Board Game Design: Identifying Multiple Paths to Victory (Part III)

Conclusion of Part I & Part II.

Card games offer a special approach to game driven chaos through a randomized deck. An individual card will often have a range of usefulness relative to the other cards in your hand. In a game of five card draw, there is a straightforward desire for higher value cards and a single deuce can often be discarded without thought. If given an initial hand beginning with a pair twos, suddenly an additional two would add tremendous value. Card games all utilize this to some degree.

In Dominion, many players are impressed with the ability to “build your own machine” deck construction mechanics. I was enamored with the idea that it embraced the aspect of unproductive cards with an all or nothing approach of victory cards. In the base game victory cards are a hindrance for the duration of the game until final scoring in which they are the only means in order to win. Everyone who has played even one game of Dominion has experienced the dreaded mostly green hand for which the actions on a turn are severely diminished. Dominion was the first instance of an all-or-nothing approach to the usefulness of cards I had observed in game design.

The brilliance of the design of the Pokemon Trading Card game is often overshadowed as it was glanced over by many and dismissed as merely an extension of the Pokemon brand. Cards were collected and traded based on the notoriety of the Pokemon, the holographic Charizard being the Holy Grail for many. If you were anything like me in the 1990’s, you never played a game of the Pokemon TCG by the written rules. If that is the case, chances are that trainer cards were passed over and energy cards were trashed completely.

Many collectible card games require an element of structure in the pregame ritual of deck building. Pokemon was unrestrained as the only requirement was that the deck must be comprised of 60 cards. A balance deck needed several categories of cards but there were no restrictive guidelines as to what could be included. Cards ranged from basic pokemon who were your primary method of representation in the battle arena; energy cards which fueled attacks and special actions and trainer cards which allowed common card game actions such as access to your discard pile and drawing additional cards for future use.

The Pokemon TCG is another prototypical example that falls within our framework for multiple victory conditions. Over the course of the game basic pokemon cards are played into your "bench", of which one is selected as an active pokemon. The primary strategy involves switching your active pokemon with those on your bench in order to utilize key advantages and minimizing weaknesses. Upon depleting the hit points of one of your opponent's pokemon, you receive one of six "prizes" which consist of 6 random cards dealt from your deck before the game.

Our first victory condition in this series of articles is our tactical victory, taking advantage of the primary actions in the game. In the Pokemon TCG this victory condition is met by knocking out all of your opponent's active and benched pokemon, in such a way that they have none available during a game. This condition can be more easily achieved with a deck designed to get a lot of pokemon out quickly onto your bench that have moderate attack strength in order to take down an opponent who builds up to that powerfully evolved Charizard. An interesting risk is made if a deck is based on a low quantity of powerful basic pokemon, risking those cards being stuck as an out of reach "prize" or on the bottom of the draw deck.

The prize function operates as an interesting method of facilitating chaos in the game. As not all cards can be drawn through normal play, for the risk averse players it insists upon a deck built on duplication and multiples of the most crucial cards for a given strategy. Achieving all six of the prizes is a simplified element of the set collection victory path in our design structure. It certainly doesn't express the expected aspects of set collection such as like-kind accumulation and zero-sum depletion but it does fit the criteria in a loosely defined manner and satisfies the basic requirement of set collection of a particular item.

Our final strategic pathway of an hourglass victory is a common structure in card games in one form or another. In many collectible card games when a player's deck is depleted this triggers victory for this player or more often, the opponent. In the Star Wars Collectible Card Game, when a powerful character card is defeated it has a "damage" number which causes additional attrition beyond that card. This function consists of discarding a number of cards equal to the "damage" number indicated on the card, usually relative to strength and functional as a balancing mechanism. In Pokemon, this is much more simpler and deck management is more often under control of each player based on drawing and reshuffling discarded cards back into the deck with special actions. Once a players deck has been exhausted, that player has been defeated.

I look forward to seeing how these three primary methods of victory will continue to be explored and expanded going forward in game design. I thank you for reading and I hope this series of articles has enriched your analysis of these game types, and thus encouraging a bright gaming future. 

Board Game Design: Identifying Multiple Paths to Victory (Part II)

In Part I we reviewed some multifarious victory conditions in board games, specifically victory conditions that complemented one another and allowed for a deeper strategy as players attempt to achieve victory.

As a quick summary, we assessed three primary conditions often used in board game design that allow for overlap and multiple paths to victory:

• Tactical Victory - The Tactical Victory path often utilizes a map and offers an opportunity to win in a war of attrition (Having the last pieces on the board in checkers) or by achieving a high standard control over the board (Running your opponents out of business in Monopoly or capturing your opponent’s flag in Stratego).
• Set Collection - The set collection mechanic can consist of either a carefully orchestrated set of requirements (Completion of each category in Trivial Pursuit and collecting all the different colored wedges) or an agglomeration of sorts (The frantic collection and redistribution of the right cards to teammates in Pandemic)
• Hourglass Victory - In Part I we identified the Hourglass victory as a means to bring a tightly contested game to conclusion, often consisting of a turn limit or an inevitable achievement that a player will make within a designed duration the game is intended to last.

In Part II we will take a look at the first of two games that utilize all three conditions and examine the differences in the application of each victory condition.

Rarely  have the opportunity to enjoy a game as finely crafted for a specific player count as End of the Triumvirate. Designed and balanced ideally for three players, it has often been described as “A knife fight in a phone booth” and its description does not disappoint. End of the Triumvirate is always fiercely contested until the end and by structural design does not suffer from runaway leader syndrome or the complementary apathetic loser syndrome.

End of the Triumvirate consists of each of our predefined victory conditions: a militaristic dissection of a map of the Roman Empire, a scale of military & political prowess and an annual Roman Senate election of which a player attempts to win twice over the course of the game.

In every design I've ever worked on I've found that it takes more than to develop great mechanics, adding an interesting theme or making players feel empowered. A game needs tension. The easiest way to do that always seems to be "add a map".

The End of the Triumvirate has a very well defined map that as one my expect takes up the majority of the game board as well as the majority of the game play. Consisting of 15 provinces, the Roman Empire is separated during set-up and each player begins with 5 provinces. Players lead large armies around the board gathering additional provinces and gold using a limited quantity of action points each turn.

Over the coarse of the game, provinces change hands many times and empires rise and fall. In order to achieve the tactical victory, a player must control 9 of the 15 territories during their turn. I have rarely seen this achieved and although it is certainly possible, it requires one of the three players to nearly bow out of the tactical victory condition entirely. When I have seen it achieved, often one or both of the other players are about to win using another victory condition in their very next turn; a wonderful sign of an intensely competitive game.

Our second victory condition for examination is the Senate election. Depending on how players plan out their turns, they may use their gold in order to persuade influence in the Senate. This can involve moving (yellow) unaligned citizens into their section of the forum or out of an opponents forum and back into the unaligned section. After each player has made two or three turns, the player with the most influence wins the election and their citizens are "reset" for the next election.

After winning one Senate election, a player can win the game by either winning another election or by positioning six citizens in their forum. This is the hourglass victory condition of The End of the Triumvirate. No matter how the game has played out, the game will not last more than four elections, and would only reach that point if all three players are active in the Senate. The majority of games I have participated in have ended with the third or fourth election delivering victory for a particularly politically active player, and it is a neat method to ensure a timely finish without a confusing turn limit (I'm occasionally left underwhelmed when a game ends after X number of turns without any really thematic reason).

The End of the Triumvirate offers two competence tracks in the subjects of military and political mastery. These function surprisingly well as mechanics to demonstrate the power advantage of someone who chooses to specialize and the competence tracks also allow for deeper player interaction.

Players have the ability to advance their abilities at their discretion which strengthens their actions and more importantly increases the costs of their opponents. For instance if I advance my position to "III" on the political competence my opponents behind me at "II"  or "I" must pay two extra gold in order to move citizens around in the Senate. Alternatively they can match my level or exceed it in order to remove this additional cost. The competence track adds an interesting additional element in order to assist players who are really pushing for a tactical victory or political victory in order to "protect their lead" by essentially placing bananas behind them on the final lap of a race in Mario Kart. Naturally as players attempt to outperform one another in competence, they spur this set collection victory condition to completion by reaching level "VII" in both competences.

The End of the Triumvirate offers three very diverse ways to seek victory but all three intertwined with the actions a player makes. In Part III we'll take a look at an old favorite that is entirely overlooked for its design brilliance and we'll see very quickly how it fits into our design analysis of diverse paths to victory.

Board Game Design: Identifying Multiple Paths to Victory (Part I)

In 1985 Paramount Pictures released a live action comedy based on the popular board game “Clue”. Featuring Tim Curry in one of his best performances, the movie “Clue” received mixed reviews and was considered commercially unsuccessful and thus like many others I first experienced it on video. I was enamored by the perfect casting and I’ve always loved mysteries but what made the movie memorable for me was that after the mystery was explained and I expected the credits to roll they hit me with two additional alternate endings.

The version of “Clue” feature film in theaters provided the audience with one of three endings, but the home video release ostensibly made more sense to the viewer as it helped establish that the actual turn of events was not as important as the journey made to get there. This was certainly not the first instance of multiple endings used in film and it didn’t fulfill its intended commercial goal of selling more tickets to the same audience for an alternate ending, but nevertheless it was my first memorable exposure to the idea and it made an impact.

A finely structured board game relies on a satisfying endgame even more than defining mechanics, integration of theme or player interaction. Its the aftertaste players will remember whether they won or lost that will bring the game out of the closet at the next opportunity. The final outcome should reward player(s) that performed the strongest, have a consolidated final scoring that is not entirely transparent and keep those who fall behind early engaged and hopeful.

One of the best ways to make the victory of a particular design distinguished from its bookshelf competitors is to allow multiple ways for players to find their own paths to victory. By providing several options, players maintain a tense struggle for resources while waging a war on multiple fronts.

For the purposes of this article I am particularly interested in games offering very divergent victory goals. This excludes games with pass-through conditions such as High Society in which currency is used to buy items worth VP but the player who spends the most during the game is eliminated prior to final scoring. I’m also excluding games for which multiple victory conditions are aligned in the game-play: in Mr. Jack the person playing as Jack can win by escaping the board, evading capture on the eighth turn or an incorrect accusation by the inspector, but in all cases Jack’s motivation is to conceal his/her identity effectively.

Some common trends in games that have multiple paths to victory:

• Games offer low player counts (often just 2 players, while 4 players is less common and typically the upper limit of the player count)
• Fewer players allow participants to monitor progress of opponents during the game while not overwhelming players with too many potential outcomes.
• Victory Points are often not used and one player is the winner with few methods to measure parity of the game. If VP are used it is often as a tiebreaker.
• Games often have an upper limit on the length of the game but surprise victories are not uncommon when a player is ignored by opponents and crafty with their decisions. 

Tactical Victory:

The tactical victory is often the bread and butter of the game; the portion of which the most action resides and in which meaningful decisions are made. In Risk, your tactical objective is global domination. By virtue of being the primary focus of all participants this is often the least likely victory condition. When a particularly dominant player is fortifying their position an attack-the-leader syndrome from other players offers further balancing to the game and often prevents a tactical victory.

Set Collection:

Set collection could be considered the secondary condition following the tactical path to victory. It is tremendously important that a player maintain an active role in the tactical gameplay (to prevent opponents from achieving the primary tactical victory) but set collection is an alternative path that keeps players engaged in monitoring the progress of their opponents and increasing tension while bringing players towards the endgame.

Hourglass Victory:

In a hard fought game amongst several worthy competitors it is essential to bring the game to a conclusion rather than drag out the climax of the conflict and remove the unique experience. The hourglass is the tertiary objective filling the role of closer. When a victory cannot or has not been achieved in the designed time table of the game, the hourglass objective is the final act in determining the victor. Ideally this utilizes a different criteria than the other victory conditions; something as simple as the player with the most currency at the end of the eighth and final turn is the winner. This condition ensures a timely endpoint even if all players are playing optimally and still allows for a satisfying and definitive result as it is foreseeable.

If victory points are used in the design of a game, they hold special value here as they can be collected on the side by players and only have value if the turn limit or stalemate condition is met.

In Part II we will look at some of these victory conditions in action and see how their relationship creates depth without added complexity in game design. Did I miss a fourth category of victory conditions? If I did I would love to find out your thoughts.