Slackful Thoughts

10 December, 2002:
The gaming group I regularly play with occasionally tackles long multi-player games. The appeal of these games is simple: they tend to be games with wide scope and many choices, leading to a nice meaty session of gaming. Planning to play one of these games also forces us to block out a large session of gaming time, which allows us to hang out together a lot. When these types of games work, they are extremely satisfying gaming experiences. However, when they don't work for whatever reason, it feels like a wasted gaming session.

I think of this category of games as "appointment games". I use the term appointment game to designate any game that requires enough time and players that you need to schedule them significantly in advance of playing them. Games such as Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne and other popular fantasy strategy games can be played on very short notice. Games such as Age of Renaissance, Napoleonic Wars and other games I'll be discussing here require more foresight to get a game together. I don't normally consider role-playing games to be in this category. While they do require many other players and much preparation, it's essential to the nature of role-playing games that they require those resources. Calling them appointment games would be redundant. Board games don't necessarily require the time investment of appointment games, which is why I think of them in a separate category. I do consider many miniatures games do be in this category.

I've been playing appointment games since I was about 11 years old. Back then, I mostly played Car Wars as our big appointment game. Car Wars usually required advance preparation (designing cars), was more fun with more participants, and took quite a bit of time to play to completion. We loved it. The sessions where we played this game just flew by, and left us wanting more. Car Wars had enough depth and variety that we didn't feel the need to tinker with the rules at all. Later on, we moved into playing some of the Games Workshop miniatures games, such as Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Space Marine/Titan Legions. We also played a lot of Talisman, which fits in this category due to the length of the game. Most of the games I played in high school were of this type, since there just weren't as many great shorter games as there are today. When we wanted to play something short, we usually ended up playing games with a traditional deck of cards, such as Bridge or Pinochle.

It was around this time that we started coming up with house rules for our games. What we were discovering is that certain rules just didn't work for us. A rule might give unfair advantage to a particular strategy that we found distasteful, or perhaps it didn't fit in with our view of how things should work in the game. Whatever the reason, we found ourselves changing the games we played considerably. These house rules were important to us, since we invested a lot of our time into these games, and we wanted to make sure everyone had fun. If a rule was ruining the fun for some or all of us, it was easier for us to change the rule instead of changing the players or the game, especially given the cost of games for high school kids.

As I was able to afford more games and have more options available, my attitude towards house rules slowly changed. Instead of investing time and effort in fixing something I thought of as "broken", I became more likely to move on. The major exceptions are Warhammer Quest, for reasons I will explain below in the recommendation section, and other miniatures games, which require enough of a financial investment that they almost require changes if you don't care for particular rules. The breadth of gaming choices I had available (880 and counting!) meant that I could find a game that worked for me out of the box, without worrying too much about house rules. I suspect that the commonality of house rules across all gaming groups follows a similar pattern. When there are a lot of games covering a particular area, or many choices available to a gaming group, house rules are likely kept to a minimum. If a group has fewer games available to it, whether because of the rarity of the subject material or financial reasons, they're more likely to modify things until the game pleases their group. Ultimately, that's one of the great advantages of board and card games over computer games, the transparency of the game. If you don't like something, you can change it.

Why was I thinking about this? We've been playing a particular appointment game a fair bit recently, and it hadn't really worked. What do I mean by not working? In this case, players were being eliminated very early in the process, sometimes through no fault of their own. Perhaps that's the way the game was meant to work, but it wasn't what we wanted. It's far better for us if everybody stays involved in the game the whole way, since one of the reasons we play appointment games is to spend time gaming together. If some of the players are eliminated, that helps defeat our goal. We've been talking about house rules to repair this particular game, and my wife recently asked me why we were even bothering. She pointed out that I own so many games I've never played that it seemed foolish to waste our time playing a game that had disappointed us multiple times. That's when I started to realize that my desire for house rules was directly proportional to the uniqueness of the game. This game (which I don't mention because I only want to be positive toward games in my column) had many features unique to it that were very, very appealing to us. It seemed worth it to attempt to fix the game for our group. While she was right in that we have many other games we could be playing, and perhaps we'd be better off trying one of them for our next appointment, the lure of those unique feature is compelling. It certainly provides a goal for games: be unique, and your customers are more willing to forgive your failings.

What are some of my favorite appointment games of all time? Here's a list of some of the ones I've had the most fun playing:

Age of Renaissance (Avalon Hill Games) — Age of Renaissance isn't in print any more, which is a shame, but copies can still be found at some hobby stores and on the secondary market. I'll start out this recommendation by saying that this game isn't for everyone. It's the purported sequel to Civilization and Advanced Civilization (designed by Francis Tresham and published in the U.S. by Avalon Hill), and many gamers who bought it expecting a similar game were disappointed. It does feature quite a bit of bookkeeping that can be a turnoff. After all those caveats, I think I can say with confidence that this has been my current group's favorite appointment game. The sweep of history is a fascinating backdrop, it allows for great comebacks for players who fall behind, the historical flavor is well done and there are a wide variety of viable strategies. On top of all that, each of the various starting positions have very different feels and require different methods of playing. It's a game that you should play before you buy, but I think it's a fantastic way to spend five or six hours with your friends.

Napoleonic Wars (GMT Games) — Napoleonic Wars is in a loose series of games that originated with Mark Herman's brilliant We The People (published by Avalon Hill, out of print). Unlike the other games in the series, it's a multi-player design. It coves the period of 1805 through 1815 in Europe, with each player playing one or more of the major powers (France, Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia). Depending on the number of players, different countries are controlled by the players. The heart of the design are the cards, each of which features a historical event and can be played to either activate that event or to perform operations with the armies on the board. Like the other games on this list, the scope of the game is massive and the players are presented with a vast number of choices on each of their turns. The different powers have very different strengths and positions, and much of the fun of the game comes from this asymmetry. The highest praise I can give this game is that I don't even realize how quickly the time is flying when we're playing it. It's a new publication, so it's readily available, so if your group doesn't mind a fairly involved rulebook, I cannot recommend this game highly enough. It's possible that this game will pass Age of Renaissance as my groups favorite appointment game.

Axis & Allies (Avalon Hill Games) — Axis and Allies is an older game than the others on this list are, and it's one of the first historical games I ever played and remains a favorite. While many would say it isn't a real wargame, it manages to capture a WWII feel with simple mechanics and always manages to be fun. This is a much simpler game than the others on this last, and is probably the easiest to find as well, which makes it a good choice as an introduction. Avalon Hill published two variants of this game, focused on the European and Pacific theatres, but I would stay away from those initially. The Pacific variant has serious balance problems, and I haven't played the European variant enough to make a judgement on it. This game also has a nice production, which increases my enjoyment of it. An older game in the same original series as Axis and Allies (when Milton Bradley published it) is Fortress America, which is very difficult to find but is just as much fun. In many ways I prefer Fortress America, and would have put it in the list if it were easier to find.

Warhammer Quest (Games Workshop) — Games Workshop is known mostly for their fantasy and science fiction miniatures games, but this gem is a dungeon crawling board game that is truly unique. It's almost an act of cruelty to list it here, since it's virtually impossible to find at a reasonable price, but if you find it and have any interest in dungeon crawling, it's amazing. It doesn't require a GM, has a truly amazing scope and is truly cooperative, making it a unique game experience among my collection. It's unique status and subject matter have made it the focus of a dizzying array of house rules by my group, which we even gave thought to publishing. If I could only keep one board game out of my collection, I'd kill myself. But, if that out were disallowed, I'd probably keep Warhammer Quest.

Twilight Imperium (Fantasy Flight Games) — Twilight Imperium is the first in Fantasy Flight's Hexplay series of games, and it's probably the best. It features a map of the galaxy that is built from hex tiles before each game, ensuring that no two games are alike. There are plenty of options in the game, and the different races do have different strengths. The game does have some balance issues with the races and the quality of cards, but the second edition has cleaned up some of those issues with the cards at least. While not perfect, it's nonetheless a great way to spend a day. The other games in the series, Battlemist and Thunder's Edge, are also fun, but also suffer from balance issues. The setting for Battlemist is more appealing to me, but I believe that Twilight Imperium is a better game.

~ Joshua Buergel