamic environment

Of all the games mentioned here, Betrayal at House on the Hill has my favourite mechanic. The game consists of the players exploring a "procedurally generated" abandoned house made up of randomly drawn tiles (not unlike how Torchlight generates its dungeon). While that alone would be interesting, the twist is that at a certain point in the game, one of the players is randomly revealed as the betrayer. At this point, they become substantially more powerful and it's them vs. the rest of the players.

That former ally transforming into a villain is such a great dynamic that I cannot fathom why this hasn't been done (well) in a digital game. The closest thing would be the bank heist multiplayer in Kane & Lynch that consists of a bank heist. The heist is split amongst all the robbers that survive, but off your comrades too soon, and you may not be able to complete the heist at all. Interesting, but nowhere as compelling as Betrayal at House on the Hill. While I haven't played it, I've heard the new Battlestar Galactica board game has a similar mechanic. Currently, Betrayal at House on the Hill is out of print, but in looking for information about this post, I discovered that a second edition is forthcoming! I highly recommend giving it a look when it arrives later this year.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a mountain of German-style board games of all stripes. Arkham Horror marries cooperative play with steep, steep odds fighting horrors from the stars. Settlers of Catan's legendary trading gameplay creates a great cooperative/competitive dynamic. I just picked up Pandemic as a gift for friends and am really looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.

As creators of digital games, we ought not to lose sight of developments in the non-digital gaming world. There's a lot we can learn from there, as they can from us. Pass on Monopoly, head down to your friendly local game store (Drexoll is Vancouver's) and find something worth analyzing. You never know what lessons may dwell inside the box of a humble-looking Autorenspiel.

Did a Card Game Start the Spanish American War?

The Spanish American War is one of those largely forgotten American conflicts, due in part to it lasting less than four months. But it's a fascinating part of turn of the century history, especially the war's origins. The Spanish American War itself is interesting, between Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, the liberation of Cuba and the Philippines and how those nations have changed in the interceding years, the question of imperialism that's alarmingly familiar today and more.

But what I find most intriguing is the war's origins, namely that just two men are basically responsible for starting the war- William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

The conflict between the US and Spain is in some ways a casualty itself, a casualty of the war between Hearst's New York Morning Journal and Pulitzer's New York World. Seeing the brewing conflict with Spain as, essentially, a profitable new market for selling papers, the two men led their reporters in running increasingly alarmist headlines, embellished or wholly falsified interviews, shocking photographs, etc. The two men invented and perfected yellow journalism.

Hearst also, among many other things, funded the creation of a card game called "War with Spain," with gameplay focused on sinking the Spanish navy. In a somewhat morbid way, Hearst may have created the first Game For Change. Excerpts from The Chief and Mightier Than the Sword might be of interest for further reading.

I mainly mention this because I find it an interesting moment in history involving games. But Hearst's "War with Spain" does remind that games can affect the way we see things. Including the way to see other games. (Plus I needed a segue for the next post I want to do, but was too busy to do this week)

I quite enjoy board/card games with reasonable complexity, i.e. German-style board game. Part of the reason is their mechanics are laid bare in a way largely impossible in video games. Next time I'm going to talk about a handful of my favourites and what about their mechanics I find so compelling.

Until then, remember the Maine!