To expand on the argument, it’s more than a matter of games getting quarterbacked by the loudest person, because it also fucks up the “fun” incentives when you have players of disparate skill levels. If you’re someone that’s good at the game, it puts you in a bad spot where trying to win is in direct conflict with the discovery aspect the less skilled players are going through, since if you’re trying to win and communication is unrestricted, you’re naturally going to be directing them to this action instead of that crappy thing they were going to do instead.
Another co-op that solves this is Mage Knight co-op mode, where each player’s decision tree from turn to turn is so complex it’s basically impossible to take over their turn beyond general suggestions, even without a time limit.
But in general, co-ops that have been specifically designed to mitigate the quarterbacking problem are still unfortunately rare, the genre has a long way to go.
I feel like this is a problem that is just solved by not being a dick? Like if these games are good for anything it’s teaching you how to do that. Right?
So the reason it isnt solved by not being a dick: if you know the solution to a given situation in a co-op but the other players do not, you can either ruin the game for them by dictating their actions or resign yourself to probably losing. This situation crops up constantly in most cooperative games when players have different skill levels with a given game. It is also entirely solvable in design so saying that it is a table level social issue that cant be fixed ignores the value game rules have for defining social interactions.
It’s less a matter of being a dick and more a matter of the game giving the opportunity to quarterback in the first place. Aforementioned games are able to avoid or at least greatly mitigate the problem by not giving the players the opportunity in the first place, either by mediating player interaction or by information overload, as opposed to trusting the players to act in a certain way even though it’s against what the game is asking them to do.
Besides that, players always do unfun things in pursuit of some reward (cf all mmorpg design ever) so if a game rewards dickish behavior players will behave like dicks even if they would be having more fun otherwise. Take for instance a noted bad-game like munchkin, a lightweight filler game that can stretch to multiple hours of awfulness because all the take-that and chip-taking mechanics prevent the end of game condition from being reached. Everyone knows letting the game end is more fun for those involved but the mechanics reward bad behavior and the game is a slog as a result.
I dunno - of course all this makes sense in the context of a videogame, with the attendant anonymity, but in the intimate context of a board game (played in person) it seems like, again, this is all just training in NOT doing this crap and having fun with your co-players instead. That isn’t to say I don’t believe in using good board game design to disincentivize this behavior, but at the same time I think it’s easier to make a bad game fun in person, and having to do so is good training in non-dickitude.
But I already know how to not be a dick; I don’t need training for it!
I think you’re also ignoring the case where I engage in non-dickish behavior, but I don’t have as much fun because I’m restrained from fully engaging with the game. It’s a lot more fun when I can try my best.
Co-op games are a lot more satisfying when I don’t have to choose between trying my best and not being a dick. Even if I always choose the former, that’s still not as good as not having to make that choice to begin with.
Sure, you can have fun with literally any game no matter how bad it is. But we’re at selectbutton, we have standards. Games that don’t incentivize being a dick are just way more fun in general (Diplomacy is the exception but that’s a special case where playing like a jerk is fun for everyone, just look at how Austria is doing in the Axe Diplomacy thread).
At this point I am not sure we are disagreeing but just emphasizing different parts of the same statement. When I say that co-ops are fatally flawed, I’m not saying that they’re inherently un-fun, just that they’ll never be game of all time so long as they reward un-engaging playstyles and at least one of the flavors of terrible nerd behavior.
Jaipur is fantastic. Obviously it’s a lot less complex than most of what’s being discussed here, but the depth is significant and the game will definitely make you salty with your friends.
Yeah I do like Jaipur a lot, I left it off my opening post but it could easily have made it on there as one of the best 2 player filler games. It’s high-variance but the length of the game and the presence of interesting choices on many turns makes it stand out for at least making the player FEEL like they won by their own wit and skill (and of course the skill of playing the game comes from managing the variance of the market row, it’s certainly not the kind of randomness that people lambast older American games for)
Still, if I have only 15 minutes to play a game. For 2 players, I’ll play Jaipur, for 3-4 I’ll play either Coup or Welcome to the Dungeon/Skull. More than that, ONUW, The Resistance or Codenames.
Click Clack Lumberjack and Pictomania are some other quick fillers I like pulling out for high player counts. One of my roommates got a copy of Exploding Kittens recently which I’m tempted to burn, so I welcome any alternative honestly.
Anyways, got a chance to play Salmon Run recently, and it’s actually a pretty competent deckbuilder with a board. You’re trying to navigate your salmon to the spawning grounds while fighting past the other salmon, the river current, and assorted bears. The action economy is pretty interesting in that you can play up to 3 cards per turn, but if all three are movement cards, you’re forced to take a fatigue ie curse. Besides basic movement (left/right/forward/wild) and fatigues, there are double movements and some nasty attack cards that let you move the bear around or force people backwards or force them to discard. You gain cards by moving onto specific spaces on the modular board, which are usually placed inconveniently out of the way or right in front of a waterfall or bear, so there are some interesting decisions to be made. The only real problem I can see with it is longevity, I think I’d probably get bored after playing it for a while because the only game to game variance is the modular board construction.
I kind of want to address this because I would love if this thread could bring people that aren’t already board gamers into the hobby. I’m not sure how, though. Most of my OP was aimed at people who have never played board games before but I’m not sure how to convey that only games in the last category have playtimes over an hour and complexity above ‘light-medium’. I definitely think games aimed at a broader category than hardcore board gamers that get excited about pushing wooden cubes around in economic sims about the 19th century textile industry are not only worth discussing but excellent in their own right.
Granted, there’s not much to say about a game like Codenames besides “It’s awesome” without getting into awful let-me-tell-you-about-my-DnD-character territory (let me tell you about this clue I gave and my friends didn’t get)
I’d like to hear more about the light-medium games as that’s the kind of boardgamer I am right now. I’m actually just about to buy a bunch of games, and this thread has been helpful.
I’m probably going to get Tragedy Looper despite it being for heavy gamers, though, because it sounds cool and I found it at a not stupid price
@Sykel I know you don’t like dice in games very much, so I’ll keep that in mind when recommending you stuff, but what is it about board games that you like? Social creativity? Engine building? Tactics? Lying to your friend’s faces and taking their stuff? Board games, especially right now, are great for accommodating a huge variety of tastes at basically every level of complexity.
I don’t consider Trag Looper to be heavy really, it’s more on the midweight spectrum. It is definitely awesome, but something to keep in mind is that you really want consistent group of people for it if possible because otherwise you’ll be stuck masterminding the training scenarios all the time which can be pretty boring.
I’m pretty into deduction and bluffing games, and also anything a bit unusual. I have two groups I play with - one who like fairly heavy games, but also lighter ones inbetween, and one who is fairly new to games and is mostly into lighter stuff. So I’m trying to find games I can play with both groups.
Games I really enjoy:
Resistance - great bluffing/deduction game, though I prefer it with an expansion since the main game can get a bit repetitive. Very popular with both groups.
King of Tokyo/New York - Dice heavy game, but I like that you have some control over what you roll, plus the cards help. Also like the different playstyles, especially for such a pick up and play game. Main problem is when someone gets eliminated, they can be sitting around for a while.
Dixit - Like trying to make a not too obvious clue, and trying to match a card to the clue. Only problem I have is sometimes you just get a run of clues with no decent card to go with it. Thinking of making a house rule where you can exchange cards with the deck once everyone has been story teller. Popular with both groups.
Coup - like the bluffing/deduction. Don’t like the elimination as someone can be sitting out for a while. Popular with both groups.
FITS - It’s tetris the boardgame but not crap
No Thanks - Good game about risk management and maybe screwing someone over for the hell of it. Popular with both groups.
Ticket to Ride - TRAINS.
For Sale - nice light game
Sheriff of Nottingham - great bluffing game
Games I thought were pretty okay:
Dominion - Seems to be a well made game, pretty dry though
Splendour - See above
Consulting Detective - Would have loved this if the case we got wasn’t such a dud
Mascarade - I actually quite liked this, but really it just seems like coup for more people?
Tigris & Euphrates - A favourite game among one of my game groups (they like heavier stuff). I would have enjoyed it more if I knew how to play - hard to catch up once you’re behind.
Boss Monster - This was really cute and fun. Would like to play it again.
Small Worlds - Like Risk with depth but not too much
Elysium - Hated it first, thought it was not bad by the end. Would play again.
Games I did not care for:
Eldritch Horror - very plodding, dicey, didn’t feel like I was really doing anything
Zombie Dice - IT’S JUST DICE
Machi Koro - Too reliant on dice rolls, too light
Risk Legacy - Kept making the game worse by piling on positive feedback
Discworld - Felt like I had very little control over my hand, which made it feel way too luck of the draw for my tastes (even though I was very lucky)
Yeah, tragedy looper is a good choice for you. I agree with @agrajag that it isnt really a heavy game. The mechanics are pretty straightforward and the game has an extensive tutorial in one of the rulebooks. The sense of heaviness comes from the huge learning curve for all the roles and abilities characters can have, and the fact that the game is mechanically very unique. The tutorial mitigates this somewhat but be prepared to explain what the various tokens do a dozen times.
Like the iconography in rftg, once a group has learned the roles it becomes pretty straightforward.’
Otherwise:
###Welcome to the Dungeon
A 2-4 player bluffing/push-your-luck game. It has player elimination but the game tends to go so quickly that player elimination is as inconsequential as in Love Letter. On a player’s turn, they draw a card from the monster deck and decide whether to put it into the dungeon or eliminate it along with one of the hero’s monster-fighting tools. Eventually, all but one player will have decided to pass instead of drawing a card, and this last player is forced to face the dungeon with the now likely ill-equipped hero. Unlike the direct bluffing of a game like Coup or The Resistance, the bluffing in WttD comes from either trying to convince the other players that the dungeon is now impossible to face when you know it is trivially easy based on the monsters you have placed yourself (so that they all pass and you get to earn a victory point by beating the dungeon) or by making a player think it’s easy when actually there’s a dragon sitting on the front doorstep and the dragon-slaying spear has been lost. Highly recommended particularly because you dig bluffing/deduction games and a push your luck game like King of Tokyo.
###One Night Ultimate Werewolf
You should obviously get this, it makes a great companion to something like the Resistance. Large number of roles with interesting actions, and the game is split into a single night-time and day-time phase with a final accusation (of who is the werewolf) happening after about 5 minutes of debate. A large number of improvements over traditional Werewolf/Mafia games so much so that I wouldn’t even bother comparing it to its ancestors if “Werewolf” wasn’t included in the name of the game. The only drawback is that it practically requires playing with the app because the night-time phase script can be more convoluted even than the close-your-eyes script from the Resistance with all expansions included. Huge amount of variety without even including the expansions, but unlike the regular Resistance agent in the Resistance, the Villager in ONUW is boring and I suggest swapping them out ASAP once your group is comfortable with the game.
Oh, some games to avoid: Dead of Winter, Shadow Hunters, they are both pretty terrible. I was actually hopeful for Shadow Hunters but it’s a load of random crap.
Has anyone here played Power Grid / Funkenschlag? It’s very complex and intimidating, but it’s also a ridiculous amount of fun. Unfortunately I only got to play it once at a party, but I’ve wanted to play it again since then. Anyone have experience with it?
Dead of Winter has been enjoyable in my experience, but after a dozen or so games I don’t think I care to ever play it again.
Dominion has a lot of interesting synergies. Not my favorite by a long shot, though.
