Traditional Salutation! Self-deprecating re-affirmation of the obvious: Title of Segment [Mechanic Monday]!
I really like board game apps. I like that they clean up the bookkeeping, I like the speed with which you can play, which is coupled with the option for guided tutorials over rulebooks. I really like being able to play without any other humans (Fin Fun Fact! One of Fin’s Fun Catchphrases is: “I’ve always longed for a massively singleplayer online role playing game.” Fun!) And I like that I can do it all on a mobile device, without a surface, starting and stopping within or between games. Some implementations I recommend the most? Jaipur, Splendor, Maquis, Medici, Star Realms, Hive, Onirim - to name just a handful. They’re great, with many positives!
They’re also, simultaneously, kind of not great for me. For all the same reasons. The faster I learn and get a bunch of plays in, the quicker the novelty wears off. The staler the play experience, the more “solved” it feels, even if this is just my perception. The ease of play, against increasingly more predictable AI opponents, leads me to fixate on and then burn out on a game. Sometimes, I walk away from this cycle with more appreciation for the physical game; other times, I feel that the weaknesses have been exposed enough that I don’t really feel much motivation to play it physically.
This is a real roundabout and likely controversial way to bring up Lords of Waterdeep. I played it pretty hard on the iPhone. And it got pretty stale. And I deleted the app because it was a memory hog. And these days, the idea of buying a big shelf-and-table hog where the theme feels S-O-O-O pasted on is - not appealing. I’m not knocking the design - there’s a lot to recommend it! There’s just also a lot to disqualify it for me - but let’s focus on something I did find interesting: Corruption.
Corruption is terrific! Daniel Solis called this mechanic a good implementation of the Tragedy of the Commons. I’m also reminded of the titular mechanic in Heat. In both cases, you have a toxic resource that confers significant short-term benefits, but which must be paid off or returned by the game’s end, or There Will Be Consequences, Consequences of a scale depending on how much of that resource is still un-paid-off between all players.
So: Toxic Resource, Available and Attractive to All, is negative to any Players holding it at game’s end based on how much is still in play. Delightful. It’s passive though; how about we turn it into a more actively malevolent force?
Smart Toxic Resource
In UNIT-E-CORP, the titular corporation is just starting out, as is the town that the players are building. As players build up their businesses, the best way to get ahead is with the assistance of the town’s biggest economic driver - Unit-E-Corp! Unit-E-Corp can help you sway civic planning decisions, and you can synergize to tie your business’s successed to Unit-E-Corp. You can also tailor your restaurants, entertainment, and housing to target UniteCorp employees!
But as each player relies on Unit-E-Corp to get ahead of their opponents, Unit-E-Corp grows stronger and stronger. After it gains critical momentum, Unit-E-Corp decides it no longer needs your contributions, and begins to turn your city into a Company Town, replacing civic decision-making with corporate decrees, and devaluing all currencies in favour of company scrip. The player with the most Success at the end wins, but if the Company grows too big, only Unit-E-Corp wins.
So here’s what I like about this. It’s a multi-level push-your-luck, by which I mean that there are short-term and long-term ways to gamble against going too far. And there’s something thematically nice about an AI instead of a passive resource, in that you can use programmed actions to add a slight risk element to the tragedy of commons. This idea came to me based on this tweet by Shannon McDowell, but I really do think there are lots of fun ways to explore this Corruption/Heat-inspired iteration of a dummy player / Automata corporation. Cards that offer players choices but which, as the company grows, rules out the top, player-friendly choices; a Deck of mixed Corp actions that as you enable, you thin of the good actions; various currencies (including like “labour” and “endorsement”, not just literal fiscal currecnies) that get crashed out by the corp; and so much more. If anyone read this, I’d encourage them to chime in with other sub-mechanics for such an AI. Sound off in the comments y’all!
Sentence abruptly making an excuse to depart. Odd joke, acknowledgment of unprofessionalism, empty invitation to read next iteration!
I really like board game apps. I like that they clean up the bookkeeping, I like the speed with which you can play, which is coupled with the option for guided tutorials over rulebooks. I really like being able to play without any other humans (Fin Fun Fact! One of Fin’s Fun Catchphrases is: “I’ve always longed for a massively singleplayer online role playing game.” Fun!) And I like that I can do it all on a mobile device, without a surface, starting and stopping within or between games. Some implementations I recommend the most? Jaipur, Splendor, Maquis, Medici, Star Realms, Hive, Onirim - to name just a handful. They’re great, with many positives!
They’re also, simultaneously, kind of not great for me. For all the same reasons. The faster I learn and get a bunch of plays in, the quicker the novelty wears off. The staler the play experience, the more “solved” it feels, even if this is just my perception. The ease of play, against increasingly more predictable AI opponents, leads me to fixate on and then burn out on a game. Sometimes, I walk away from this cycle with more appreciation for the physical game; other times, I feel that the weaknesses have been exposed enough that I don’t really feel much motivation to play it physically.
This is a real roundabout and likely controversial way to bring up Lords of Waterdeep. I played it pretty hard on the iPhone. And it got pretty stale. And I deleted the app because it was a memory hog. And these days, the idea of buying a big shelf-and-table hog where the theme feels S-O-O-O pasted on is - not appealing. I’m not knocking the design - there’s a lot to recommend it! There’s just also a lot to disqualify it for me - but let’s focus on something I did find interesting: Corruption.
Corruption is terrific! Daniel Solis called this mechanic a good implementation of the Tragedy of the Commons. I’m also reminded of the titular mechanic in Heat. In both cases, you have a toxic resource that confers significant short-term benefits, but which must be paid off or returned by the game’s end, or There Will Be Consequences, Consequences of a scale depending on how much of that resource is still un-paid-off between all players.
So: Toxic Resource, Available and Attractive to All, is negative to any Players holding it at game’s end based on how much is still in play. Delightful. It’s passive though; how about we turn it into a more actively malevolent force?
Smart Toxic Resource
In UNIT-E-CORP, the titular corporation is just starting out, as is the town that the players are building. As players build up their businesses, the best way to get ahead is with the assistance of the town’s biggest economic driver - Unit-E-Corp! Unit-E-Corp can help you sway civic planning decisions, and you can synergize to tie your business’s successed to Unit-E-Corp. You can also tailor your restaurants, entertainment, and housing to target UniteCorp employees!
But as each player relies on Unit-E-Corp to get ahead of their opponents, Unit-E-Corp grows stronger and stronger. After it gains critical momentum, Unit-E-Corp decides it no longer needs your contributions, and begins to turn your city into a Company Town, replacing civic decision-making with corporate decrees, and devaluing all currencies in favour of company scrip. The player with the most Success at the end wins, but if the Company grows too big, only Unit-E-Corp wins.
So here’s what I like about this. It’s a multi-level push-your-luck, by which I mean that there are short-term and long-term ways to gamble against going too far. And there’s something thematically nice about an AI instead of a passive resource, in that you can use programmed actions to add a slight risk element to the tragedy of commons. This idea came to me based on this tweet by Shannon McDowell, but I really do think there are lots of fun ways to explore this Corruption/Heat-inspired iteration of a dummy player / Automata corporation. Cards that offer players choices but which, as the company grows, rules out the top, player-friendly choices; a Deck of mixed Corp actions that as you enable, you thin of the good actions; various currencies (including like “labour” and “endorsement”, not just literal fiscal currecnies) that get crashed out by the corp; and so much more. If anyone read this, I’d encourage them to chime in with other sub-mechanics for such an AI. Sound off in the comments y’all!
Sentence abruptly making an excuse to depart. Odd joke, acknowledgment of unprofessionalism, empty invitation to read next iteration!
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