Whenever I suggest it people always get sheepish and intimidated by the prospect of a ludicrously complex game that takes literal months to complete for some unknowable reason
(Actually, Monopoly isn’t that bad if you follow the rules in the box and auction properties people land on but don’t buy.)
Psychie
The primary issue with Monopoly, from a game design standpoint, is two-fold, first, there is never a reason not to buy a property when you can afford to, meaning there are effectively no real decisions to make (auctioning alleviates this a bit as deciding how much to bid can be an interesting decision point, but overall it’s not a big enough part of the game to really help, especially when you encounter issue 2), second, there is a distinct lack of catch up mechanics, the vast majority of the time it becomes fairly obvious who is going to win fairly early on due to getting a significant lead fairly early on, meaning you can know the winner within the first half hour and be able to do anything to effect that outcome for the next three and a half hours of gameplay before you reach that conclusion. A game either needs to be quick or have catch up mechanics to keep it interesting throughout the game, otherwise it’s just unfun to watch your friend win over the course of several hours, and even winning can be boring unless you’re particularly sadistic since nobody else is having any fun at that point.
foamy
The lack of catchup mechanics is intentional, and played properly, is *why* Monopoly games don’t actually go for four hours.
Long Monopoly games exist almost entirely because people house-rule in catchup mechanics / money sources / removing money sinks.
Psychie
I’ve never played with houserules, and while it’s been around 20 years since I last played so I’m not entirely certain how long the games actually were, I never played a game of monopoly that didn’t feel like it took absolutely forever to play and it pretty much always ate up an entire afternoon. There definitely wasn’t a game that lasted less than an hour. My family were always big on reading the rules and referencing the rulebook when we couldn’t remember a specific rule in the moment. Since movement is random and the game doesn’t end until everyone except one player is bankrupt, it can legitimately take an incredibly long time to finish the game playing as normal, even when one player gets an early enough lead that there’s no way to catch up.
Also, it’s worth noting that my description of the problem with monopoly is taken directly from a lecture by a game design professor I took a class with in college. Four hours might be an exaggeration, but the fact of the matter is most games take way too long to play and are actively unfun for the majority of the playtime since there are no real decisions/choices to make and the outcome is determined *very* early on in the vast majority of playthroughs. That is bad game design. Good games are not an exercise in frustration due to being unable to affect the outcome for most players most of the time.
Whirlakitty
No. Monopoly IS that bad even when played “correctly”. It is truly, absolutely THAT bad. 😛
(Huge boardgame fan here. My username is a boardgame reference even)
AbacusWizard
Agreed. At a family reunion some years ago, I played a game of Monopoly-with-the-actual-rules with some of my cousins who are also serious boardgamers (we just finished this year’s family reunion, which was a week long and involved three or four board games each day with those same cousins), just to see what it would be like, and it *still* lasted way too long, and it was *still* obvious who was going to win far in advance of the actual end of the game, and it *still* wasn’t very fun.
Mano308gts
I’ll stand in exception, as an avid board gamer who grew up playing Monopoly and enjoyed it. Sure, it’s a gambling game- there’s little strategy whatsoever- however, the purchase or not purchase metric is not as simple as is being suggested; for instance, purchasing the light blues (and developing them) can be rather useless, since they are relatively low impact. Whereas getting the reds, orange, or yellow sets can win the game.
FWIW, I have always played Monopoly with trades available, and half the fun was in making trades with opponents.
Mano308gts
To add to that, as a gambling game, the tide can reverse pretty effectively if/when the lead player gets one of the taxes cards from chance community chest; especially the more expensive of the two can bankrupt an aggressively expensive player. Monopoly is not such an obvious win- even if you can see who is likely to win early on.
i’m sure a handful of the current group would get a kick outta D&D tho sarah might find LARPing more fulfilling b/c she’d actually get to hit someting XD
The story I remember hearing is that Monopoly was originally designed as “here’s why capitalism sucks” and some asshole decided to steal it to make it a mass market product, which instantly made the entire game make sense to me.
Yeah, the mechanic where one player grabs an early lead through sheer dumb luck and then spends the next four hours grinding everyone else slowly into the dirt is entirely deliberate.
Kintrex
Monopoly isn’t meant to last four hours. If it does, it’s probably because you’re using house rules.
It depends on the initial property distribution. If no one actually has a developable set when the properties are all claimed — which I find is pretty common if you’ve got more than two players — it can drag on for-fucking-ever, with rental money just basically being passed around the board, and Go income pretty much covering other expenses, until someone hits a run of bad luck and the wheels come off.
Yeah, Monopoly was designed to suck. I’d actually love to know how it became so popular, tbh, such that everyone’s played it.
Rose by Any Other Name
… Extra Creditz literally put out a Youtube video this past week explaining the history of Monopoly, so if you’re interested, just search for that creator doing that topic on that platform and you should find it. It’s a pretty good video – watched it myself. Obvioulsy.
vlademir1
Was literally about to point to EC’s recent video when I scrolled down a slight bit more.
Are we going to pretend that strip monopoly isn’t a thing?
Rowen Morland
If Monopoly is supposed to represent unfun capitalist domination, how does that get reflected in the strip version, in practice?
Plain Marie
My theory is that getting to choose one of the cute, I mean enticing player markers is the most fun I’ll ever have with Mon0poly. The point of the game is right there in the title! Have fun mortgaging your little boot or whatever.
Plain Marie
Or to expand on that, the players get to choose (acquire) a relatively low stakes item, which is the last real choice some make in the rest of the game. Kinda like how it’s fun to choose a new set of Summer plates or something at Target, yet never acquire enough capital to buy a house or a real table to put them on.
Mark
Possibly interesting: our family had a Monopoly set, but to this day I’ve never played it with the cute tokens — ours were all pawns.
It took me a minute to parse that sentence correctly and figure out that you weren’t talking about a game called “Real Fuck Monopoly”. Which at least sounds more entertaining than regular Monopoly.
digital Monopoly on Switch is way more fun… mostly because you can put in an AI player to bully.
Just remember – the difficulty is actually how bullshit their rolls will be. Hard literally cheats. However, luck aside, the AI is always stupid and doesn’t understand that mortgaged property is worth less than normal.
I find that a lot of games depend on who you play them with. Some games like monopoly or risk can just be really painful in general though. I have found that I don’t like playing games like Catan if some (or all) of the other players are really competitive. If people are going to be very competitive (especially getting rub it in your face mean), I prefer games that take the competition out of the equation for the most part (possibly cards against humanity, mild meld or a cooperative game). I want to play a game to relax, have fun and socialize. Being competitive with aomeone else isn’t fun to me, and can end up with hard feels imo. Thr only time I have found that competitive games go well is when I am playing with laid back friends or family that are also just playing for fun. I have been in 2 casual groups, a small pinochle group and a monthly group that plays bunco. The bunco group sometimes gets teenagers/pre-teens that are very antsy about winning. It tends to make the whole experience less enjoyable for everyone, as otherwise we just joke around about how the dice are rolling and don’t care too much. I do find that having money involved in any game significantly increases the competitiveness, and decreases thr enjoyment for me. Due to this, I don’t tend to use money when playing games, even ones with betting like pinochle, as you can play those games without money.
On a my personal experience side note, the card game Pit can get even the quiestest person yelling. A mildly competitive game with a bit of a twist is the card game Wizard. Everyone looks at their own cards and knows what trump is, and then makes a bet about how many tricks they will win. You want to get exactly what you bet, not over or under. Since you don’t know what is in everyone else’s hand, the result can be quite random, losing with what you thought was a good card and winning with what you thought was a horrible card. It can sometimes result in a form of slight cooperation, as you try to play your cards right to help someone get a trick they want and you don’t want. Much of what happens is luck, though the more players there are or the further in the game you are (more cards dealt out) the better the guess you can have on what is out there.
See, I don’t consider myself particularly competitive, as I can have a good time winning or losing, but I’m always kind of confused and kind of bothered by the people who play games like you do. That’s not a dig at you, as you’d probably be bothered by playing with me too, neither way is wrong, per se, just incompatible.
I’m of the opinion that anything worth doing at all is worth doing well, so I take everything pretty much equally seriously, this means I can joke around and have fun doing just about anything, but it also means that even when doing things purely for fun, like games, I operate at the best of my ability. In games this means I do my best to win, and many can see that as being competitive, but honestly, I have have had more fun losing some games than winning, as it means I’m playing against someone competent who can provide me with a real challenge, if I’m always winning I just feel like I’m bullying the other player(s), and it gets boring since I already know the outcome before I start. I consider caring about the outcome, at least insofar as putting forth effort goes, to be part of the basic premise of the game, so when a player genuinely doesn’t seem to care about the game and doesn’t seem to even try to win, it feels kind of disrespectful to me since they’re not even trying to engage with the game as intended. Like, if playing the game is superfluous to the situation, why even play in the first place? There’s plenty of other ways to spend time with friends and family and enjoy each others’ company, including just hanging out and chatting, so why play a game if the game doesn’t matter? I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of not engaging with something seriously just because it’s fun, since to me fun is a reason to take something *more* seriously, not less.
Plain Marie
Good point. One of my siblings is aggressively noncompetetive (but only in games) to the point that they will feel uncomfortable with power imbalances and suggest changing rules so that everybody wins to some degree. Bo-ring! I didn’t want a community project… I want to use strategy and be entertained!
Yumi
I think some of it is in the goal in playing a game… like, the overall goal is to have fun, and if sometimes people find that better created by something focused on a shared experience, and some people want to be competitive about it. And I think either is fine, though I don’t consider “as the game intends” to be a reason to be serious about it.
Sometimes I play games with my friends who get real competitive, and I’m just over here having a fun time doing whatever, convincing people to trade an ore for an ore as a show of goodwill between our people. And sometimes I play with that attitude and still win, which is extra funny with the friend who has been trashtalking the whole time.
Kimi
I wouldn’t say that I don’t put in any effort. I would try my best (which may or may not be good depending on the game). I am just not the type of person to play a multiplayer game if it ends up frustrating or people start yelling or mocking others for it. There is a difference between trying your best and being overtly competitive about something. If someone says that they are going to crush me just as we start playing a game (especially a game that I have never played before), I am going to be a bit leery about playing with them vs someone who is cheery even if they lose. There is enough stuff in my life (work, etc) that I have to be competitve and stress over that I don’t want to do it during my fun time. I understand that is how some people have fun, but it isn’t my cup of tea. I also understand that it can be really frustrating to play with someone that doesn’t understand the game and doesn’t care to try. I have had a few pinochle partners that are not only oblivious about not strategising over the table, but also really don’t know how to bid, pass or play a hand no matter how many games you play with them. I just shrug it off and enjoy the conversation, but I know that it could drive other people crazy. When I play scrabble with my mom’s family, we tend to help each other out if they can’t think of a word with the letters that they had. Part of it might have been due to me being young at first, and then at the end my grandma having memory issues. I know that some people would find it cheating, but it can be fun spotting a good spot that they didn’t notice and helping them out. Even with her gone, I still play with older relatives or acquaintances who might not be able to play without a little help keeping track or keeping score. I just know that with games, there is a lot of personal preference involved, and I would have for someone to be scared away from playing board or card games just because they were exposed to only one form. There is a lot of variety out there and different playing styles. Just because you don’t fit with one game or group doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t fit in with another.
Psychie
Yeah, I agree that people shouldn’t get so competitive that they get mad or mean about it, I only got into a shouting match over a game once and that was because another player was blatantly cheating but was somehow convinced she was in the right (it was Uno, and she introduced a houserule I had never heard of before in the middle of the game, at first she insisted it was a real, official rule, so I pulled up the official Uno rulebook online and asked her to show me where the rulebook said she could do what she did, and after reading it and failing to find the rule she was citing she just pointed to the rule encouraging houserules, the other two players genuinely didn’t care and were acting like *I* was the bad guy for insisting on fair play, so I didn’t even get the chance to point out that the rule encouraging houserules specifically says the players need to agree on houserules *before* the game starts, and as nobody had ever mentioned that houserule to me, obviously I hadn’t agreed to it, since every time I tried to argue my point I’d get cut off by one of the other three, I have sworn off Uno entirely because of this, a game so reliant on houserules to be fun at all that they don’t even bother to include the rulebook in the box most of the time is a terrible game and only exists as argument bait since almost nobody actually knows the rules of the game).
I also enjoy cooperative games, and when I’m playing with people who I know either won’t be a challenge to play against or don’t have fun with competitive play, I try to bring out co-op games. Unfortunately co-op games tend to be the most complex in my experience, so it can be tricky to convince people to play if they aren’t already heavily into board games. A lot of people find more complex games to be daunting and don’t want to bother learning to play, no matter how shallow the learning curve actually is.
I guess maybe I misunderstood what you were talking about with regard to competitive players. Most people I’ve met that complain about people being competitive complain about people playing to win and getting good at the game, but it sounds like your issue is more with poor sportsmanship which I agree is a problem. I find games are boring if you always win with little to no challenge, and they are frustrating if you always lose with little to no chance of winning, so I want to be good at the game, but also play against challenging opponents. Trash talking can be fun with the right group, but if people are doing that when they don’t even know your temperament then they are just being rude, and the desire to win should never take precedence over the players having fun.
I also agree that different playstyles can all be valid but also potentially incompatible. There have been times when watching actual play shows I’ll comment that I don’t think I’d have fun playing with one player or another because the way they play the game frustrates me, and people think I’m being a hater saying they’re way of playing is wrong somehow, when that isn’t my point at all, I just think the way they play games and the way I play games are incompatible with one another.
Yeah. My wife and I sometimes play Scrabble or Clue but we don’t keep score. It’s just a fun way to entertain each other with a shared intellectual challenge.
Chess I see as mainly about getting inside your opponent’s head. The players learn interesting things about each others’ planning and perception. Perhaps that’s a weird way to socialize, but then I’m weird.
I’m reminded of the card game Golf, which has some completive chance/strategy elements, but can benefit from some cooperative elements. That’s a fun game with the right group.
Settlers of Catan is fine with 3 players, but with 4 players, at least one person will get screwed. Unless you’re playing with the fish expansion which makes the edge spaces valuable, then 4 players is fine.
I would second several of your points- many modern games (Katan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Smallworld, & more) are extremely unfun when you’re playing with highly competitive folks; and emotions can and do run high. Otoh, I personally cannot stand Apples to Apples (and let’s be honest, Cards against Humanity is just dirty Apples to Apples) because it winds up just feeling like a popularity contest; you can usually tell who playedd what card.
Also, shout-out for mentioning Pit, one of the most fun games I have ever played… When playing with a rambunctious group. I have played games of Pit with people that were calmer, and it’s literally excruciating in those circumstances.
The thing about comic strips is that the amount of time between panels, and especially between strips, isn’t strictly defined.
Also possibly Lucy has a teleport-to-board-games-opportunity power, like Joyce can teleport to Dorothy or Dina can teleport to incorrect dinosaur trivia.
I feel like while Sarah would appreciate the friendship destroying spirit of diplomacy, her social issues would prevent her from actually being good at and enjoying the game.
209 thoughts on “Board games”
NGPZ
*plays Mad Tea Party Area Theme on hacked muzak*
Ana Chronistic
Sarah don’t know what she’s missing!
*eyes copy of Pandemic Legacy played incorrectly through December part 1 with no chance of completing December part 2*
…maybe she does
(Monopoly is a shit game, tho, better to play Power Grid)
Thag Simmons
Nah, The Campaign for North Africa, accept no substitutes.
Emil
So, how many plays of that have you logged? 😉
Thag Simmons
Whenever I suggest it people always get sheepish and intimidated by the prospect of a ludicrously complex game that takes literal months to complete for some unknowable reason
someone
Monopoly was originally The Landlord’s Game, which was not meant to be entertaining but political activism.
Needfuldoer
Which got bastardized into the game we all know
and lovetoday thanks to the telephone game and some good old fashioned revisionist history.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUOKKszskTQ
(Actually, Monopoly isn’t that bad if you follow the rules in the box and auction properties people land on but don’t buy.)
Psychie
The primary issue with Monopoly, from a game design standpoint, is two-fold, first, there is never a reason not to buy a property when you can afford to, meaning there are effectively no real decisions to make (auctioning alleviates this a bit as deciding how much to bid can be an interesting decision point, but overall it’s not a big enough part of the game to really help, especially when you encounter issue 2), second, there is a distinct lack of catch up mechanics, the vast majority of the time it becomes fairly obvious who is going to win fairly early on due to getting a significant lead fairly early on, meaning you can know the winner within the first half hour and be able to do anything to effect that outcome for the next three and a half hours of gameplay before you reach that conclusion. A game either needs to be quick or have catch up mechanics to keep it interesting throughout the game, otherwise it’s just unfun to watch your friend win over the course of several hours, and even winning can be boring unless you’re particularly sadistic since nobody else is having any fun at that point.
foamy
The lack of catchup mechanics is intentional, and played properly, is *why* Monopoly games don’t actually go for four hours.
Long Monopoly games exist almost entirely because people house-rule in catchup mechanics / money sources / removing money sinks.
Psychie
I’ve never played with houserules, and while it’s been around 20 years since I last played so I’m not entirely certain how long the games actually were, I never played a game of monopoly that didn’t feel like it took absolutely forever to play and it pretty much always ate up an entire afternoon. There definitely wasn’t a game that lasted less than an hour. My family were always big on reading the rules and referencing the rulebook when we couldn’t remember a specific rule in the moment. Since movement is random and the game doesn’t end until everyone except one player is bankrupt, it can legitimately take an incredibly long time to finish the game playing as normal, even when one player gets an early enough lead that there’s no way to catch up.
Also, it’s worth noting that my description of the problem with monopoly is taken directly from a lecture by a game design professor I took a class with in college. Four hours might be an exaggeration, but the fact of the matter is most games take way too long to play and are actively unfun for the majority of the playtime since there are no real decisions/choices to make and the outcome is determined *very* early on in the vast majority of playthroughs. That is bad game design. Good games are not an exercise in frustration due to being unable to affect the outcome for most players most of the time.
Whirlakitty
No. Monopoly IS that bad even when played “correctly”. It is truly, absolutely THAT bad. 😛
(Huge boardgame fan here. My username is a boardgame reference even)
AbacusWizard
Agreed. At a family reunion some years ago, I played a game of Monopoly-with-the-actual-rules with some of my cousins who are also serious boardgamers (we just finished this year’s family reunion, which was a week long and involved three or four board games each day with those same cousins), just to see what it would be like, and it *still* lasted way too long, and it was *still* obvious who was going to win far in advance of the actual end of the game, and it *still* wasn’t very fun.
Mano308gts
I’ll stand in exception, as an avid board gamer who grew up playing Monopoly and enjoyed it. Sure, it’s a gambling game- there’s little strategy whatsoever- however, the purchase or not purchase metric is not as simple as is being suggested; for instance, purchasing the light blues (and developing them) can be rather useless, since they are relatively low impact. Whereas getting the reds, orange, or yellow sets can win the game.
FWIW, I have always played Monopoly with trades available, and half the fun was in making trades with opponents.
Mano308gts
To add to that, as a gambling game, the tide can reverse pretty effectively if/when the lead player gets one of the taxes cards from chance community chest; especially the more expensive of the two can bankrupt an aggressively expensive player. Monopoly is not such an obvious win- even if you can see who is likely to win early on.
Pylgrim
I played Power Grid once. It made me more furious in a very short time than all the times I ever played monopoly put together.
Ana Chronistic
I’m saying Power Grid is a superior version of Monopoly, not that it’s enjoyable to people who hate counting
morleuca
I recommend Illuminopoly instead
anon
i’m sure a handful of the current group would get a kick outta D&D tho sarah might find LARPing more fulfilling b/c she’d actually get to hit someting XD
Nono
Yeah you wouldn’t want the Risk of them Monopolizing the party!
True Survivor
They’ll socialize or they’ll be Sorry!
Delavan
Y’all gettin’ a little Parcheesi with these puns…
NGPZ
My alien senses indicate an upcoming drama Twister
Ana Chronistic
Y’all gotta Scrabble for these puns
Blibdoolpoolp
Drunken Board Games > Most Social Gatherings
Nymph
If you make friends with people who share your interests then Drunken Board Games = Most Social Gatherings.
wwwhhattt
This, especially since the pandemic. Now my social circle is pretty much just my RPG group
Azhrei Vep
I’d add that Sober Board Games > Drunken Board Games > Most Social Gatherings.
Yeet
there’s so many good games but for real fuck monopoly all my homies hate monopoly
Thag Simmons
The story I remember hearing is that Monopoly was originally designed as “here’s why capitalism sucks” and some asshole decided to steal it to make it a mass market product, which instantly made the entire game make sense to me.
John Campbell
Yeah, the mechanic where one player grabs an early lead through sheer dumb luck and then spends the next four hours grinding everyone else slowly into the dirt is entirely deliberate.
Kintrex
Monopoly isn’t meant to last four hours. If it does, it’s probably because you’re using house rules.
John Campbell
It depends on the initial property distribution. If no one actually has a developable set when the properties are all claimed — which I find is pretty common if you’ve got more than two players — it can drag on for-fucking-ever, with rental money just basically being passed around the board, and Go income pretty much covering other expenses, until someone hits a run of bad luck and the wheels come off.
Jamie
Yeah, Monopoly was designed to suck. I’d actually love to know how it became so popular, tbh, such that everyone’s played it.
Rose by Any Other Name
… Extra Creditz literally put out a Youtube video this past week explaining the history of Monopoly, so if you’re interested, just search for that creator doing that topic on that platform and you should find it. It’s a pretty good video – watched it myself. Obvioulsy.
vlademir1
Was literally about to point to EC’s recent video when I scrolled down a slight bit more.
Nathan
https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Extra+Creditz+monopoly
clif
Are we going to pretend that strip monopoly isn’t a thing?
Rowen Morland
If Monopoly is supposed to represent unfun capitalist domination, how does that get reflected in the strip version, in practice?
Plain Marie
My theory is that getting to choose one of the cute, I mean enticing player markers is the most fun I’ll ever have with Mon0poly. The point of the game is right there in the title! Have fun mortgaging your little boot or whatever.
Plain Marie
Or to expand on that, the players get to choose (acquire) a relatively low stakes item, which is the last real choice some make in the rest of the game. Kinda like how it’s fun to choose a new set of Summer plates or something at Target, yet never acquire enough capital to buy a house or a real table to put them on.
Mark
Possibly interesting: our family had a Monopoly set, but to this day I’ve never played it with the cute tokens — ours were all pawns.
All pawns. Think about that.
Nathan
Could you tell whose was whose?
Mark
Well, yes, they were different colors.
John Campbell
It took me a minute to parse that sentence correctly and figure out that you weren’t talking about a game called “Real Fuck Monopoly”. Which at least sounds more entertaining than regular Monopoly.
Thag Simmons
maybe people invented punctuation for a reason
Yumi
Maybe People were actually innovators of capitalization
clif
Capitalist.
Mark
The Maybe People were a one-hit wonder. I don’t know why we still talk about them.
StClair
Not to be confused with the Ink Spots song that plays during the intro to Fallout (1), “Maybe”.
Proxiehunter
Even more intriguing than knife monopoly.
Max
There are no losers in that version of the game. Depending on who you invited to the party…
Rose by Any Other Name
digital Monopoly on Switch is way more fun… mostly because you can put in an AI player to bully.
Just remember – the difficulty is actually how bullshit their rolls will be. Hard literally cheats. However, luck aside, the AI is always stupid and doesn’t understand that mortgaged property is worth less than normal.
Needfuldoer
AI Monopoly, you say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkvFcYBznPI
Kimi
I find that a lot of games depend on who you play them with. Some games like monopoly or risk can just be really painful in general though. I have found that I don’t like playing games like Catan if some (or all) of the other players are really competitive. If people are going to be very competitive (especially getting rub it in your face mean), I prefer games that take the competition out of the equation for the most part (possibly cards against humanity, mild meld or a cooperative game). I want to play a game to relax, have fun and socialize. Being competitive with aomeone else isn’t fun to me, and can end up with hard feels imo. Thr only time I have found that competitive games go well is when I am playing with laid back friends or family that are also just playing for fun. I have been in 2 casual groups, a small pinochle group and a monthly group that plays bunco. The bunco group sometimes gets teenagers/pre-teens that are very antsy about winning. It tends to make the whole experience less enjoyable for everyone, as otherwise we just joke around about how the dice are rolling and don’t care too much. I do find that having money involved in any game significantly increases the competitiveness, and decreases thr enjoyment for me. Due to this, I don’t tend to use money when playing games, even ones with betting like pinochle, as you can play those games without money.
On a my personal experience side note, the card game Pit can get even the quiestest person yelling. A mildly competitive game with a bit of a twist is the card game Wizard. Everyone looks at their own cards and knows what trump is, and then makes a bet about how many tricks they will win. You want to get exactly what you bet, not over or under. Since you don’t know what is in everyone else’s hand, the result can be quite random, losing with what you thought was a good card and winning with what you thought was a horrible card. It can sometimes result in a form of slight cooperation, as you try to play your cards right to help someone get a trick they want and you don’t want. Much of what happens is luck, though the more players there are or the further in the game you are (more cards dealt out) the better the guess you can have on what is out there.
Psychie
See, I don’t consider myself particularly competitive, as I can have a good time winning or losing, but I’m always kind of confused and kind of bothered by the people who play games like you do. That’s not a dig at you, as you’d probably be bothered by playing with me too, neither way is wrong, per se, just incompatible.
I’m of the opinion that anything worth doing at all is worth doing well, so I take everything pretty much equally seriously, this means I can joke around and have fun doing just about anything, but it also means that even when doing things purely for fun, like games, I operate at the best of my ability. In games this means I do my best to win, and many can see that as being competitive, but honestly, I have have had more fun losing some games than winning, as it means I’m playing against someone competent who can provide me with a real challenge, if I’m always winning I just feel like I’m bullying the other player(s), and it gets boring since I already know the outcome before I start. I consider caring about the outcome, at least insofar as putting forth effort goes, to be part of the basic premise of the game, so when a player genuinely doesn’t seem to care about the game and doesn’t seem to even try to win, it feels kind of disrespectful to me since they’re not even trying to engage with the game as intended. Like, if playing the game is superfluous to the situation, why even play in the first place? There’s plenty of other ways to spend time with friends and family and enjoy each others’ company, including just hanging out and chatting, so why play a game if the game doesn’t matter? I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of not engaging with something seriously just because it’s fun, since to me fun is a reason to take something *more* seriously, not less.
Plain Marie
Good point. One of my siblings is aggressively noncompetetive (but only in games) to the point that they will feel uncomfortable with power imbalances and suggest changing rules so that everybody wins to some degree. Bo-ring! I didn’t want a community project… I want to use strategy and be entertained!
Yumi
I think some of it is in the goal in playing a game… like, the overall goal is to have fun, and if sometimes people find that better created by something focused on a shared experience, and some people want to be competitive about it. And I think either is fine, though I don’t consider “as the game intends” to be a reason to be serious about it.
Sometimes I play games with my friends who get real competitive, and I’m just over here having a fun time doing whatever, convincing people to trade an ore for an ore as a show of goodwill between our people. And sometimes I play with that attitude and still win, which is extra funny with the friend who has been trashtalking the whole time.
Kimi
I wouldn’t say that I don’t put in any effort. I would try my best (which may or may not be good depending on the game). I am just not the type of person to play a multiplayer game if it ends up frustrating or people start yelling or mocking others for it. There is a difference between trying your best and being overtly competitive about something. If someone says that they are going to crush me just as we start playing a game (especially a game that I have never played before), I am going to be a bit leery about playing with them vs someone who is cheery even if they lose. There is enough stuff in my life (work, etc) that I have to be competitve and stress over that I don’t want to do it during my fun time. I understand that is how some people have fun, but it isn’t my cup of tea. I also understand that it can be really frustrating to play with someone that doesn’t understand the game and doesn’t care to try. I have had a few pinochle partners that are not only oblivious about not strategising over the table, but also really don’t know how to bid, pass or play a hand no matter how many games you play with them. I just shrug it off and enjoy the conversation, but I know that it could drive other people crazy. When I play scrabble with my mom’s family, we tend to help each other out if they can’t think of a word with the letters that they had. Part of it might have been due to me being young at first, and then at the end my grandma having memory issues. I know that some people would find it cheating, but it can be fun spotting a good spot that they didn’t notice and helping them out. Even with her gone, I still play with older relatives or acquaintances who might not be able to play without a little help keeping track or keeping score. I just know that with games, there is a lot of personal preference involved, and I would have for someone to be scared away from playing board or card games just because they were exposed to only one form. There is a lot of variety out there and different playing styles. Just because you don’t fit with one game or group doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t fit in with another.
Psychie
Yeah, I agree that people shouldn’t get so competitive that they get mad or mean about it, I only got into a shouting match over a game once and that was because another player was blatantly cheating but was somehow convinced she was in the right (it was Uno, and she introduced a houserule I had never heard of before in the middle of the game, at first she insisted it was a real, official rule, so I pulled up the official Uno rulebook online and asked her to show me where the rulebook said she could do what she did, and after reading it and failing to find the rule she was citing she just pointed to the rule encouraging houserules, the other two players genuinely didn’t care and were acting like *I* was the bad guy for insisting on fair play, so I didn’t even get the chance to point out that the rule encouraging houserules specifically says the players need to agree on houserules *before* the game starts, and as nobody had ever mentioned that houserule to me, obviously I hadn’t agreed to it, since every time I tried to argue my point I’d get cut off by one of the other three, I have sworn off Uno entirely because of this, a game so reliant on houserules to be fun at all that they don’t even bother to include the rulebook in the box most of the time is a terrible game and only exists as argument bait since almost nobody actually knows the rules of the game).
I also enjoy cooperative games, and when I’m playing with people who I know either won’t be a challenge to play against or don’t have fun with competitive play, I try to bring out co-op games. Unfortunately co-op games tend to be the most complex in my experience, so it can be tricky to convince people to play if they aren’t already heavily into board games. A lot of people find more complex games to be daunting and don’t want to bother learning to play, no matter how shallow the learning curve actually is.
I guess maybe I misunderstood what you were talking about with regard to competitive players. Most people I’ve met that complain about people being competitive complain about people playing to win and getting good at the game, but it sounds like your issue is more with poor sportsmanship which I agree is a problem. I find games are boring if you always win with little to no challenge, and they are frustrating if you always lose with little to no chance of winning, so I want to be good at the game, but also play against challenging opponents. Trash talking can be fun with the right group, but if people are doing that when they don’t even know your temperament then they are just being rude, and the desire to win should never take precedence over the players having fun.
I also agree that different playstyles can all be valid but also potentially incompatible. There have been times when watching actual play shows I’ll comment that I don’t think I’d have fun playing with one player or another because the way they play the game frustrates me, and people think I’m being a hater saying they’re way of playing is wrong somehow, when that isn’t my point at all, I just think the way they play games and the way I play games are incompatible with one another.
Mark
Yeah. My wife and I sometimes play Scrabble or Clue but we don’t keep score. It’s just a fun way to entertain each other with a shared intellectual challenge.
Chess I see as mainly about getting inside your opponent’s head. The players learn interesting things about each others’ planning and perception. Perhaps that’s a weird way to socialize, but then I’m weird.
Plain Marie
I’m reminded of the card game Golf, which has some completive chance/strategy elements, but can benefit from some cooperative elements. That’s a fun game with the right group.
Bash
I learned Wizard recently. I won by predicting that I would do badly, and then doing badly on purpose. Highly entertaining.
jmsr7
Settlers of Catan is fine with 3 players, but with 4 players, at least one person will get screwed. Unless you’re playing with the fish expansion which makes the edge spaces valuable, then 4 players is fine.
Mano308gts
I would second several of your points- many modern games (Katan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Smallworld, & more) are extremely unfun when you’re playing with highly competitive folks; and emotions can and do run high. Otoh, I personally cannot stand Apples to Apples (and let’s be honest, Cards against Humanity is just dirty Apples to Apples) because it winds up just feeling like a popularity contest; you can usually tell who playedd what card.
Also, shout-out for mentioning Pit, one of the most fun games I have ever played… When playing with a rambunctious group. I have played games of Pit with people that were calmer, and it’s literally excruciating in those circumstances.
Greylurker
I have me a lot of fun board games, but my collection is largely “Weird game I got on Kickstarter for the miniatures”.
jeffepp
Joyce started here party time with catan
Animedingo
She lives in a different building how did she get there so fast
John Campbell
The thing about comic strips is that the amount of time between panels, and especially between strips, isn’t strictly defined.
Also possibly Lucy has a teleport-to-board-games-opportunity power, like Joyce can teleport to Dorothy or Dina can teleport to incorrect dinosaur trivia.
Cholma
Maybe Sarah prefers Diplomacy? Of course, you can’t go wrong with Settlers of Catan!
Thag Simmons
I feel like while Sarah would appreciate the friendship destroying spirit of diplomacy, her social issues would prevent her from actually being good at and enjoying the game.
vlademir1
I could quite heavily debate that. You can’t go wrong with SoC in a mixed group, but in a heavily board game focused group….
butting
Blood Bowl or nothing.
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