I’m currently reading Game Development Essentials: Gameplay Mechanics and there’s a section that breaks out the game design process into four starting points: story-driven, art-driven, gameplay-driven, and technology-driven.

Of course, the authors are referring to video game designs, but video games owe a lot to paper games design-wise, and many video game designers use paper game prototypes to test their game mechanics before they program them and test them digitally.

I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at modern board games using the same game design goals as a basis for discussion.

Story-Driven Design

I started with a rather difficult one regarding board games. If I was including other hobby games, then roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons obviously fit the bill pretty well (no snarky “3.x is a board game!” comments from the grognards). There is one company that seems to put out a lot of board games that include story elements during gameplay, and that’s Fantasy Flight Games.

Starting with their first game, Twilight Imperium, it was clear that story mattered. The tagline “Pax Magnifica Bellum Gloriosum” is right there in the game’s logo, and those four Latin words imply an awful lot of setting and story before you even open the box. After they squeezed every last dime out of the d20 boom, they reinvented themselves as publishers of big box, big ticket board games…and here was that story again.

Runebound is a fantasy adventure game that uses decks of cards to tell a different story each time you play the game. It’s so engaging that many people find solo play just as satisfying, if not more so, than playing with a group. Some of the expansion decks represent new stories that can be played using the game.

There’s also their products based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novels of George R.R. Martin, including a board game, a long-running collectible card game, and a book of art. The folks making games at Fantasy Flight clearly care about story.

Another recent hit game that relies on story is Betrayal at House on the Hill, by Avalon Hill (Hasbro). Part of their ultimately doomed line of Euro-style games (including the underrated Vegas Showdown, available to play online at Gleemax Games), the game tells the story of a group of movie-inspired archetypal victims exploring a house that will ultimately haunt them to death. The story aspect is really played up by a scenario book that features dozens of ways to end the game. Each is its own story and has its own play mechanics, making this game one of the most replayable ever straight out of the box.

Art-Driven Design

The first company that comes to mind when I think about art-driven games is Days of Wonder. As much as Eurogames changed the look and feel of board games once they were imported across the pond, Days of Wonder reset the bar for board game production design with their visually stunning packaging and game components. When I was a kid, I recognized that the reason I wanted to play Mousetrap instead of Sorry on occasion was the physical bits associated with the former.

Now, the same can be said for deciding to play Cleopatra (pictured) rather than El Grande. Sometimes I just want a more visually interesting game. From the Ticket to Ride series to Shadows over Camelot to Battlelore, Days of Wonder never fails to grab your imagination when you open up a box and sort through the pieces.

Of course, you might be thinking about games that use art in their components…and no, I’m not talking about Concentration. A couple of Reiner Knizia games come immediately to mind.

First, is Modern Art, a clever, simple, and fun bidding game that often acts as filler between larger games at conventions and board gamer meetups. It’s not my favorite of the Knizia auction trilogy (that would be Ra), but it’s a decent little game that features art on the cards (even though the art is fake ). For a bidding game that features real art and artists, try to find a copy of the old Parker Bros. game, Masterpiece.

The other Knizia game, which happens to be my favorite quick 2-player game, is Lost Cities. This game features five colors, or “expeditions,” each of which has 12 cards. Each expedition is illustrated by an evocative painting, which is then divided up among the 12 cards so that if you put them together in a certain order they show the painting. If you’ve got smaller children that can’t quite play games, you can still put Lost Cities in their hands and let them assemble the paintings…gotta hook ‘em young!

Gameplay-Driven Design

There is almost too much to say about this subject in relation to modern board games. The explosion of Eurogames over the past decade is well chronicled over at Boardgamegeek, so I’m not even going to try. For the most part, these games all strive to be driven by gameplay, or mechanics. Whether it’s a new take on an old mechanic (like the infinite variations on auctions out there), or coming up with something unique (for my money, Wolfgang Kramer is the best innovator in games), games imported by Rio Grande or Z-Man Games tend to offer fancy new ways to move widgets around a board.

Even though I love Kramer, the undisputed king of gameplay-driven design is Reiner Knizia. Many of his games are almost pure mathematics, and I’ve heard stories that Reiner sometimes sends games to publishers as nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet, and leaves the theme and components to the publisher to figure out. Take a look at some of his games that have been rethemed (Kingdoms was a farmer’s market game, King’s Gate was a Lord of the Rings game) and you can really see the math at work. Heck, even the aforementioned Lost Cities is easily translatable into a huge variety of themes. One fan-themed creation I saw over at the Geek turned the game into a learning game about vegetables.

Technology-Driven Design

What a strange category this is, and one I’d not be likely to ever venture into myself. Technology-based designs aren’t worried about the shape and composition of the widgets involved, rather they’re made to showcase a particular technology.

One example I’ve seen played at conventions in the past few years is Khet: the Laser Game, also known as Deflexion. It’s a chess-like game in which you move pieces around, some of which have mirrors on them, and attempt to shoot your opponent’s pharaoh with a laser that you must fire after moving. It’s an interesting game, and a fun way to intersect technology with board games.

I have this impression that technology-driven design is much more important in the kids market than it is for more sophisticated games. Think about Fireball Island, Mousetrap, and Lucky Loop…all less sophisticated games that utilize technology.

Of course, no report on technology-based board game designs would be complete with a brief homage to one of my favorite board games as a kid, Dark Tower. As I’m looking over the Dark Tower entry at Boardgamegeek, I can’t help but notice that the game’s design is uncredited. I find it amazing that no one has unearthed the name of the game’s designer after all these years. Perhaps one of you, my loyal readers, would like to solve this mystery?

Well, that’s it for the article, feel free to jump in the comments and tell me about your favorite games that fit into one of these four categories, or if there’s something glaring you think I failed to mention.

Widely considered to be the most playable edition of Talisman, 2nd edition is the one that brings back fond memories for me (which 4e failed to capture). Yesterday I was hunting thrift stores for gadgets and structures for the Chain Reaction machine my friends and I are building, and at the back of the top shelf of games (I always check the game shelf…who doesn’t?) I saw a Talisman box. I hadn’t seen one in so long, I thought it was an expansion box I’d never seen, because it seemed so small compared to the 4th Edition box as well as the box I kept my old 2nd Edition + expansions in. I pulled it out, carefully peeled the tape away from the edges, and looked inside. What I found brought a smile to my face.

TrollandToad.com has just purchased one of the largest game collections in the country.

Yep, you heard me right, Gleemax Games opened its doors today. I had hoped to have an update on the wiki project and first round of contests, but there was a rogue game of Nuclear War that had to be stopped outside the dome. So instead, I’m going to suggest you go over and give Gleemax Games a shot. I’ve already registered, and you’ll likely find me there playing Acquire, so if you see me online gimme a shout and we’ll get a game in!

In fact, if you loyal readers haven’t ever played Acquire, it’s about time you did. It’s the granddaddy of all these fancy Eurogames that are all the rage with the kids these days. If you’re not sure how to play, leave a comment or look for me online…I’m programmed to teach!

The game list is:

• Magic: the Gathering Online (this seems to just take you to the original website, so I think it’s just advertising)
• Axis and Allies
• RoboRally (a classic Richard Garfield game whose recent reprint is beautiful, but lacks character)
• Acquire
• Vegas Showdown
• Desktop Tower Defense
• Guillotine

Of those, I recommend RoboRally, Acquire, and Vegas Showdown.

It is in Alpha still, but it says that “for a limited time, all Gleemax Games are free to play,” which seems to confirm my earlier statement that Gleemax will indeed be a pay site in the future (near, far, how can you tell with WotC?). The interface is a bit wonky, with multiple popups and Java apps appearing and disappearing all over the place, but the games I’ve played have a pretty smooth interface and the AI’s weren’t half bad. I’m not sure how easy it would be to learn a game on there, but knowing these games as well as I do it was easy to play. And certainly better than playing on VASSAL or Brettspielwelt.

Anyone who’s as big a fan of Xeni Jardin’s vlogs on Boing Boing will love this look into NY Comic Con. If you’re not familiar with BBTV, make sure you stay until after the credits for a cosplay performance that’s not to be missed. The funny thing is…there’s nothing about comics here. Hobby games are really gaining some momentum in geek culture, which is of course good for all of us!

Boing Boing at NY Comic Con

Bonus Net Feature: Right now there’s a Google ad link circulating on GMail with the headline: “Yankees’ Wang improves to 5-0.” I guess there are nearly a half dozen happy women in the Big Apple this morning.

Trying to replace “Hey sexy GIRLfriend!”

The first and second articles in this series covered Talisman 4e and Runebound. The third and final game in our series, also published by Fantasy Flight Games, is as close to playing a D&D skirmish game as you’ll get without having to roll for hit points and allocate skills.

Descent: Descent is another board game from Fantasy Flight Games that highlights their quality dominance in the American board game market. In fact, I believe Descent was their first brave entry into the $80 board game market…that might just be a market they created! As you can see, it’s a huge double-sized box that dwarfs even the giant Euro boxes published here by Rio Grande Games, like El Grande.

The game is meant to recreate the best of dungeon crawling without all that pesky roleplaying. Sounds like a certain card game, eh? Still, this is a more serious take on dungeon crawling. The game board consists of different-sized dungeon puzzle tiles that fit together according to pre-determined configurations found in the Scenario Book (which contains a dozen or so linked adventures that can form a campaign).

Thick cardboard chits, something Fantasy Flight Games is well known for, represent chests, potions, pits and other traps, and other effects and objects. Three-dimensional doors stand between rooms, which are only revealed when the characters can see them, much like drawing a roleplaying map. The characters are represented by plastic miniatures, as are the monsters, some of which are large and truly frightening. None of them are painted, unfortunately, but they are color coded depending on how powerful they are (each monster has a weak and strong version).

The gameplay works basically like the tactical portion of Dungeons and Dragons, except that since it’s a board game you have some “action point” resources to decide on. Anyone who’s played Doom: the Boardgame will be familiar with how Descent works, as the latter is a “fixed” version of the former. Doom had some balance and mechanics issues that were solved in Descent. You basically have the choice to attack twice, move twice, attack and move, or use special abilities. It’s not uncommon to see someone decide to go open a chest or pick up a potion while his buddies fight it out.

The combat dice in Descent are unique, like the movement dice in Runebound, and they come in several colors. Each color is good for a different thing…so some dice have more range, some have more damage, and others have more special ability triggers. Your weapon and magic attacks determine which dice you combine to make your attack. There are several portals to town, which are important for the heroes to find as they replenish their stock of Conquest Tokens.

The game is competitive between the Overlord and the players. The Overlord reveals the basic setup of rooms, but he also has special cards that let him rain hell on the characters when it seems like they’re having too easy a go of it. There’s a constant tug-of-war between the threat tokens of the Overlord and the Conquest Tokens of the players: if the characters run out of Conquest Tokens, the Overlord wins. He can sap their reserves primarily by killing them.

This adversarial play is necessary to make the game run, because the basic Scenario setups are simple, and it’s only the surprises that the Overlord can tailor to each adventure that make it exciting for all involved.

Descent, unlike Runebound, is not a good game for two players. While it’s technically possible to play with as few as two or three, the game really shines with 4-5. Any time a player has to run more than one character, the game is going to bog down, and the player is probably going to have less fun as he juggles too many options and abilities each turn.

I heartily recommend picking up Descent, as even if you can’t get a group to play the game, the pieces are great for building D&D dungeons, and owning such a big, heavy box will certainly make you feel like an alpha gamer.

Coming up for air never felt so bad.

Links of Interest
Official Site
Descent on Boardgamegeek

Reviews: RPG.net – 1up.com
Purchase: Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The first article in this series covered the reborn classic, Talisman 4e. Now we turn our attention to what many consider the spiritual successor to Talisman.

Runebound: The first time I played this game, I went into it looking for an updated experience like the one Talisman used to give me…and I found it! Runebound was to my 30-year-old self what Talisman was to me at 10. Of course, we were playing with the First Edition game, and with six players, so the game was a bit slow and had some clunky spots. It would be a year or more before I tried Second Edition to see if they’d fixed some of the issues I had with the game. And they had.

Runebound Second Edition is an excellent adventure board game. Designed by Martin Wallace (Warfrog) and Darrell Hardy, and published by Fantasy Flight Games this big box game captures the grand adventure central to fantasy epics and wraps it up in a series of game mechanics that maintain a perfect balance of system and story.

System and story? What is this, a roleplaying game? Well, no, but at times it certainly feels like one. At its core, Runebound is the story of several great heroes who emerge from anonymity during a time of savage war. Dwarven fighters, sneaky orc thieves, and enigmatic wizards all have their own motivations for seeking adventure, just like different kinds of players enjoy different aspects of playing roleplaying games. Runebound has many of them covered.

Like to buff out your character and collect shiny trinkets? You can do that. Enjoy watching the plot of a story unfold, even if you’re not playing a big part in it? You’ll enjoy the game even when it’s not your turn. Fancy yourself a slayer of dragons or protector of the innocent? This game’s got several bad guys you’ll chomp at the bit to take down.

Perhaps the story of the game bears explaining at this point, so you can see what I mean. In the base game, the necromancer Vorakesh has sent his undead agents to scour the lands in search of the ancient Dragon Runes, which he will use to resurrect Lord Margath, ruler of dragons. The heroes must travel between cities in order to find rumors, collect allies, and gain power so they can put an end to Vorakesh’s plans. Of course, the wilderness between the cities is teeming with bandits, monsters, and undead minions, and the very lands themselves seem to be changing as evil grows in power.

The brilliance of the game’s story mechanic makes you feel as though you’re adventuring through the pages of a novel, and you get that page-turning feeling where you can’t wait to flip over the next card and see what it says, even though you know it could be your death. The game uses four Adventure Decks of different colors in order to funnel the action without making it predictable. The heroes choose which color deck to adventure in by seeking out various regions of the map to explore.

The green deck is first, and it’s filled with random monsters, bandits, and low-level minions searching for the Dragon Runes. It starts out reasonably difficult, but characters quickly gain a level of competence that feels like real progress. The game paces its experience benefits very well, and uses the adventure deck design to cycle between accomplishment and struggle in a way that few games do. The yellow deck follows, in which the heroes will eventually meet Vorakesh himself. I won’t spoil what happens, just like I wouldn’t spoil a TV cliffhanger, but there are two more decks (blue and red) of increasingly difficult foes.

In addition to the story, the innovative movement rules are greater than the sum of their parts, and help make the game feel epic. The gameboard represents and entire region, with eight cities, forests, mountains, swamps, roads, rivers, hills, and plains. Each hex represents hundreds of square miles, and you can almost feel yourself getting lost in a huge forest or trapped in a mountain pass. The dice don’t tell you how many spaced you can move, they tell you which terrains you can move over each turn. It’s quite possible to get into mountains and not be able to get out! At least it was your choice to go into the mountains in the first place, unlike the randomness of Talisman.

Effusive as my praise is, there is a caveat to those thinking of buying the game and recreating the old days: the game plays very slowly with more than three players, and I find two is actually optimal. Watching four extra rounds of movement and combat, especially with players who don’t use the movement shortcut, can become excruciating, if only because you’re so excited at your personal story you can’t wait to flip the next card!

If you’re looking for two-player games, I’d definitely recommend picking up Runebound. The setup time is moderate, but it can be cut by putting different types of chits in snack bags, and a two-player game can be played in a couple of hours (obviously times will vary if you’re new to the game). Another benefit is that the game has a lot of cheap ($6-$8) expansion decks that can add new adventures, new equipment and magic items, or new character cards and allies. There are also big box expansions that provide new rules and new gameboards.

You want a spoiler? The ending of Runebound…makes you want to play it again.

Links of Interest
Official Site
Runebound on Boardgamegeek
Blank Card Templates and other Fan Materials

Reviews: Tom Vasel – RPG.net
Purchase: Buy Runebound: 2nd Edition - Buy Runebound expansions

Over the next three days, I’m going to be comparing some fantasy adventure board games, in an attempt to steer you into purchasing them all through my affiliate links help you decide which one is right for you. I’ll take a look at three adventure board games, one classic reborn and two new entries that make The Gamer Dome glad to be in the 21st century.

Age before beauty, they say, so let’s kick things off with a classic game that just got a facelift.

Talisman: I was lucky enough to get my hands on this at the Gencon release last year, and let me tell you…it’s not as good as I remember. I mean, in the mid-’80s it was as good as anything out there, and for a teenage kid and his friends it felt like an adventure every time we cracked open the box. Playing it at Gencon, though, where there are a couple of other things to do with your time is excruciating. Not to mention the fact that if I’ve got the 4-8 hours it’s going to take to finish this game I’d rather play four euros, some Dreamblade, or a one-off D&D session.

I was incredibly disappointed that the now defunct Black Industries didn’t take advantage of two decades of board game design, or even feedback on Talisman itself, to change the game up in any way. Sure, they updated the art, but it’s actually harder to read than it used to be. The characters they chose are horribly imbalanced, and in a game like Talisman it matters quite a bit!

The worst example is the Prophetess, who even my 10-year-old self knew was clearly the best character in the game. They didn’t change her a bit, and she still dominates the game in a way no other character can. Then there are the treasures…it’s great to have some diversity and different power levels for treasures, but having them randomly drawn can make for a terrible game. One example from the game I played: The Prophetess used her ability to avoid a Strength 7 dragon and instead pick up a Runesword, which gave her the Ghoul’s primary power in addition to already being far better than him. Talk about a kick in the nuts!

Gameplay is very simple in the grand old tradition of Monopoly: roll a movement die, move your character’s miniature (left or right…decision-making at its 1980s finest!), and do whatever it says on the space where you land. This can vary from losing a turn (always a barrel of laughs!) to being turned into a toad and losing everything (which, for Talisman fans, seems to be ultimate entertainment, and even funnier after the eighth hour of play), to gaining vital attributes and treasures with which to win the game. The fickle hand of fate is powerful here, as you can spend an hour or more trying to hit a specific spot that you need while other people traipse on by, hit the spot, and then go off on more adventures while you desperately try to walk to the next space.

Your goal is to reach the center section, as the board consists of three concentric rings. The outer ring has lots of ways to lose turns, gain treasures, and buy magic equipment and healing. The middle section has lots of ways to lose turns, gain treasures, and bu…you get the point. The only thing differentiating the two is that the middle ring is turned to 11. You get twice as many cards, face twice as many dangers, and can lose twice as many turns!

Depending on what cards you draw, and what character you’re playing, this endless cycle of roll and move can lead to feeling like you’re watching someone else work toward the inevitability of winning the game.

The center section is a series of challenges, made with either your physical or mental attributes, until you reach the Crown of Command. That doesn’t end the game, however, as you’re forced to start blasting your opponents one health per round until everyone else is dead. Since other players can buy healing, and you only have a 50% chance each round of dealing damage, this can become the most interminable and boring part of the game.

I really cannot recommend picking up the 4th edition of Talisman when there are much better adventure board games out there.

Is that a Talisman or an albatross on the chain around your neck?

Links of Interest
Official Site
Talisman on Boardgamegeek

Review: Talisman Island (fansite)
Purchase: Buy Talisman 4e (But don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

So, not many people were likely fooled by the Motley Fool’s April Fool’s Day joke (how many times can I use the word fool in a sentence?), but I did find co-founder David Gardner’s piece about board games to be an interesting read. I’m also fairly certain by the article’s content that David is an aficionado of good strategy board games. (If anyone has evidence to support this, leave a comment!)

Entitled “Sharpen Your Intellect With Strategy Board Games,” the piece takes a look at some of the ways that playing games as a pastime can help you in your career. It also doubles as an amazing primer on strategy board games that you can use to convince heathens your friends that haven’t tried real board games to pick one up and give it a shot. David covers everything from some top board games to where you can get ratings to where you can purchase the games you do decide to try.

We board gamers spend a lot of time trying to draw people into the hobby, yet passing this “joke” around your email list might be one of the most effective ways yet!