Certainly fascinating to think about :)! Thank you for sharing.
I think, for me, it probably depends on what I'm after in a game... and what type of game it is. Waxing can be really a nice way to gradually learn the mechanics of something, and new things always seem more "shiny"... though there might be a point where it's too much – although that probably also depends on the pacing of the increases.
Dynamic can be quite nice, it gives more a sense of control.
I can see a waning space potentially being super atmospheric if used in the right context, like, in a game about surviving a long winter, or something like that?
That said, even static can be great, if the options are great and/or many from the start! Or, the space can stay the same size, but the options swapped out – I'm currently reading "Under Hollow Hills" by the Bakers, and you always have the same number of "plays" (moves, options), even the same ones, but other things in the game changes – most notably your appearance/imagery, through stepping toward summer/winter, and your bonuses to your plays also change around. An interesting contrast to most other broadly PbtA games, where you often can gain more moves over time. I also just read "Wanderhome" by Jay Dragon, a Belonging Outside Belonging game; and there (mostly) the number of things marked on your sheet stays the same, but they can evolve/change over time, getting swapped out as your character changes. And I guess, all the while, the "some things you can do" list stays the same – unless you swap playbooks, which you do have the option for on an advancement (either by your character retiring and you making a new one, or them changing so much they need a new playbook). And I suppose, the things you can do are essentially endless, moves/plays/things you can do are just some, not all, the options.
(Also, as a fun aside, we call tic-tac-toe "luffarschack" over here in Sweden – which means something like, "tramp/vagrant('s) chess" ^^)
Thank you so much for this comment and making the connections to TTRPGs! That's interesting that some TTRPGs might have a static decision space, when I had sort of assumed they would all expand over time (e.g. finding new regions, new NPCs, etc.). I'm going to need to think about this!!!
Also, I love the sound of "luffarschack" and will be calling tic-tac-toe that from now on!
I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but indeed in both the games I mentioned, those other elements do change a lot – in Wanderhome you literally wander from place to place, and create the places you find together as you go, as well as new "kith" (the game's preferred term for non-player characters)! And as players, anyone can pick up both the places and the kith, and do things with them, instead of their own playbooks for a while (as there is no centralised "GM" but rather the role is distributed/absent (depending on your perspective)). And in Under Hollow Hills, you're a travelling circus also going from place to place, where the MC (Mistress of Ceremonies, the game's "GM" role) prepare the place and some characters associated with it in advance for each session. So I suppose, the "static" space in terms of what options the playbook characters have works really well in the setting, where the world around them is even more dynamic than what is perhaps usual :)
I don't think I've thought about it that much before, but you're right, it is a quite fun name! It is quite intuitive too, you can really see how someone travelling around without many belongings wouldn't (usually) carry around a full chessboard with all the pieces, but you can more or less always draw some lines in the sand or use sticks and stones or whatever to play some luffarschack!
Ah! I always think of it as the restricted 3x3 grid, but according to the article that is more "properly" known as "tripp trapp trull"... although I'm unsure if I have ever heard it called that. Hmmm... actually, yeah, we do call that sometimes tic tac toe even "in Swedish" ie using the American English word; or we just call it "three in a row" (tre i rad).
I do recall the variant they call "fritt luffarschack", with "fritt" meaning "free" – there, you don't really have a board per se, rather you keep extending as needed until someone reaches usually five in a row (yes, five, not three). As such, it's also sometimes just called "five in a row" (fem i rad)... and as they state in that article, it is often played on a graph paper or whatever that's called when it looks like what you use to do math, I do remember that from school ^^
Also, to complicate things further, I now remember that "four in a row" is usually played in a standing thing like in this article https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyra_i_rad where you drop buttons... changing the language to English on that article tells me that there's apparently a game that was trademarked that had that structure under the name Connect Four!
Oh... and now I saw that a game similar to free luffarschack exists in Japan, called 五目並べ (gomoku narabe), where the first character is "go", for five, and then the next, "moku", is in this context the counter for stones used in the Chinese game "Go", and then "narabe" (the kanji is for "nara", the ending is "be" in hiragana) is the imperative form of the verb "to line up" (conveniently, I happen to have studied Japanese a good amount)... where you play using Go stones on a Go board instead of totally freeform!
Fascinating indeed, and I suppose I fell right down that rabbit hole with you ^^
Yes, Connect Four is a well-known game in the US. Sometimes outdoor breweries/pubs will have large plastic versions to play. It's also a popular kids game that can be purchased.
I'll need to think about how to make it interesting for everyone, but Luffarshack/Gomoku seems like a good future topic.
People often ask me how I manage to write SCM every single week and wonder how I keep going? This! Interactions like this are the best! Thanks!
My pleasure :D This was really fun for me too – I love games, linguistics, mathematics, etc, and thinking about things in general and my other interests in particular, so this really hit all the good things :) really appreciate the newsletter a lot, definitely one I look forward to every week! Thank you, likewise.
This is a great article about an aspect of play that I think about when designing but never really quantified. It also makes me realize what makes a lot of games "not fun" because they have extremely limited decision spaces and no room for expanding them.
Also on a pedantic grammar note, it's "Fewer Choices" not "Less Choices". On the other hand, you can have "Less CHOICE", singular. (I'll gloss over all sorts of other grammar mistakes and misspellings but this one always sticks out to me.)
Thanks! I'd note that not everyone enjoys expanding decision spaces. Some (many) people love the constriction of the space, trying to lock in those last few pieces of the puzzle. So perhaps not fun to you (and me!!) but just a different kind of fun. ;)
Also, I've fixed the fewer/less mistake. The SCM editor has been sacked.
Great article! I'm a sucker for classifying things.
One aspect that also can help control the decision space for players is Strategy. If a player has a strategy - for example, they're trying to build lots of buildings rather than transport goods (to make up a game), they can focus on those actions and abilities that will enable them to pursue that. Or in chess, if you decide you want to put pressure on a certain piece that will help focus what moves you evaluate.
This allows players to 'self-prune' the decision tree to get down to just a handful of good options to decide between.
It also may help increase the skill cap, as good players will start to learn when they should extend beyond the options for their strategy into something else, either to block an opponent or take advantage of an opening.
Designers can assist in this process by giving players strategies through asymmetric player powers or endgame goals that will naturally steer them into a particular strategy and focus the decision space.
If everything starts symmetric, it can be helpful to have a 'waxing/increasing' decision space over the first few turns while players develop a strategy they wish to pursue. Having those two work in tandem (choices increase overall as developing strategies reduces them) can help control complexity while keeping the game rich and replayable.
While writing this, I was thinking about the distinction between raw/gross decision space size vs. actual/net decision space size. You bring up a very good point about it. In the best cases, strategy and goals can narrow the gross decision space into a smaller net decision space. It helps solve the "What do I do?!" problem that leads to excessive AP. I personally love when games, as you said, give variable player powers or goals to help guide the first moves. Eclipse sort of does this with factions with some focusing on expansion and others on combat.
In the worst cases, the strategy limitation could lead to what I'd call fake choices. I might have mentioned those in the player agency articles. It's where although I might have 5+ cards in my hand to choose from, if only ONE of the cards actually makes sense to play at a given time.... that's not really a choice. My decision space is 1, not 5. This (frustratingly for me) comes up in basic trick-taking games where you must follow suit even if you have just one card of that suit. Agency is gone.
I'm glad you mentioned the Decision Space podcast. The episodes on these specific definitions were fantastic. I'd that for the sake of consistency and clarity you should have just used their terms from the start (waxing vs waning) instead of just saying Increasing and Decreasing. But that's more of my preference for consistency with terms and definitions. Great read as always!
Certainly fascinating to think about :)! Thank you for sharing.
I think, for me, it probably depends on what I'm after in a game... and what type of game it is. Waxing can be really a nice way to gradually learn the mechanics of something, and new things always seem more "shiny"... though there might be a point where it's too much – although that probably also depends on the pacing of the increases.
Dynamic can be quite nice, it gives more a sense of control.
I can see a waning space potentially being super atmospheric if used in the right context, like, in a game about surviving a long winter, or something like that?
That said, even static can be great, if the options are great and/or many from the start! Or, the space can stay the same size, but the options swapped out – I'm currently reading "Under Hollow Hills" by the Bakers, and you always have the same number of "plays" (moves, options), even the same ones, but other things in the game changes – most notably your appearance/imagery, through stepping toward summer/winter, and your bonuses to your plays also change around. An interesting contrast to most other broadly PbtA games, where you often can gain more moves over time. I also just read "Wanderhome" by Jay Dragon, a Belonging Outside Belonging game; and there (mostly) the number of things marked on your sheet stays the same, but they can evolve/change over time, getting swapped out as your character changes. And I guess, all the while, the "some things you can do" list stays the same – unless you swap playbooks, which you do have the option for on an advancement (either by your character retiring and you making a new one, or them changing so much they need a new playbook). And I suppose, the things you can do are essentially endless, moves/plays/things you can do are just some, not all, the options.
(Also, as a fun aside, we call tic-tac-toe "luffarschack" over here in Sweden – which means something like, "tramp/vagrant('s) chess" ^^)
Thank you so much for this comment and making the connections to TTRPGs! That's interesting that some TTRPGs might have a static decision space, when I had sort of assumed they would all expand over time (e.g. finding new regions, new NPCs, etc.). I'm going to need to think about this!!!
Also, I love the sound of "luffarschack" and will be calling tic-tac-toe that from now on!
I hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but indeed in both the games I mentioned, those other elements do change a lot – in Wanderhome you literally wander from place to place, and create the places you find together as you go, as well as new "kith" (the game's preferred term for non-player characters)! And as players, anyone can pick up both the places and the kith, and do things with them, instead of their own playbooks for a while (as there is no centralised "GM" but rather the role is distributed/absent (depending on your perspective)). And in Under Hollow Hills, you're a travelling circus also going from place to place, where the MC (Mistress of Ceremonies, the game's "GM" role) prepare the place and some characters associated with it in advance for each session. So I suppose, the "static" space in terms of what options the playbook characters have works really well in the setting, where the world around them is even more dynamic than what is perhaps usual :)
I don't think I've thought about it that much before, but you're right, it is a quite fun name! It is quite intuitive too, you can really see how someone travelling around without many belongings wouldn't (usually) carry around a full chessboard with all the pieces, but you can more or less always draw some lines in the sand or use sticks and stones or whatever to play some luffarschack!
Apparently Luffarshack (or at least some versions) use a much larger board!?
Well now I'm down the rabbit hole on this one.... perhaps a future SCM article: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffarschack
Ah! I always think of it as the restricted 3x3 grid, but according to the article that is more "properly" known as "tripp trapp trull"... although I'm unsure if I have ever heard it called that. Hmmm... actually, yeah, we do call that sometimes tic tac toe even "in Swedish" ie using the American English word; or we just call it "three in a row" (tre i rad).
I do recall the variant they call "fritt luffarschack", with "fritt" meaning "free" – there, you don't really have a board per se, rather you keep extending as needed until someone reaches usually five in a row (yes, five, not three). As such, it's also sometimes just called "five in a row" (fem i rad)... and as they state in that article, it is often played on a graph paper or whatever that's called when it looks like what you use to do math, I do remember that from school ^^
Also, to complicate things further, I now remember that "four in a row" is usually played in a standing thing like in this article https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyra_i_rad where you drop buttons... changing the language to English on that article tells me that there's apparently a game that was trademarked that had that structure under the name Connect Four!
Oh... and now I saw that a game similar to free luffarschack exists in Japan, called 五目並べ (gomoku narabe), where the first character is "go", for five, and then the next, "moku", is in this context the counter for stones used in the Chinese game "Go", and then "narabe" (the kanji is for "nara", the ending is "be" in hiragana) is the imperative form of the verb "to line up" (conveniently, I happen to have studied Japanese a good amount)... where you play using Go stones on a Go board instead of totally freeform!
Fascinating indeed, and I suppose I fell right down that rabbit hole with you ^^
Ahhhhhh this is the best! Thank you!
Yes, Connect Four is a well-known game in the US. Sometimes outdoor breweries/pubs will have large plastic versions to play. It's also a popular kids game that can be purchased.
I'll need to think about how to make it interesting for everyone, but Luffarshack/Gomoku seems like a good future topic.
People often ask me how I manage to write SCM every single week and wonder how I keep going? This! Interactions like this are the best! Thanks!
My pleasure :D This was really fun for me too – I love games, linguistics, mathematics, etc, and thinking about things in general and my other interests in particular, so this really hit all the good things :) really appreciate the newsletter a lot, definitely one I look forward to every week! Thank you, likewise.
This is a great article about an aspect of play that I think about when designing but never really quantified. It also makes me realize what makes a lot of games "not fun" because they have extremely limited decision spaces and no room for expanding them.
Also on a pedantic grammar note, it's "Fewer Choices" not "Less Choices". On the other hand, you can have "Less CHOICE", singular. (I'll gloss over all sorts of other grammar mistakes and misspellings but this one always sticks out to me.)
Thanks! I'd note that not everyone enjoys expanding decision spaces. Some (many) people love the constriction of the space, trying to lock in those last few pieces of the puzzle. So perhaps not fun to you (and me!!) but just a different kind of fun. ;)
Also, I've fixed the fewer/less mistake. The SCM editor has been sacked.
Great article! I'm a sucker for classifying things.
One aspect that also can help control the decision space for players is Strategy. If a player has a strategy - for example, they're trying to build lots of buildings rather than transport goods (to make up a game), they can focus on those actions and abilities that will enable them to pursue that. Or in chess, if you decide you want to put pressure on a certain piece that will help focus what moves you evaluate.
This allows players to 'self-prune' the decision tree to get down to just a handful of good options to decide between.
It also may help increase the skill cap, as good players will start to learn when they should extend beyond the options for their strategy into something else, either to block an opponent or take advantage of an opening.
Designers can assist in this process by giving players strategies through asymmetric player powers or endgame goals that will naturally steer them into a particular strategy and focus the decision space.
If everything starts symmetric, it can be helpful to have a 'waxing/increasing' decision space over the first few turns while players develop a strategy they wish to pursue. Having those two work in tandem (choices increase overall as developing strategies reduces them) can help control complexity while keeping the game rich and replayable.
Thank you for your comment!
While writing this, I was thinking about the distinction between raw/gross decision space size vs. actual/net decision space size. You bring up a very good point about it. In the best cases, strategy and goals can narrow the gross decision space into a smaller net decision space. It helps solve the "What do I do?!" problem that leads to excessive AP. I personally love when games, as you said, give variable player powers or goals to help guide the first moves. Eclipse sort of does this with factions with some focusing on expansion and others on combat.
In the worst cases, the strategy limitation could lead to what I'd call fake choices. I might have mentioned those in the player agency articles. It's where although I might have 5+ cards in my hand to choose from, if only ONE of the cards actually makes sense to play at a given time.... that's not really a choice. My decision space is 1, not 5. This (frustratingly for me) comes up in basic trick-taking games where you must follow suit even if you have just one card of that suit. Agency is gone.
I'm glad you mentioned the Decision Space podcast. The episodes on these specific definitions were fantastic. I'd that for the sake of consistency and clarity you should have just used their terms from the start (waxing vs waning) instead of just saying Increasing and Decreasing. But that's more of my preference for consistency with terms and definitions. Great read as always!
Thank you! ☺️