6 (or 7) Zones of Play & Design Implications

I caught a recent Ludology episode, which covered the 6 Zones of Play. For those who haven’t seen or heard of the 6 Zones of Play, it’s a concept framed out by Scott Rogers that breaks down the “physical” board and play space into… wait for it.... 6 zones! A cliffhanger, I know.

Shakedown: Tabletop Game Classification and the BGG Database

If you haven’t seen the news, BGG has launched a major change to the game database. The mechanisms/mechanics descriptors for game entries has been greatly expanded in alignment with a recently published book on game mechanisms, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (2019) by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev.

The synopsis is that we’ve gone from 51 terms for mechanisms to 186 terms. The new set is, by virtue of the sheer number of them, considerably more detailed. Instead of a singular “worker placement” we now have seven different mechanical nuances defined for worker placement games.

Smorgasbord: Summer '19 Report

Times seems to fly these days.

Here we are, 6-months later, since the last report on my boardgame activities. My last post was about my game collection woes - and perhaps tipped off by a recent thread, I figured this was good timing to circle back on what I’ve been playing of late and how “the collection” is faring.

First of all, I did a little reorganization of my BGG inventory, and if you click HERE you’ll get a list of ~110 games that I “own” and consider principally part of my collection. I realized one little fatal flaw with my usage of the “has parts” tag to denote games that my household owns but that I don’t consider “mine” - which is that I started getting peppered with requests for game parts! Whups!

Now, I simply take all my owned games and then use the “want to play” flag for those games that I could conceivably desire to play sooner or later (rather than never). This gets us to 110 games and excludes from the list all the assorted kids games (2x copies of Candy land, etc.), games I want to sell/trade away, and other games that would require a “family discussion” were I to try and purge them from the shelf. It’s a reasonably-sized feeling list - and while there are few in there still listed for trade, unloading them is a low priority.

Keyforge: IMPACT Deck Analysis

Like many, I heard about Keyforge, from Fantasy Flight Games, last year, months before its proper release. As a former Magic: The Gathering player (circa 1994-1997 and sporadically thereafter) I was curious about Keyforge and how it would play. As a designer, I was downright intrigued by Richard Garfield's creation. As a gamer staring down the barrel of less free time, the prospect of playing a collectible card card (CCG) game without the expense and time most CCG’s require - what with all the card collecting and deck construction furor - was enough to sell me on the idea.

Stellaris is Dead... To Me

First, a disclaimer: This whole post is like just my opinion, man.

Now onto the grave business at hand…

I was listening to Three Moves Ahead 2018 yearly review of strategy gaming, and the conversation inevitably swung around to how things went for Paradox this year, which unsurprisingly gets us to Stellaris (which has been the hottest space 4X videogame since 2016 - for those that might be wondering). One of the panelists made a comment to the following effect (I’m paraphrasing): I finally have to come to terms with the fact that Stellaris is increasingly not - nor likely to ever be - the game I imagined it would be.

I couldn’t agree more.

The Inglorious State Of 4X Games

NOTE: This article was originally posted at eXplorminate. Head over to eXplorminate to get your fix for 4X and strategy game news, reviews, and more.

---

Greetings! If you haven’t listened to the 33rd Strategic Expanse – 4th Anniversary Hangout featuring all of the lesser (I’m jesting) eXplorminate staffers then please stop reading this and go listen to that first. The rest of this little rant (thoughtful article?) will make a bit more sense with the proper context. With that out of the way…

I’m elated that, despite my absence on the podcast episode, my name was referenced (usually couched in swear words) a significant number of times. That means you’re all listening to me, which is good because it makes me feel a little less like a crazy person screaming into the wind – and more justified because I’m sure you’ll agree that I’m right. And if you don’t agree now, then maybe you’ll agree to agree with me sometime in the future. Only time will tell.

Alright, alright, enough of the snarkiness.

Visualizing the BGG Game Database with Gephi. Whoa!

So I stumbled into an interesting post over at r/boardgames from reddit user Shepperstein, who had downloaded a trove of data from BGG’s database. He then used Gephi to create some fantastic network models (aka graphs) depicting relationships between game categories. Very cool stuff. I urge you to check out his post and links to his analysis.

Of course, I immediately wanted to start playing around with the data myself!

Fortunately, I’m no stranger to excel AND I used Gephi several years ago, so I was already familiar with its basic functionality. Shepperstein also kindly provided a direct link to his database, so I could tap into that information directly. Are we excited yet?

Rhine & Rhone: An express version of T&E (or Y&Y)

Alright, so having recently acquired Yellow & Yangtze I'm now getting all reinvigorated for the Tigris & Euphrates-style gameplay.

However, one thing about both games is that neither are particularly portable and games can run on for a while. My kids and nephews have really taken to Y&Y (yes!!!!) but sometimes we don't have the time to play a full game but still want something along those lines. Also both games are not very portable. And so I got thinking...

Rethinking Emissary for the "Red Frontier"

Emissary is a design I’ve been iterating on for a number of years now. And while the vagaries of life pulled me away from design work, recently I’ve had a window of time to resume my eternal tinkering.

For those unfamiliar, Emissary was created for a PnP design competition to either create an express version of a bigger game or a micro-game (or both!). At the time, I was experimenting with a number of games using the Decktet system, and I came upon the idea to take Hegemonic and distill it down to its 4X roots (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) by using the decktet. The resulting design worked quite well and had a vaguely Magnate-like feel to its balance of resource management, hand management, and area control.

Lobotomy Lab: Shipwrights of the North Sea

Someone Call a Doctor!

So I have a problem, and the name of the problem is The North Sea Trilogy, a series of viking-themed games by Shem Phillips. I'm not usually one to be suckered into being a completion-ist. But alas I have a weakness for viking-stuff. And when that "stuff" happens to be a boardgame coupled with amazing artwork, it is hard for me to resist (apparently).

After acquiring and enjoying Raiders of the North Sea quite immensely, I soon found myself looking into Explorers of the North Sea, a Tikal-like tile placement and action point game in the same North Sea series. Shortly thereafter, when I was in the store succumbing to that temptation, sitting on the shelf right next to Explorers was of course The North Sea Runesaga, which allows you to combine Raiders, Explorers, and Shipwrights of the North Sea into one multi-game campaign. Of course that also meant that I needed to buy Shipwrights, and so oh my god, what have I done.

My wallet considerably lighter, and with smiles on the store clerks' faces, I ambled home in a state of post-purchase bliss.