Runaway leader mechanisms (i.e. positive feedback loops) can be really fun if done correctly. That’s the core mechanism of engine building games. I think what works for those games is that almost everything that you do positively contributes to your engine, giving everyone that feeling of being the runaway leader. The other trick is these games don’t overstay their welcome. The frustrating part the runaway leader problem in Monopoly and Risk is that the winner is generally known within the first half hour, but the game then drags on for multiple hours after that. Once the winner of a game is apparent, the game should end as soon as possible.
@OliverSalva10 сағат бұрын
Hi Adam! I just discovered your channel and I'm loving everything so far :) I've self-published my first game called "Happy Ending", an erotic-theme game for adults, and I'm really happy to hear that it fits what you were saying about people looking for games as reasons to do things outside the norm! I do hope to make more games in the future (either more general audience, or continuing on my current theme)
@tetzy388213 сағат бұрын
I would actually like to argue that top trumps does give you a choice, albeit completely reliant on skill rather than strategy. The best strategy is not always to call out the highest number on the card, since the number in the category is compared relative to all other numbers in that category, rather than the number in each other category. For example, if I had Marie Curie as my card, with a "Nobel Prize" category, she would have 2. Compared to her age, weight in kilograms, height in centimeters, etc., 2 is a very small number. I would still call out "Nobel Prize: 2" in this instance because I know it is very likely that she would win. Again, there's no strategy since on every card, only one number is objectively "the best" and so there is no decision making, but knowing which one this is makes Top Trumps a game of skill. Perhaps I've entirely misinterpreted your statement but I thought this was interesting.
@ismaelhall399014 сағат бұрын
all about the money
@user-pz8sf8rb8i19 сағат бұрын
How many of you think that Galaxy Trucker is a racing game?
@simondupuis837221 сағат бұрын
Just discovered this channel and am binging this is really useful stuff! Have you thought of making a video on political games like quo vadis?
@JonathonV21 сағат бұрын
Thanks for the video, Adam! I’m going to rank some of my prototypes using your system below. My current game design could easily turn into something publishable, but for the moment I’m just hoping to create something my friends enjoy, because I’m not sure I want to commit to the hassle of getting it published. I’m certainly not expecting it to become the next Azul or Catan, because it’s not designed for that wide of an appeal; it’s more intricate and complex, which are the games I and my friends want to play. I think my theme is fantastic but I’ll need better art to make that theme shine through. None of my former designs have generated this level of excitement for me. It does use a lot of mechanics found in other games, but I’ve never seen this blend of mechanics used together before. (D=4, A=4, R=2, E=5, Σ=15) When I lived in Norwich, I designed an engine builder over the weekend just so I could join the game design group hosted by the co-designer of Cryptid, but my game quickly spiralled out of control and didn’t work well at all. 😂 Nevertheless, the playtesters were kind, and it gave me the confidence to start my own game design group back home in Canada. (D=2, A=2, R=3, E=1, Σ=8) A few years ago I created a variant of Nine Men’s Morris where on your turn you slide a meeple along the vertices of a connected hexagram, and each vertex had its own corresponding action. I’ve never seen a modern game do that, so I think the idea is unique, but maybe it’s unique because it doesn’t work: it either seems too easy to get where you want to go or too hard, depending on how many meeples you have blocking the various spaces. The game also suffers from being a bit dry and not particularly exciting to play. I think if I did get it to work, though, a lot of light gamers would really enjoy it. So, I’d classify the idea as having potential, but it’s on the back-burner for the moment. (D=5, A=2, R=4, E=1, Σ=12) I designed a game that used a deck of playing cards to let you collect resources, which you kept track of on a Dice-Forge-like player board. Once you had the resources, you could spend them to complete a small milestone, or try to save up more resources and complete a large milestone. The catch is that every milestone you complete-large or small-gives resources to both your neighbours, so you have to decide if it’s worth saving up for the big milestones (so you don’t give your opponents as much stuff), or to try to fulfil the easier milestones (so you get the points before the deck of cards runs out). My playtesters loved the game, but I thought it was too simple and random. I thought the decisions around positive interaction were interesting, though. (D=3, A=3, R=2, E=1, Σ=9)
@sawderf741Күн бұрын
Tak and Shobu are two of my favorite.
@user-mc7pj9gb4r2 күн бұрын
Adam, how long can you pull a cat by the balls, it's time to run a Kickstarter campaign and earn 600 thousand euros An example of a Framecraft game, 2022. You can create better! Accept this challenge for the next year, you have 12 months. Time's up! We close our eyes, and what we see 2 years later is a restaurant, a business meeting, an expensive suit, a Range Rover parked in the parking lot...Everything is in our hands!
@pikapomelo2 күн бұрын
Wild to think that there are new (fairly simple) ideas being discovered and popularized in just the recent past. What a time to be alive. The 80s through early 2000s really have such a range of ways to play digital and physical games. Also a little sad that there are so many forgotten and unsuccessful games. Hopefully people had fun with them!
@TabletopUpgrades3 күн бұрын
You’re a really excellent presenter Adam, fantastic. Well done!
@benco8044 күн бұрын
I think a good angle for this kind of thing would be doing something awkward but appealing. Like holding another players hands while staring them in the eye without blinking. The game told you to do it so it's okay. You even get to potentially get to hold the hand of a crush and pretend that the game made you do it. Or just have a funny experience of just having to hold your dad's hand while he stares at you.
@Jarino5074 күн бұрын
Other games to consider: pangaia, chai, steam up, agueda, abducktion, beez, leaf
@ptorq5 күн бұрын
Probably my favorite board game is Rail Baron, which has got a quite large lookup table for both determining where a player must go next and how much the trip is worth. There is a mechanism for eliminating players (if they can't pay their rail fees and they've got no properties left to auction), but by the time someone's eliminated someone else generally will be very close to having enough money to win (this doesn't necessarily mean that they DO win, though, there's a condition they have to meet first, and it can be interrupted by the other players).
@maxpower24805 күн бұрын
Yeaaaah, as a Magic player from the ninties I can most definitely tell you, that Donald Vaccarino most definitely didn't invent deckbuilding!
@AdaminWales5 күн бұрын
Garfield’s MTG features pre-game deck construction. Donald X Vaccarino took that pre-game activity and turned it into the game itself. He famously invented an entirely new genre of board games: Deckbuilding Games.The history is covered thoroughly in my video about Deckbuilding: How to design a DECK BUILDING board game kzread.info/dash/bejne/aWGqlbGjadLMdsY.html StarCraft was the first board game to feature in-game deckbuilding, but it was a minor part of a much larger game. Dominion was the blueprint that all later deckbuilders followed. CCGs (with pre-game deck construction) are a different thing entirely. That said, MTG was certainly one of the most innovative designs ever created. It is not often that a truly unheard of, and influential, new system bursts onto the scene in this hobby. Gygax and Arneson did it with D&D. Garfield did it with MTG. And Vaccarino did it with Dominion.
@maxpower24805 күн бұрын
@@AdaminWales I watched your Deckbuilding board game video right after and as someone constantly looking for ways to get the MtG limited format experience in my more casual gaming groups, I'm going to use that video as my shopping list for a while now... (I've discovered that I have a special fondness for dice level up games and I'd encourage you to check out "Tidal Blades" and "Too Many Bones" if you haven't already, as both games do interesting things with the mechanic.) That said, so far I haven't found a game I enjoy as much as MtG limited, which brings me to my actual point: I don't care about any specific designer's accolades or who should get credit. (although those can be important as well) For me it's more about establishing a baseline of universal facts. And I'd still argue that you're wrong about Vaccarino inventing the genre. What he did, was making it work for a more casual market for probably the first time. Let me explain: This is something non- (and some casual) Magic players might not realize, but depending on the format, Magic can be very different kinds of games. What you were talking about is called 'constructed', which is what you are discribing: players building their decks beforehand and then meeting up to play. What I am talking about is called 'limited' and more specifically 'draft', where fighting over cards as a limited resource is part of the game. There are many different versions of this, but the most common one is a 'blind pick' version, where players open packs, take a card and pass them on to the next player untill every card has been picked, then repeat that process (in most cases) 2 more times. Then they build their deck and battle. For less experienced players this may seem not all that different from constructed as the drafting and the 'proper' game are still distinctly seperated, but for more experienced players there is a lot of information to be gained during the draft. There are also 'perfect (equal) information' versions like "Winston Draft" and "Rochester Draft", which were a lot more common in the 90s, but have been dropped mostly due to taking so much more time to play. (Also there is a combined version: "Winchester Draft") There are more casual multiplayer drafts, which also have had more gameplay introduced into the draft portion during the last decade. Lastly (and probably most importantly for this discussion) there is "Cube Draft", where you basically build your own Magic Set out of existing cards to randomly draw 'packs' to then draft with. A Roster Cube Draft is probably the closest thing to Dominion Magic has to offer. (Vastly more complicated, though) Cube lists have been shared over the internet basically since the late nineties and there used to be multiple 'official' Cubes released and updated by WotC. I would be very surprised if Donald X Vaccarino wasn't exposed to some of these formats and wasn't trying to put what he found fun in them in a more simple boxed product. Which is great and I love(d) (There isn't enough player interaction for my taste, so I've moved on...) Dominion. He just didn't invent the genre. I hope I could bring my point across cohesively. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond and for your videos in general. Let me know, if I managed to convince you (It's super cool, if I didn't. There is certainly a point to be made about the very distinc phases of Draft/Construction/Combat, which is something, most Deckbuilders try to interweave, but to me that would seem like putting an arbitrary dogma on the genre. In fact, I'd love to see some in-box deckbuilders with more pre-game decisions like choosing factions.) and have a good one!
@AdaminWales3 күн бұрын
Thanks for the detailed response and rebuttal. I haven’t played MTG, so I can’t speak with authority on this. Though I’ve played other CCGs, LCGs and many deckbuilding games. I am aware of the draft formats you describe, but haven’t got stuck into them in any depth. I would only be convinced MTG was a “deckbuilding game” in the widely understood sense, if the game involved consistently adding and removing cards to refine your deck for the entirety of the game. That seems to me to be the defining feature. When you separate out the deck construction from other phases of the game it becomes something else (even if the deck construction is an interactive process between players). I acknowledge that leaves a very muddy middle ground. I’ve listed Heat in the deckbuilding video for example - many would not include this as a deckbuilder (indeed I think it probably isn’t really one). There is a degree of semantics here. And the debate is really about giving appropriate credit. I have no skin in that game - I don’t know Donald X or Richard Garfield personally, or their respective publishers. It seems to me that Garfield gets plenty of credit for the incredible thing he created. Donald X is very open about the influence MTG had on Dominion. But I also think Dominion started something new. Deck-building games became huge immediately following Dominion and they haven’t slowed down. Perhaps they would have happened anyway without Dominion, but it seems more likely that 99% of these games were developed from Dominion’s blueprint, rather than a specific MTG draft format. So my opinion hasn’t really changed - sorry! For me, Dominion still created the genre, though I agree that it wouldn’t have happened without Donald X’s exposure to MTG.
@ezraclark79046 күн бұрын
A really key lesson that you danced around for a lot of the video is end on a high note
@CornedBee6 күн бұрын
Top Trumps is not completely random. In theory, card memorizing will give you an enormous advantage. If you memorize the card order during the first deck traversal, you know when the opponent's strong cards come up - and you also know their particular weak stats (a well-designed Top Trumps has cards with weak points). This gives you an enormous advantage.
@Booster_Golden_Cobra6 күн бұрын
I have never been able to vocalize why I love dice placement so much. I love this video. It’s as if you have taught me how to fish. A bit dramatic I know, but this is the first resource that I’ve come across that so brilliantly defines why I love dice placement. Input randomness is actually what I enjoy. Thank you for helping me better understand why I enjoy the things I do. Fantastic video and I can’t wait to watch the other ones.
@vickrpg6 күн бұрын
TIL that the UK calls "Clue" "Cluedo" and it was the most shocking unaddressed difference in this video.
@robertg32607 күн бұрын
Modern games don't make these mistakes? Have you not played ...Munchkin? Exploding Kittens? Or ANY games from Unstable Games? There are tons of modern games that are crap with no player agency etc.
@user-cd4bx6uq1y7 күн бұрын
Yep board game design docs is what I need
@angrymurloc76267 күн бұрын
monopoly and the wrestling game are actually both great pieces of art through their use of player agony as metaphor for the real world scenario they model. it might not be fun to play long term, but I think you can credit them for this instead of citing them as negative examples really your whole video so far is very slow paced and uninformative. Any explanation of random events in games must include the hearthstone performance triangle, or else be irrelevant. a certain amount of randomness can very much smooth a gameplay experience
@gaiuszeno13317 күн бұрын
I would disagree with the lookup table being seen as a bad thing. Personally i think a game that has a lookup table that will point you to the page in the book of tables to tell you what the rng means is appealing.
@jeremiahdonaldson16788 күн бұрын
The biggest reason is one you touched on but didn't explore: time. Any work of art has the potential to sit around for years or even decades before anyone cares about it for some reason, and designers have to look at what they're creating as 'art'. But for anyone to care about it, it has to be available to purchase, and a lot of these games simply aren't available to purchase for long enough to gain traction. Catan, for instance, came out in 1995, but it wasn't until years later in 2008 that people really paid attention to it, and people forget when they talk about it that it was essentially a throw away design for more than a decade after release, and it never would have sold the 40 million units it has sold if it wasn't available for purchase when people started paying attention to it.
@AdaminWales8 күн бұрын
It’s a really interesting observation. I wonder how many (modern) games have had a mediocre immediate response, but become massive much further down the line. Pandemic has certainly been on an upward trajectory (although it was pretty big on initial release). I can’t think of too many others though.
@jeremiahdonaldson16787 күн бұрын
@@AdaminWales I'd say it's more than we think. Catan is just the big game example I have of it. It's far more common I think for books and music albums to go through such a process.
@thomasdegroat60398 күн бұрын
You like the life spinner? The component that has a whole rule written into the game because it breaks so often?
@AdaminWales8 күн бұрын
My copy is 40 years old and still functioning!! :D
@oliverrichtberg15098 күн бұрын
As always: fantastic video, Adam! 👍
@beetlejuss8 күн бұрын
Oh so now you like dice... Lol, I remember the videos where you discourage their use... XD
@AdaminWales8 күн бұрын
I’ve never discouraged their use! I’ve always felt they’re a difficult thing to get right, and shouldn’t be the first thing that new designers reach for (based on a decade of running regular playtesting meet-ups). I see new designers struggling to manage randomness in their games all the time. It is not easy designing games with dice. Experience helps. I made a video many years ago called “Dice are not the answer”. That’s exactly the point it was trying to make: dice should be used deliberately and cautiously. They shouldn’t be used to decide outcomes in your game just because you can’t think of a better way. I love dice games and always have. Some of my earliest reviews were raving about Piraten Kapern, Wurfel Bohnanza & Strike! And one of my own designs, Thrown, is a dice game too.
@Onthewayover8 күн бұрын
That was painful and necessary. Thank you for setting up the worst pitch with the most patient publisher in the business 😂
@mjolasgard25338 күн бұрын
I'm a Frustration Fantaic... and I would complain... but I haven't rolled a 6 yet.
@krotenschemel85588 күн бұрын
Actually, this is not a good list. I agree with some of the points, but a lot of points are "popular old mechanics, which have prominent examples of bad employment", some are "popular old mechanics, which were the only feature of a game or dominated the game too much" and some points really are "intrinsically bad mechanics". But being careful to avoid a certain mechanic in a specific context is something else to getting rid of them entirely.
@happypantsfilmmaker17978 күн бұрын
The point about how games should be fun even when you are loosing I think is really important. There are so many games that just become straight up not fun halfway through as the loosing player because your opponents advantage just keep snowballing and you have no chance to recover.
@Sawta8 күн бұрын
14:25 the mistake that you are making is that there is a _desire_ for players to become "immersed" in the game. Some might, but I suspect that just as many do not care an iota about "immersion". Games like poker, roulette, blackjack, etc. are primarily random events with an _illusion_ of choice or skill. Randomness is not bad, in spite of what modern game design might whine about. Randomness is good because it acts as an equalizing event to allow less competitive, less serious players, to have a chance to catch up _by_ chance. The only reason that premise doesn't seem appealing to some is because there is a presumption of a _desire and demand_ for strategy. Games can be simplistic, gimmicky, random, and still still be enjoyable precisely because a great deal of attention isn't needed. The only reason why this point isn't more pronounced is because casual players don't buy niche boardgames - they buy *fun* boardgames, like Monopoly, Risk, Battleship, The Game of Life, etc. They enjoy chance, because chance is exciting and enjoyable. Because strategy and deep concentration _are not_ fun, _are not_ interesting, and _are not_ pleasurable to play casually.
@gabimferraz52129 күн бұрын
okay but like, bro u mantioned EVERY single game i know kkkkkkkk, what are board games even about now a days
@AdaminWales9 күн бұрын
There are over 1000 new board games released each year. If you like these games, you’re going to LOVE the games which have come out over the last 30 years or so. Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Wingspan, Pandemic, or Dominion would be awesome starting points! And this channel has hundreds of videos showing off different types of games released over recent years. Welcome!
@morgasm6579 күн бұрын
Monopoly isn't supposed to be fun, its a lesson in the shortcomings of capitalism. Its supposed to make you realise landlords are the devil.
@AdaminWales9 күн бұрын
The precursor to Monopoly, The Landlord’s Game, was indeed intended as an educational tool - with two modes of play contrasting different economic theories. I think it’s a stretch to describe Monopoly as having the same goal. This version is a gross simplification of the original, stripping out any context or comparison of different theories. It has been promoted for many decades as “great fun for families” and isn’t generally promoted as educational.
@morgasm6578 күн бұрын
@@AdaminWales promoted as great fun for families isn't the same as, "great fun for families" though and it's pretty educational on the effects of a wealth gap. It's a game that inevitably ends up with some people really pissed off. And the fact that it's been rebranded as a "fun game" and not an educational tool is just capitalism at work. Anyway, the video overall was good 👍
@guacamolen9 күн бұрын
Thanks for this overview! I'm wrapping up a design for a trick-taking game and came here to see how unique of a scoring mechanic is that I'm introducing, and I'm leaving with a lot of respect for designers in the genre.
@AdaminWales9 күн бұрын
Thanks - that’s great! Good luck with your game :)
@SergioLopez-el5pp10 күн бұрын
You have Mana Man instead of Mana mana in the description. I love your videos. Thank you.
@AdaminWales9 күн бұрын
Corrected. Thanks!
@All4Tanuki10 күн бұрын
I dunno man, that road trip sounds kinda good...
@TheJuicyTangerine10 күн бұрын
There is a range of mechanisms that could be considered "take that". Take that, aggressive mechanics, and otherwise player interaction are important game mechanics. But what I can't stand are "nope" mechanics that just allow you to say no to whatever (unstable unicorns as an example). There are so many better ways to address this. Counterspells in Magic the Gathering is a example of a "nope" that is at least interactive and able to be signaled. In exploding kittens, the one who has the most nopes is generally the one who wins.
@RaveKev10 күн бұрын
@34:40 haha, i wanted to design a memory game.. :-D let's try
@AdaminWales9 күн бұрын
You might find my most recent video helpful ;) How to Design a MEMORY Board Game kzread.info/dash/bejne/pGSnwZmpXb2ngaw.html
@nickvandam121410 күн бұрын
I've been working on a worker placement game for fun. Thanks for your video. Do you have any suggestions or videos on how to determine the values of actions/cards in a game? I know balancing is fine tuned through playtesting, but is there a good method to start from? Right now I feel like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall. Thanks!
@AdaminWales9 күн бұрын
That’s a good topic, and I’m not sure it’s a strength of mine. I might have a go at covering it one day. But I’m probably a spaghetti man too…
@al264210 күн бұрын
Thanks for your videos. They are great, informative, well referenced, inspiring. Never give up!
@redshadow31010 күн бұрын
Lol I can't watch anything witch mentions "Skip a turn" without thinking of the game Android. You only get 5 or 6 turns in the entire game, and it can be 40-60 minutes between turns. We had one player forced to skip 2 turns in a row ensuring he spent more than 2 hours between turns.
@rantschler11 күн бұрын
I hate your videos. They introduce me to more things that I'd like to try than my bank account will allow me to buy or my schedule will give me time to play. Now i have to plan which of these games I can sneak in tonight without my wife noticing.
@thedspenguin11 күн бұрын
I was out of the house on vacation when this video came out but I... remembered... to come back to watch it.
@HansVonMannschaft11 күн бұрын
I disagree strongly. I'm incredibly tired of how many games consist of everyone doing their own thing and then points are counted at the end. Direct conflict and player elimination can be incredibly important for giving the players an actual feeling of competiton and success.
@darthrainbows11 күн бұрын
Have you made any content addressing accessibility in board games? I see so many games out there that are completely unplayable for players with moderately impaired vision or color blindness, all of which could be fixed with better visual cues. A good example is Too Many Bones: a great game that is utterly unplayable if you can't differentiate the dozens of icons used on the dice and tokens, almost all of which are printed so small that even with my mostly-good vision, I had difficulty.
@juddvance772111 күн бұрын
"Don't use reference tables" Tell me you've never played a wargame without telling me you've never played a wargame.
@Frustratedartist212 күн бұрын
That Simpsons monopoly is beautiful! As a *video* game design beginner, this was very helpful. It reminded me of a relatively recent game, Triangle Strategy, a turn based strategy RPG. For the magician characters, using magic costs you a "turn point" resource, which gets filled one unit per turn. Usually, the useful magic attacks cost 2 points or more. Therefore, after using magic, you have 2 turns with these characters where you can do nothing. If you want to use the most powerful magics, you have do to nothing for 4 turns. It feels like a punishment for using magic, not like a price. This mechanic of "pay with turns" is very common in Square Enix games for the last couple of years, and I hate it. It's suppose to be a risk-reward thing, but if the price of doing something cool is doing nothing, the player in fact chooses between weak choices and boredom in the next turn. That's not a good choice in a game.
@fanshaw12 күн бұрын
I don't see much in the way of improved materials quality. Plastic still dominates when wood would turn the thing into an heirloom. Tile games like Rummicub would be so much better and more robust. Ticket to Ride could go all out with high-quality trains and carriages - metal, maybe with enamel paint, but no, cheap plastic. Given the pricing of games these days, it seems mean-spirited. Board games are a tactile experience, different from far more sophisticated online games - make it a good one.
Пікірлер
Runaway leader mechanisms (i.e. positive feedback loops) can be really fun if done correctly. That’s the core mechanism of engine building games. I think what works for those games is that almost everything that you do positively contributes to your engine, giving everyone that feeling of being the runaway leader. The other trick is these games don’t overstay their welcome. The frustrating part the runaway leader problem in Monopoly and Risk is that the winner is generally known within the first half hour, but the game then drags on for multiple hours after that. Once the winner of a game is apparent, the game should end as soon as possible.
Hi Adam! I just discovered your channel and I'm loving everything so far :) I've self-published my first game called "Happy Ending", an erotic-theme game for adults, and I'm really happy to hear that it fits what you were saying about people looking for games as reasons to do things outside the norm! I do hope to make more games in the future (either more general audience, or continuing on my current theme)
I would actually like to argue that top trumps does give you a choice, albeit completely reliant on skill rather than strategy. The best strategy is not always to call out the highest number on the card, since the number in the category is compared relative to all other numbers in that category, rather than the number in each other category. For example, if I had Marie Curie as my card, with a "Nobel Prize" category, she would have 2. Compared to her age, weight in kilograms, height in centimeters, etc., 2 is a very small number. I would still call out "Nobel Prize: 2" in this instance because I know it is very likely that she would win. Again, there's no strategy since on every card, only one number is objectively "the best" and so there is no decision making, but knowing which one this is makes Top Trumps a game of skill. Perhaps I've entirely misinterpreted your statement but I thought this was interesting.
all about the money
How many of you think that Galaxy Trucker is a racing game?
Just discovered this channel and am binging this is really useful stuff! Have you thought of making a video on political games like quo vadis?
Thanks for the video, Adam! I’m going to rank some of my prototypes using your system below. My current game design could easily turn into something publishable, but for the moment I’m just hoping to create something my friends enjoy, because I’m not sure I want to commit to the hassle of getting it published. I’m certainly not expecting it to become the next Azul or Catan, because it’s not designed for that wide of an appeal; it’s more intricate and complex, which are the games I and my friends want to play. I think my theme is fantastic but I’ll need better art to make that theme shine through. None of my former designs have generated this level of excitement for me. It does use a lot of mechanics found in other games, but I’ve never seen this blend of mechanics used together before. (D=4, A=4, R=2, E=5, Σ=15) When I lived in Norwich, I designed an engine builder over the weekend just so I could join the game design group hosted by the co-designer of Cryptid, but my game quickly spiralled out of control and didn’t work well at all. 😂 Nevertheless, the playtesters were kind, and it gave me the confidence to start my own game design group back home in Canada. (D=2, A=2, R=3, E=1, Σ=8) A few years ago I created a variant of Nine Men’s Morris where on your turn you slide a meeple along the vertices of a connected hexagram, and each vertex had its own corresponding action. I’ve never seen a modern game do that, so I think the idea is unique, but maybe it’s unique because it doesn’t work: it either seems too easy to get where you want to go or too hard, depending on how many meeples you have blocking the various spaces. The game also suffers from being a bit dry and not particularly exciting to play. I think if I did get it to work, though, a lot of light gamers would really enjoy it. So, I’d classify the idea as having potential, but it’s on the back-burner for the moment. (D=5, A=2, R=4, E=1, Σ=12) I designed a game that used a deck of playing cards to let you collect resources, which you kept track of on a Dice-Forge-like player board. Once you had the resources, you could spend them to complete a small milestone, or try to save up more resources and complete a large milestone. The catch is that every milestone you complete-large or small-gives resources to both your neighbours, so you have to decide if it’s worth saving up for the big milestones (so you don’t give your opponents as much stuff), or to try to fulfil the easier milestones (so you get the points before the deck of cards runs out). My playtesters loved the game, but I thought it was too simple and random. I thought the decisions around positive interaction were interesting, though. (D=3, A=3, R=2, E=1, Σ=9)
Tak and Shobu are two of my favorite.
Adam, how long can you pull a cat by the balls, it's time to run a Kickstarter campaign and earn 600 thousand euros An example of a Framecraft game, 2022. You can create better! Accept this challenge for the next year, you have 12 months. Time's up! We close our eyes, and what we see 2 years later is a restaurant, a business meeting, an expensive suit, a Range Rover parked in the parking lot...Everything is in our hands!
Wild to think that there are new (fairly simple) ideas being discovered and popularized in just the recent past. What a time to be alive. The 80s through early 2000s really have such a range of ways to play digital and physical games. Also a little sad that there are so many forgotten and unsuccessful games. Hopefully people had fun with them!
You’re a really excellent presenter Adam, fantastic. Well done!
I think a good angle for this kind of thing would be doing something awkward but appealing. Like holding another players hands while staring them in the eye without blinking. The game told you to do it so it's okay. You even get to potentially get to hold the hand of a crush and pretend that the game made you do it. Or just have a funny experience of just having to hold your dad's hand while he stares at you.
Other games to consider: pangaia, chai, steam up, agueda, abducktion, beez, leaf
Probably my favorite board game is Rail Baron, which has got a quite large lookup table for both determining where a player must go next and how much the trip is worth. There is a mechanism for eliminating players (if they can't pay their rail fees and they've got no properties left to auction), but by the time someone's eliminated someone else generally will be very close to having enough money to win (this doesn't necessarily mean that they DO win, though, there's a condition they have to meet first, and it can be interrupted by the other players).
Yeaaaah, as a Magic player from the ninties I can most definitely tell you, that Donald Vaccarino most definitely didn't invent deckbuilding!
Garfield’s MTG features pre-game deck construction. Donald X Vaccarino took that pre-game activity and turned it into the game itself. He famously invented an entirely new genre of board games: Deckbuilding Games.The history is covered thoroughly in my video about Deckbuilding: How to design a DECK BUILDING board game kzread.info/dash/bejne/aWGqlbGjadLMdsY.html StarCraft was the first board game to feature in-game deckbuilding, but it was a minor part of a much larger game. Dominion was the blueprint that all later deckbuilders followed. CCGs (with pre-game deck construction) are a different thing entirely. That said, MTG was certainly one of the most innovative designs ever created. It is not often that a truly unheard of, and influential, new system bursts onto the scene in this hobby. Gygax and Arneson did it with D&D. Garfield did it with MTG. And Vaccarino did it with Dominion.
@@AdaminWales I watched your Deckbuilding board game video right after and as someone constantly looking for ways to get the MtG limited format experience in my more casual gaming groups, I'm going to use that video as my shopping list for a while now... (I've discovered that I have a special fondness for dice level up games and I'd encourage you to check out "Tidal Blades" and "Too Many Bones" if you haven't already, as both games do interesting things with the mechanic.) That said, so far I haven't found a game I enjoy as much as MtG limited, which brings me to my actual point: I don't care about any specific designer's accolades or who should get credit. (although those can be important as well) For me it's more about establishing a baseline of universal facts. And I'd still argue that you're wrong about Vaccarino inventing the genre. What he did, was making it work for a more casual market for probably the first time. Let me explain: This is something non- (and some casual) Magic players might not realize, but depending on the format, Magic can be very different kinds of games. What you were talking about is called 'constructed', which is what you are discribing: players building their decks beforehand and then meeting up to play. What I am talking about is called 'limited' and more specifically 'draft', where fighting over cards as a limited resource is part of the game. There are many different versions of this, but the most common one is a 'blind pick' version, where players open packs, take a card and pass them on to the next player untill every card has been picked, then repeat that process (in most cases) 2 more times. Then they build their deck and battle. For less experienced players this may seem not all that different from constructed as the drafting and the 'proper' game are still distinctly seperated, but for more experienced players there is a lot of information to be gained during the draft. There are also 'perfect (equal) information' versions like "Winston Draft" and "Rochester Draft", which were a lot more common in the 90s, but have been dropped mostly due to taking so much more time to play. (Also there is a combined version: "Winchester Draft") There are more casual multiplayer drafts, which also have had more gameplay introduced into the draft portion during the last decade. Lastly (and probably most importantly for this discussion) there is "Cube Draft", where you basically build your own Magic Set out of existing cards to randomly draw 'packs' to then draft with. A Roster Cube Draft is probably the closest thing to Dominion Magic has to offer. (Vastly more complicated, though) Cube lists have been shared over the internet basically since the late nineties and there used to be multiple 'official' Cubes released and updated by WotC. I would be very surprised if Donald X Vaccarino wasn't exposed to some of these formats and wasn't trying to put what he found fun in them in a more simple boxed product. Which is great and I love(d) (There isn't enough player interaction for my taste, so I've moved on...) Dominion. He just didn't invent the genre. I hope I could bring my point across cohesively. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond and for your videos in general. Let me know, if I managed to convince you (It's super cool, if I didn't. There is certainly a point to be made about the very distinc phases of Draft/Construction/Combat, which is something, most Deckbuilders try to interweave, but to me that would seem like putting an arbitrary dogma on the genre. In fact, I'd love to see some in-box deckbuilders with more pre-game decisions like choosing factions.) and have a good one!
Thanks for the detailed response and rebuttal. I haven’t played MTG, so I can’t speak with authority on this. Though I’ve played other CCGs, LCGs and many deckbuilding games. I am aware of the draft formats you describe, but haven’t got stuck into them in any depth. I would only be convinced MTG was a “deckbuilding game” in the widely understood sense, if the game involved consistently adding and removing cards to refine your deck for the entirety of the game. That seems to me to be the defining feature. When you separate out the deck construction from other phases of the game it becomes something else (even if the deck construction is an interactive process between players). I acknowledge that leaves a very muddy middle ground. I’ve listed Heat in the deckbuilding video for example - many would not include this as a deckbuilder (indeed I think it probably isn’t really one). There is a degree of semantics here. And the debate is really about giving appropriate credit. I have no skin in that game - I don’t know Donald X or Richard Garfield personally, or their respective publishers. It seems to me that Garfield gets plenty of credit for the incredible thing he created. Donald X is very open about the influence MTG had on Dominion. But I also think Dominion started something new. Deck-building games became huge immediately following Dominion and they haven’t slowed down. Perhaps they would have happened anyway without Dominion, but it seems more likely that 99% of these games were developed from Dominion’s blueprint, rather than a specific MTG draft format. So my opinion hasn’t really changed - sorry! For me, Dominion still created the genre, though I agree that it wouldn’t have happened without Donald X’s exposure to MTG.
A really key lesson that you danced around for a lot of the video is end on a high note
Top Trumps is not completely random. In theory, card memorizing will give you an enormous advantage. If you memorize the card order during the first deck traversal, you know when the opponent's strong cards come up - and you also know their particular weak stats (a well-designed Top Trumps has cards with weak points). This gives you an enormous advantage.
I have never been able to vocalize why I love dice placement so much. I love this video. It’s as if you have taught me how to fish. A bit dramatic I know, but this is the first resource that I’ve come across that so brilliantly defines why I love dice placement. Input randomness is actually what I enjoy. Thank you for helping me better understand why I enjoy the things I do. Fantastic video and I can’t wait to watch the other ones.
TIL that the UK calls "Clue" "Cluedo" and it was the most shocking unaddressed difference in this video.
Modern games don't make these mistakes? Have you not played ...Munchkin? Exploding Kittens? Or ANY games from Unstable Games? There are tons of modern games that are crap with no player agency etc.
Yep board game design docs is what I need
monopoly and the wrestling game are actually both great pieces of art through their use of player agony as metaphor for the real world scenario they model. it might not be fun to play long term, but I think you can credit them for this instead of citing them as negative examples really your whole video so far is very slow paced and uninformative. Any explanation of random events in games must include the hearthstone performance triangle, or else be irrelevant. a certain amount of randomness can very much smooth a gameplay experience
I would disagree with the lookup table being seen as a bad thing. Personally i think a game that has a lookup table that will point you to the page in the book of tables to tell you what the rng means is appealing.
The biggest reason is one you touched on but didn't explore: time. Any work of art has the potential to sit around for years or even decades before anyone cares about it for some reason, and designers have to look at what they're creating as 'art'. But for anyone to care about it, it has to be available to purchase, and a lot of these games simply aren't available to purchase for long enough to gain traction. Catan, for instance, came out in 1995, but it wasn't until years later in 2008 that people really paid attention to it, and people forget when they talk about it that it was essentially a throw away design for more than a decade after release, and it never would have sold the 40 million units it has sold if it wasn't available for purchase when people started paying attention to it.
It’s a really interesting observation. I wonder how many (modern) games have had a mediocre immediate response, but become massive much further down the line. Pandemic has certainly been on an upward trajectory (although it was pretty big on initial release). I can’t think of too many others though.
@@AdaminWales I'd say it's more than we think. Catan is just the big game example I have of it. It's far more common I think for books and music albums to go through such a process.
You like the life spinner? The component that has a whole rule written into the game because it breaks so often?
My copy is 40 years old and still functioning!! :D
As always: fantastic video, Adam! 👍
Oh so now you like dice... Lol, I remember the videos where you discourage their use... XD
I’ve never discouraged their use! I’ve always felt they’re a difficult thing to get right, and shouldn’t be the first thing that new designers reach for (based on a decade of running regular playtesting meet-ups). I see new designers struggling to manage randomness in their games all the time. It is not easy designing games with dice. Experience helps. I made a video many years ago called “Dice are not the answer”. That’s exactly the point it was trying to make: dice should be used deliberately and cautiously. They shouldn’t be used to decide outcomes in your game just because you can’t think of a better way. I love dice games and always have. Some of my earliest reviews were raving about Piraten Kapern, Wurfel Bohnanza & Strike! And one of my own designs, Thrown, is a dice game too.
That was painful and necessary. Thank you for setting up the worst pitch with the most patient publisher in the business 😂
I'm a Frustration Fantaic... and I would complain... but I haven't rolled a 6 yet.
Actually, this is not a good list. I agree with some of the points, but a lot of points are "popular old mechanics, which have prominent examples of bad employment", some are "popular old mechanics, which were the only feature of a game or dominated the game too much" and some points really are "intrinsically bad mechanics". But being careful to avoid a certain mechanic in a specific context is something else to getting rid of them entirely.
The point about how games should be fun even when you are loosing I think is really important. There are so many games that just become straight up not fun halfway through as the loosing player because your opponents advantage just keep snowballing and you have no chance to recover.
14:25 the mistake that you are making is that there is a _desire_ for players to become "immersed" in the game. Some might, but I suspect that just as many do not care an iota about "immersion". Games like poker, roulette, blackjack, etc. are primarily random events with an _illusion_ of choice or skill. Randomness is not bad, in spite of what modern game design might whine about. Randomness is good because it acts as an equalizing event to allow less competitive, less serious players, to have a chance to catch up _by_ chance. The only reason that premise doesn't seem appealing to some is because there is a presumption of a _desire and demand_ for strategy. Games can be simplistic, gimmicky, random, and still still be enjoyable precisely because a great deal of attention isn't needed. The only reason why this point isn't more pronounced is because casual players don't buy niche boardgames - they buy *fun* boardgames, like Monopoly, Risk, Battleship, The Game of Life, etc. They enjoy chance, because chance is exciting and enjoyable. Because strategy and deep concentration _are not_ fun, _are not_ interesting, and _are not_ pleasurable to play casually.
okay but like, bro u mantioned EVERY single game i know kkkkkkkk, what are board games even about now a days
There are over 1000 new board games released each year. If you like these games, you’re going to LOVE the games which have come out over the last 30 years or so. Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Wingspan, Pandemic, or Dominion would be awesome starting points! And this channel has hundreds of videos showing off different types of games released over recent years. Welcome!
Monopoly isn't supposed to be fun, its a lesson in the shortcomings of capitalism. Its supposed to make you realise landlords are the devil.
The precursor to Monopoly, The Landlord’s Game, was indeed intended as an educational tool - with two modes of play contrasting different economic theories. I think it’s a stretch to describe Monopoly as having the same goal. This version is a gross simplification of the original, stripping out any context or comparison of different theories. It has been promoted for many decades as “great fun for families” and isn’t generally promoted as educational.
@@AdaminWales promoted as great fun for families isn't the same as, "great fun for families" though and it's pretty educational on the effects of a wealth gap. It's a game that inevitably ends up with some people really pissed off. And the fact that it's been rebranded as a "fun game" and not an educational tool is just capitalism at work. Anyway, the video overall was good 👍
Thanks for this overview! I'm wrapping up a design for a trick-taking game and came here to see how unique of a scoring mechanic is that I'm introducing, and I'm leaving with a lot of respect for designers in the genre.
Thanks - that’s great! Good luck with your game :)
You have Mana Man instead of Mana mana in the description. I love your videos. Thank you.
Corrected. Thanks!
I dunno man, that road trip sounds kinda good...
There is a range of mechanisms that could be considered "take that". Take that, aggressive mechanics, and otherwise player interaction are important game mechanics. But what I can't stand are "nope" mechanics that just allow you to say no to whatever (unstable unicorns as an example). There are so many better ways to address this. Counterspells in Magic the Gathering is a example of a "nope" that is at least interactive and able to be signaled. In exploding kittens, the one who has the most nopes is generally the one who wins.
@34:40 haha, i wanted to design a memory game.. :-D let's try
You might find my most recent video helpful ;) How to Design a MEMORY Board Game kzread.info/dash/bejne/pGSnwZmpXb2ngaw.html
I've been working on a worker placement game for fun. Thanks for your video. Do you have any suggestions or videos on how to determine the values of actions/cards in a game? I know balancing is fine tuned through playtesting, but is there a good method to start from? Right now I feel like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall. Thanks!
That’s a good topic, and I’m not sure it’s a strength of mine. I might have a go at covering it one day. But I’m probably a spaghetti man too…
Thanks for your videos. They are great, informative, well referenced, inspiring. Never give up!
Lol I can't watch anything witch mentions "Skip a turn" without thinking of the game Android. You only get 5 or 6 turns in the entire game, and it can be 40-60 minutes between turns. We had one player forced to skip 2 turns in a row ensuring he spent more than 2 hours between turns.
I hate your videos. They introduce me to more things that I'd like to try than my bank account will allow me to buy or my schedule will give me time to play. Now i have to plan which of these games I can sneak in tonight without my wife noticing.
I was out of the house on vacation when this video came out but I... remembered... to come back to watch it.
I disagree strongly. I'm incredibly tired of how many games consist of everyone doing their own thing and then points are counted at the end. Direct conflict and player elimination can be incredibly important for giving the players an actual feeling of competiton and success.
Have you made any content addressing accessibility in board games? I see so many games out there that are completely unplayable for players with moderately impaired vision or color blindness, all of which could be fixed with better visual cues. A good example is Too Many Bones: a great game that is utterly unplayable if you can't differentiate the dozens of icons used on the dice and tokens, almost all of which are printed so small that even with my mostly-good vision, I had difficulty.
"Don't use reference tables" Tell me you've never played a wargame without telling me you've never played a wargame.
That Simpsons monopoly is beautiful! As a *video* game design beginner, this was very helpful. It reminded me of a relatively recent game, Triangle Strategy, a turn based strategy RPG. For the magician characters, using magic costs you a "turn point" resource, which gets filled one unit per turn. Usually, the useful magic attacks cost 2 points or more. Therefore, after using magic, you have 2 turns with these characters where you can do nothing. If you want to use the most powerful magics, you have do to nothing for 4 turns. It feels like a punishment for using magic, not like a price. This mechanic of "pay with turns" is very common in Square Enix games for the last couple of years, and I hate it. It's suppose to be a risk-reward thing, but if the price of doing something cool is doing nothing, the player in fact chooses between weak choices and boredom in the next turn. That's not a good choice in a game.
I don't see much in the way of improved materials quality. Plastic still dominates when wood would turn the thing into an heirloom. Tile games like Rummicub would be so much better and more robust. Ticket to Ride could go all out with high-quality trains and carriages - metal, maybe with enamel paint, but no, cheap plastic. Given the pricing of games these days, it seems mean-spirited. Board games are a tactile experience, different from far more sophisticated online games - make it a good one.