The addiction of PnP

Over the last couple weeks, I have made six or seven small print and play projects. And we are talking small projects, only three or four sheets of components at most.

And I got to thinking that some of them are games that I am not going to be playing anytime in the near future. The thought process that followed that thought was that, back when I was possibly buying games, I was picking up games without any idea of when they would actually hit the table.

But this isn't really the same behavior.

Here's the thing. Compulsive game buying and game hoarding ended up taking up a lot of money and storage space. It wasn't good for me and it wasn't even good for playing games.

Until I take the jump and start making 18XX games, my level of PnP isn't that expensive. We got the printer and laminator and other craft supplies for more than just game crafting. As long as I don't mind black and white, even a regular sized deck of cards or an averaged sized board doesn't cost that much. And, as long as I'm going to store them all in the same box and use universal pawns and tokens, they don't take up a lot of space.

But really, there's also the fact that game crafting is its own activity and hobby. It's its own thing. Yeah, part of the point is I get a game out of the end of it but it's also fun to actually do the making.

So PnP is kind of crazy but it's not a bad crazy.

Am I asking for the wrong things from dry erace markers?

I've been looking at my PnP copy of Akua, contemplating at how it hasn't seen any play yet. Frankly, we've found it a convoluted and not very intuitive.

I think that that is a side effect of its very nature. It is a game that is designed to be played with nothing but dry erase markers and the dryer erase board. At the same time, it is a game that is designed to be a full game with action selection and infrastructure development.

The format means no cards or hidden information or any random elements. The board and the pen marks have to handle everything and that can be a tall order.

It is kind of funny to think of developing what is basically a travel Euro, when the actual functional solution that we have used has been tablets. But I have to admire the desire to make a physical and mechanical game with such minimal components.

However, a game that I can play with a clipboard and some dry erase markers on a car trip or standing in line or on a plane needs to be one that I can play with a divided attention. I don't think Akua passes that particular test.

So I got to thinking, what kind of game would I want to play via dry a race that would both have the feel of a Euro or German Family Game? In the first thing that came to mind was something like Transamerica, where you would be drawing lines along a map to make connections.

Of course, you wouldn't be able to easily replicate the destination cards of Transamerica on the board. So then I thought it would need to be some kind of action selection game, where you choose to do things like draw track or make deliveries or other train actions. Since I'm clearly thinking about a train game.

Then I realized that might already exist with the pencil-and-paper adaptation of Stephenson's Rocket, another PnP project that I haven't played and really should. While it was designed for each player to have their own board, I think one board with different colored makers for each player should work.

Of course, Stephenson's Rocket, while I'm pretty sure it is more intuitive than Akua, also probably won't pass that test of being easily played with lots of distractions.

And, the truth of the matter is I really need to play both Akua and Stephenson's Rocket, not to judge them as how they work as dry erase games but how they work as games. Akua seems like it would be a good game with the right players. I know a couple guys back in Chicago who would love it but even more who wouldn't like it. And Stephenson's Rocket is a classic but will this adaptations do it justice?

At the same time, does this ideal dry erase game exist? I know there are games that use dry erase well (Some of my friends have raved about Captain Sonar) but one that would work on a plane?

Another stab at elegance

When I look at the school of German Family Games, a word I see a lot is elegant. But elegance is a word that can mean a lot of things to different people. But in this particular case, I'm pretty sure that what elegance means simplicity. Not that the rules or the play is necessarily simple but that everything is stripped down to just what it needed to play the games.

(On the other hand, in Euros, elegance means that the game is complex but all the moving parts all fit together like clockwork. Which could mean the same thing, since you usually don't have extra gears in your pocket watch. But it doesn't feel simple so I'm calling it a different flavor of elegant.)

This is one case where the philosophy of German Family Games and Abstract Games overlaps. That simplicity is a key element to so many abstracts. Go is one of the complex games I have ever played, perhaps the most complex. But the ruleset is very minimal. Other genuine classics, like Checkers or Mancala or Hex are even more minimal. Seriously, Hex is so minimal but it is still a challenging and interesting game. But it is clearly not a German Family Game.

Part of my old definition of an abstract used to include no random elements and no hidden information. However, as I've heard many games I love Qwirkle or Ingenious described as abstracts, I've come to accept that that's too rigid a definition. However, I feel that games like Ingenious, originally introduced to me as a German Family Game, show how blurry the line between the schools can be.

One designer who I feel embraced that blurry line, probably helped create that blurry line, is Alexander Randolph. He and Sid Sackson helped guide the 3M game line back in the 1960s and 1970s, which helped develop the modern designer game. The 3M line definitely pushed the idea of games that weren't for children or for gambling but for intellectual stimulation. Oh lord, that sounded so snobby and elitist.

Many of his designs like Ghosts or Ricochet Robots or Bison or Twixt are fundamentally abstracts. Man, there is no other way to describe Twixt but as an abstract. But they were aimed at the audience that would define German Family Games. I wonder what he would make after he saw what has been designed today. (Of course, I wonder even more what Sid Sackson would design)

I do believe that these two schools of philosophy use simplicity for different reasons. The Abstract school, not always intentionally, uses minimalism to refine the game. The German Family Game school uses simplicity to make games accessible. 

Abstract Games as philosophy is probably one of the most nebulous ones. After all, it includes centuries upon centuries of games that were independently developed all over the globe. So much of it comes from the natural organic development that took place over time. Minimalism necessity for games to be passed down by word-of-mouth over generations. German Family Games, on the other hand, are intentionally designed for a targeted audience.

So, when I just use the word elegant to describe a German Family Game, I guess I mean easy to teach and fun to play.

Memories of Yaz

I remember when I first saw the Baton Races of Yaz in 1984 as an insert in Dragon Magazine #82. It wasn't the first board game I'd seen in Dragon but the silly theme and simple rules really appealed to me. In fact, since I didn't want to cut up the magazine, I made my copy via xerox, making it my first print-and-play project.

The Baton Races of Yaz is a hex-and-chit game where, instead of trying to kill each other, the two sides are trying to be the first to break all the big glass balls in their color.

When I first saw it, I thought that it was really neat. I mean, I was seven or eight and here was in adult style hex-and-chit game that I could easily understand. Different types terrain, different types of units with multiple stats on them. (Basically speed, types of terrain it could move on) and if a unit could paralyze another unit.

Incidentally, this is how I learned what the word throttle meant as far as grabbing someone around the throat. The slow Lugants, who are the only unit who can't hold the baton, are the only combat unit, throttling opponents.

At the time I was told by older gamers that the Baton Races of Yaz  was a flawed game, too simple. In fact, I felt kind of embarrassed being so enthusiastic  about it.

However, so many years later with a lot of game experience during those years, I have come to some different opinions about the Baton Races of Yaz.

First of all, it was a very good introduction to hex-and-chit games. Heck, it even taught me how a lot of information could be one little square of cardboard. The most significant absence is a CRT (combat results table) since there aren't actually any random elements.   

Second, I would now say that the Baton Races of Yaz is a combination of hex-and-chit and family game. Which is really a weird beast now that I've actually written that down. But the family aspect isn't just the goofy theme but the philosophy of the game as well. It's a race where you don't lose pieces. Interaction but, despite the throttling, not violent conflict. I mean, compared to an Ogre's Hellbore cannons :P In real life, if someone kicked me to the ground and started to strangle me, I'd call that violent.

That being said, The Baton Races of Yaz is neither a perfect game nor the perfect blend between those two genres. While the luck free element and the ability to pass the baton as a free action means a skilled player can set up some amazing plays, it also means unskilled play can really drag. And the better player will crush the weaker player, which is not a virtue in a family game.

(On the other hand, Ogre gives you the option of giving the six-year-old the Ogre tank and you don't take any howitzers as a way of evening the playing field)

The Baton Races of Yaz is not a hidden gem that was stapled in the middle of a magazine. It is, though, a decent little game with some interesting room for thoughtful play, as well as a really amusing theme. In some ways, I think it was ahead of its time while never intending to be.

The idea of a cross between a hex-and-chit game and a family game is an interesting one, albeit one that probably didn't occur to the Dragon staff. I wonder what other games are out there that could fill that niche. I wonder if there are undesigned games that could be built from the idea.

One of my old gaming groups bought the Dragon archive some years ago so I've had the files to make another copy for a while now. And that wouldn't be hard because the whole thing is two pages long, including the counters. And I think it would be worth making another copy, one a lot nicer my long lost xerox version.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2867/baton-races-yaz

Does this mean my PnP habit is getting out of hand?

Does this ever happen to anyone else? I was looking through my PnP files and realized I had not yet downloaded some of the files I had bought through Kickstarter.

I'd say that more than nine out of ten of the Kickstarters I back are at the PnP/PDF level. There's a very good chance that I will only make PnP pledges in 2017 as part of my goal to not buy any new games this year. PnP doesn't count :P

And there are plenty of good reasons I stick to the print and play level. Easy on the wallet and storage space. I like crafting games. And, frankly, I'm more confident on getting electronic files.

But sometimes, I lose track of them :D

Buttonshy turned out to be the one I was the worst offender on. You see, they offer black-and-white demo copies and we have a black-and-white printer. So I use those for the initial beater copies. 

So I'll already have a copy of a game made but I forgot to get the final files :D

Anyway, I just went back and downloaded five or six files that I hadn't downloaded earlier. Often because I had already made the free version :D

Okay, there is value in not thinking. Just not that much

I have often written about how there are a lot of games the take a half hour or less to play but are still rich, even deep, gaming experiences. That you can have a meaningful gaming life even with a small time budget. There are even games like the tiny auction game GEM that take about 15 minutes that for still feel like playing a middle of a game night game.

But, let's be fair, a lot of shorter games are honestly light with simple decision trees. I like games like HUE or Love Letter or Burgoo but I wouldn't choose playing them four or five times over a game of Carcassonne or Ingenious or Qwirkle. They are good games and have their place but they don't have that deep level of engagement. 

And then there are those games that really live up to the pejorative filler. Games that have super simple decision trees, sometimes practically not having a decision tree at all. Cthulhu Dice, whose sole virtue is having a neat die, or RLC, which doesn't even have that going for it, are examples of games with no decisions. Frankly, I'm not even sure if I can call them games.

But I guess those super light games do have their place. I recently read about how someone used Dragon Slayer for breaks during D&D.

Now, I found Dragon Slayer to be a meh dice game since your decisions were limited to choosing which dragon to fight since every fight was to the death. The challenge mechanic to force other players to fight one more dragon was the most interesting part. It stayed in my collection because the dice are neat and it is actually pretty thematic.

I can see how it would work well would you want something quick and, frankly, mindless. The fact that it has a fairly strong theme for such a thin game is also a plus.

That said, the game that has been my choice for quick, brainless dice game for the last few years is still Zombie Dice. More tension and, I'm not kidding, more actual decisions. It's more of a legitimate push-your-luck game. 

It's a shame that our toddler has scattered the dice all over the house :D

I will probably never stop looking for short but deeper games. Even lighter ones that  have interesting decisions are something that I will be keeping my eye out for. But I'm not really going to go looking for thought free games. But I will admit that there is value in having a few around.

The best thing that came out of the Sorry franchise

While I have nothing against dexterity games, they aren't what I got into board games for. However, I do have some in my collection since they can be fun and you never know when someone might want to play one.

Sorry Sliders is one that has stayed in my collection by virtue of being fun, relatively easy to store and offering a variety of set ups.

The basic pieces of the game are four card board ramps, two double-sided center boards that give different scoring options, some plastic bumpers to modify the layouts and four sets of pawns to flick. The pawns are shaped like Sorry pawns but have rolling ball bearings on the bottom so they can really move.

Sorry Sliders has a number of variations but they all come down to flicking your pawns down the ramps to land on scoring sections and knock out your opponents' pawns. But, seriously, what else does it need to be?

Pretty much all you need to do to teach the game is set it up. Folks can take one look at it and understand exactly how to play. And people will want to play. Sorry Sliders there's definitely a lot of fun. I have never seen it failed to make a hit. And, like I said, I am not that into dexterity games but this is one that will never leave my collection.

It might have the Sorry theme but it really is a direct descendent of the wide family of table games that involve flicking things. 

Sorry Sliders in many ways fills the same niche as games like Crokinole or Carrom. It practically counts as a variant of Table Shuffleboard. And, let's be brutally honest, Sorry Sliders is definitely not as good as those games. Plastic sliders and cardboard just don't compare to wooden or even graphite components. Dexterity games are a category where quality components directly affect gameplay, as opposed to just making things pretty :P

But Sorry Sliders, which I am pretty sure it is still in print, costs literally a fraction of what a decent Crokinole board would cost. Let alone what a really good board cost. And that really goes for any table game that involves a big wooden frame and board.

For a gamer with a budget (and isn't that every gamer?), Sorry Sliders is a really good choice. It might not be perfect but it is a really good return for its price. It would be cool to own a hand-crafted Crokinole board but Sorry Sliders will work for me.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37196/sorry-sliders