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The 1955 Parker Brothers game "Careers" is weirdly ahead of its time in this way, it's roll-and-move (looks like Monopoly) but each player chooses their own, hi

The 1955 Parker Brothers game "Careers" is weirdly ahead of its time in this way, it's roll-and-move (looks like Monopoly) but each player chooses their own, hidden, victory condition to win. It's the norm for everyone in a 4 player game to still think they have a shot at winning right up until someone reveals that they have won. I've always wanted a decent Civ-style computer game that did that, it would solve the "diplomatic AI in a zero-sum game makes no sense" problem. Careers has way too much of a luck component and not enough direct competition for serious gamers but for a light family game it's basically a not terrible version of Monopoly or Life. Edit: also from the designer of Careers: invented language Loglan. I guess there's something to the "language as cooperative game" theory.

aaron-santos 9y ago
Hidden victory conditions can be great at keeping players engaged until the winning player makes the reveal. Dead of Winter and Archipelago are great examples of this at work. Your response reminded me of another theme common among designer boardgames: the manipulation of randomness. It's common to see non-replacement probabilities like drawing from a stack of cards or a bag of chits, and less common to see unmodifiable die rolls. Non-replacement randomness is an easy way to include a strategic component to what could otherwise be boring die rolls. If dice are used, often it's possible to manipulate the results post-roll a la The Castles of Burgundy and many other Stefan Feld games.