1795: Thoughts on Roll20 and Other Board Game Apps

Longstanding Internet friend Matt Mason sent me this link earlier. For those too lazy to click, it’s an article about an app called Roll20 that is, so far as I can make out, designed for two main things: to facilitate online “remote play” of tabletop role-playing games between players who are scattered around the globe, and to support the “local” experience of those playing together in the same room by making the housekeeping and paperwork required for playing and running a tabletop role-playing game electronic.

It’s a good idea, and indeed many role-playing groups already use various electronic solutions to support their sessions, whether it’s simply firing up iTunes or equivalent to provide a musical backing to a dramatic encounter, or having an indexed, searchable copy of the rules on hand to save leafing through weighty tomes in the midst of what is supposed to be frantic combat.

The Kill Screen article is a little confused, so far as I can make out; it goes on to mention what it calls “Boardgamegeek-type board games” (with the implicit definition that these are things somewhat more complicated than entry-level fare like Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan) and suggests that an app such as Roll20 would provide an adequate solution to what a “pain” many modern boardgames are.

I can’t argue that there are certain games out there which are a bit of a pain at times. Stuff like Arkham Horror and Descent have so many cards, chits and tokens that it’s 1) difficult to keep the box organised and 2) rather time-consuming to set up and put these games away. Arguably, though, the setup and pack-away time is part of the experience: there’s the tactility of punching out all those tokens in the first place, and the satisfaction of laying them out in pleasing arrangements on the table during play — there are plenty of people out there who “pose” their game boards to make good photographs. There’s also something inherently satisfying about picking up and playing with physical items: slamming down a card in front of an opponent when you pull off a satisfying move; shuffling through a treasure deck to get your reward from a tough encounter; hoping that the deck of event cards will be kind to you this time around.

I also have mixed feelings about electronic versions of board games. It’s cool to be able to play many titles online with far-off friends, but the experience just isn’t the same, particularly when playing asynchronously. A single game of Ascension or Carcassonne can take weeks if you let it — and it’s very easy to let these things slide, even when they’re right there in your pocket on your phone — and it just ends up feeling more like work than fun, particularly if you have a number of games on the go at once. These days, if I’m going to play a board game, I want to do it face-to-face.

That doesn’t mean that apps like Roll20 don’t have a place, however. In fact, we’re already starting to see some interesting examples of technology being used to support — not replace — game components, the most notable of which is the upcoming board game adaptation of classic PC strategy game XCOM, which effectively casts an app in the role of the antagonist “player” or “game master”, deals with all the heavy lifting with regard to tracking things and provides suitably randomised elements for which no-one can complain that the decks of cards haven’t been shuffled well enough.

There’s scope for plenty of other types of things, too; the aforementioned Arkham Horror and Descent would both benefit enormously from phone or tablet character sheet apps, allowing players to keep track of their health, fatigue, equipped items, treasure and all manner of other things without having to gradually take over their corner of the table with cards, chits and all manner of other gubbins. Games like Mage Knight would benefit from their randomised elements being automated and made truly (or as near-as-dammit) random.

I’d never want to give up the physical element of board games altogether. But I think we’re starting to move into an interesting new era where traditional physical components and digital elements will come together to produce truly interesting experiences. I’m excited to give them a try.

#oneaday Day 867: Horrified

Apparently Nintendo did some thing today, but I haven’t been paying attention. The reason for this is that I was (still am, in fact) at my friend’s house playing a series of excellent board games, including Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico, 7 Wonders and Arkham Horror.

I really like Arkham Horror, though it takes so long to play and we almost inevitably start so late that we rarely finish a complete game. Tonight, we actually got to the end of a game. Okay, it was by losing. But that’s still something, at least.

For the uninitiated, Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game that uses HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos to excellent effect, challenging players to compete against all odds in a desperate struggle to prevent various old, evil things from returning to the Earth. It is very strongly thematic, featuring a particularly prominent sense of emergent narrative as the players compete against the game itself in an attempt to come out on top… and usually fail.

The reason Arkham Horror is such a challenge is to do with its complexity. It’s not complex in the sense that it’s difficult to understand — each of the basic mechanics are pretty straightforward, in fact — but it is complex in the sense that there are a lot of rules to remember, many of which are very easy to forget. There really is nothing worse in a gaming session than snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and then realising to your horror that you’ve actually been playing it wrong somewhere along the line. It kind of takes the edge off your victory somewhat.

It’s frustrating to lose, too. The game puts up a hell of a fight (no pun intended) against the players. Sometimes things seem to be going well then everything just goes disastrously wrong for reasons that seem to have been out of your control. On reflection, though, it is usually the case that such a fate could have been avoided — and anyway, if you were practically guaranteed a win every time, where would the fun be? As it is, Arkham Horror is the board game equivalent of something like Dark Souls — it kicks you repeatedly in the testicles each time you play, and the only way to improve is to practice. This isn’t always practical, unfortunately, given that the game’s large box contains approximately a million components and takes a long time to set up. The game is, however, possible to play solo, which is always a bonus in my book.

If you’re looking for a fun, challenging cooperative game to play with friends on a long, rainy afternoon, Arkham Horror certainly fits that bill well. And if the base game isn’t challenging enough for you, the various expansions ensure that not only will the play area take over most of your living room, but you’ll be battling the Ancient Ones until the small hours.

#oneaday, Day 341: The Five Best and Worst Holiday Board Games to Teach Your Family

As the Coca-Cola advert says, holidays are comin’. (To go off on the earliest tangent I’ve ever gone off on, the word “Coca-Cola” is seemingly indecipherable to Americans when pronounced with a British accent, as I discovered at the cinema the other night.) In fact, holidays are pretty much here, what with it being Christmas Eve and all. Actually, by the time you UK types read this, it is Christmas Day. Happy holidayweenukkahmas. Fuck it. Happy Christmas.

Anyway. You may be currently locked in a house with the rest of your family, in which case it will at some point become necessary to devise some form of entertainment in order to prevent you all from killing each other. It is probably a little late to recommend things to go out and buy right now, but you’ll know for next time. In the spirit of List Season, which always seems to coincide with holiday season, here are the five best and worst board games to break out during a lull in the conversation and/or turkey consumption. Well, maybe not the “best” and “worst”. But five good ones and five less appropriate (though still good) ones, in the order that I thought of them.

The Best

Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a relatively simple game. The basic goal is to collect sets of coloured cards in order to claim train routes on a board representing America, Europe, Scandinavia or one of the many other variants out there. Bonus points can be attained for claiming the longest continuous unbroken route as well as completing specific “point-to-point” routes between two cities across the board via any line. It all seems very simple until near the end of the game, when a lot of blocking each other’s routes comes into play. It’s simple enough for kids as young as 7 to understand and enjoy, yet there’s enough strategic play in there for the adults to appreciate, too.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a game about laying tiles on the table to build up a map of a geographical region featuring cities, roads and fields. Points are scored by claiming these regions with little wooden people commonly referred to as “meeples”. It’s another simple game that is expandable with about a bajillion optional expansion packs. There’s only one rule—the “farmers” rule—that is a little difficult to explain to everyone. The rest is very simple. There’s also a great iPhone and iPad version for those lucky enough to have Apple products under their tree, and there’s a similarly great version on Xbox LIVE Arcade, too.

Settlers of Catan

Catan is a game about building and trading. There is lots of interaction between players as you attempt to collect combinations of resources for building roads, settlements and cities. There’s also an element of luck thanks to a roll of two dice determining which resources are “produced” each turn, though the luck factor never overwhelms the strategy element. Catan is perhaps a bit complex for young kids, but is a lot of fun for older kids and adults. It’s also expandable with several additional packs, though not quite as many as Carcassonne.

Robo Rally

Robo Rally tasks players with racing through a series of checkpoints using their robots. Robots can be programmed using “instruction cards”, which allow the ‘bot to do things like turn 90 degrees left or right, move forward a certain number of spaces and a few other things. Each turn, players can give 5 instructions to their ‘bots from a pool of cards in their hand. It becomes a game about planning where you’ll end up and making the best of the options available to you. It’s simple to play, with lots of different variations and tracks included in the box.

Space Alert

Space Alert is a thoroughly silly game where you start by listening to a CD filled with sci-fi alerts telling you where threats are appearing around your spacecraft. Using hands of “order cards” (a bit like Robo Rally‘s instruction cards) players plan in advance how they’re going to take care of all the threats and keep the ship running smoothly. The twist is the amount of time they have to plan all this is determined by the length of the track on the CD. If they dawdle too much, jobs won’t get done, normally with disastrous consequences. Said potentially disastrous consequences are revealed after the CD has finished, when the orders laid down are revealed and resolved on a turn-by-turn basis. It’s genuinely horrifying to see a well-laid plan screwed up and resolve itself in turn-by-turn slow motion, but it’s hilarious.

The Worst

Arkham Horror

Arkham Horror is a brilliant co-operative game set slap bang in the middle of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. However, its shortest variant takes three hours to play, with more difficult opponents taking four or five hours to take down and usually ending with the players’ defeat. It also has a bajillion rules to learn, which are easy enough to remember once you’ve played a game or two, but nightmarish to explain to newbies. Save this one for gaming nights with plenty of time to spare.

Power Grid

Power Grid is an in-depth simulation of competing electric corporations attempting to supply power to cities in either Germany or America. It has a few elements in common with Ticket to Ride but also has an in-depth simulation of supply and demand in its resource market, as well as a requirement to be good at both maths and forward planning. It’s quite heavy going for newbies and is rather depressing for people who don’t do well with numbers.

Monopoly

When was the last time you finished a game of Monopoly? Exactly. The simple reason for this is that people always forget two things: firstly, that the “you can take all the tax money if you land on Free Parking” rule is complete bollocks and was never in the game in the first place, and secondly, if you don’t buy a property when you land on it, it’s supposed to be auctioned off. Following these rules (which no-one ever remembers to) makes games a lot quicker. Alternatively, you could download the Board Game Remix Kit and make Monopoly worth playing again.

Warhammer Quest

Warhammer Quest is awesome, but has a big-ass rulebook, hundreds of bits of cardboard, cards, counters, miniatures and all manner of other things to deal with. While it makes an awesome Christmas present, it’s best saved for a night you can devote to it with a group interested in taking part in a full campaign.

Agricola

Agricola is a great game (that is a lot more interesting than its concept—”a game about 13th century German agriculture”—sounds) but takes approximately a thousand years to set up thanks to its hundreds of little wooden bits, thousands of cards and board that comes in far too many pieces for its own good. I also hate it because I never win and that means it’s bullshit.

So there you go. All of the above are worth spending some Christmas money on. Not all are worth trying to explain to your grandma, unless she has a particular interest in trying to take down Cthulhu.

#oneaday, Day 73: Strategic Mind

I’m shit at strategy games. I mean really shit. That doesn’t stop me playing and enjoying them, but I am just awful at them. I think it’s an inability to think ahead or do those mind-fucking mental calculations required to predict what situation you’ll be in ten turns down the road. If I start getting into thinking about that, I end up suffering from analysis paralysis and have to lie down for a little while afterwards.

This is frustrating when playing board games which you know are supposed to be really good, like Agricola and Power Grid. But I find myself consistently losing at them. Agricola is more of a problem than Power Grid, which I can normally do respectably in.

It could well be difficulty in prioritising things. In Agricola I’m never sure what action is the best thing to take, and seeing my regular opponents playing I’m always pretty sure that they are doing some sort of black magic to convince me I’ve had the same number of turns as them but in fact knocking me out for three rounds, getting into an extremely advantageous position and then waking me up as if nothing had happened. Of course, I know that’s actually not happening, that it’s just a case of me making poor choices. But it’s immensely frustrating, and prevents me from enjoying the game as much as I should – because, I hasten to add, it’s a great game.

Now games like Warhammer Quest and Arkham Horror? Fine. I work well as part of a team, so co-op games are good for me. Even Catan is fine, as the semi-randomised nature of the game means that I’m not totally reliant on my non-existent strategic brain. Ticket to Ride, too, is great. But as soon as the game comes down to nothing but my own skill and chance is kept to a minimum? I suck. Hard.

Perhaps I should find a way to practice strategic thinking. Does anyone have any suggestions?