Puerto Rico and other games
Apr. 4th, 2004 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avramWhen we were up in Somerville, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka asked me to describe Puerto Rico, and I didn’t give a very good answer. I figure I ought to have a better idea of what makes a game I’ve been playing almost every week for the past year or more interesting, so here goes:
Puerto Rico uses a mechanic that may have a formal name that I don’t know about, but I call “role-taking”. There are a bunch of games that use this. Verräter is the first I can remember running into; others include Mueterer and Citadels. In role-taking games there are a bunch of roles, each associated with some action or ability. Each round, each player chooses one role.
In Puerto Rico, the role-taking is the main decision that you’ll be making each turn, your primary action. (Other decisions all deal with the consequences of what role you or other players take.) The game’s major innovative development of the role-taking mechanic is that the role you choose gives all players the ability to take some action, though your own action is superior in some way. If you take the Builder, for instance, everyone gets to buy one building, but you build first (giving you first shot at a building that’s in short supply) and you get a discount on your purchase. So each time you choose an action, you’re giving an opportunity to the other players. This means that the tactically-savvy player spends much of the game thinking about relative advantage: “What can I do that helps me while helping other players the least?” Also “How do I position myself so that I can benefit at least a bit from anything other players do?”
Puerto Rico also manages to avoid many of the common pitfalls of game design. It’s difficult to wind up unable to take constructive action for more than a turn or two. You generally don’t know for sure who’s going to win till very near the end of the game, even though the game has almost no random elements. (I spent most of the last game I played convinced I was going to lose, and then several turns worth of work paid off and I managed to pull off a couple of really good shipping phases that put me into the lead.) The various game elements are well balanced against each other.
(Hm, I still haven‘t given a good description of the game in general. But I’ve probably already gone on too long.)
San Juan (which I played twice at Games Club on Friday, and then again atmnemex’s and drcpunk’s place yesterday) is a card game based on Puerto Rico. It keeps the central role-taking mechanic, and therefore the relative-advantage mindset, but simplifies the rest of the game. There’s a much bigger random element; you can get screwed by drawing badly, while drawing well can give you a tremendous advantage if you know enough to make use of it. It goes very quickly — a constant refrain in the game is “Oh, is the round over already?” Not as complex as Puerto Rico, not as easy (though still possible) to deliberately screw over other players, but still quite addictive.
Bang! was disappointing. First strike against it: The Jail card, which can cause a player to lose a turn. Haven’t game designers figured out yet that having to spend game time doing nothing reduces enjoyment of a game? Second strike: The hidden goal mechanic means that half the players start the game with no idea of who their allies and enemies are, which provides a disincentive to take action, and makes the game less exciting. Once we started shooting at each other thing livened up a bit. I was disappointed that there wasn’t much role-play chatter; I think the game lends itself to that sort of thing. I also didn’t get to see if any duels happened, since I got blown up by dynamite fairly early. But at least I got to kill that goldurned thief what stole my horse!
mamishka asked me to describe Puerto Rico, and I didn’t give a very good answer. I figure I ought to have a better idea of what makes a game I’ve been playing almost every week for the past year or more interesting, so here goes:Puerto Rico uses a mechanic that may have a formal name that I don’t know about, but I call “role-taking”. There are a bunch of games that use this. Verräter is the first I can remember running into; others include Mueterer and Citadels. In role-taking games there are a bunch of roles, each associated with some action or ability. Each round, each player chooses one role.
In Puerto Rico, the role-taking is the main decision that you’ll be making each turn, your primary action. (Other decisions all deal with the consequences of what role you or other players take.) The game’s major innovative development of the role-taking mechanic is that the role you choose gives all players the ability to take some action, though your own action is superior in some way. If you take the Builder, for instance, everyone gets to buy one building, but you build first (giving you first shot at a building that’s in short supply) and you get a discount on your purchase. So each time you choose an action, you’re giving an opportunity to the other players. This means that the tactically-savvy player spends much of the game thinking about relative advantage: “What can I do that helps me while helping other players the least?” Also “How do I position myself so that I can benefit at least a bit from anything other players do?”
Puerto Rico also manages to avoid many of the common pitfalls of game design. It’s difficult to wind up unable to take constructive action for more than a turn or two. You generally don’t know for sure who’s going to win till very near the end of the game, even though the game has almost no random elements. (I spent most of the last game I played convinced I was going to lose, and then several turns worth of work paid off and I managed to pull off a couple of really good shipping phases that put me into the lead.) The various game elements are well balanced against each other.
(Hm, I still haven‘t given a good description of the game in general. But I’ve probably already gone on too long.)
San Juan (which I played twice at Games Club on Friday, and then again at
mnemex’sdrcpunk’sBang! was disappointing. First strike against it: The Jail card, which can cause a player to lose a turn. Haven’t game designers figured out yet that having to spend game time doing nothing reduces enjoyment of a game? Second strike: The hidden goal mechanic means that half the players start the game with no idea of who their allies and enemies are, which provides a disincentive to take action, and makes the game less exciting. Once we started shooting at each other thing livened up a bit. I was disappointed that there wasn’t much role-play chatter; I think the game lends itself to that sort of thing. I also didn’t get to see if any duels happened, since I got blown up by dynamite fairly early. But at least I got to kill that goldurned thief what stole my horse!
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Date: 2004-04-05 03:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-05 03:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-05 02:01 pm (UTC)I'd be sure there are games that used a similar mechanic before the current wave of German games which follow this concept, except that I can't think of them.
A -related-, but not identical concept is "conflicting actions" -- where you chose an action each turn, but it's penalized in some way if another player choses exactly the same action -- Adel Verplect (By Hook or by Crook) is an example of this sort, as is the alternative version of Domain I have, and a few other games as well, I think.