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PyroMyth Games Blog Archive! Selected items 12/22/2003 – 08/11/2004 Wednesday, 11 August 2004 Problem Players Part One – Cheaters This will be an ongoing article covering many types of social problems that come up in gaming groups and what you might do to handle them. The reason is that every group runs into social conflict at one time or another and it’s best to handle it when it first comes up to keep these problems from ruining everyone’s good time. I am not planning a specific schedule for each installment so there may be many other articles that come up between the chapters. The problem: Cheating Player Assessment: This person feels that they need to win to validate themselves, to feel worthwhile not only in the eyes of others but to themselves. Feel pity for them rather than anger. Solution: To start you must be sure that is without doubt that the person has cheated. If the person seems to regularly beat the odds this doesn’t make them a cheater just lucky, also some games allow for actions that would be considered cheating in most other games. Don’t falsely accuse someone of cheating as that does more damage to your gaming group that a cheater will do. Once you are certain that the person has cheated you have the hard decision to make of how to handle it. If this person is a friend of yours it is best if you take them aside. If not I have listed several options but not all possible options below. 1. You don’t know the player but another member that you know well does: Speak to the person’s friend in private and ask them to confront them. The drawback of this is the person may become defensive and just get mad that you would accuse their friend of cheating. 2. You don’t know the player or anyone who is friends with them: Most groups have leaders even if they are not elected it’s usually easy to spot them. If you can identify your group leader and know them to be tactful speak with them about the situation. They may jump in a resolve it or you two can hammer out a plan of action. 3. You don’t know the player or the group: Now you are up against a rock and a hard place. You don’t want to step on any toes but you also don’t want to play with cheaters either. If you can’t identify the group’s leader you are stuck with letting it be or taking to them yourself. If you chose to speak with the cheater don’t do this in front of the others and be tactful. This is the hardest thing as the person is likely to deny it and even get hostile. I sincerely hope that this issue never comes up with you. At least now you have thought about it in advance so if it does you will be ready as you can be to deal with it. Tuesday, 27 July 2004 Game Expansions & Diminishing Returns. Many games either by the designers original intent like in CCG’s or as an after thought are expandable or have spawned spin-off games that are very similar if not nearly identical in play. This doesn’t include the 666 different Monopoly sets available these days but would include such games as Lord of the Rings Risk. I don’t intend to get into specific lines of games as that would require thoughtful research. What I do intend to do is raise a question to whomever reads this. That question is when is enough, enough for you? I better elaborate. Let’s say you have a game you love to play and you buy an expansion to it for half the cost of the original. Now you have increased the cost of your game from $30 to $45 are you having that much more fun with it. Chances are you are with the first expansion since there may be many things that the designer left out to keep the game simple so new players can learn how to play in under 30 min. A year later expansion #2 hit the store, you just have to have it and spend another $15. You now have spent enough on expansions to have bought an entirely different game. Was the collective fun from both expansions equal or greater than the enjoyment you would get from a new game? Even with the chance that you might get a mediocre game you can see how with the limit to what can be added to a game you are going to start losing out at some point. The same general idea applies to game series where you have several stand alone games that use primarily the same mechanics to drive them; there are a few of these going around. Everyone has a different threshold for this and we are inclined to gravitate towards those things we are familiar with and have fond memories of. For me the new experience has to come before the augmentation of an old experience. How about you? Tuesday, 6 July 2004 Game Night? What a good idea! You probably have seen the commercials saying that getting together with family and friends to play games is a great way to spend an evening together, laughing, chatting and generally just socializing. I could not agree more. Unless I have to play the games they would suggest. These might include Monopoly, Life, Scrabble, Yahtzee and Sorry. To be fair not all these games are bad but at the same time they are not so great either. Hasbro has a page at their site where you can put in the Number of players, Age of players, and Length of game and Educational requirements. So I thought I would give it a try and see if it could find a game I might like to play. I want to have some friends over so I picked 4 players, 30 to 60 min for play and Adult as the age range with no requirement for education. What I got was a list of Monopoly and Scrabble editions, Clue, Boggle and Yahtzee. My friends might never come over if I try to get them to play these perennial yawn fests. Ok monopoly is fun until someone takes a decisive lead then you have 45 more minuets of play, Clue and Yahtzee are fine if you don’t have better games to play but Scrabble and Boggle are about as fun as reading a dictionary. I think that suggesting people play games instead of watching TV and ignoring you family was a great idea. I don’t think that I will catch on if no one has any fun. Go to my links page, you will find many game company’s who make fun and interesting games that are stimulating not mind dulling. Not all of them are what you would call family games, yet the bulk of them are great ways to spend time with friend’s family and even the neighbors you have not gotten to know yet. You have lived next to them for 6 years so go and invite them over to play some games. Wednesday, 7 April 2004 Someone has to be King – “King making – What’s the big deal?” I hear all the time in gaming circles that King making (the ability of a player who can’t win the game to affect the outcome in such a way as to be able to ensure another player the win) is a bad thing and how it ruins game play. Here are a few thoughts about King making. •You smacked player X down repeatedly during the game, why would they help you and why would they not help your enemy. You have it coming buddy! •Odds are if the game was not already close they could not stop you from winning. •Its fine to play to win but if it matters so much to you that you get upset you might consider doing something else for fun. •If you want a game that you have total control over try Chess then you can complain to yourself when you lose. All sarcasm and snippy remarks aside I think that King making is made to be much more of an issue that it needs to be. Having the ability to affect game play is part of all games and writing special rules that deny a player that ability is denying them the game itself and should only be done in the most extreme of situations. Who wants to be in a game that they are not allowed to play? Saturday, 3 January 2004 Holiday Game Review Now that it is the new year it is time to decide if i asked for the right games for x-mas. This year i received two board games as gifts: Basari and Kahuna. Both games are well made with nice boards, boxes and components so i am not going to mention that individually. Basari (out of the box games) is a jewel trading game with a nice bidding/haggling mechanic. It's 3-4 players and takes 20 to 30 min to play. The time is kept down by the scoring trigger (the game is scored in three rounds). That is simply when a player makes one circuit of the board the round ends, players are scored for dominating one of the four gem types and the players are placed back at the start positions. I guess i don't need to explain the entire rules here. What i should mention is that this is a fun, light and quick game that is good for a range of ages. That makes it a great family game. Kahuna (Kosmos) is a territory domination game; before you make any assumptions you should know this is not Risk. It is a card driven, point scoring game (also scored in three rounds). It's 2 players only and takes 30 min to play. The cards provide a great deal of randomness so if you are a heavy strategy gamer you might find the game to be weak. Otherwise it's a nice diversion for two. Let's just say that the game is unique, worth playing and leave it at that. Monday, 22 December 2003 Creativity Vs. Design It can be hard to focus on completing current projects when new ideas are coming to you on a regular basis. For example I am working on a children’s game (ages 6-9) that distracted me from working on a treasure hunting game (ages 12+) and now an idea for a pyramid building game has come to mind. With all that I still have to do a final edit on the rules for Neptune R.O.T.S. so I can post it in January. Point being that design must at times take a back seat to creativity; I don't believe in trying to master and control it. On the other hand you must at time work very had to focus to get things done when you are being bombarded by your muse. There is little benefit to have a creative mind if nothing you ever imagine becomes reality...