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Why we still love board games

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Re: Why we still love board games

#21

Post by hendrik-xdest »

yycom wrote: post #19
cletus wrote: post #14

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QnHbzVY... German-style boardgames are my favourite hobby. I've played probably 300+ different ones now. Perennial favourites include Agricola, Dominion, Ora et Labora (relatively new), Age of Steam and Titan (played this to death in the 90s, not so much now but I still love the game). For me these games are a sweet spot between traditional family games (wh…

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

German-style board game is a term that refers to specific game mechanics. The reference to Germany stems from the success of the "The Settlers" board game. In contrast to well known American games, like Risk or Monopoly, the game ends with all players still in the game and it introduces mechanics where players have to interact (trade) with each other to advance.

The Settlers obviously isn't the first game with those mechanics. Magic the Gathering and others might have been available a lot earlier. Still, The Settlers made these gaming principles popular to the broad masses. Interestingly, the German gaming market became huge mostly through the influence of this game as well.

Re: Why we still love board games

#22

Post by DanBC »

yycom wrote: post #19
cletus wrote: post #14

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QnHbzVY... German-style boardgames are my favourite hobby. I've played probably 300+ different ones now. Perennial favourites include Agricola, Dominion, Ora et Labora (relatively new), Age of Steam and Titan (played this to death in the 90s, not so much now but I still love the game). For me these games are a sweet spot between traditional family games (wh…

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe.

Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre).

Usually there's an element of competing against the game itself, not just against other players. Usually they avoid player elimination (unlike monopoly).

Ticket to Ride is a great game. You have some destination cards. You draw train cards. You use the train cards with your train counters to build routes (for points) on the destination cards. Routes consist of a bunch of shorter routes, and these are limited so other players can claim them. The luck comes in drawing good destination cards, and what train cards come up. You can try to cobble other players by claiming their routes, but you really need to claim your routes. (This isn't a great description. See Board game geek for better.)

Carcassonne is a 'simple' "draw a tile, place a tile" game. You need to build towns or farms or roads, while stopping your opponent doing the same.

Monopoly gets harsh treatment among some people. I tend to agree. If you play it properly (with all the auctions, and with the intent to drive other people out of the game) it's okay, but vicious.

Re: Why we still love board games

#23

Post by qznc »

yycom wrote: post #19
cletus wrote: post #14

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QnHbzVY... German-style boardgames are my favourite hobby. I've played probably 300+ different ones now. Perennial favourites include Agricola, Dominion, Ora et Labora (relatively new), Age of Steam and Titan (played this to death in the 90s, not so much now but I still love the game). For me these games are a sweet spot between traditional family games (wh…

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

As a german the question is rather what is not a german-style board game? I hardly know any board games not designed and produced in germany. Even the rest of the world seems to play mostly german board games. Like germany has a monopoly on board games (which is ironic as Monopoly is a popular non-german board game).

Re: Why we still love board games

#24

Post by qznc »

DanBC wrote: post #22
yycom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe. Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre). Usually there's an element of competing against the ga…

I think you rather classified "modern" board games, not "german style".

On the other hand, do you know a modern non-german board game?

Re: Why we still love board games

#25

Post by michaelochurch »

Board games are discrete and closed, often in a well-thought-out and beautiful way. It's generally intended as a social experience, but the discrete world makes the game possible to take apart and analyze, so that if you want to dive deep into the game, you can. It's up to you what kind of experience you want to have. If you want to play today and forget who won tomorrow, that's fine. On the other hand, if you want to get analytical about why starting that external conflict in a game of T&E was such a good (or bad) move, you can do that as well. In a continuous, real-time computer game, you can't as easily reason "to the bottom" because the mathematical microstructure is hidden, and often emergent.

Germany, Hungary, and to some degree, France, have a really strong (tabletop) gaming culture, which is a really cool thing. I tend to think that games confer a lot of benefits not just for "weird gamer types", but for everyone. It's a lot easier to get to know people over a board game than when there is nothing "in the center" to talk about: can people really carry on a 2-hour conversation about the fucking weather? I'm a weather geek and even I would prefer not to (possibly because I know from experience that it bores most people).

I actually think there's space in the world for a "board game cafe" niche. Instead of board games being a fringe activity that require corralling people, I don't see why there couldn't be a revival of the culture where a person can walk into a coffee shop at any time and find a game.

Re: Why we still love board games

#26

Post by mikeknoop »

Haven't seen these mentioned yet, and I recommend both:

Powergrid: Unique because there are no dice involved; a game of economics

Steam: Unique because there is a bank (partly tied to your score) that you can borrow against to build pieces faster

Re: Why we still love board games

#28

Post by qohen »

yycom wrote: post #19
cletus wrote: post #14

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QnHbzVY... German-style boardgames are my favourite hobby. I've played probably 300+ different ones now. Perennial favourites include Agricola, Dominion, Ora et Labora (relatively new), Age of Steam and Titan (played this to death in the 90s, not so much now but I still love the game). For me these games are a sweet spot between traditional family games (wh…

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-style_board_game

As mentioned in the article, and here in the comments, the term "Eurogame" is often used to describe them:

http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Eurogame

(That term, in fact, redirects to the Wikipedia page above.)

Also, FYI, in contrast to Eurogames, there's a style of game colloquially known as "Ameritrash", which you can read about here:

http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Ameritrash

Re: Why we still love board games

#29

Post by qohen »

qznc wrote: post #23
yycom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

As a german the question is rather what is not a german-style board game? I hardly know any board games not designed and produced in germany. Even the rest of the world seems to play mostly german board games. Like germany has a monopoly on board games (which is ironic as Monopoly is a popular non-german board game).

> As a german the question is rather what is not a german-style board game?

http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Ameritrash

Re: Why we still love board games

#30

Post by wybo »

yycom wrote: post #19
cletus wrote: post #14

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QnHbzVY... German-style boardgames are my favourite hobby. I've played probably 300+ different ones now. Perennial favourites include Agricola, Dominion, Ora et Labora (relatively new), Age of Steam and Titan (played this to death in the 90s, not so much now but I still love the game). For me these games are a sweet spot between traditional family games (wh…

Thanks for telling us about your favorite hobby, how many you have played, where it fits in your personal spectrum, that it has been around for many years, and giving us some titles! But, what is a German-style board game?

Funkenschlag (Power Grid) is a typical German board game, and great fun. It is well-balanced, and contains map-control, auctions, and resource management: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid
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