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> In my play groups, whenever Scotland Yard comes out, people usually jostle for the opportunity to play Mister X. We have to 'force' people not to be the enemy

> In my play groups, whenever Scotland Yard comes out, people usually jostle for the opportunity to play Mister X. We have to 'force' people not to be the enemy team. That is just because people like to be the criminal. We had a board game with robbers and police were one guy had to be the police and everyone else were robbers, and nobody wanted to be the police because that role was boring. Of course in Scotland yard people wanted to be mr X. But in a pure cooperative game everyone can play the fun role instead of forcing one to play the boring role (or everyone but one playing the boring role as is the case in Scotland yard). This cops n robber game from 1943: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10709/tjuv-och-polis https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10709/tjuv-och-polis > Dungeon Master is _not_ the enemy But he isn't a part of the adventuring group, so he isn't playing the game he is just running the game. Some people like to run games, but many just want to relax and play.

eru 3y ago
> That is just because people like to be the criminal. No. You are right about exciting vs comparatively 'boring'. But that's not because of the thematic dress-up as a 'criminal'. You could just as well have an identical game where Mr X is a good guy, and the chasers are a criminal mob. (Or both sides are morally grey nondescript groups of eg different spy agencies.) In any case, different people have different tastes. And for many people, competing is fun. And not something that's forced on them against their will. Nor something that is 'not nice'. As a really extreme example (from a logical point of view): have a look at a casual chess game. You can view it as both players cooperating in exploring the fixed acyclic graph of legal chess positions. Each player is only there because they want to cooperate with the other player in the project of playing a game of chess. They might even allow each other to take back moves, if that makes for a more entertaining game for them.
- Jensson 3y ago
  But you can look at the explosion of fully cooperative games the past decade to see it wasn't really an understood concept before then. There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design.
  - eru 3y ago
    Maybe, but it's not just cooperative games, but many other techniques of modern board game design as well. The latest in cardboard based entertainment is a lot more fun than the old Ameritrash of Monopoly and 'Game of Life'. My native Germans had a few decades of a head start there, but modern boardgames, even from the US, generally have surpassed Eurostyle games from a few decades ago. So, I agree that cooperative games are more fun now than cooperative games a few decades ago (or even most boardgames from that time, cooperative or not). But that's mostly because game design has gotten a lot better in general. > There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design. Well, I would say better understanding of game design _is_ a technological advance. Just like eg Newton working out a faster way to calculate more digits of Pi is a technical advance (or the lifting of a limitation), even though Newton would have been using the same writing implements to do his calculations as the people 70 years before him.

eru 3y ago

> That is just because people like to be the criminal. No. You are right about exciting vs comparatively 'boring'. But that's not because of the thematic dress-up as a 'criminal'. You could just as well have an identical game where Mr X is a good guy, and the chasers are a criminal mob. (Or both sides are morally grey nondescript groups of eg different spy agencies.) In any case, different people have different tastes. And for many people, competing is fun. And not something that's forced on them against their will. Nor something that is 'not nice'. As a really extreme example (from a logical point of view): have a look at a casual chess game. You can view it as both players cooperating in exploring the fixed acyclic graph of legal chess positions. Each player is only there because they want to cooperate with the other player in the project of playing a game of chess. They might even allow each other to take back moves, if that makes for a more entertaining game for them.

Jensson 3y ago
But you can look at the explosion of fully cooperative games the past decade to see it wasn't really an understood concept before then. There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design.
- eru 3y ago
  Maybe, but it's not just cooperative games, but many other techniques of modern board game design as well. The latest in cardboard based entertainment is a lot more fun than the old Ameritrash of Monopoly and 'Game of Life'. My native Germans had a few decades of a head start there, but modern boardgames, even from the US, generally have surpassed Eurostyle games from a few decades ago. So, I agree that cooperative games are more fun now than cooperative games a few decades ago (or even most boardgames from that time, cooperative or not). But that's mostly because game design has gotten a lot better in general. > There were no technical limitations preventing such cooperative games to be made 70 years ago, all they lacked was understanding of game design. Well, I would say better understanding of game design _is_ a technological advance. Just like eg Newton working out a faster way to calculate more digits of Pi is a technical advance (or the lifting of a limitation), even though Newton would have been using the same writing implements to do his calculations as the people 70 years before him.