While I do understand their purpose, I absolutely hate catch up mechanics in board games. It always feels like the game is penalizing players who plan and execute strategically. I've actually played a few games where the optimal strategy is to intentionally get behind because the catch-up mechanics are so powerful.
When playing TTRPG games I think one of the hardest things to do correctly is to find the appropriate balance between player freedom and pro, providing guidelines to prevent analysis paralysis. I also think this varies from group to group making it even more complicated.
I feel like "catch-up mechanisms" could have been an article by itself. It's a big topic and can be a problem if implemented in certain ways (as you noted). I'm generally OK with them in games. I have found in a few games, however, the catch-up helps so much that it always brings everyone close to the same score at the end of the game. This allows things like end-game bonus points to have a much larger impact on the actual victor.
Interesting way to think about dungeon crawls. It does seem to limit the decision space if players just focus on the room they are currently in.
Wasn’t familiar with The Duke and had to look it up. Those are what I’d call “self-documenting components”! I love when the board/components explain how to play the game. I have that as a future SCM article topic in the queue.
1. Construct decision space to make it "tall" (Civilization) rather than "wide" (Chess). In Chess, any move potentially impacts future moves of any other piece on the board, meaning that there are all parts of the systems are interlinked.
In Civilization the Board Game, while considering unit movement, you can generally forget about other parts of the game, such as economy or town building. Although there are "links" from one sub-system to the others (this particular tech makes armies move further, that particular building improves town defense), they are few and clearly marked. This way, the player can focus on one specific sub-system (say, making a good military move tactically, or going for the military win strategically) and not calculate everything else.
2. Nest smaller decisions in bigger decisions, i.e. don't make 24 roles, 3 of which provide coal resources, rather, make 7 roles, one of which provides coal, but can do so in 3 different ways. This allows players to prune possibility space and move towards strategy signposts. Interestingly, I think that point salads can actually exacerbate the AP issue, as they tend to dilute decisions and smear them all over possibility space. Rather than focusing on one specific goal, players are tempted to calculate all possible combinations of moves to maximize their utility.
As an application of this principle to RPGs, I found principle of "fantasy-packages" very useful.
Class-based systems demonstrate "fantasy first" approach, when the player has an idea what they want to play and can pick it right away, without diving into details. Skill-based systems, if not designed carefully, can have a weird effect of mixing all parts of all supported fantasies together, and then the players, after identifying that kind of fantasy they want to play, have to identify these parts in the mix, pick them out and assemble in some sort of functioning way. This sometimes extends beyond character building into actions.
I'm not saying class-based systems are better (I personally lean toward skill-based ones). I'm saying that I expect restaurant menu to have a choice of dishes (with possible variants), rather than just list of raw ingredients that might taste acceptable if cooked together maybe.
3. Use enough unpredictability to switch player brain from deterministic gear to heuristic "not sure how it will play out anyway, so I'm just gonna make a move which looks good enough" mode.
Interestingly, the game can be deterministic and have little to no hidden information, but still have a big unpredictability element that fires up heuristics mode (like the mindbug in Mindbug).
4. Allow players to think about their moves when it's not their turn. For the plans to remain valid, the board state shouldn't change too drastically between turns. The most radical solution would be simultaneous turns.
All good points, but number 4 is particularly important. Wish I had remembered to include that one. It’s really frustrating in games where you expect a strategic game, but frequent game state changes turn it into a tactical one. Destroys the ability to plan your turn ahead of time.
Great article as always!
While I do understand their purpose, I absolutely hate catch up mechanics in board games. It always feels like the game is penalizing players who plan and execute strategically. I've actually played a few games where the optimal strategy is to intentionally get behind because the catch-up mechanics are so powerful.
When playing TTRPG games I think one of the hardest things to do correctly is to find the appropriate balance between player freedom and pro, providing guidelines to prevent analysis paralysis. I also think this varies from group to group making it even more complicated.
Thank you!
I feel like "catch-up mechanisms" could have been an article by itself. It's a big topic and can be a problem if implemented in certain ways (as you noted). I'm generally OK with them in games. I have found in a few games, however, the catch-up helps so much that it always brings everyone close to the same score at the end of the game. This allows things like end-game bonus points to have a much larger impact on the actual victor.
A commenter just yesterday reminded me that RPG dungeons are a "physical" decision tree: N,S,E, or W; keep going until you hit a wall or a trap.
For a boardgame example, THE DUKE does interesting scaffolding. Each piece is unique, but the possible moves are printed right on the piece.
Interesting way to think about dungeon crawls. It does seem to limit the decision space if players just focus on the room they are currently in.
Wasn’t familiar with The Duke and had to look it up. Those are what I’d call “self-documenting components”! I love when the board/components explain how to play the game. I have that as a future SCM article topic in the queue.
I found the following methods useful:
1. Construct decision space to make it "tall" (Civilization) rather than "wide" (Chess). In Chess, any move potentially impacts future moves of any other piece on the board, meaning that there are all parts of the systems are interlinked.
In Civilization the Board Game, while considering unit movement, you can generally forget about other parts of the game, such as economy or town building. Although there are "links" from one sub-system to the others (this particular tech makes armies move further, that particular building improves town defense), they are few and clearly marked. This way, the player can focus on one specific sub-system (say, making a good military move tactically, or going for the military win strategically) and not calculate everything else.
2. Nest smaller decisions in bigger decisions, i.e. don't make 24 roles, 3 of which provide coal resources, rather, make 7 roles, one of which provides coal, but can do so in 3 different ways. This allows players to prune possibility space and move towards strategy signposts. Interestingly, I think that point salads can actually exacerbate the AP issue, as they tend to dilute decisions and smear them all over possibility space. Rather than focusing on one specific goal, players are tempted to calculate all possible combinations of moves to maximize their utility.
As an application of this principle to RPGs, I found principle of "fantasy-packages" very useful.
Class-based systems demonstrate "fantasy first" approach, when the player has an idea what they want to play and can pick it right away, without diving into details. Skill-based systems, if not designed carefully, can have a weird effect of mixing all parts of all supported fantasies together, and then the players, after identifying that kind of fantasy they want to play, have to identify these parts in the mix, pick them out and assemble in some sort of functioning way. This sometimes extends beyond character building into actions.
I'm not saying class-based systems are better (I personally lean toward skill-based ones). I'm saying that I expect restaurant menu to have a choice of dishes (with possible variants), rather than just list of raw ingredients that might taste acceptable if cooked together maybe.
3. Use enough unpredictability to switch player brain from deterministic gear to heuristic "not sure how it will play out anyway, so I'm just gonna make a move which looks good enough" mode.
Interestingly, the game can be deterministic and have little to no hidden information, but still have a big unpredictability element that fires up heuristics mode (like the mindbug in Mindbug).
4. Allow players to think about their moves when it's not their turn. For the plans to remain valid, the board state shouldn't change too drastically between turns. The most radical solution would be simultaneous turns.
Wow! Thank you for the detailed comment!
All good points, but number 4 is particularly important. Wish I had remembered to include that one. It’s really frustrating in games where you expect a strategic game, but frequent game state changes turn it into a tactical one. Destroys the ability to plan your turn ahead of time.
another banger EP!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed this one!