Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rise of German Board Games

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 128 posts

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#111

Post by Chris_Jay »

5_minutes wrote: post #70
koonsolo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's always a challenge to play board games with my kids. They are now 8, 6 and 4, and none of them wants to lose. It always ends up with someone crying, sometimes with all of them crying (including the winner). For other parents who have the same issue: I was able to "fix" this situation by declaring the winner as the person who is able to take defeat without crying. After that I mostly can declare all of th…

Hah! Definitely have the same problem, there's always someone crying. Which are some of those co-op games?

My favourite by far is defenders of the realm. Apparently it's very similar to Pandemic (which I've not played), but with an '80s D&D theme. In my experience it really sparks the imagination.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#112

Post by dagw »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #105
adamredwoods wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's probably a grognard.

I host a gaming club. We're in test for 5 games. They vary from simple card games to collectible sets to party games to complex deck-building board games. They all have one thing in common: they're social. You play with other people , rather than in the same room as other people. I've watched some family members play Catan every holiday for years. They sit in virtual silence for 2-4 hours, all looking grim, hardly sp…

I get your point, but allow me to offer a counterpoint. A game I can play (and win) without concentration or any real mental effort is a dull game. Sure playing the games can be a lot of fun with the right people but then they're fun despite the game and not because of the game. The game itself is just a catalyst for social interaction (which I guess in itself is a perfectly valid scale to judge a game on). However I believe that if it's a great game I should also be able to enjoy playing it in virtual silence against complete strangers.

Ironically I consider Catan a game that is mainly fun because of the social interaction the results from it.

And that seems to me to be a critical threshold to deserve inclusion in the category 'game'.

Is chess a game?

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#113

Post by TomMarius »

mcv wrote: post #100
gbhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We play a variant without the robber where a 7 means you just draw a resource of your choice. Much preferred if you aren't looking for a competitively enhanced game. :-)

We have a house rule that we re-roll 7s in the first two rounds. This after a 6 player game where the first round saw most people rolling a 7. It didn't particularly screw anyone, but it's just not a fun way to start the game. Even with that rule, we usually only use the robber to hurt the leader. During the early game when nobody is clearly ahead, we prefer to place it on poor production fields, and use it just to s…

Actually hurting someone with the robber at the beginning doesn't make sense even economically - most of the time you need to be able to trade with them.

My father once caused a game-long shortage of bricks and nobody - including him - was able to do anything. Lol. :-)

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#114

Post by tnzn »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38
tnzn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that meaningless ? Do you also consider races meaningless ? Do you consider most sports meaningless ? You probably don't like it because that's not how you learned to enjoy games, not because it's inherently worse than Ameritrash

Sports don't stop the race randomly because somebody has found 'victory points' under their chair. Payers' efforts are rewarded with clearly recognized progress (down the field/on the scoreboard). There are time limits and buzzers and some sense of tension. Not just grind along and then, randomly, 'its over, and you lost'.

It just seems you play german board games as if you were a tenisman who doesn't count points and is surprised when we tell him the set is finished.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#115

Post by vkou »

usrusr wrote: post #98
vkou wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the random nature of the robber, and the kingmaker moves where a sore loser will decide which other player will win. Dealing with both of those things is part of the game... But I prefer games with less emphasis on those aspects.

They are part of the game to keep it somewhat interesting for those who were unlucky in the early buildup. How would a game designed to minimize kingmaking not end up being an isolated race to the high-score? Maybe you would not mind these forms of interaction so much in a game that is more upfront about them? On the surface, Catan seems to be almost cooperative, I could imagine the "politics" to catch some players b…

There's games that have less kingmaker impact - where your choices restrict the choices other players can make, but not to the extent that Settlers does. Consider just about any worker placement games where, say, five players compete for three three worker spots on a particular resource tile.

It sucks if you were one of the two players who didn't get a chance to place - but it doesn't feel quite as shitty as when someone occupies the only worker spot for a particular tile, just to spite you.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#117

Post by user5994461 »

KenoFischer wrote: post #40
Pxtl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catan is still friendlier than many of its counterparts. In terms of the old marquee games, Catan is really most similar to Monopoly: buy property, barter with the other players, collect matched sets of things, and hope the dice make your property investments pay out. Obviously the topology of the game is completely different, but compared to the bloodthirsty game of Monopoly, Catan is quite congenial - youre not out…

Catan has significantly more adversarial aspects than Monopoly; Cutting off roads that players need, controlling the placement of the robber, choosing who to steal from, denial of trade of resources. I think one of the things that makes Catan so rage-inciting, is that it's quite common to take actions to deny the other players points, even if it has a negative effect on your overall position.

It's one of the most boring game out there. The losers and the potential winners are decided after a couple of turns. Then you're just powerless and waiting for the game to finish.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#118

Post by labster »

chx wrote: post #31

Since the article mentions Monopoly in passing: it is NOT fine for children; it was created to teach about inequality; it is a horrible game even for children (or especially for children). If you are forced to play it, use this https://imgur.com/gallery/vX3zm tactic, it won't happen again.

TL;DR 1) Acquire cheap monopolies 2) Build 3 houses everywhere, no hotels 3) Deprived of houses, your friends lose without an economic engine. 4) Buy a better game (don't skip this step)

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#119

Post by erispoe »

cdelsolar wrote: post #36

Decent article, except for lumping the excellent board game of Scrabble with Monopoly

Scrabble, at a top level, is a game of memorizing as many words and combinations as you can. Some top players in english don't even speak english very well. That's a pure memory game.

Re: The Rise of German Board Games

#120

Post by T-hawk »

erispoe wrote: post #119
cdelsolar wrote: post #36

Decent article, except for lumping the excellent board game of Scrabble with Monopoly

Scrabble, at a top level, is a game of memorizing as many words and combinations as you can. Some top players in english don't even speak english very well. That's a pure memory game.

Scrabble isn't a word game. It's an area-control game with 150,000 rules that define legal placement for your resources.
Post reply on HN