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The Rise of German Board Games

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#21

Post by ideonexus »

5_minutes wrote: post #9

I love playing board games with my kids, gets them away from anything digital: nintendo’s, ipads or tv stuff. And hey having a 8 year old thinking about his Stratego setup, is a good thing!

Seconding this. My boys love their tablets and their Xbox, which I play with them and don't discourage (video games have their positives), but our real quality time is playing board games. It's wonderful to watch my four and six-year-old "get it" while interacting with them on a personal level. Earlier this year I discovered thrift stores are a wealth of games and I'll bring home a stack of new ones to try out every couple of weeks for less than $20. We try them out and it's like trying out novel ways of thinking much of the time. I highly recommend this as a way of connecting to your kids.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#22

Post by Yen »

arkh wrote: post #20
IntronExon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly is like that, and your point dovetails with the tendency of that game to end abruptly when someone quits in a rage. Who wants to spend dozens of rounds slowly, yet inevitably losing?

Here is the trick: gang up on the current winner. Playing with at least 3 or 4 players most games become more about diplomacy and getting other players to do what you want than getting good roll / cards. A good trick is to get hit hard at the start of the game (when you win a lot it is not hard to be a target) then once someone start getting ahead focus everyone on them while retelling how everyone fucked you over ea…

I'd like to specifically advise caution with the "gang up on the current winner" strategy.

One the one hand, yes, it can make games more fairly balanced. It works well when a) all players are roughly on the same skill level, and can independently agree on who the current winner is, b) players are all playing to win, and c) players are willing to recognize that it's still just a game, and not take losing personally.

It can fail hard, though, and make a gaming experience more miserable. "retelling how everyone fucked you over early-on" reinforces the negative parts of the game play experience, and eventually you get people arguing over who's been screwed over worse. You get players who've had a strong showing arguing that "I'm not really the leader", and feeling singled out and attacked when they inevitably get ganged-up upon. Except then it's not merely their perception - the other players have discussed ganging up on them!

My immediate family is almost entirely board game enthusiasts, but arguments of that variety have almost driven apart that board-game-playing shared interest. Games such as Settlers of Catan are effectively banned, since they're really hard to prevent from devolving into "who got screwed over more" arguments.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#25

Post by shitloadofbooks »

5_minutes wrote: post #9

I love playing board games with my kids, gets them away from anything digital: nintendo’s, ipads or tv stuff. And hey having a 8 year old thinking about his Stratego setup, is a good thing!

I got started with Stratego around age 7-8 after my dad taught me.

I showed my friend group and we got bored of the base game very quickly, so we started modifying it and making custom versions. We had a double-wide version (just a hand drawn grid hanging off the side and custom pieces made out of cardboard and stickytape), rivers, boulders, tanks (2x1 pieces), 1v1v1, custom scenarios, etc.

We eventually moved on to HeroQuest and then discovered Warhammer (but couldn't afford it so we used to play our own DIY version with LEGO and dice).

Those rapid prototyping and iteration skills I learned at an early age massively helped me in life and they're used daily in my role as an Infra/Ops Engineer.

I also have a published board game (and hopefully more to come)!

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#26

Post by branchless »

I know it's not the main thrust of the article but to note: monopoly is supposed to end with one winner by a landslide because it was created as a critique of capitalism without land value tax. The original game had two sets of rules, one that was sustainable and one based on the current insanity you can find outside your window.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#29

Post by andygcook »

arkh wrote: post #20
IntronExon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly is like that, and your point dovetails with the tendency of that game to end abruptly when someone quits in a rage. Who wants to spend dozens of rounds slowly, yet inevitably losing?

Here is the trick: gang up on the current winner. Playing with at least 3 or 4 players most games become more about diplomacy and getting other players to do what you want than getting good roll / cards. A good trick is to get hit hard at the start of the game (when you win a lot it is not hard to be a target) then once someone start getting ahead focus everyone on them while retelling how everyone fucked you over ea…

My friends and I used to play Risk a lot in high school. I won the first few games, and this strategy started being invoked on me from the very start of the game to just get me out. Made it decidedly less fun for me because I’d be eliminated then just have to sit there the whole night.

Eventually we discovered Catan and games got markedly better because of the game dynamics. Haven’t played Risk since those days.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#30

Post by labster »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #2

Wow, this explains so well why I despise Eurogames. Instead of eliminating opponents, everybody plays until the end after some arbitrary score limit is reached (or turn limit or whatever). I play Dominion or Catan and I'm working away and suddenly somebody says "game over! I won!" and I'm thinking, well that was a waste of time. I'm resentful and frustrated - what did I do all that for if it ends at such a meaningles…

Upvoted because everyone is entitled to their own preferences in games. It's wonderful that the world is full of such different people.

Also, I'm not definitely inviting you to my gaming group.

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