Pros and cons of standardizing in board games

Standardizing - yay or nay?

To even begin the discussion about standardizing game components, we need to ask ourselves if this is an actual improvement.

Having dedicated lately more than the fair share of my time to publishing rather than designing, I realized that there is a downside of standardizing - it kills some of the creativity of designers (myself included) on the altar of delivering a marketable, user-friendly, industry standard product. The designer in me is trying to fight the other side of my board gaming personality (the publisher) screaming for more freedom and less standard components. 

I - the designer - wish to have a giant board in one of my upcoming titles depicting a detailed map of the world, something which would make the War of the Ring giant board seem average, but I - the publisher - will most likely deny this request on ground of being unreasonable, too expensive and almost impossible to manufacture.

And that's not all... I - the gamer - had the pleasure of opening 46 game boxes bought in Essen and some of them gave me great joy of discovering clever assembly mechanisms and cute little tweaks which made some games special right of the box, while some others had some of the most twisted annoying components that went straight to the "I am not emotionally equipped to deal with this" shelf.

So, perhaps there's a middle ground and an agreement can be sought by the dreamy designer, the pragmatic publisher and the exigent gamer. 

Almost two years ago when NSKN Games was even younger than today, we decided to approach board game publishing with a specific set of mind - making each game component as functional as possible and packing everything in the least possible amount of space.

Same size boxes

In a post on the NSKN Games website called "Less is more" we described this "discovery" and its core principles. We adheres to these principles fully and Exodus: Proxima Centauri (revised edition), Praetor, Progress: Evolution of Technology and Versailles - board games published by NSKN Games since then - are all built accordingly. Our two upcoming titles for the first half of 2015 - Exodus: Edge of Extinction and Mistfall - are following the trend and will have the same ergonomic design. But is this all we can do? The short answer is no, there's definitely room for improvement and this is what I want to explore together with you today.

Game components one by one - standard or not?

1. Game box - it's the first thing you and I see and 90% of the times the box is the decisive factor in our interest and later buying the game or not.

Image source: BoardGameGeek

My first few games were of various sizes and shapes, from the standard square Ticket to Ride box, to the monstrous Twilight Imperium "coffin" and the tiny Catan Card Game. Through the years I have become pickier and the box of Dungeon Fighter caused me head aches because it's just marginally larger than the standard square and yet it does not fit on my very standard IKEA shelves... so I had to let it go.

Image source: thebattlestandard.com

My plea if for standard boxes which save shelf space. Fantasy Flight Games - one of the trend setters in the hobby industry - has given up the iconic "coffin" boxes and switched to square boxes of various heights. I do not know the actual reason behind this move but I can speculate that they are standardizing and making their products gamer-friendly. Think only of Imperial Assault or Descent 2.0.

What is your opinion, do you prefer standard boxes or are you a fan of unlimited creativity and prefer cubical or cylindrical boxes?

2. Rules

Squares, rectangles, A5, A4, letter... the rules is modern games are all over the place. We at NSKN tried our own standard, 285x285mm booklets which are roughly the size of the box. It was or choice for the past 2 years because it allows large graphic examples, the page can be divided into 2 or 3 columns according to needs and it is cost effective.

Cost effective is one of the keys for small publishers like us to succeed. Once we evolved past the point of mere survival (as a company) we had the luxury of rethinking our publishing paradigm and look again for better solutions.

I have been advocating for "our size of the rules" for quite a while until I have recently made an experiment of my own: I took the rules of a random game, put them in both the large square format and A4 (which is almost the same as letter size) and read through them timing myself. Reading the same amount of rules text in A4 format took me about 25% less time. Therefore, the rules of our next game are coming in A4 format, even if that adds a few cents to our production costs.

Which is your preferred rules format? Do you even have one? Is this a key aspect for you when it comes to buying or even playing a game?

3. Boards

This is the point where the discussion gets complicated.

Having analyzed 50 games with non-modular boards published after 2012, I found the following distribution: more than 50% are a 4-fold square or rectangle, 30% are 6-fold rectangles and the rest are... all over the place. When it comes to modular boards, the most common shapes are rectangles, hexagons and starred hexagons, but the distribution here is too difficult to assess because of the wide range of options. Furthermore, less and less of modern board games have an actual board, with German style games sticking more to the original conservative model with an actual board.

I mentioned before that the designer in me wants a giant game board. I have spoken to a few manufacturers and the largest single piece board they can make is 100 x 70 cm and this is not really what I had in mind. Anything beyond that would require all kinds of non-standard "stuff" (I was afraid to ask) and the price would increase five to ten fold for a board just 1.5 times as large.

Comparing boards with the same total area, a 4-fold cut is 30% cheaper in average than a 6-fold cut thus the industry preference for the former. Even when it comes to ergonomics and table space, a square 4-fold cut seems preferable. And yet in Versailles we went with a larger 6-fold board very close to the manufacturer's upper limit because it suited better the game's needs. My inner fight between the designer and the publisher was a clear victory for the designer, while the publisher saw the margins decreasing under his eyes.

Using any standard game board will also save significant costs with the cutting knives when manufacturing with an established large board game factory. For small publishers saving this kind of money may very well make a big difference.

Modular boards offer a greater flexibility and sometime much greater replay value. They do not necessarily increase the manufacturing costs, but they usually do. Yet more and more designers and publishers walk this road, because creativity is no longer limited by a rectangle.

So... what is you view on game boards? With or without? Modular or classic? Does this aspect even matter when it comes to your liking and buying games? 

Conclusions?

Writing for quite a while now, I have only covered about half of the topics I had in mind. So. I'd love to see your opinions and I'll resume my train of thought next week.

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The Agency and the Missing X

Recently I have been invited to sit in the guest chair of a Polish videocast called Rozmowy ZnadPlanszy to talk about Ameritrash games (if by any chance you understand spoken Polish, here’s a direct link to the episode). We talked about obvious differences between American and European games, about recent blurring of the lines, and about the evolution of the Ameritrash genre. Little did I know that I would stumble upon a very small but probably also a very important step only a few days later, while comparing the Decent 2.0 and the Imperial Assault dice.

Descent 2.0 Dice.

The Dreaded X in Descent 2.0.

If you are a fan of dungeon crawls, chances are you’ve held a set of these babies in your hand. If you’ve played both editions of Descent, you probably also remember that, although the dice from both sets used the same principal, the original Descent dice and the Decent 2.0 ones were a little different.  But we needed Imperial Assault to introduce one very significant change.

By just looking at the pictures you will not spot the one detail I’m referring to, as Decent and Imperial Assault dice share Surges, Range (called Accuracy in IA) and damage symbols, with the newer game dropping the tired heart-shaped design for one that is probably more futuristic (although slightly less obvious). There is another dropped element: the dreaded X.

Now, for those of you who have never played Decent: rolling an X while attacking means that the attack misses completely. No matter how much damage it would deal, the target escapes unscathed and unless there is a reroll available, nothing can be done to deal any damage. Without an X, you get to count the damage dealt, apply possible bonuses and subtract the defence granted by the target’s armour dice.

The (somewhat less) Dreaded X in IA

Well, to be totally honest, the X is not completely expunged: in Imperial Assault it appears on a Dodge Die, but only some characters get to use it. Whenever the Dodge Die is not involved, a smart player may actually set up an attack that will deal some damage regardless of what was rolled. And although the full effectiveness of such an attack is still a matter of a random roll, the basic outcome can be easily foreseen.

Some will probably say that this is coming back to the beginning, to the first edition of Descent, which allowed for precise calculations of minimum damage, as armour was a static value, not governed by any roll. However, as the X was still there (on the first edition Descent dice), the one in six chance of a complete failure used to be constant element of any roll. Until now.

American games have been evolving, borrowing ideas from other genres, approaching their inherent randomness in new ways and introducing changes big and small. Now, as evidenced by what is arguably a top tier product of a top tier company, another important step was made. The removal of the automatic failure allows players to make more accurate approximations. I’d even say that it encourages them to set up situations in which specific goals can be achieved exclusively through skill, without fear of being stopped by a stroke of bad luck.

Imperial Assault Dice

I don’t want to blow this small vanishing X out of proportion, as the whole modification may be just that: a small detail in a big game. On the other hand, it may be a sign of an overall change that will see American style games put more and more power into players’ hands. And that is (in my book at least) great news, as I love the theme, but most often I love agency even more.

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A Civilized Goblin Slayer

We love civilization games – we, as NSKN Games and (dare I say) we, as gamers in general. Since the success of Francis Tresham’s Civilization almost 35 years ago, civilization games have always turned heads of most people finding pleasure in tabletop gaming. The only question is: why?

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

A few days ago I listened to the 160th episode of the D6 Generation, a podcast I’ve been a fan for the last few years. Russ Wakelin and Craig Gallant invited Tom Vasel to sit in the third revolving chair (now being a trademark of the show) to review Star Wars: Imperial Assault and talk about the mechanisms in dungeon crawling games. After creating a list of rather obvious entries (like HeroQuest and Descent), and making some surprising exclusions (most notably Wrath of Ashardalon and the whole D&D Adventure System), they arrived an what I found to be a particularly interesting conclusion: the story and character building is what makes a dungeon crawl what it is – and a good game in general.

This is an interesting conclusion, as it would seem that a dungeon to crawl, some monsters to kill, and some heroes to kill the monsters with would be all you need to enjoy a true dungeon crawling experience. The character development is probably not the component most people would come up with instantly, but it’s also something most of us would mention along the way. And whether we agree with the D6G genre assessment or not, it seem that ensuring some options for the heroes to “ding!” is essential to enhance a game’s staying power.

If we take a small sidestep and enter the adventure game territory it will become rather obvious that character development is one of the key things we are after. And stepping even further – far enough to cross the boundary that divides American and European style games – it will quickly become noticeable that one of the things we seem to love most about gaming is improving things. So, in general, whether we’re talking about a barbarian getting better and better at slaying goblins, an economic engine more and more effective at cranking out victory points, or a nation built from a humble settler now able to flood the world with its armies or dominate the lands with its ruthlessly adorable culture, we will arrive at the same concept: development.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

It’s true that there are gamers who enjoy destroying, confronting other players and generally wreaking havoc (right from turn one if possible), but even they are not impervious to the lure of a bigger gun. And whether those gamers like it or not, the temptation to see something of their own grow, become faster, stronger or simply more lethal falls in line with a base desire we all seem to share: a desire to build, to improve and to watch our creation grow for the benefit of (or to destroy) all who lay their eyes upon its glory.

But all of this is not really a surprise. After all, we love growth and development not only in gaming. A book or a movie is also far more enjoyable if the characters change and evolve, if they learn new things, if they lose something (but usually also gain something in the process). Thus, it would be unwise to ignore development as an important factor of any creative endeavour – be it one the audience can observe, or one it can actively participate in. And that is probably also why we like civilization games so much – and why we need more games that take cues from what seems to be one of the most basic drives when it comes to gaming.

Also, if anybody asks, this is why NSKN loves games where you get to build and develop so much. And this is why we made will keep making them.

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