Marvelous! I loved board games when I was young. Then I stopped liking them when I decided they didn’t usually foster interesting conversations. I think you’ve identified why that is. I’ve encountered just a couple of games with a cooperative/competitive dynamic.
One is The Bean Game, Bohnanza. It does have the most points win rule, but we played so everyone was interested in how they placed. We also relaxed the restrictions on card trading, at first by not remembering that rule. A remarkable thing emerged over sessions: the most generous and kindest player tended to win. People wanted to be generous back to them. They did more trades, so had better card sets.
Your game here seems marvelous. I particularly love the idea that the players aren’t balanced, so you can’t compare scores. This makes game design vastly easier and allows more creativity in tinkering with abilities, etc.
I want a copy!
I also think this could be commercially successful; a polished version sounds like it would be aesthetically pleasing, and the tag line of “teach your kids to negotiate in potentially adversarial situations” would be highly compelling for parents.
The pitch you’ve given is highly compelling to me as a rationalist, so I think you’d sell some to the rationalist community if you could get it even decently manufactured.
I have also found this with Bohnanza; although the rules say that the most points win, my group has always made it a faux pas to actually count points before the end of the game. Everyone plays to maximize their own score, rather than to beat the opponents, and it is definitely the case that people who accept “bad” trades tend to do better than people who walk away from the negotiating table. (At the same time, people who can instead negotiate the “bad” trade into something better do the best of all.)
I would say that Agricola (by the same author) and its spinoff Caverna, also have the opportunity for positive-sum trades if you play to maximize your own score rather than to beat the other players; I expect the same is true for many/most other worker placement games. In those games, resources accrue to the board at a fixed rate until someone spends one of their limited actions to harvest them. There are a fixed number of turns, so there is a fixed amount of each resource which is produced by this mechanism. For instance, the 4-wood space in Agricola accrues 4 wood each round for the 14 rounds of the game, for a total of 56 wood. In a game where players are hotly contesting the wood, the space gets harvested by someone every round, so the action efficiency is 4 wood/action. In a game where players let the wood build up and harvest it every other round, the action efficiency is 8 wood/action. Everyone may get the same total wood in the game, but with less opportunity cost.
SU&SD did a delightful review of Bohnanza this month: The Beans Game.
I’ve been wanting to check it out. It sounds like you have a lovely group. Whereabouts are yall located? x)
Your game here seems marvelous. I particularly love the idea that the players aren’t balanced, so you can’t compare scores. This makes game design vastly easier and allows more creativity in tinkering with abilities, etc.
Right? Most multiplayer games just aren’t able to discuss power asymmetries, they get boring when they do, which is absurd, games often have these characters like, I don’t know, Bowser, who are supposed to be abnormally strong and intimidating, and then they have to remove that characteristic from the character.
I think you’d sell some to the rationalist community if you could get it even decently manufactured.
Yeah, interest among EAs is really high. I think there’s a lot we can learn from this kind of game, but I’m always reluctant to focus on the audience at home. The audience who’s most aware that they need a thing are often the audience who mostly already has it, I really want to reach the kind of audiences who don’t know that cooperative bargaining theory exists, they’re really suffering out there.
Good points. Then I think you want to market to / pursued parents. They want their children to be good at resisting bad deals, but wise in how they exercise their power over others.
I think for adults there’s also a huge pitch for this being a new type of game: cooperative and competitive at the same time. Play it your way. (And learn how that works out).
You might actually want to make it a tiny bit more competitive to entice people who think cooperative games are dull. It would be easy to put the points on the same scale by looking at average scores of different roles over just a few sessions. There still wouldn’t be one winner, but it would make it more of a challenge to improve your own play and play better than others. Challenge is motivating.
Marvelous! I loved board games when I was young. Then I stopped liking them when I decided they didn’t usually foster interesting conversations. I think you’ve identified why that is. I’ve encountered just a couple of games with a cooperative/competitive dynamic.
One is The Bean Game, Bohnanza. It does have the most points win rule, but we played so everyone was interested in how they placed. We also relaxed the restrictions on card trading, at first by not remembering that rule. A remarkable thing emerged over sessions: the most generous and kindest player tended to win. People wanted to be generous back to them. They did more trades, so had better card sets.
Your game here seems marvelous. I particularly love the idea that the players aren’t balanced, so you can’t compare scores. This makes game design vastly easier and allows more creativity in tinkering with abilities, etc.
I want a copy!
I also think this could be commercially successful; a polished version sounds like it would be aesthetically pleasing, and the tag line of “teach your kids to negotiate in potentially adversarial situations” would be highly compelling for parents.
The pitch you’ve given is highly compelling to me as a rationalist, so I think you’d sell some to the rationalist community if you could get it even decently manufactured.
I have also found this with Bohnanza; although the rules say that the most points win, my group has always made it a faux pas to actually count points before the end of the game. Everyone plays to maximize their own score, rather than to beat the opponents, and it is definitely the case that people who accept “bad” trades tend to do better than people who walk away from the negotiating table. (At the same time, people who can instead negotiate the “bad” trade into something better do the best of all.)
I would say that Agricola (by the same author) and its spinoff Caverna, also have the opportunity for positive-sum trades if you play to maximize your own score rather than to beat the other players; I expect the same is true for many/most other worker placement games. In those games, resources accrue to the board at a fixed rate until someone spends one of their limited actions to harvest them. There are a fixed number of turns, so there is a fixed amount of each resource which is produced by this mechanism. For instance, the 4-wood space in Agricola accrues 4 wood each round for the 14 rounds of the game, for a total of 56 wood. In a game where players are hotly contesting the wood, the space gets harvested by someone every round, so the action efficiency is 4 wood/action. In a game where players let the wood build up and harvest it every other round, the action efficiency is 8 wood/action. Everyone may get the same total wood in the game, but with less opportunity cost.
SU&SD did a delightful review of Bohnanza this month: The Beans Game.
I’ve been wanting to check it out. It sounds like you have a lovely group. Whereabouts are yall located? x)
Right? Most multiplayer games just aren’t able to discuss power asymmetries, they get boring when they do, which is absurd, games often have these characters like, I don’t know, Bowser, who are supposed to be abnormally strong and intimidating, and then they have to remove that characteristic from the character.
Yeah, interest among EAs is really high. I think there’s a lot we can learn from this kind of game, but I’m always reluctant to focus on the audience at home. The audience who’s most aware that they need a thing are often the audience who mostly already has it, I really want to reach the kind of audiences who don’t know that cooperative bargaining theory exists, they’re really suffering out there.
Good points. Then I think you want to market to / pursued parents. They want their children to be good at resisting bad deals, but wise in how they exercise their power over others.
I think for adults there’s also a huge pitch for this being a new type of game: cooperative and competitive at the same time. Play it your way. (And learn how that works out).
You might actually want to make it a tiny bit more competitive to entice people who think cooperative games are dull. It would be easy to put the points on the same scale by looking at average scores of different roles over just a few sessions. There still wouldn’t be one winner, but it would make it more of a challenge to improve your own play and play better than others. Challenge is motivating.