Fjords makes me feel old :D

Okay, Fjords has been not only reprinted but expanded? Got to admit that I did not expect that.

On the one hand, I don’t think of Fjords as being a profoundly great game. On the other hand, I would never turn down a game of Fjords :D

(If I’m reading this correctly, the major changes are raising the player count to four and the ability to shift a house once during the first part of the game. Not dramatic changes but Fjords is a simple game. Small things can be big)

My first response to seeing this was ‘Damn, I’m old.’ Because, when it came out and we were playing it, Fjords was a solid B game. And apparently, as well as being published by Grail Games, it has become a grail game.

Apparently, if you stay in a hobby long enough, you get to see regular things become classic.

Second, man, the late Franz-Benno Delonge made some great games. TransAmerica alone would be an amazing legacy. But he also made Dos Rios and Hellas and Manila. (I still haven’t played Container and I’m folding TransEuropa into TransAmerica)

He doesn’t have a huge catalog of games but there is a healthy percentage of evergreens in that catalog. As I’ve said, Fjords is a solid, even meditative game but it doesn’t even make my top three of his designs. 

Happy his work is still getting attention.

Now, when is Hellas going to get a reprint?

The trap of labels with game design schools

It’s been too long since I played Delonge’s Hellas (as opposed to Dorra’s Hellas or any other game named Hellas) However, it’s a game that really sticks in my brain because of how it straddles design schools.

It’s an area of control game where you build a map of islands out of tiles, occupy those tiles with ships and soldiers and openly attacking each other. Plus you have God cards that let you break the rules in different ways.

While Hellas is a fun game in general, the reason that it stood out to me when I first found out about it was that it was a German Family game that had direct conflict, literally combat. At the time, merging the sensibilities of war games and German Family games was pretty unusual. 

Of course, that also depends on what you’re willing to consider a war game. When folks are willing to argue about whether or not Memoir 44 or Twilight Struggle are war games, Hellas is on super thin ice as far as being considered a war game. (Is chess a war game?)

I spend a lot of time thinking about the different design schools of games. And I do think they are important because they help explain what the goal of the design is, what the intended audience is. To be fair, I think it’s much more important for publishers than for consumers.

BUT games like Hellas (and Memoir 44 and Twilight Struggle and many more) are examples about how porous these labels are. 

I do believe that there is real value in defining games via design school, in particular from a marketing standpoint. However, there is a definite danger in letting that be the defining characteristic of a game. That is far from the end all, be all of games. If you (or I or Bryan down the street) let that be what makes your decision on a game, you might be in a game cult.

And more and more, game designers take inspiration from different schools for one game. Designs schools are tool boxes, not limitations. Hellas is an example of that from 2002.

Missing Franz-Benno Delonge

It’s been about ten years now but I still get bummed when I think about Franz-Benno Delonge passing away.

It’s not just because he designed a number of games that have really done well for me. It’s because he was only fifty so I really have to wonder what else he could have made. It’s very sad when a creator dies at an old age and you have a sense of completed body of work but it’s a different sad when they die young. (I feel the same way about Roger Zelazny)

I honestly don’t know much about the man but interviews make him sound pretty friendly. Plus, he was a daddy which gives him points in my book and makes his passing even more sad.

I have not played all of his games, even though he didn’t make that many of them. Of the ones that he played, they pretty much break down to either games that I want to play again and games that I haven’t quite enough of.

I’ve played TransAmerica, TransEuropa, Fjords, Dos Rios, Manila and Hellas, which is actually about a third of his game catalog. And I do admire designers who manage to create huge numbers of good games. Reiner Knizia and Sid Sackson are two of my heroes. But every game I’ve played from Delonge has been just super solid. 

And someday, when I have both the opportunity and the time (oh boy, the time), I want to play Container at least once.

I think that Delonge’s legacy will be TransAmerica. That is a game that will be still be getting played twenty years from now. I don’t know if it his best game from a ‘game’ standpoint but it is so simple and accessible while still being so fun and interesting. You can teach it to just about everyone but even seasoned gamers still enjoy it.

Delonge definitely belonged to the German Family school of game design. Simple rules, complex decisions, lots of interaction, no player elimination and relatively short playing times. It doesn’t seem to be as trendy as it used be but I still think it has a lot of staying power for a wide audience. And, as I already said, I think Delonge will be a great example for decades to come.