4 ms·

Consider Monopoly: it has an elimination mechanic but it's almost a mercy, because quite often in games you know from a few minutes in that you're not going to

Consider Monopoly: it has an elimination mechanic but it's almost a mercy, because quite often in games you know from a few minutes in that you're not going to win. I'm thinking of race for the galaxy here: whoever's engine gets started first pretty much walks away with the game, but you still have to play twenty more minutes of the game.

SubiculumCode 9y ago
Comparing RFTG to Monopoly made me barf up a little, frankly.
- viridian 9y ago
  Monopoly isn't even a bad game if you do this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822820 Somehow a particular set of house rules got popular enough to make everyone hate monopoly. It turns a game of high stakes, high commitment resource scuffling, into a game where you either get knocked out fast or are given enough free assets that you can only lose in the slowest, most agonizing way possible. It's kind of funny how a game designed to heavily favor aggression to make a point had that entire point negated by house rules.
  - lmm 9y ago
    People feel the need to introduce a social safety net into a game of red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism. Maybe the game made its point after all.
  - SubiculumCode 9y ago
    http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/introducing-modern-money-monopoly-mmm.html http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/introducing-moder... An interesting read
jknoepfler 9y ago
Games that lack meaningful player interaction generally struggle to create interesting rubber-banding. It's a very tricky thing to get right (king-making in 3+ player games is a huge problem that tends to tug against allowing strong player interactions - consider 2-player chess vs. 4-player chess)
mercutio2 9y ago
How much RftG have you played? The dynamic you describe is my experience in approximately 20% of 4 player games, maybe 30% of 2 player games. Really skilled Race players see a wide variety of paths to victory in my experience, so if someone has a lead on one strategy, you pursue a different strategy and it’s not usually not obvious who will win.
Tuna-Fish 9y ago
The rubber band mechanism in RftG that gives the runners-up a chance to win is that once someone's "engine has started", everyone around the table is going to have a pretty good idea of the phases that someone is going to play. Then you can use those and your own phases to effectively get more actions out of a round. The lead player is still the one expected to win, but it's not usually a done deal by any stretch.
alasdair_ 9y ago
Have you played the latest Star Wars monopoly? It's not simply a reskin - the same basic rules apply but there is a team mechanic (players are on the light side or dark side, and their team must win in order for the player to win) as well as faster gameplay, actions that can be taken during any players turn, and more. It's also much faster - a complete game with four people takes an hour.
- Doxin 9y ago
  A standard game of monopoly, When played according to the official rules, Takes around 45 minutes. Most people introduce a bunch of house rules which prevent money from draining from the economy, making the game last forever.
  - function_seven 9y ago
    The two biggest offenders: (1) Money for free parking (sometimes it's a flat $500 or whatever was collected in taxes), and (2) not forcing an auction every time a player declines to buy property. The first one makes everyone rich and causes rents just go back and forth for ages. The second one makes it take much longer to get monopolies on property groups.
  - dererson 9y ago
    House rules is one thing. I know from experience its usually people trying to keep everyone in the game as long as possible
  - cosarara97 9y ago
    Even without house rules, it depends on the way people play. In my family, monopoly is played in a very anti-social way, where the main goal seems to be preventing other's victory or advantage. The strategy everybody follows is basically "buy everything you can, and decline all bad trades". Buy everything, of course, to prevent others from making full property groups. Since there is no such thing as an equal trade, no trades are made. As you can imagine, since nobody has full property groups, the game takes forever, it's terribly boring, and pretty much boils down to luck.
TheGRS 9y ago
I thought you were going to say its a mercy because of how horrible it is to play Monopoly in the first place :)

SubiculumCode 9y ago

Comparing RFTG to Monopoly made me barf up a little, frankly.

viridian 9y ago
Monopoly isn't even a bad game if you do this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15822820 Somehow a particular set of house rules got popular enough to make everyone hate monopoly. It turns a game of high stakes, high commitment resource scuffling, into a game where you either get knocked out fast or are given enough free assets that you can only lose in the slowest, most agonizing way possible. It's kind of funny how a game designed to heavily favor aggression to make a point had that entire point negated by house rules.
- lmm 9y ago
  People feel the need to introduce a social safety net into a game of red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism. Maybe the game made its point after all.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/introducing-modern-money-monopoly-mmm.html http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/introducing-moder... An interesting read

jknoepfler 9y ago

Games that lack meaningful player interaction generally struggle to create interesting rubber-banding. It's a very tricky thing to get right (king-making in 3+ player games is a huge problem that tends to tug against allowing strong player interactions - consider 2-player chess vs. 4-player chess)

mercutio2 9y ago

How much RftG have you played? The dynamic you describe is my experience in approximately 20% of 4 player games, maybe 30% of 2 player games. Really skilled Race players see a wide variety of paths to victory in my experience, so if someone has a lead on one strategy, you pursue a different strategy and it’s not usually not obvious who will win.

Tuna-Fish 9y ago

The rubber band mechanism in RftG that gives the runners-up a chance to win is that once someone's "engine has started", everyone around the table is going to have a pretty good idea of the phases that someone is going to play. Then you can use those and your own phases to effectively get more actions out of a round. The lead player is still the one expected to win, but it's not usually a done deal by any stretch.

alasdair_ 9y ago

Have you played the latest Star Wars monopoly? It's not simply a reskin - the same basic rules apply but there is a team mechanic (players are on the light side or dark side, and their team must win in order for the player to win) as well as faster gameplay, actions that can be taken during any players turn, and more. It's also much faster - a complete game with four people takes an hour.

Doxin 9y ago
A standard game of monopoly, When played according to the official rules, Takes around 45 minutes. Most people introduce a bunch of house rules which prevent money from draining from the economy, making the game last forever.
- function_seven 9y ago
  The two biggest offenders: (1) Money for free parking (sometimes it's a flat $500 or whatever was collected in taxes), and (2) not forcing an auction every time a player declines to buy property. The first one makes everyone rich and causes rents just go back and forth for ages. The second one makes it take much longer to get monopolies on property groups.
- dererson 9y ago
  House rules is one thing. I know from experience its usually people trying to keep everyone in the game as long as possible
- cosarara97 9y ago
  Even without house rules, it depends on the way people play. In my family, monopoly is played in a very anti-social way, where the main goal seems to be preventing other's victory or advantage. The strategy everybody follows is basically "buy everything you can, and decline all bad trades". Buy everything, of course, to prevent others from making full property groups. Since there is no such thing as an equal trade, no trades are made. As you can imagine, since nobody has full property groups, the game takes forever, it's terribly boring, and pretty much boils down to luck.

TheGRS 9y ago

I thought you were going to say its a mercy because of how horrible it is to play Monopoly in the first place :)