Monday, October 31, 2016

Cooperative Story-based Board Games and My Contradictory Nature


My favorite board game is Betrayal at the House on the Hill. I accept that it is not the best board game, it is still my favorite. Even though I'm not normally a fan of horror.


Betrayal Explanation

If you're not familiar with the game, I'll give a short explanation. In Betrayal, players are exploring an old mansion. The mansion is revealed room by room as room tiles are drawn from a deck and placed down to form the places the players are exploring. Different rooms may trigger varying frightening events or reward the players with items.


Partway through the game, an event will happen which will trigger the second phase, the haunt. When the haunt is triggered, players look at a chart to determine, based on the variables that started the haunt, what adventure they will be playing. There are 50 different scenarios (100 with the new expansion) that can occur. Usually, one of the players (often the one who triggered the haunt), will be the "traitor," and will take a role opposing the other players from that point forward. Depending on the situation, the traitor might be a vampire, or a madman trying to blow up the house, or a cultist bringing ghosts up from the dead, or many other things. Each scenario is unique, with unique objectives for the traitor and the players.


Why I like Betrayal

I like stories. They're some of my favorite things. Betrayal provides some of the fun of being able to experience an adventure together with friends that roleplaying games bring (with less depth, of course), without requiring someone to spend a lot of time prepping an adventure to GM.


I like exploring the house and seeing it form completely differently each time I play. I like all the different scenarios allowing me to get a new story/scenario each time I play.


Also, your characters have stats that can improve or be lowered throughout the game, so I like the RPG-like mechanic of being able to work to improve my character as I go along.


Some of it's Problems

I think some of the "best" board games are based more on skill than on luck. While Betrayal does offer the players some-possibly even many-choices, it is certainly more luck than skill. While the high level of randomness in room tiles, event cards, item cards, omen cards, and the adventure itself makes the game more interesting, it also makes the game less skill based. Things happen to the characters and they don't necessarily have much choice in it. It's easy to draw an event card that screws up everything for your character even if you've made all the right choices. You may have been building up your Might and Speed, and the haunt, when it's revealed, might be based on Intellect and Sanity, making your efforts prove to be in vain.


For me, I'm less concerned with being control when playing Betrayal. I'm not playing it for it to be a game of skill, so the randomness doesn't bother me so much. But, I know that for some people it does, and I know that isn't as good of a "game" because of it.


The other problem comes with the role of the traitor. The players have no control over who becomes the traitor, but once someone does, everyone else is against them. For some players, this is not an enjoyable experience. They feel like everyone else is ganging up on them, and they don't like being the enemy in something that is cooperative for everyone else.


I am among those who like being the traitor, so this experience doesn't bother me. However, I know people who have been alienated from the game from becoming the traitor on their first play.


Lately, I've been Looking for a Board Game that May not Exist.

I've been thinking about board games, and I've had a yearning for something that I'm not sure exists. Some of this comes from wanting a game that has elements of Betrayal, but with certain other distinctions.


2-6 Players
Betrayal at the House on the Hill is 3-6 players. Munchkin is 3-6 players. Vast is 1-5 players, but it definitely seems less fun with 1 or 2 players than when there are more.


A lot of the time I would like to play a board game is during time when my wife and I are hanging out. I want something that I can play with her and have a good time playing, but that we could also share with other friends of ours.


Cooperative
I like games where I get to work with people. Going along with the next point, I feel like having the players on the same team allows for better story/adventure potential. While I do enjoy games where I put my wit against that of other players, my current fixation is more focused on something that can be done together.


Story/Adventure
I'm looking for something that has something of a story/adventure to it. I want to be playing characters with a goal to overcome something, like the varying scenarios in Betrayal. I like the idea of something that feels like it has a plot arc to it-a beginning, middle, and end, where more is revealed as the story goes along.


Lots of Stories
Some games are designed around one specific story. In Vast, each of the characters has a motivation or reason that they are in the Cave, and an individual objective to carry out as their adventure/story. But these motivations are the same every single game. The story is an excuse to have these things with different mechanics to be acting against each other, rather than the other way around.


Betrayal has 50-100 stories. Even playing the same scenarios more than once, the changed positioning of rooms and other important things adds some interest (and the number of scenarios means that at least it's unlikely to play the same scenario twice close together.)


Optional: Character Advancement
I like things where my character advances, what can I say?


"It sounds like you want a tabletop RPG..."


Yes, you're very smart.


BUT the distinctions between what I want and a tabletop RPG are:
  • I want it to be playable with two players. (I want it to be playable with more too, but I want it to be able to go down to two)
  • I don't want either of the players to have to come up with the story
  • I want all the players to be able to work on a team as the adventurers/heroes. I do not want any to need to play the villain or to GM the scenario.
  • I want it to have a lot of replayability with varying stories/adventures/objectives for the players.
  • I want a complete story/game to be playable in one sitting (probably about an hour would be ideal, but I imagine that what I want would probably come out closer to 2).
"Do you know about...?"
While I do want suggestions, if any of you know of a solution that I am not aware of, here are some things I have thought about or looked into, and why I don't think they fit what I want.


  • Betrayal at the House on the Hill-Need 3 players, one player ends up not being cooperative.
  • Munchkin-Need 3 players, all players competitive
  • Vast-All players competitive
  • Order of the Stick-While I haven't played this game, it seems like despite having a degree of randomness to the dungeon, the story itself is always the same.
  • D&D games like Castle Ravenloft-I haven't played these either, largely because the price is somewhat prohibitive for something I'm not sure I'll enjoy; However, my understanding is that they a) take forever and b) don't have a lot of replayability.
My Solution
For a while, I had been thinking of a game like Betrayal, but heist-themed. Instead of using Might, Speed, Sanity, and Intellect of Betrayal, I'd been thinking of taking Leverage's key focuses of Hacker (for tech stuff), Hitter (for fighting), Grifter (for talking), and Thief (for things like lockpicking or pickpocketing). Players would spend the exploration phase scoping out the location of their heist (built with individual tiles), and eventually the actual heist would begin and they would have objectives to complete within the overall location.


It seemed cool. If I was confident in my ability to get around the copyright issues of deliberately ripping off both a popular board game and a television franchise, I might even look at developing it more.


But, here comes a bigger obstacle with me trying to fill my void myself-if I wrote out 50 or so scenarios for this game, I would be familiar with all of them. There would be no discovery for me to play through them. No real surprise or gain. So it's a lot of work attempting to put in front of myself something I'd enjoy to lose a large part of the enjoyment factor.


So, recently, I was thinking of a new plan:


Something with a lot more moving parts. A game that mixes and matches villains, plots, storylines, etc into varied and unique combinations such that each part of the story/adventure is randomized along the way, providing for the full stories/scenarios/adventures to be different based on the combinations. With this, even though I would be familiar with all of the moving parts, I would be able to be surprised by the combinations.


I'd think of potentially having the setting itself discovered with hexagonal tiles-like a hexcrawl.


I like this idea a lot, and I'd like to spend some time developing it.


However...
Tomorrow I'm starting at the beginning of the drafts of Episodes 104 and 105 of Heroism and Other Lies. I'm hoping to get The Wonder Vault Heist out later this week. I'm working on the final edits to Episode 101. I'll soon be running some RPGs with my regular group that-while I was thinking I had premade adventures to run-I've realized I'll need to do a fair bit of work preparing. I'm working on a one shot to test out my system in early December. Assuming that works out, I'll be going on to trying to start a campaign with my system probably in January. And then there's actually developing system/character options/etc for my system. And I have no idea when I'm going to work on Looking Glass Moon.


So, what I'm saying is...I don't really have the time to devote to making a board game right now, even if I *really* want to.


So, I'll keep the idea here and in my back pocket, to work on maybe on the side or when I get more time.


What are your thoughts on my idea? Is it a game you'd be interested in playing? Do you know of any existing games that might fit what I'm looking for?

4 comments:

  1. I was looking through a list of games that may have something similar to what you're looking for: http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/g18/15-best-new-board-games-of-the-year/

    I would enjoy a game like you're suggesting. If you had others come up with scenarios or whatever, you'd end up with some scenarios that you are unfamiliar with.

    Jacob

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's true. One of my downfalls is that I'm bad at collaboration, so it's hard for me to ask others to do things like write scenarios. To a degree, the idea doesn't even occur to me.

      I think one of my other hesitancies is that a lot of times that I *do* ask people to do things for my creative projects, even if they are happy/excited to help and about the project in general, I end up waiting indefinitely.

      Looking at the list...

      T.I.M.E. Stories seems like it would be fun, but if it only comes with one scenario and the others are bought one at a time, it seems like it's very expensive to get a good level of replayability.

      I can't tell if Specter Ops actually has different scenarios or not, but it also has the "everyone against one person" dynamic. And probably can't be played two playered. On the plus side, from the description, I *think* they at least get to choose who the villain is.

      Myth sounds promising, and I'm going to look into it more. (Okay, I did some research. It seems like the rules are somewhere between sloppy and incomplete, and that the game really tries to get you to buy it's expansions to fully play/enjoy the stuff that comes with the base set. At least, that's what some reviews I was looking at said.)

      Dead of Winter-maybe...I'm not generally a fan of the whole zombie thing. And I'm not sure different objectives are really quite as different as having different scenarios.

      Delete
  2. Have you played the new edition yet? I agree with a lot about what you said about how Betrayal is unique in its differing stories and the ability for players to work together. (I also agree with your assessment of its downfalls as well. I admit I often get bored with the luck component and the fact that I remember most of the tiles/cards.) I love the idea of creating your own game to meet your desires, and I'd be very interested in a game like that! And as long as Leverage or Betrayal creators didn't catch wind, I'm sure you'd be fine borrowing some basic ideas. ;) I like Jake's idea to have friends contribute to creating scenarios if they were interested! (Assuming they wouldn't take forever, like you mentioned.)

    Unfortunately, I wish I knew of other board games that were closer to what you've described as well! Although it's not an RPG, do you enjoy Small World? That's a fun strategy game with a lot of replay value that Brandon and I have liked just the two of us. It's true that there's no character advancement, but there's the element of imagining a fun story for why races are attacking one another. So you could stretch it to include a light story? Haha. Similarly, Pandemic can be played with just two players, and it adds the element of cooperation. (Of course, it's missing the RPG element as well.) I know we've played these together, but I can't remember all your thoughts on them. Again, I know it's not what you're looking for, but it does have some of the desired components, so I figured I'd bring it up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. By new edition, do you mean the expansion that just came out? I now own it, but I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet. I'm planning to this Thursday. I'm excited about it.

      I haven't played Small World enough times to really know how well I like it. I think the setting stuff is cute, but I assume that the more I play, the more that fades to the background and it becomes more about the game. While I like the idea of strategy-type games, I feel like they're never at the top of my list. While I agree that skill makes a game better than luck, my experience with Risk (which Small World takes a lot from) is that better players tend to trounce less skilled players. With Risk, I've found that there are people far better than me, who always beat me by a pretty big margin that's obvious early in the game, and people who I am far better than, who I end up beating by a big margin that's obvious early in the game. It's not much fun for the person being beaten, and I've never had a risk game where I've felt evenly matched. I would also say that Small World doesn't really care much about what the "story" is.

      I like that Pandemic is cooperative; I'm not a huge fan of the setting/situation.

      I have enjoyed both Small World and Pandemic, so don't think I don't like them. They just aren't really what I'm looking for in this post.

      Delete