Today, I was contemplating the idea of creating a Ra computer game. One hypothetical feature of this game would be to “auto-pass” a worthless auction. Turns out this feature won’t be seeing the light of day…

For both of the riddles below, you may use any play situation you can imagine, and you have complete knowledge of the game state; in particular, you can know exactly what tiles are still in the bag as well as each player’s face-down suns and score.

Riddle 1: The auction track contains one tile, Unrest (AKA Death of Civilizations). The sun in the middle is worse than any of your remaining face-up suns. You pull a Ra tile. Come up with a situation where you would want to bid on this auction. Make no assumptions about your opponents’ strategy–assume that whatever they do will be bad for you.

Riddle 2: The auction track contains nothing at all. The sun in the middle is worse than any of your remaining face-up suns. You pull a Ra tile. Come up with a situation where you would want to bid on this auction. For this one, you may make reasonable assumptions about opponents’ strategy; they may want, say, to maximize their own score or winning chances, not just hurt you.

I had a great time at Origins and have several new games and articles to write.

First, I demoed a game called If Wishes Were Fishes and wrote a short review at BoardGameGeek because they didn’t have one yet. It’s available here. Short summary: gameplay is solid but uninspired; theme makes it look much lighter than it actually is.

Among game designers there is disagreement about the importance of the theme. Some say that it should come before everything else and drive the design of the mechanics; others, that you should come up with the best mechanics possible and then put on an acceptable theme.

Here I’d like to argue a point that only sounds trite at first: The theme should be added as soon as it is needed. So, for instance, if the designer is inspired by a certain theme, well, then that theme should be there from the beginning. Goodness knows the inspiration is critical! If the designer is inspired by a certain set of mechanics or idea in the game flow, and the game can be designed entirely without a theme, then the game can have a theme added at the last minute or even left abstract.

In the design of Tactego, I now find myself with many ideas for units to use, certainly many more than can comfortably fit into a game. Doubtless a decent game can be made with several combinations of these; but who has the time or inclination to try every single one of them out? Even if we could, that wouldn’t tell us which is best or most fun. Therefore, I believe that this is the time to pick a theme, and let that help guide my choice of which pieces to use.

(Reader Ephraim Glass’s favorite units also sound like a good place to start to me; we’ll probably start there.)

As for what theme to use? The Napoleonic theme of Stratego definitely doesn’t excite me. I’m a big fan of fantasy but I think it’s overdone. One idea I kind of like is rival bandit lords fighting over stolen treasure in pre-Renaissance Europe. Another is a much more abstract game focusing on competing tribes of animals (cats are stealthy, wolves like being in packs, elephants are just big, etc.)

A continuation from the previous article.

Probable

• Santiago, on Yehuda’s strong recommendation, although someone else in the group might end up buying it
• Tichu, on the recommendation of many people and its low cost
• 6 Nimmt/Category 5, ditto

Possible

• For Sale (cheap to boot)
• Hive
• Ys

Stretch

• Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Looks like not my thing in general, but comes deeply themed and highly recommended.
• Hey! That’s My Fish! Looks fun but not compelling; but possibly fun filler.
• Wallenstein/Samurai; supposed to be a very good wargame/Euro hybrid.