City of Shadows megagame

Last Saturday I had my first experience of a megagame. It was called "City of Shadows" and although it had elements of a board game (hence a valid topic for this blog) it was much more like a role-playing experience.

OVERVIEW OF THE GAME

Imagine, if you will, around 75 people crammed into a hall – the players. Add another 15 people whose job was to monitor the progress of the game – the control team. Squeeze into this melee six large maps showing different areas of a city, and then picture most of the players having made some effort to dress as if they lived in America in the year 1931. Finally, have all the people mill around and make a lot of noise, and continue doing so for six hours. You have now have some idea of what a megagame is like.

The players were divided into different types – six police squads (one for each map), eight gangs (setting up assorted crime rackets as they expanded their influence across the city), a city hall and a city police department (both on the stage, trying to balance crime and politics), the local press (who produced regular A4 sheets with all the latest news and rumours), a few feds, several men and women of science (some with fawning assistants), and last but not least seven vigilantes (who could move amongst the others either as superheroes or as ordinary citizens). I was a member of this last group, known to the general populous as "Hero By Night".

Each 'turn' of the game lasted half an hour in real time representing one month in game time. The game controllers tried to keep to a strict timetable with the last five minutes of each turn spent in 'teams' (catching up with each other and planning the next turn). But mostly when the whistle blew, you couldn't hear what the control was saying because of the general hubbub. I found myself constantly asking people around the maps "What phase are we on? Am I too late to come swooping in and conduct a raid?"

And who won? I haven't a clue. I'm pretty certain the city lost, what with rampant crime, corrupt police, even more corrupt politicians and whole swathes of the city destroyed by mad scientists. There were so many interconnected stories taking place that there is no way to sum up the experience other than saying everyone seemed to be having a good time.

As an example, here is a taste of what my fellow vigilantes got up to, some of which I didn't discover until the game was over. Captain Union started as the darling of the city but seemed more interested in lucrative advertising deals than actually doing anything useful and his popularity waned. At one point he bought a huge robot suit from a scientist and tried to destroy a tidal wave machine, but as the machine was underwater and the suit was not especially waterproof this didn't end well. Captain Freedom started off by robbing a bank supposedly to provide himself with enough funds for fighting crime. The Fighting Fool seemed to relish violence and turned out to be working hand in glove with one of the scientists. The Fury spent the entire game in a personal vendetta against the Sicilian gang. The City Redeemer soon established a reputation for destruction, having burnt one of the gang bosses so badly that he had nothing left to do but join the vigilantes as a rather ineffective supervillain. But in mid-game she decided to give up crime fighting and run for mayor as an independent candidate. The gangs supported her (by throwing lots of dosh into her campaign) and she was duly elected, but as the game drew to a close she was assassinated by one of the gangs. The Ghost arrived a few turns into the game, and like me seemed to be an honest-to-goodness crime fighter.

In contrast with all of the shenagins of my colleagues my main concern was to reduce crime and protect the citizens. I formed no lasting alliances and often found myself simply wandering the streets wondering where I would be most useful. But I can claim a moral victory. My steady plugging away at crime was recognised and on the 'Moral Compass' I finished the game as the top hero in the good-evil spectrum.

THE ADVENTURES OF HERO BY NIGHT

In the early part of the year I patrolled the streets, warning the gangs that I wasn't happy with their expansionist tendencies. I tried shutting down a few rackets but discovered it wasn't easy on my own. In the spring four vigilantes joined together to capture a gang boss and bring him to justice. Despite the presence of many mobsters we succeeded in capturing the boss only to discover that it was a case of 'mistaken identity'. The boss had slipped away unnoticed and left some poor sap to take the heat. Even when I successfully destroyed a racket it turned out that they simply started it up again when my back was turned. All in all not an auspicious start.

I reckon that I remained the poorest person in the whole city. Apart from a meagre income each turn, which I mostly spent on replacing my used equipment, I gained nothing. I couldn't understand why others were wandering about with fistfuls of cash and mad scientists thought nothing about giving me money ("whatever it costs") to aid my search for the hideout of their arch enemy. My one chance for earning a decent wage came when a toy company decided that Hero By Night was more popular than Captain Union - but I didn't hesitate to turn them down. I'm a crime-fighter. I don't promote toys.

In the summer the first crisis hit. Professor Emilia Gargunza threatened to unleash a virus on the city as a statement of female equality. The whole city was in a panic. For one brief moment I thought I was the one who could save the day. I had previously discovered the professor's lair and liberated some of her equipment. I agreed to return it if she gave me the location of the virus bomb. We even had the press to witness the exchange. She admitted it was under the city hall, so with five minutes to go I had the mayor and his staff frantically searching their location. I did admit that the information may not be reliable. And of course it wasn't. The evil harridan was lying! The bomb went off in the North precinct and several city blocks were infested with zombie-like creatures. So much for my heroic negotiations.

Not all scientists were quite so troublesome. One even invented a confusion gun which I bought from him and used to good effect now and then. Another appeared in a robot spider which a couple of us managed to damage enough to drive it away. But then Tesla let loose his tidal wave machine (to demonstrate the power of alternating current) and Edwin Scott unleashed an earthquake.

My most successful intervention came as the year drew to a close. A huge robot dinosaur was rampaging across the West Side. The Fighting Fool and I joined with the Police to bring it down. The massed police force damaged it and it fled. We followed and brought to bear as much equipment as we could in order to damage it further. Spotting a controller inside its head, we swung into action – literally. (Finally, a chance to use my hook gun!) The villain was knocked unconscious, but then an argument broke out between the Fighting Fool and myself. He wanted to kill the villain and I wanted to arrest him. The Fool backed down in the face of my determination. Victory was ours, and a mere two blocks of the city were destroyed in the process. Sadly when we hauled up the scientist before the judge a corrupt jury found him innocent and he was released. Oh well, I tried.

LIFE LESSONS

It occurs to me that life in a church is not unlike a day spent in a megagame. In a congregation of a hundred and more there are so many interconnected stories it is impossible to keep up with them all. There are factions and alliances forming and dissolving. The property committee have plans to do this and the youth ministry team have plans to do that. The church council tries to monitor it all and keep everyone happy. The little group who sit on the back row have a grumble about the new fangled aspects of worship. A different group rally round to support the old lady who has broken her arm. And no one person (even the minister!) has a complete grasp of all the different things which are going on.

I don't know what I can do about this other than simply acknowledge it. I have my own view of what is going on in the church – but it is far from complete. I need to remember that there are lots of opinions, desires, plans and activities which I am unaware of. It's a good job that the Holy Spirit is wise enough to hold all this together and guide us through the chaos.

Themes of Games (pasted on or otherwise)

The Dice Tower's "Top ten games with a Pasted On Theme" left me wanting to argue with them about the nature of themes in games. Here's my argument.

Some games have no theme at all. These are called abstract games. For example when you place dominoes next to other dominoes all you are doing is placing dominoes next to other dominoes. You are not attempting to simulate any other kind of activity.

Some games have such a thin veneer of 'theme' that it might as well not be present at all. In the game of chess you are moving different kinds of men around a battlefield in order to capture the men belonging to your opponent. But when your knight captures a bishop you do not conjure up a picture of a man in armour riding his horse past intervening soldiers in order to kidnap (or maybe kill) a mitre-wearing man of the cloth. All you think of is that your little wooden piece has moved to a new square thereby removing your opponent's little wooden piece from the game. It would be difficult to argue that chess has any meaningful 'theme'.

On the other hand, in the game Memoir '44 the theme provides a large part of the enjoyment. You are moving your troops up the Normandy beaches under a barrage of gunfire hoping that at least some will survive long enough to kill the enemy. Or are you? Aren't you just moving little plastic figures from one hex to another? Can't it be both?

Time for a couple of definitions. For the duration of this blog I'm going to define the mechanics of the game as the process of moving pieces, rolling dice, shuffling, drawing or playing cards and collecting or discarding tokens - all according to a set of rules. And I'm going to define the theme of the game as the 'real life' activity that the game represents, such as finding cures for diseases, managing a farm, climbing a mountain or surviving life on a desert island. I'm also going to include such things as fighting dragons, trading with distant planets, vanquishing super villains and guiding a civilisation through 2000 years of history as being 'real life' activities too. None of us may ever fight a dragon, but we know that the experience of lashing out with a sword at a fire-breathing monster would be very different from the experience of rolling a twenty-sided die and seeing what number comes up. My point here is that game theme and game mechanics are always radically different things.

So why are some games regarded as having a 'good' theme? For me it comes down to this: When you describe your actions, do you naturally describe them in terms of the theme or the mechanics? Did you send three thieves to steal treasure, or did you discard three black cubes to gain five money tokens?

Take Incan Gold for example - one of the games (wrongly in my opinion) featured in the 'Pasted On Theme' list. There is only one decision each player has to make on their turn - do I go further into the temple or do I leave? Either way there is a risk. Expressed in terms of game mechanics the choice is between moving the tokens so far collected into your cardboard tent where they will be worth points at the end of the game or gambling on getting more tokens in later turns (though maybe losing them all and not scoring any points this round.) In terms of theme the choice is this: would it be brave or foolhardy to push deeper into the temple? There are potentially greater riches to be found, but I've had warnings of a rock fall and spiders ahead and if I come across either of them suddenly I can lose everything I've collected so far.

The experience of choosing one of two cards to put face down on the table (mechanics) is very different from the experience of choosing whether to move forward or backwards in an underground corridor (theme). Yet there is enough of a similarity in the consequences of the decision that, at least in your imagination, you are not choosing a card you are choosing to press on into (or turn back from) the unknown wealth or danger in an Incan Temple.

When the decisions made in a game are similar to decisions you might make in the 'real life' activity, then it is easier to immerse yourself in a game and feel that you are actually doing more than just moving pieces on a board. I'm overtaking three cars to get ahead in the race. I'm flying to Paris because the city is in danger of an outbreak of disease. I'm planting corn because I'll need the crop to feed my family.  I'm equipping the dwarf with an axe and the paladin with a flaming sword and we're going into the dungeon to fight the ice demon.

The worthies at the Dice Tower sometimes used the argument that if the same mechanics can support a variety of themes then the theme must be 'pasted on'. I disagree. Say, for example, that you have a game which is basically about collecting sets of cards to earn victory points. You could make this entirely abstract by just collecting sets of colours or numbers. But the game might be more fun if you are collecting animals for your zoo, or if you are a Martian invader collecting 'earthlings', or if you are a medieval trader collecting luxury goods. And if I am gleefully flying my UFO around the countryside picking up cows and chickens, the fun is not spoilt by my knowing that the same mechanics could be used with a different theme. So what? I've just beamed up four cows! Beat that, my bug-eyed green opponent!

So a good theme is one which allows you to imagine you are engaged in the 'real life' activity even whilst you know you are really just moving stuff around a table. For this reason I agree that the Dice Tower were right about Dominion. Ostensibly the theme is that you are prince expanding your dominion over various people and places. But you don't feel as if you are actually doing that. You just feel that you are drawing cards, getting extra actions and adding cards to your deck. When you can afford a province it doesn't feel as if you've extended your land holdings it just feels as if you've added a 6VP card to your deck.

Admittedly some of the cards in Dominion do make thematic sense. Sort of. A moat protects you. A mine increases your wealth. A village (with its extra population) allows more actions. But very few of these actually feel as if you are triggering real life benefits.

Other games manage to support the theme through the details of the game pieces and cards. One of the most thematic games I've played recently is Evolution. In particular I enjoy the way the different 'traits' placed on your species make perfect sense. For example, species which can 'forage' will pick up two food from the watering hole instead of one. Species with a 'long neck' have access to food in the treetops before they need to start taking the limited supply from the watering hole. 'Scavengers' gain meat food whenever a carnivore has made a kill. 'Pack hunting' carnivores can attack creatures bigger than themselves.

I know there is a danger in using theme to interpret rules. Often some rules don't quite make sense thematically. What makes a great theme is when the mechanics and the theme seem to dovetail together effortlessly.

My conclusions?
a) Games with good themes are not intrinsically better than abstract games. Even themes which may be 'pasted on' can help you enjoy a game. And there are some game mechanics which are just brilliant fun regardless of any associated theme.
b) The following three things, if done well, enhance the theme of a game:
Appropriate artwork and components. e.g. Memoir '44 with its miniatures.
Decisions and consequences within the game which feel similar to the same kinds of decisions and consequences that you would face in the real life situation. e.g. Incan Gold.
Detailed rules or cards or special abilities which make sense within the theme. e.g. Evolution.

Roll the dice; move your piece

Many people's conception of a board game is that you roll a six-sided die, move your piece that number of spaces along a track and if the destination space says to do something, then you do it.

Snakes and ladders uses this system. Many Victorian board games you see in museums use this system. Monopoly, arguably the most famous board game of all, uses this system although it adds another level of excitement by using two six-sided dice. Wow. Two dice. Just imagine.

There is an episode of The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon invents a game and invites his friends to play. The science in The Big Bang Theory is usually spot on. The depiction of the board gaming hobby is way off the mark. Sheldon's game involves rolling dice and moving a piece along a track. I was incensed at this travesty of game design. How can a programme which is bang up to date regarding quantum mechanics and relativity still be living in the 19th century as far as board games go?

"But how else do you move your piece along a track if not by rolling dice?" I hear you ask. Let me suggest some other possibilities.

In Wrath of Ashardalon each character in the dungeon has a 'speed' rating and can move any number of spaces up to their speed. Sometimes, with the appropriate equipment (such as magic boots) they might be able to temporarily increase their speed to move further than normal.

In Ave Caesar each charioteer has a hand of numbered cards and plays one to move their chariot that many spaces.

In Formula D each driver rolls a different shape of die (from four-sided up to thirty-sided) depending on what gear they are in.

In Tokaido players take their turn only when they are the rearmost traveller and they can move as many spaces along the track as they wish providing they end in an empty space.

In Theseus: The Dark Orbit when a character chooses to move he must move around the space station a number of spaces exactly equal to the number of characters in his starting space.

In Tikal you have ten action points to spend each turn and the more of them you spend moving through the jungle, the less you have to spend on other useful actions.

In Rampage (now renamed as Terror in Meeple City) you move your monster around the board by flicking him with your finger.

As with most things in life, the more you investigate, the more wonderful and varied you find things to be. When I was growing up I assumed there were basically four types of farmyard animals: horses, cows, sheep, pigs. Maybe you could throw in donkeys and dogs to bring it up to half a dozen. But then I discovered goats, llamas and alpacas and realised there are many different breeds of horses, cows, sheep and pigs. There's a lot more to farmyard animals than you can find in a children's story book.

Similarly there is much more to art, to history, to music, to science, to poetry, to gardening etc etc etc than ever I first imagined. It's a huge and wonderful world out there. Make sure you appreciate it!

Individual Identity and feelings of superiority

In The Reason for God, Timothy Keller argues that if we get our identity from, for example, our ethnicity or our social class, then we will inevitably feel superior to those of other races or classes. Even if we pride ourselves on being an open-minded tolerant person, then this is bound to lead to us looking down on those we perceive as narrow-minded and bigoted.

And it occurred to me that playing board games with asymmetric roles could help people appreciate their individual identity without leading to feelings of superiority. Here's what I mean.

Andean Abyss is a four-player game set in Columbia. Each player controls a different faction (Government, FARC, AUC, Cartels - go check Wikipedia if you need to brush up on your Columbian history.) Each faction has its own set of rules and its own victory conditions. When I played as the Government, I valued my own particular abilities, such as having so much money that the resources marker literally went off the scale, and I regarded the other factions as my enemies. Well, apart from that one turn when I joined forces with the AUC to wipe almost every FARC guerrilla and base off the map. My identity was locked in to being the Government and the other players were my deadly foes.

But at another level I appreciated the way that the four different factions were finely balanced and none were superior to the others. Far from it. All four were needed for an engrossing game. (Warning: do not attempt this game if you need to be in bed before midnight.) Hence my overall experience was appreciation of having one particular identity and appreciation of the existence of other different but equally valid factions.

Bringing this into the real world, it seems to me that I can take pride in belonging to the best county in the world (Yorkshire, if you were wondering) and at the same time appreciate that other people take equal pride in belonging to their own county or state or province or island or tribe. It's an example of what Orwell called Doublethink - something which human beings do all the time - in which I have no problem in believing a) my cultural identity is better than any other and b) everyone's cultural identity is equally important and no single one is best.

By a roundabout route my thoughts have brought me back to the same point Timothy Keller was trying to make: that the only way to have a self-identity which doesn't lead to a sense of superiority is to see our significance as being who we are under God.

Part of the fun of gaming is pitting yourself against opponents. Sometimes one can become immersed in a theme to the extent of glorying in their suffering. ("Ha! Take that, you communist swine!") But it would be awful if that in-game fun turned into dislike of the other players. The thing that stops the pride in my identity leading to a disparagement of others is that I know there is a bigger picture. Andean Abyss is just a game. There is a life beyond.

I remain proud to be a born and bred Yorkshireman. But I (somewhat reluctantly) recognise that in God's eyes, all lands and all peoples are equally loved and valued. There is so much about my identity (gender, race, education, height) which makes me happy to be me. (Weight? - don't ask.) I can't imagine  anything better than being who I am. But at the same time I realise my true identity and self-worth is due to being a child of God. And in that sense I am no better (and no worse) than any other living person.

Elegant Design

I've just posted the first of what might (repeat might) be a series of youtube videos. In it I try to enthuse about the elegance of design of board games (as illustrated by Cartagena) and of the universe (as illustrated by the universe).

In this post I am attempting to make the same point in more carefully considered sentences. But feel free to stop reading now and watch the video instead.

Something I appreciate about board games (or at least the good ones) is elegance of design. Simple rules which hang together to produce rich and satisfying gameplay. I picked Cartagena as my example because the rules boil down to two simple actions. Either play a card to move a pirate forward to the symbol on the card. Or move a pirate backwards to meet one/two other pirates and draw one/two cards.

From this there emerges an interesting game. The only way to move forward is by playing cards and the only way to draw cards is to move backwards. So when do you push on ahead, and when do you keep falling back to collect the necessary resources for a later advance? And you soon discover that you must keep a watchful eye open for a chain of covered symbols, allowing you (or your rival pirate) to make a dramatic leap forward.

I hadn't heard of this game until it was pointed out to me on a 'bring and buy' stall. I bought it on a fellow gamer's recommendation and so far have not regretted my purchase.

But more to the point: Elegant rules don't just write themselves. They are the work of a designer. In this case a chap called Leo Colovini (whose name I mispronounce on the video. Sorry, Leo.) A quick check on Board Game Geek reveals that he has designed many games, of which I have played just one other - Meridian - which as I recall also had relatively simple rules and the same kind of intellectual challenge.

Over the last few years I have encountered enough really good and well-designed games to have developed a taste for particular designers and even begin to recognise their individual 'style'. I have learned to admire the creativity of someone who can invent a set of rules for moving bits of wood and card around on a table in order to produce a pleasurable and engrossing experience.

Then I turn to the design of the universe and find I have to multiply that admiration a thousandfold.

The universe works by a set of rules about the interaction of subatomic particles in the environment of a four dimensional space-time continuum - or eleven dimensional or whatever the latest count of dimensions is thought to be. Yet these rules work so elegantly together that they produce the universe. Not just elements and stars and planets. Not just amino acids and blood vessels and aardvarks. Not just human beings and emotions and abstract concepts. But imaginative brains which are able to design and implement their own creations. And so there has come into existence the concept of blogging in which pixels on a screen can be interpreted as words and can stimulate particular thoughts in the minds of those who see them. (That's you, dear reader.) And there has come into existence stirring music. And whodunits. And smartphones. And Strictly Come Dancing. And Go Ape. And the pleasure of being allowed to lick the bowl when one's wife has made a chocolate cake. And not to forget the delightful discovery of satisfying gameplay from elegant board game rules.

And the thing is that every bit of this (and everything else in the universe which I don't have time to list) emerges from the beautifully designed set of rules which we call 'the laws of physics'. Impressed as I am by the hugeness, the intricacy and the variety of God's creation, I can't help but be even more impressed that all this complexity and depth arises from a relatively simple and (verging on) comprehensible set of rules.

I stand in awe of God's ability as a designer.