 All right mechanics game mechanics. Yeah Everyone loves game mechanics the word. Yeah, the word is thrown out all the time phrase, whatever, right? What is a game mechanic anybody? No No, I don't even raise their hand one guys try it. We're not gonna let him answer I mean the first person shooter like is shooting a mechanic is like gun collection a mechanic It's just an entire game a mechanic What if I play a game and that game determines who plays the next game, right? So what is a game mechanic the fact is if you look on the internet if you try to look at research and books and Wikipedia, right? The definitions for game mechanic are so vague as to include so many unrelated things or They're so varied that you can't tell which one is the right one. I've seen things like dice is a game mechanic I guess so it's not that interesting to talk about just as a game mechanic, right? But something else like you know physics could be a game mechanic, right? It's some sort of crazy physics game, right? It's like well or even like half-life, too I mean physics is a game mechanic in half-life to the puzzles, you know There's a levering board and you've got to stand on it and then walk up it All right Or sometimes an entire game could be a mechanic of another game So it's how do you really talk about game mechanics if you don't you can't really separate them into any particular category, right? So for the purpose of this discussion and at least in my mind I see a game mechanic as so you know and this is a tabletop theater also says we're gonna focus on tabletop But of course it applies to all games, right? Is a set of rules that sort of form a new rule be you know unto themselves, right? So if you really break a game down into these smallest bits, you know Like the rules of rolling dice would be like pick up the die Shake it up a bunch throw it but then look at it the number of dots that is face up is this number, right? And but at the same time there's the distinction I mean there are actions you take in the course of a game that aren't mechanical in the sense that they don't affect the game The fact that I have to look at the value on the die isn't a mechanic like if I forget to look at it I don't get to move in monopoly. That's not how it works But for example rolling a die and then moving a guy forward is a set of rules you roll a die and then you move Right, it's a set of rules that create this mechanic of roll your dice move your mice And we can just tell people hey in this game you roll your dice move your mice We don't need to explain all these sub rules, right of that. It's a mechanic It's a combination of rules that form a mechanism that is a piece of a larger game All right, so let us explore some many game mechanics and for each game mechanic We're going to tell you a if you're a player what you should do when you encounter this game mechanic and B If you are a game maker when you should use it and how you should use it and how you should think about it, right? So the number one most obvious game mechanic in the entire universe is Taking turns now this might seem self-evident, but really it's not the idea of taking turns It's not in all games and it's not even that intuitive It's soccer. Do you take turns in soccer? No, you just play for a long time and then it's over Football you take turns. I mean one team's turn is to be on offense There's a way to interrupt that term, but it is it is their turn to score volleyball It's my turn to score as opposed to your turn. Yeah, and turn there's so many variations on taking turns It could be everyone takes a simultaneous turn. It could be we go around in a circle taking turns It could be the turn order changes. It could be you know one person takes a bunch of turns Right, you could baseball, you know, you have a bunch of turns on one team that a bunch of turns on the other team It's it's crazy all over the now We're not even just talking about ortho games meaning like straight standard games like a game of chess or Puerto Rico Where players play to win in an RPG there's RPGs like Mom's Guard where you take turns It's the game master's turn then the players turn Dungeons and Dragons doesn't work like that. Nope. Dungeons and Dragons doesn't have turns at all All right, so if you're a player, right, how do you need to think about taking turns? Right well the first thing you really need to think about that's most important is the lefty righty, right in most games A player that takes their turn before you, you know, especially if there's more than two players, right? We'll be able to affect you in some way and a player that goes after you You'll usually be able to do something to them simply because of the fact that you go before they do, right? So if a guy goes before me he can do something to interrupt, you know What I'm about to do and mess with me, right? So when you're going to sit down at the table, if you know the game is clockwise You know look at who's sitting where make sure the really powerful guy is on the left and the really weak guy is on the right This proves problematic You might wonder why do so many games go clockwise the only reason games go clockwise And that's the order of play is because that's easy for people to remember That is the only reason and a lot of games are actually really unbalanced as a result We would play El Grande, which is this bidding game But once you bid on your position for turn order then everything else just went clockwise and the problem with that was that Once you realize it you want to sit to the left to someone or the right to someone and we would stand around the table If you want to play El Grande sure and just waiting for someone to sit down We started having to play another game to figure out where we'd sit in El Grande because the game didn't take this into account Yeah, there's a thing you can get called shocking roulette It's a pretty popular gaming device everyone puts their finger in and one person gets shocked and that's how you know who goes first You can use this multiple times to create a turn order if necessary Which means everyone but one person will get shocked which is pretty fun Now one thing to really think about as a player is some games give you a way to change the turn order Like in Kayla someone can use I think the provost to jump whatever building it is You can go on this building and change the turn order now I get to go first any time a game lets you spend in-game resources to change the turn order The game is telling you that turn order is really important to winning So if you're a game maker right how do you decide how to use this taking turns thing right and really the big Development in the tabletop world that's happened You know in terms of taking turns in the design of them in games is that we went from games Where each player did a whole bunch of stuff on their turn and the other people waited, right? Like war games, you know one person does a whole bunch of stuff move all my guys Attack attack attack do all this stuff and then now it's your turn right you play rigging samurai swords or you know So shogun, it's all the same game. So yeah, the game only takes four turns Yeah, risk your axis and allies got turn in that turn takes a full hour, right? So now modern games what they do is if they have turn taking at all They do lots and lots of little turns right when you play eclipse It's like I've moved and the next guy researches and the next guy builds and the next guy moves in the next I write you're going around doing lots of little things take it to ride It's your turn you can take a cards which takes two seconds You can build trains which takes a few more seconds you can take routes You almost never do that maybe once a game right and that also doesn't take very long at all So it's take trains take trains take trains build trains take trains it goes around really fast All right, and that's a modern game design people aren't bored at the table Right is there any more modern newer tabletop games are much more popular now at the same time There's a lot of subtlety there in a game where Scott's turn takes a long time on my turn I can spend that time thinking and planning my turn more or less depending on how the games design some games Don't let you do this They don't give you enough information to when it's not your turn make a reasonable plan or decision like Alambra is a Great game, but you can't do anything when it's not your turn if you try to plan your turn Someone's gonna take that tile Guaranteed so you basically have to sit there and ignore the game until it's your turn and then take your turn But if you design a game you can think about that Do you want players to be able to plan their turn ahead of time? If so you need to give them the information necessary to make those decisions If you do this even very complex games will move a lot quicker games to do this poorly take forever Not just because the turns take a long time, but because every player is starting from scratch at the beginning of their turn Now even more subtly you might even not want to do that Alambra actually works as a game because you don't want players planning when It's not their turn. Why would you do that? Why would you want players to not have any ability to plan on their turn? So they don't have to think too hard No, not having to think too hard means they can socialize sometimes some crazy people. We're not these crazy people They're right out in this room There's people out there who like to talk to people and have fun while they're playing again Now I'm not that way I'm looking at the Puerto Rico board like all right if Scott captains three turns from now I'll win if this and this and this happen But a game like Alambra the turns are very quick and you cannot plan when it's not your turn as a result When you're taking your turn you're out of the game for maybe 10 seconds 20 seconds while you take your turn Everyone else is just socializing and hanging out So the game becomes more social if you're designing a game The way turn-taking works is a huge impact on whether or not people will talk to each other during your game All right Let's move on because we spend that much time on every one of these we're gonna be not finishing everyone of these is really Complicated. I know it's really good. Okay, so the next one racing you think right racing is pretty simple Whoever gets to the end first wins right and you might think you know racing You might think race cars bike racing running racing you just go as fast as possible. That's the strategy, right? Well, not necessarily right a lot of times going slower is better This is formula D or formula day as it was previously known and in this game You got to go slow because you have to stop a certain number of times in each corner to prevent from crashing If you don't out of the game, that's right So, you know, it's like you basically risk getting kicked out of the game if you go too fast The thing is right is I think it was Porsche You know Mr. Porsche right who said the perfect race car will go over the finish line and then explode Right, his little brother style. Yeah fall apart in a heap right is and a lot of these racing games is you know You expend resources, you know your tires wear out your you know you your you've run out of fuel Right, you basically have to bring it to the edge. It's like I'll go faster around this corner You know if I don't stop, you know one more time in this corner I'm gonna take some damage and it's like well if you think of those damages as Spend all of them except for one the one that will make your car explode before the end of the race if you try To prevent all damage you're gonna go too slow right you're not gonna make it now racing's a mechanic that exists within a lot Of other games like power grid sort of has the race to victory points the race to fill out places Obviously, it's a little more abstract But even then look what happens if you end your turn and you've got one or two Electros as opposed to zero you probably played suboptimally you could have done something to where you could have spent those Electros you'll notice players who win power grid more often and their turn with either zero or a whole bunch Every single turn pay attention to that those players know what they're doing Also things that don't appear to be races are races any board game you play where it's like whoever the game is over when someone gets a hundred points Like Vinci was like that that's a race It doesn't look like a race because you're not physically running You know you can't see that you're ahead of someone but it is a race now Vinci is the game that small world became small world Is based on Vinci? Oh, okay, so yeah, I don't think anyone would no one knows Vinci Anyway, you should if you if you like small world you should play Vinci once if you could find a copy just to see what the differences are It's pretty interesting. There are some misprints in a rata and stuff like that All right, so if you're a game designer, you're making a game When would you put in a race when you put in a race is when you want to test? How well the players can detect can calculate efficiency, right? If it's just you know a game where someone wins by you know defeating the opponent efficiency might not matter Someone might be able to play a very long I can build a whole lot of Zerg, right? It's like you know, there's no there's no time limit here This thing is only gonna end when it ends maybe a fighting You know I guess fighting games usually have a clock But let's see how to fighting game where there's no time limit, right? Well, I don't need to be efficient I can be super defensive and you just wait until I you know get their last hit point And there's there's no rush here. No time limit. No nothing, right? It's not gonna end But if you want to say we need to force these players to find a way to do You know to make them find a more efficient path instead of the slow build Which is really easy to come up with then you need to put some sort of race in your game If there's no ending no no way to push people forward that they need to reach there on time that they're not going to Right. It's like oh, I don't have to now making a good racing mechanic You need some way for the people behind to feel like they're catching up now I say feel like because and this is kind of an advanced topic But basically there's no such thing as catch-up mechanisms in games if you could catch up You weren't actually behind you just didn't understand the actual state of the game, right? And his best way to explain this is think about Mario Kart You look at Mario Kart and you look at who's winning and it says first place Mario second place Luigi third place princess, right? Okay, it says Mario first place we're on lap two out of three who is really in first place It's not Mario it says he's in first place, but he's not actually in first place because blue shell Everyone knows blue shells coming now. You'll see advanced players in games like this It's called a positional heuristic a way to figure out where you actually are who's actually winning people who win games like Mario Kart Are playing with their own complex heuristic. They know who's really winning. They're not paying attention to first second third That's the guy who hangs in back and power grid the whole game and then a rubber bands into the front at the very end So it looks like a catch-up mechanism right when Luigi wins that race from second It's like oh he caught up right no He was in first place the whole time you were just incorrectly calculating who was in first now That's all well good in theory But in practice catch-up mechanisms basically do exist and a good example of this is in a racing game You want players to have the ability to risk more for greater reward at any point that way any players falling behind Will take ever-increasing risks to be able to catch up right you look at you know American football, right? It's like oh shit. There's like 30 seconds left in the game You know we just scored, but we need some more points to actually win this. Let's go crazy. I'm such a guy Let's you know, let's do a Hail Mary. There's all these crazy things you can try that are very high-risk They're probably not gonna work, but you can use a way you can make it go for it now They serve three purposes one if you want to win games Always add randomness and always take extra risks when you're behind or you think you're behind That is the best chance you've got of catching up to these add excitement If I'm watching football and an on-site kick happens. Holy crap. That is Rondle something that is rarely seen who here know that has never seen the word Rondle before Okay Okay, so this is from a game called antique II right and the way this work is you can only move up between One and three steps and each of these is different action, right? So if I'm the green guy, right? I can go I can on my next turn I could do gold maneuver or farming, but I can't do marble know how to do that other maneuver iron or temple Right, so you sort of if you go slowly you can do all the things and you go quickly It's like you're limited on what you can do in your next turn So what this causes is a cycle in the game, right? You've got sort of you know this this cycle of you do these things then you do these things They do these things you do these things now games all have cycles You'll see this when you play power good or any game like now people are buying houses now They're doing this other thing, but this does it not only enforces the cycle, but it reinforces it It shows you hey the cycle is here You don't have to figure it out the important part of this game is everything but this Rondle Because everyone sees the same Rondle. They know the ebb and flow. There's a lot of other games though that also have Rondles I think seasons is a pretty hot game right now that has a Rondle that goes around as the seasons change the different types of energy tokens become more common and more rare One can argue that in the Dune board game the sandstorm is players affect how rapidly it moves around the board wiping everything out It's definitely a rondo it goes all the way around the board killing everything in his path the sandstorm So people are constantly running away from it So you can see any place that's near the sandstorm is a weak area and anything that's behind it is a very strong area To go into so you got to see where the spice drops right so when you're playing a game And you see a Rondle what you need to do is you need to basically on your turn You know instead of looking at your current situation what you have you need to say How can I line up what I have with the movement of this circle right? I need to be up when it's up and down when it's down You know when if you're playing agricula which sort of has a cycle even those have a physical Rondle Right has the harvest and then a new phase and then a harvest right you got to have the food Go up at the harvest and then down after the harvest if your food if you're baking You know if you're sewing during the harvest round and you're not gonna get that big action till after it you're you're shifted away It's not a good situation now mechanically when these Rondles exist like agricula The cycle is set the hardest happens at a set time no matter what typically when someone designs a Rondle The Rondle is variable by the players players at input into how quickly or slowly the Rondle moves Let's speed up and let's slow down if you want to be good at Rondles Usually I say you don't need to do math You just need heuristics need to kind of figure out intuitively how to play with Rondles do modulus math in your head Learn how to do it quickly your head. I'm not joking. It's really easy to do You can calculate out where it's gonna be or where it could be for the next two or three turns into the future And then you look at the other players. Oh Scott really needs to maneuver So I know he's gonna push the thing over there So I know how the rest of the board is gonna look yeah, but I mean I think the way this Rondle Yeah, this one doesn't actually work. You can you can always maneuver because this two of them I think right but like the sandstorm if you're you just maneuvered you can't maneuver again The sandstorm and doom players decide by setting numbers Collectively how fast or how slow it moves? Yes, so in a game like that You know you can either shift your play to line up with the existing cycle or you can shift the cycle itself to line Up with whatever you your current situation is If you're a game designer and you want to put a rondle in your game You totally should because it's not enough rondle games. Oh my god. I want this word Love rondle so much. We saw that game antique a years ago We're like what's this spinner looking thing and we were just obsessed with it Yeah, it was not that good though Usually rondles are very good for when you want to have phases in your game and you want to sort of have you know Another cycle within the phases right so like the game itself everyone's building up right but as they build up It's like they need to get resources and spend them and get resources and spend them or you know Get resources and use them in a different way, right? And when you want to physically allow players to do what we just said to you know shift that cycle to line up with how they're playing You know then you should put a rondle in there to visualize it and it's totally fun Now simultaneously you're doing this when you don't want the game to be about players Figuring out that there is a cycle or figuring the cycle out on their own You're giving it to them and telling them use this to optimize the rest of your game Yeah, if you're not gonna if the cycle is gonna be set in place like you know a curricula, right? Their harvests are here here here here end of story then rondle is no good. Okay gambling yeah money Okay, so obviously everyone knows that gambling is right if you're playing gambling any gambling of any kind What do you do? It's just really brain-dead simple You just know what the odds are if you don't know what the odds are and don't really understand probability Properly like you're buying lottery tickets or something that do not gamble ever With real money or not real money, but gambling happens even outside of casinos There's plenty of you know board games that you play or even video games that are Gambling you just don't realize that they are gambling right some of them are really obvious like what was that horse racing game? We played oh my god, I don't know what that was called Yeah, roll dice move horses around and then one of them wins Yeah, you just literally just bet on these horses with fake Monopoly, you know game money And then you win game money and then so ever yeah the winner It's actually really fun game Because you're not using real money, but you know there's there's plenty of other times, you know where it's just you know Okay, I'm playing this you know card I know there's a 30% chance that this card will do this thing that I really need and there's a 50% chance that thing will go but that one costs more so would you bet a dollar on a 30% chance or five dollars on a 50% chance and it's like do you know which one of those is better? You know and like we said before if it's early game and you're winning play conservatively If it's late game and you're losing onside kick do the crazy move, right? That is a very low percentage chance of succeeding, right? If you're a game designer, when do you put gambling in games? When your players don't understand probabilities? Because if the players understand probabilities and you put gambling in there the game will be very very boring Because everyone will just know what the optimal move is with the greatest odds of success and do it over and over and over again Now there is a counter example that has got pointed out this horse racing game that we actually really enjoyed playing was a dumb It was just a gambling game. It was basically a glorified roulette table But because that game really focused on the sort of social elements. It was a fun game to play It just wasn't a good game in terms of you know any sort of strategic thinking You're not gonna feel like you played well Monopoly is a terrible example It's a terrible game, but like Puerto Rico or El Grande or one of these you know really even chess You're not gonna get that feeling But you're still gonna have fun gambling is really good to use in light games or quick games or games Where you don't really know one really cares who wins like they want to win, but they're not gonna talk about that time They won so games that are just fun that you're gonna play for 20 minutes in the expo hall with some dude And then go off somewhere else in the con that is where you use gambling I mean even the game we played yesterday skyline had it where you roll these dice to build buildings And the building pieces are the dice right that had a huge element of gambling I was like well, I'm rolling this die There's a one and six chance it'll come up as you know Give me a lot of points if it doesn't come up that way I'm gonna give it and someone else is gonna get that die and have a greater chance Now you were winning and then Frank pulled a hail Mary in real this crazy role and he was winning and then I pulled another hail Mary one million shot and I was winning that game got really exciting gambling ads Excitement because you don't know how it's gonna end up The number one game mechanic in the entire right now. All right. All right, so rock paper scissors now When we say rock paper scissors, we're not talking about the game Well, we are talking about the game rock-paper-scissors, but Basically, there are tons and tons and tons of rock paper scissors is is In almost every game that you play ever Starcraft World of Warcraft anything with a almost like it's hard to fix Stratego very almost any game you think of has a rock paper scissors going on somewhere within it Though it's not just a three-way, right? It's like one of those thousand-way rock paper scissors is that there is you know where it's like Well, you know this tank is strong against that aircraft because it has extra armor But that helicopter is strong against the tank right fire emblems a great one right axe beats spears spear beats Sword I think and sword beats axe. I play advanced wars. I know nothing of your fire Yeah, I hope I'm right, but fire emblem has the sword Notting I'm right good. I was gonna say the internet is about to rage on you Had it right right is this rock-paper-scissors? So when you encounter a rock-paper-scissors in a game, right? The first thing I do is recognize that it is a rock-paper-scissors right number two You have to determine what kind of rock-paper-scissors is sometimes it's the simultaneous reveal like you don't know It's you know, you don't know what the other guys got sometimes, you know what the other guys got fire emblem I see that guy standing there holding a sword. I wonder what he's got I will send my next guy Right, you know what to use on that guy, so it's like rim and play that way All right, I've thrown no you had to show it to me. No, it's obvious. Oh, you gotta send a scout and get them If there's a scout using it's probably a good idea, right? But the real thing you have to do is you have to know the whole chart right memorization is the number one thing going on When there's only rock-paper-scissors everyone in this room knows which one beats which one when there's 10,000 different military units, right? Simply knowing which one beats which one is this huge memorization task, right? And when there's way too many of them like in a lot of complicated games It really makes it hard for new people to play because even if they are really good Strategically thinking or really good at problem-solving simply not knowing all the information all the different things that they could throw What you know, it's like if there's lizards and Spock's and 10 other things, right? If you don't know which one beats which one you're just you basically can't win The other person will throw something and let you see it like I got scissors. I mean, you don't know what beats this Is it another scissors? No You've got to know that it's rock, right? Now this can be complicated further when one of these components like in Starcraft sure You can let you zerg or whatever all these pieces, but there's a skill component Maybe scissors is really hard to throw because I got to be like this and if it's slightly crooked, I don't win That's true. You think about like a lot of fighting games, right? You'll see like a new fighting game will come out completely new, right? And one character will just be like that Everyone's using that character and winning all the time, right? Well that character is easy to use and really strong Well, then you see another tournament and suddenly, you know this other character people are using the more often Everyone's winning with Dan suddenly. What's up with that? Yeah, what's up with that, right? It's some character that is more powerful than the character A, right? Character B is crazy more powerful, but way harder to use So you need this high level of skill to sort of activate, right? So yeah, rock beats scissors if you can lift 500 pounds, right? So everyone goes to the gym and works out Really, you know, they can lift 500 now and then just sort of rock every time, right? And now it's just a battle between the rock people and the scissors people are not competitive anymore You know, there are other things that are rock, paper, scissors don't appear to be A shell game is actually a rock, paper, scissors, right? It's I put the shell and I put the marble in one, two or three and you pick one, two or three But usually in the shell game, it's not in any of them because I'm cheating That's true, that's true, but in a fair nice game, right? That's why I say stratego is rock, paper, scissors, right? Is the flag near the left? Is it near the middle or is it near the right? Right, and you have to put your big army with all your bomb getting rid of guys minors Also in the left the middle or the right at the beginning of the game And if he puts his big army in the same general area as your flag and you're sort of Dagging the opposite from his flag Not likely you're gonna win if you're both play properly So there you go rock, paper, scissors is everywhere. So if you encounter one Step one memorize the whole thing, right? That's it. Okay. So if you're a game designer When do you put in a rock, paper, scissors pretty much every game? It gives you a nice sort of it makes games feel very tactical You feel very accomplished when you build up a bunch of anti-aircraft and you take out those bombers that are coming in You feel really good when that happens even like world of warcraft, right? It's like, okay He's playing that class. I know what abilities he has. I'm playing this class So I know what abilities I have that are better than the ability that counter his abilities, right? And people freaking love that shit. It's the greatest. Um, okay, so let's move on Surprise events not used often enough nearly. This is star fairs of katan, right? And in this game, there are certain things that can happen where you draw a card Right and the card will be like so another player will hold the card and be like, okay We're gonna do this one ready. All right, we'll do it a space pirate attacks you. Do you flee? Yes or no? No You must fight the second player to your right takes on the role of the pirate You must each roll your mother ship and add your cannons is the other player stronger. No victory If you played ftl the same thing happens you hit random events, but they're not a hundred percent random There's a set of events. It's like oh, it's the space pirate event But you there's like five different flavors of the space pirate event and you pick it something Maybe you get extra options. Maybe there's a skill to money. You have to fight the dude But it's basically that and it's used Primarily in space games like this. I don't know why paranoia not paranoia. Um pandemic, right? You're flipping the cards over you get the surprise events like oh, shit Well in the next panel, I'll talk about that a lot of cooperative games Why they need that mechanic in there? So if you're playing a game with surprise events Memorize all of them, right? We played this game with some people who played it a hundred times and it's like a space pirate attack Yes, they just know everything that's going to happen on every one of these cards. It's only a deck of them, right? um But memorizing them is good, but a lot of them have random possibilities right like an ftl So it's like you have to know that when you find a crazy old man I'll band down on a planet if there's a 60 chance that he'll go crazy and kill your crew Right, you know, you have to know that and it sort of becomes now gambling Right when you know the odds If you're a game designer, when do you put in the surprise events? You put in a surprise events to a game that pretty much it's easy to insert into almost anything Right, it's like, you know, it's just to spice it up any game where things are just sort of going flat Where everyone does the same thing every game, right? It's like, you know Okay on turn one you always do this and turn two you always do that You need some sort of surprise even in Puerto Rico. There's a surprise. It's what settlements are going to show up, right? We flip over this. It's not an event necessarily But it's still this surprise into something that doesn't have other kinds of randomness, right? And the surprise affects all the players equally It's not like, you know Some random thing where you got screwed because you're rolling dice to shoot and you lost and the other guy rolled dice And he got all hits, right? It's some random thing happens to sort of stir it up So every game is not the same in a curricula you everyone starts with a fistful of cards That's a surprise event. What seven cards do you start with? All right Now surprise events as a game designer serve a few purposes one Injecting randomness basically makes a pseudo catch-up mechanism Randomness is the bane of players who are already ahead So players are further behind like I said before want randomness is coming all the time So if you have random events periodically that serves to sort of keep the boundary of the first place player and the last place Player close enough to where the game still feels exciting. So it basically provides a catch-up mechanism It all it also vastly increases the replay value, right? Because you're not gonna have the same random events every time you play play master of ryan 2 space amoeba one game Crazy wormhole the other game But at the same time it decreases the replay ability in that this game This star fairs of katan is super fun if you play it once every few months If you play it every day, you're gonna get really tired of those events You'll have them all memorized all the sort of fun of the flavor text and the sort of non-game elements of it are lost That noise. Oh, there's a theater like right there. There's something weird going on over there. There's messing with me All right, so let's move on. Okay drafting. Oh, baby. So the word drafting Right, there's a lot of things that are drafts and people don't realize they are drafts What a draft is right for anyone who you know, doesn't get it is the kickball field It's i'll take jimmy. I'll take bimmy. Yeah, that's a draft. You have an array of visible things And you pick right you see resources and you say I want that one. I want that one right seven wonders You get a handful of cards. I'll take this one and you pass it. It's the same nfl draft I want that college player on my team. I want that one on my team All of these things are drafts in ticket to ride. You see five face-up train cards I'll take a black and I'll take a yellow. That's a draft right drafts are everywhere All right, and when you're a player all you have to do to succeed in a draft is two things number one You need to be able to evaluate correctly the value of all the things right when you're looking at all those players You have to know which one's better than the other one kickball You get that kid who's been in fifth grade for three years on your team That's right You know if you don't know which kid's better Right, you're in trouble. Uh the order of picking always also matters Which is why seven wonders is kind of good because everyone gets cards at the same time and picks We'll talk in a minute about the different kinds of drafts like different ways it's done Uh the other thing you need to do right is not only know the value of any particular one of the items for you You need to know the value of the items for other people, right? So I say I see that there's that you know really good card. It's a science card This would give me one point You also need to know that it's worth seven points to your neighbor who already has a bunch of science Is going on now if you're in second place and that person is ahead of you Denying them seven points effectively gets you seven points So getting that would have been one to you, right? Yeah But basically denying points to players who could beat you is tantamount to victory points in most cases So it's better to hurt the person who's ahead of you more than get a less number of points for yourself In general on average not all the time and this is the mistake a lot of people make is when there's a draft They'll just pick the most powerful thing every time for them Neglecting to recognize that the second or third most powerful option Was actually more powerful than the powerful option to a neighbor or opponent, right? It's the best quarterback. I could have taken him, but I have a quarterback Oh, but that other team is in our division is screwed if they don't get one, right? I'll let him be the backup Who cares? I'll be one Right work for san francisco All right, okay, so, you know, there's a lot of different kinds of drafts, right? There's the everyone, you know sees everyone you just take turns picking There's ones where you sort of pick in different numbers to really get settlers, right? It's pick one spot a second spot You're drafting the spots on the board when you start settlers, right? It's the first player gets the best spot the second player third fourth gets two spots And then you go back up, right? So that way the order evens out whoever gets the best spot also gets the worst spot Sometimes when you're doing kickball, it's actually more fair to let one person get the first pick And the second person to get second and third picks which really outweighs the problem of There's only one guy who's been in fifth grade for three years, right? And is everyone else's little kid? But it doesn't work out if there are exactly three kids who have been in fifth grade for three years No, it doesn't you still go one two two two two is better than one one one one Anyway, uh, what other kinds of drafts are there? There's drafting and race cars following on behind someone It's actually a different kind of draft It is different but is related in one sense Remember we talked about the left right and everything in seven wonders Notice how you pass in one direction Then you pass in the other direction you keep alternating the way you're passing If you passed all the cards clockwise the player to your right is going to have a huge influence on you for the entire rest of the game And that would really make the game on fun If you start with science and then the player to your right just never ever passes you a science card again They control your whole game So it has to alternate to make seven wonders make sense to let you have the ability To try to choose a strategy instead of being dependent solely on what the person to your right is doing All right, so yeah drafts are freaking everywhere and they're totally awesome If you're making a game, when do you put in a draft right when you put in a draft? Oh, there's drafting and magic too, right? There's that right same thing When do you put in a draft you put in a draft when you have resources that the value of is not obvious Right, it's stupid to say have a draft where who wants the seven-point card and who wants the five-point card Right, it's obvious So it's really boring and dumb to have a draft right what you do is when you have a card This card does this weird thing and this card does this weird thing Which one do you want and you want to see if the players can figure out which one is better Right, we have lots of different options that have non obvious values A draft is a great way to test the players like do you know which one is better and then the game is about Can you tell right can you calculate now? They also add a sense of fairness to games that have some randomism a good example of this is a mod you can do to Agricola many of you are probably familiar with Agricola You get passed out all those little improvement cards and the family members early in the beginning of the game And you use those to kind of guide your play like advanced players their strategy is basically dependent upon The two or three of those they plan to build If you do a draft seven wonder style of those cards It removes that random element and now all players have an equal chance of trying to construct Their strategy ahead of time it adds this whole element to a curricula that isn't there Normally that doesn't matter to most players But if you played a curricula a thousand times that potato diver is way better than a lot of other cards You could get and having that gives you a better chance of winning But if you can tailor your strategy around other things You can augment the game and continue playing it when it otherwise would have started to feel stale to you All right, let's talk about two other things that are basically sort of very draft related right so you have worker placement Right a lot of games got the worker placement going on But isn't worker placement just a draft of the jobs? Right, but the difference between worker placement and a straight up, you know Other kinds of drafting is how many you get to pick most worker placement games allow you to get more workers If you see a worker placement game of any kind priority number one is get more workers A curricula that baby you make babies before anyone else do fuck everything else in that game Right I only care about that wood so I can build a freaking room for that baby I only care about that reed so I can build a roof for the baby. I only care about the food So I can feed the baby get the baby And then make it work in the fields In this case building a castle for the king of friends All right worker placement games you need more workers because then you get more draft picks Right, what's better than more draft picks? All right, nothing Um All right, the other thing you have to worry about in a lot of worker placement games is that when you get a pick Right someone else is going to get something also, right? Not always but often it's a characteristic of worker placement as sort of a subset of drafting that usually you're placing workers on things Players may own those things it's very common in games of worker placement Where a player owns the building and gets like some of the victory points or some of the production Whenever another player chooses it, right? So what this does is it interferes with your calculation of the total worth of something right if I pick You know this building here some guy actually none of these buildings will do that But if you pick this building and I'll rim will get a dollar and I'll get a purple cube, right? Well, now I have to decrease what is the value of the purple cube in dollars and subtract one Right not easy to do but you have to you have to do it anyway if you want to win Now the other characteristic that's interesting that's specific to these is that usually placing a worker For that round denies that building or that structure to every other player Well, I think that's common in all drafts, right anytime you pick something you are denying that thing to everyone else But this is repeated denial where there's one card It's like you're doing the same draft over and over and over again And there's only one Fifth grader who's been in fifth grade for three years and you get him on every single turn So suddenly turn order becomes important because that also determines draft order So you see how these all kind of start linking together in complex games, right? Another thing related to drafts Is auctions, right an auction is sort of a draft, right? One item goes up usually at a time, right? And or maybe in I guess power grid there's multiple power plants to choose from but only one is being auctioned at a time And everyone has to sort of value it, but no it's not picking right this is where auctions are different You're not picking you're bidding right now. What you're really doing is valuation. You are collectively valuing an asset that has you know, it has some real Intrinsic value to the game It's worth the number of victory points in the end But maybe the players don't know the players are sort of collectively figuring out exactly how much it's worth So you're usually incorrectly because people suck at auctions, right? It's very very similar to the same kind of thinking you do in a draft So you say which one is better? How strong is that one that one's seven better than that one, right? But you actually have to come up with a precise number, right? That one is worth 14 because it's plus four me minus 10 rim and that one's worth 17 Because it's plus 10 me minus seven, right? You have to really have to figure out exactly the right number, right? You mean any kind of auction, right? I mean there's all different kinds of auctions. There's like, you know the open bidding Do I want to turn right? You got the closed fist where you put coins in your fist and then you open it whoever has the most gets it Right, you got a once around where you say one number and then it goes around and the turn order matters And you know, there's tons and tons of auction varieties out there Now auctions are complex enough to where there are a lot of board games that are just auctions and nothing else Pizarro is a game when you just Bid on a bunch of dudes and they're worth victory points and the game's over Modern art you do that six or seven times Uh, Medici I think is also another game where it's just auctions all the time Now what amazes me how often we'll play auction games So as players how to be good at auctions Actually figure out what things are worth come up with some way to value these items and think about it Do you know how many times we play modern art? There's a painting that's up We're playing with someone who's played the game before they know the rules It cannot be worth more than 30 dollars It physically 30 dollars is the most it could possibly be worth and some kid will be like I bet 35 What's wrong with you? Like we don't even I don't know what to do about that and many of you might be doing that too I've done it on occasion auctions are actually it's really hard to value stuff So get good at auctions and you'll be able to win pretty much any game that involves auctions in any capacity Because every other player will be terrible at them and the the biggest difficulty of auctions is that you have to value something in terms of something else, right? I see okay, so You might know exactly that's worth five victory points That's worth six, but you're not buying them with victory points. You're buying them with coins And you have to know how many victory points is a coin worth? Well in something like seven wonders, there's no auctions, but you know a three coins I think it's a victory point. Yep modern art coins are victory points, right in Puerto Rico Early in the game a doubloon is worth multiple victory points late in the game A doubloon is worth less than a victory points You have to know what turn it is and on that turn figure out How many victory points is a coin worth right now? All right, not easy to figure out in addition to evaluating whatever it is that you're buying Psychology also has a huge component on auctions We used to play games with this guy upstate new york years ago where he was very scott could troll him to a point that was legendary So in the auction game, he'd think very carefully and he'd be like I bid 14 15 And then you sit there for another minute like I bid 17 18 This would infuriate him and he would not let scott beat him in the auction Right and the reason I was able to do this is because before it even started I had said that is worth 26 and I would just bid up exactly by one to pay as least as possible And if it got to 27, I'd say I'm out But simultaneously scott isn't bidding his value because he knows the guy hasn't figured that out the guy's calculating This is kind of the psychology you watch him calculating He hasn't figured out what he's gonna bid so when scott is immediately immediately saying what the next bid is The guy is thrown off. He doesn't have time to calculate suddenly He feels pressured. He feels like scott knows something he doesn't and he didn't like scott That's just I wonder why Sometimes scott would just bid him up until he'd spend all his money on something worth nothing Yeah, and it's like you might think well, I don't have to calculate anything I'll just keep bidding up by one until everyone else stops. Then I'll have the right number No, you'll be over by one Right, you'll lose that way And you played power grade if you're off by one in the second round You're probably gonna lose the game if everyone knows what they're doing. I like mr. Sleepy over Okay So, uh, if you are making games, right? When do you put in an auction? Usually when you put in auctions It becomes an auction game. It's one of those mechanics sort of dominates everything else It's like putting chocolate in something the chocolate flavor overpowers all the other flavors Right because basically what happens is even though you might put a lot of other things in the game Like power grid has tons of stuff in there besides just the auction The auctions matter so much in determining who wins that the other parts matter less, right? Like where to put your houses in power grid is you put them in the cheapest spot you can, you know Maybe you deny someone a spot. It's not really different, right? How much resources do you buy in the market? You buy what you need to power your buildings, you know Do you buy a turn ahead? Maybe if there's a lot of cheap resources, right? Not very difficult, right? Most of determining who wins power grid is the auction for the power plants Now you also use auctions is if as a game designer You're lazy and you don't want to figure out what your widgets are worth Right Think about magic cards, right? When you make a magic card if you're a magic game designer You have to put in the top left corner of that card how much mana it is to play that card, right? Which means it's up to you the game designer to get that right if you're off by one You could break the game, right? So I'm gonna be like, yes, this is so cheap. Boom. Boom. Boom. I win, right? That's why there's no moxes around anymore, right? So not imagine if every magic card was just sort of like Question mark we do an auction for that magic card, right now It's up to the players to balance your game for you That would be a cool variant a mana auction cards come up and you auction you bid with your tapping mana to play the cards from a central pool How much how do we determine how much money you have still won for turn? I don't know you come up. You give I love to come up with it game designs Everyone just everyone plays with just a big deck of basic land they choose Each lander in there, but you're limited So it's like you can put more green or less black and then you have five decks of each color And each player takes a turn picking which deck we draw a card from and then we bid on it It has to be a five player game like the star Maybe I don't know crazy idea But yeah, when you don't want to have to balance things and determine what things are supposed to cost You have an auction and then maybe if you see over time what people are bidding you can make a new game And now you know what the price is supposed to be Okay, we got to move fast voting The vote who wins games the vote rim wins game It happens a lot a lot of games You don't realize are simply you sit at the table and you vote who wins and usually that's me in disguise Small of horrors you might as well just sit down at the table and have a little election and say all right Who at the table do we want to win guys and everyone says I want to win It's like we're playing this game in a wild winter jersey once Scott wasn't playing it's like on the couch playing a ds game and every round He just yells don't vote for rim in the vote who wins game and they're like, we're not gonna let rim win Yeah, I want So basically the the most basic vote who wins game is the chip taking game Right, so the chip taking game works is everyone has a number of chips. Let's say everyone has three Right, so I have three chips. You have three chips. Yep on your turn You vote for somebody that person takes a chip and throws it in the trash, right? So on my turn I vote for rim. I vote for scott. I vote for rim I vote for rim. I went first so rim loses these out of chips. I win Now even in a three-player game we call these political games They become highly political because now these meta elements matter more if it's me scott and uh, joey jojo And we both hate him Maybe we're both voting against him. Let's let's let's play with this game. What's up? I got three fingers Three fingers, right? Okay, vote for somebody Me? Yeah, you lose one. I vote for scott. I vote for rim Who you voting for? I vote for you. I'm gonna lose See I hated rim so much. I voted him out. It does letting him win, right? I wasn't able to vote for myself to win and so many games are that game If you play pretty much any war game with more than two players because you two players you're always voting for the other guy So one step further pretty much any game that has more than two players Or no more than two teams because if you have four players with around two teams It's still effectively two players where players can directly attack each other Direct fucking games as opposed to indirect fucking games like a greek lover You can just get in someone's way and they're babies If all that can occur Then the game becomes political because it doesn't matter what my army does What matters is that I attacked scott instead of you scott is now minus one and we're both at zero Who you attack becomes the only thing that determines who wins the game and almost unless you're so bad at attacking True. You have to be really bad. But like model of horror is just vote There's a game where there's rowboats and they're trying to get office-thinking chef and every round you just vote someone off the island Until eventually kick them off the robot into the ocean All right, so many vote who wins games if you're a designer you want to make a game with voting It better be a party Like mafia is a good voting game You're voting on who to murder every day hoping that they're mafia also known as werewolf These games tend to be very social. They tend to be very fun. They tend to be very boisterous But they're not really good down level games because the voting just overpowers like chocolate everything else This is why most big serious miniatures war games go to player, right? We played battle tech with like four players in college. It was really the vote who wins game Well scott, I think it's a great game Among the players who don't make a 40 ton mech with nine jump jets and nothing but small lasers Dude, you hit someone with all those small lasers. You get to roll the dice so many times One of them is going to come on headshot. Yeah, meanwhile, I'm back up into the corner I have a mech that only has armor on the front two gouse can is the targeting computer No jump jets. I'm just backed up like this way All right, let's let's keep moving. We're running out of time in 10 minutes and we got more slides. Okay trading Right. And so trading what happens when you trade with someone in a game, right? You're basically boosting both of you plus one and everyone else stays the same sellers, right? What happens, right? So if you think about it when you play settlers first place guy trade with fourth place guy Well, you know assuming no one rips anyone off, right? It's an even trade because if you rip someone off someone made a mistake Don't get ripped off and if someone's letting you rip them off. Sure, but that what are the what's wrong with them Um, if you make an even trade with someone, assumedly the only trade you would ever make You're boosting both of you up first place and fourth place. Why would fourth place guy do that? It only gets in the third place and now your first place guy is almost guaranteed to win because you're even farther ahead Second place guy is not going to trade with first place because first place is already in his way Yeah, all that does is hurt third and fourth place guys by putting them even farther back, right? Third place guy and fourth place guy trading third place guy doesn't want to fall even farther, you know It's like maybe that helps them catch up to second place guys watch professional or like tournament level settlers play And you'll see that no one trades with anyone ever people don't trade unless they're ripping someone off One of them doesn't know what they're doing or two players are attempting to king make or they're gonna try to trade With each other and just blow everyone else behind and then it's a 50-50 shot Which one of them wins this is a game called genoa where you can trade anything with anybody at any time, right? Bonanza is a game that's not pictured is the best trading game there is because basically what it is is When you draw these two beans every turn and you can either take them or trade them away But if you take them they might hurt you, right? So a lot of times you draw and you are forced to trade because it's basically it's a landmine for me But it's a cookie for him, right? So now suddenly trading gets good people want to trade so yes desperately take away this landmine from me All right, it's a cookie. Awesome. So as a designer Trading games you want to have some sort of really powerful incentive for people to trade Otherwise smart players on the player side won't trade unless they're ripping someone off And unless you're smarter than all your friends, they know you're ripping them off and no one trades Okay, so let's move on Chicken, right? This is a chicken as in two people are driving a car at each other Right and are you gonna stop or are you gonna veer out of the way? Bringsmanship is if people use that term is a similar mechanic, right? And a lot of the times you see this is basically it's it's a good way to Mechanic in a game to stop the situation where someone is way too far ahead, right? Or someone is about to win. There's a way to stop them, right? So you see this if you've ever played uh, uh, crononauts, right? Crononauts has a way where if someone's about to win if you just disturb enough of the timeline There's a collapse and everyone loses Right lose with all of you then let you win exactly, right? So, you know, this is a game called, uh, what's the name of this con? No, thanks, right? Where you pass this token thing around and it's basically, you know worth It's a bad thing You don't want to take cards But you get in order to pass a card to someone else you to put a chip on it So you're putting more and more chips on it But the chips are worth points So you might want to eventually take it you're basically playing chicken of I don't want to take this you're gonna take it No, I hope it's getting better all the time though If you pass it around again, I'm gonna take it Yeah, it keeps getting better all the time, but it's still bad to take it, right? But you need the chips Uh, so if you're a game designer, when do you put in chicken? I think chicken is a great way to balance momentum games, right? There are a lot of games where somebody will snowball to victory, you know And it's like, you know early on they're gonna win, right? It's over before it's over and you didn't put in an ending mechanic where it ends at the right times You have this really boring mid-to-late game where, you know, we know who's won. We're just playing this out guys, right? If you put in some sort of chicken, you know destroy the world mechanic, right? I'll just crash into you I'll kamikaze, right? That really keeps things interesting keeps people in the game because they'll just go near the big red button And all of a sudden the winning players will back off and then they can catch up again Right and if they try to get ahead again red button take turns by the red button Now chicken because we you're gonna miss the next panel a little side with chicken games There's a way to guarantee you're gonna win if we're throwing the chicken actual chicken We're in cars. We're gonna race. I can threaten scops say i'm not gonna swerve But that doesn't mean anything. I mean, it's a threat. I don't want to die So all I have to do is look at scott rip my steering wheel out throw it away Now I can't swerve and what if we simultaneously pull our steering wheels off so The chicken forces an escalation of mechanics an escalation of strategy where now the game of chicken is really who can grip their steering wheel out the fastest All right, we're running out of time Tile laying there's a lot of tile laying games out there, right Tile laying games are really all about Figuring out you you draw tile and you put it somewhere in this sort of you know geographic space You're making a board you're making a gamer You're making some asset that's usually shared by all the players, but not always not always It's all about being able to tell how much just like sort of drafting right you think you're drafting the geography Right almost if I put this tile here It's worth x points for me and x points for somebody else Right or maybe you know crafting the land in this way will get me some points in the future And you need a lot of spatial reasoning, especially to get farmers in and freaking carcassonne like rim does I can't do it. I don't know what he's up to um Trick-taking there's tons of trick-taking games I've run into six people at packs this weekend who've never played a trick-taking game. Yeah hearts yuker wist Funny old guys play it right What trick-taking is all about is you know, everyone plays something right that does something and then Someone takes all of it some trick-taking games. You want to take tricks. It's like ooh I want I played the best one. I get them sometimes. It's I don't want to take them like hearts Right you take them. I want to play the weakest in a way It's almost a subset of an auction. It's like a simultaneous auction But usually there's rules about what you're allowed to bid with do you have to follow suit? You know things like that Uh, so when usually trick-taking dominates an entire game But I think there's a lot of potential for a designer to make a game that involves trick-taking That is not just you know boring old yuker, right? Like you look at something like memoir 44 the command and color series where you play a card to order your troops Right? Well, what if everyone simultaneously played a card to order their troops and the card did something? But it all there was also a trick-taking aspect So the more the card that does something more powerful on the battlefield is weaker in the trick-taking game So it bounces out and whoever takes the trick gets some sort of bonus Well, like grimoire has a really almost a mechanic like that. It's not a great game It's got a lot of mechanical problems But you have a spellbook for spells the more powerful spells go with a lower initiative They go later or a higher initiative depending on what version of dnd you play it It's synod else has a similar mechanic, right? Where it's like, you know, okay, I can play the warlord, but he goes last, right? Not so good warlord other people are gonna hit you before you hit them. All right, dexterity tests Pretty much if you have a dexterity test in your game, it's jungle speed And it's funny stormtroopers playing jungle speed because they have no dexterity It'd be funnier if it was a shooting range Yeah, but anyway, if you put a dexterity test in your game, it now becomes a sport Right, that's pretty much all there is to it If there is any physical aspect to determining who's going to win or lose the game that actually matters It is a sport by definition So when do you put a dexterity test in you put it into a game where you want to test dexterity and That's pretty much all it can be used as a sub mechanic Like there's there was a game I think I'll get a catacomb or something where it's like a dungeon crawler But you use flicking of little bits like you flick When you shoot like a magic missile you get three little purple dots and you go pew pew And you actually have to make them hit the monster when you flick them So jake, uh, I don't know arcum horror or castle raven loft it makes it with crocodile It's crocodile plus raven loft basically Um, but if you're good at that mechanic, it's the same as if you're playing counter strike It doesn't matter how much strategy the other guys use if I'm better at clicking on heads My team will win no matter what Uh dexterity tests are the best at least tabletop wise for Party type games, right? You're not getting serious people You know, you can't really get that good at you know flicking these tiny little probably even crocodiles a little more precise Well, you can if the game's about that you're gonna dedicate yourself to that just like you would any But you require such precise craftsmanship to get anything that will behave consistently I mean even bowling alleys don't behave consistently based on like the waxing and stuff, right? So no one can really build up a consistent skill the professional bowlers don't get 300 every time Even though all they do is bowl every single day of their lives, right? So jungle speed, you know, the fastest grabber, right? There's not going to be any consistent skill there, right? It's better for a party game situation Alliances. Oh, yeah, everyone's favorite So alliances are sort of like voting who wins Except when you're voting for someone to win they're winning with you, right? If you just playing a game like risk and you say let's ally That's not there's nothing in the rulebook of risk about alliances zero. Nothing's nothing. It's not a real rule Game theory is a non cooperative game, right? Only one person wins at risk in the end that alliance is bullshit It doesn't exist, right? You don't have to honor it. Nothing's stopping you from just killing them, right? But in eclipse or dune, right the alliances are real It's you can't attack the other person who's in the alliance if you do There is a severe penalty for doing so even steve jackson's luminati There's a way to have joint victory with one or more people and that's awesome because otherwise it wasn't possible to win that game, right? So if you're playing a game that has real alliances where you actually are forming teams of the other players Think of it like voting instead, right? Think of it like a parliamentary election. You have to form a coalition, right? You want it's better to win on your own, of course, right? Who wants other people to win? Nobody But you want to win with as few other people as possible, right? So you look and you say, okay this board of eclipse if i'm red blue and red go together We have more than 50 of the star fleet power of the universe galaxy Let's just do that because then only two people will win now alliances can become highly political very quickly In dune you can form arbitrarily sized alliances everyone, but scott might form an alliance We all win immediately scott just loses ha ha ha But for example eclipse has restrictions on how big alliances can be and mechanics around it To force alliances to still be fairly even so it doesn't just become political. It also becomes intrinsic to the game So when do you make if you're making a game that has an alliance situation, right? When would you make the alliance's official versus just sort of letting people do whatever they want like in risk? And pretty much it's if your players are making unofficial alliances You should probably have an official alliance rule your game was sort of begging for and letting it be unofficial We'll create all sorts of unhappy game experiences as players You know ally and and you know trader each other It's much more satisfying to do those things when there's a game mechanic enforcing it right when you trader someone in eclipse You get like this negative victory point card. It's like trader Right, that's way more satisfying than just you dick. Yep You said It makes a lot of upset players right but having that trader card no one's going to get upset It's going to be totally awesome upset All right one more traders and we're not talking about not talking about the alliance traders We're trying to talk about these co-op game traders who keep seeing right that guy and shadows over camelot Who's not trying to get the holy grail or you know, that's Cylon hanging out in the balestar galactica Right this surprised person who's supposed to be on your team. That's not actually on your team, right? In a game with a trader most of I think every single one of these games that I've seen It's usually obvious who the trader is Right because what can the trader do they can a they can play to win for the good guys? Well, they're gonna lose then because there's a trader right to they can play somewhat sub optimally Right, they you know try to look like you're trying to win But do a little bit of crappiness sometimes so that people don't think you're the trader so obviously Right and it's like okay, but I can tell if someone's playing sub optimally right even if just by a little bit It's obvious I mean you guys play pandemic usually two people at the table know exactly how to play optimally And they're just telling me what else what to do like no one else needs to even be there So if someone in shadows ever camelot is resisting the player who says the right thing to do Either they're an idiot Or they're the trader right and you know the people you're playing with I guess maybe not a pack So there might be some strangers and everyone's smart here, right? Uh, but you know the table top you know your you know your friends You know who's stupid and if you know the stupid guy's the trader well, that's gonna be really easy to get the right answer You know and look at this you watch these games. They don't let you communicate They restrict how much you can signal between yourselves because if you're all cooperative There's no reason not to share all the information you have There's no reason in the world And even if the trader's there whatever if everyone shares information It is mathematically certain that you'll figure out who the trader is So as a result these games have to restrict communication to make this trader mechanic even work I really the trader mechanics only there to keep the game from being almost not even a game Yeah, I mean you have the lord of the rings game where like someone has to become the trader We're like getting the one ring or whatever the game that you have like a point one percent chance of winning Anyway, and some bit can ruin it for you at the end. Exactly, but they win by themselves, don't they? Yes. Yes, right But yeah, why do I bring this up because I don't think you should use this? This is really dumb This mechanic has not been used very well because it tends to dominate the game people play Battlestar Galactica And they really only care about the trader mechanic and possibly trying to space them People don't really care about the rest of the game usually So I think you shouldn't use it at all if you're playing it's obvious who it is Just call them out. However early it is that they you know, it is obvious who it is I think there's potential here trader mechanics are fun everyone wants them everyone likes them There's very rarely Implemented elegantly and they overshadow the rest of the game shadows ever can a lot if you're the trader you're like, yes I get to play the fun game Pretty much. All right, I think that's all the game mechanics are gonna. It is all the game mechanics gone over We went four minutes over but we're next