Gloomhaven - Tactical Combat in a persistent world!

Games
783

Well, sure, if you build your game design around it. But otherwise, it’s just a crutch, as Mr. Frog said above. It’s one of those silly, “Hey, you can do this to make the game harder if you want!” No duh. I can also play with one eye closed, in German, or using toothpicks to move the pieces.

Really, it makes so little difference in Gloomhaven. Try playing solitaire and you’ll see. If anyone is going to be sharing information like “I can go fast” or “I can go slow”, they might as well just show their initiative. And most of the time, you play cards because they’re the best thing to do in a situation, not because you’ve got some carefully timed synergy with another character. It’s just not that kind of design.

By way of comparison, consider Spirit Island, which has a ton of interaction among players and a lot of different gameplay verbs and a lot of information, all of it open, Also, lots of very specifically designed timing tricks. So much potential for analysis paralysis, but Eric Reuss trusts the players to do as little or as much analytical play as they want. He doesn’t just decree, “Oh, well, if you’re going to see the initiative numbers, you need to, uh, uh, add plus one to the level. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Plus one to the level.” Weak.

There’s a lot of cool stuff in Gloomhaven, but Isaac Childres concept of co-op play certainly isn’t one of them.

-Tom

784

My favorite argument in this thread for the limited information sharing in the fantasy game Gloomhaven where you kill skeletons that are alive… is that limited information sharing is “realistic.” (laughing with tears emoji)

785

I was going to counter, then I remember Tom hates co-op and it would be a waste of time.

786

Have you actually played it coop? Because this really isn’t true, but I can see how it would seem that way if you’ve only played it solitaire.

787

I agree with you malkav. There are plenty of times the ambiguity of the exact initiative numbers adds some tension to the choices. i.e. - This card is probably the better card but has a greater chance I’m not going to go in the order I want. This one gives me a better shot at the order I want to go in. It isn’t always an easy choice and it’s certainly not the same as knowing the initiative numbers.

People should play how they want and if they don’t enjoy being vague that’s fine, but it isn’t a case of well you may as well just use the actual numbers.

788

I think this misinterprets the point, but I’m glad you found it entertaining. :)

What I was trying to get with my point is that conversations that go “I’m going to go as fast as I can and try to wipe that orc out” help me to focus on the story the scenario is depicting. If we used unlimited conversation, we’re pretty geeky, and I fear our conversations would be more like “My initiative is 16, so if you make sure you go higher than that, I can go first. I’m going to use a 3-space high move bottom, then I have a +4 attack that will consume the nature element for an additional +2 damage.” It’s a level of abstraction to describe things that I think would lessen my immersion.

Sure, you end up getting pretty analytic when you act out your turn, but I find that limiting the initial discussion helps to ground me in the action and imagine the fantasy scenario as it plays out. I really enjoy the stories this game tells. Our two characters in the last scenario had some moments of epic heroism, and imagining that action as it played out is a great part of the fun for me.

I haven’t played enough to totally disagree with this so I’ll keep an open mind as I play more (and I haven’t played solitaire yet), but I definitely don’t feel like this has been the case so far in the co-op scenarios we’ve played. The limited conversation and ambiguity around actions has messed up turns every time we’ve played. That’s forced us into some creative problem solving on the fly, added some humor, and sometimes made things harder. So for me, the limited conversation is simply more fun. The “difficulty” factor is one part of that, but not a significant reason I like it.

Stepping back from the conversation a bit, I’m not trying to argue that limited conversation is the best way to play or the right way to play. I hope people feed limited conversation rules to a goat if that increases their fun of the game. But I still can’t agree with the argument that it’s weak game design. For me, it adds quite a few things to the play experience that increase my enjoyment of the game.

789

It’s an attempt to shape how the game is played instead a part of the shape of the game. We like it because our group would get completely bogged down if we talked specifics, and we enjoy it when a round goes off the rails. The game doesn’t break if you talk about specifics, otherwise you couldn’t play it solo.

Personal battle goals are also secret, although I’m sure plenty of groups don’t keep them secret. We find it fun that people have little things they’re trying to do. I’ve accidentally caused someone to achieve their battle goal, and it amused me in a way that doing it on purpose wouldn’t do. Again, not keeping them secret has no material impact on the game.

790

I’m also in the camp that limiting information sharing is a good thing in Gloomhaven. It introduces a touch of chaos, which adds a layer of tension to the decision making process. There’s some hedging of bets you need to do when you don’t have precise information about what your allies are doing. It also helps mitigate that thing in co-op games where somebody takes over and starts making all the decisions. Maybe you can prove that it’s objectively “bad game design” but I think it makes the game more fun. Single player Gloomhaven seems very boring to me.

791

If limited conversation is the best way to play the game for you, you can always do that without having a bunch of rules centered around forcing you to.

I play games for the mechanics and to play with and interact with a game system. Not to add real world issues and restrictions (like not being able to talk) into the game system. I similarly don’t like games with timer mechanisms, and other systems that effectively try to limit the players freedom in the real world in order to serve as a way to alter the game’s difficulty.

I think Gloomhaven’s system is particularly egregious, because it does that lazy game design thing of saying you can talk to some degree, only don’t be too exact. What the fuck does that mean? You know my entire deck. Am I allowed to say my initiative number? No? Then am I allowed to say “My fastest initiative?” What about “My second fastest?” But I’m not saying the number, so it’s okay? It all just seems kind of silly.

If I’m playing Blood Bowl, I don’t expect to have to go throw a football through a tire swing in my back yard in order to know whether I completed a pass. I do not expect real world physicality or limitations (other than, unfortunately, my brain power, which I sadly can’t improve) to have any bearing on game mechanics.

Another example, where I know enthusiasts of the game system disagree with me, is Advanced Squad Leader. There’s a rule that you cannot check line of sight (to see whether you can see an opposing unit to take a shot at them) before deciding whether you will actually take the shot. It’s only after you irreversibly declare that you will take the shot that you then put down your string and see whether you can actually see their unit, or whether your string clips a corner of a building and oops, no you just wasted your shot because you cannot see them.

To me, this is just another real world limitation that does not belong in the game. It’s basically a question of your real world eye sight and how good you are at gauging optical angles from the naked eye, and it just seems utterly silly to have that be in a cerebral game about squad combat. I just ignore that rule when I play with a friend, and we string to see if we have line of sight before declaring the shot. I trust my friend not to be stupid and string every possible line of sight in advance and waste my time. Because I don’t need a game system to prevent someone from doing that, because I don’t play with dicks. I also have no problem if my friend strings a couple before deciding. To me, a board game should not come down to whether you wear glasses.

Yet most of the ASL world seems utterly aghast at this idea.

None of this is meant to insult. Everyone is obviously entitled to what they enjoy, but I really do think it is poor game design. Because ultimately, for me, it’s a game, not a role playing event, and not community theater. I have no desire to go to the gym and lift weights in order to open a large stone door in a fantasy game.

792

It seems like such a leap between your examples and what Gloomhaven actually does. You’re not throwing footballs through a tire swing or lifting weights here. You’re only asked not to share the explicit details of what you are going to do on your turn. I will agree that there is a significant amount of gray area on what is allowed and what is not, but this is a co-op game and your group is free to police the rule as much as they collectively decide. Or throw out the rule entirely. I can see how this lack of definition in rules can be viewed as bad design, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for the rule’s intent. Personally, I’d rather they just lay out the idea and allow my group to interpret it as we’d like instead of putting in dense rules laying out very explicitly what is and isn’t allowed.

793

In other words, the game designer saying, “Hey, I can’t really be bothered to design my game, so can you guys just do it for me however you like? kthnxbye”

Sure, it’s a problem for which the designer has no solution, and furthermore doesn’t even attempt one. And to be fair to Gloomhaven, it’s not unique to that game. As Mr. Frog mentioned above, it’s a frequently used crutch. Unless some sort of limited information is built into your game design, there’s no point making vague suggestions about how players should dance around the lack of an actual gameplay system.

-Tom

794

All those games get an asterisk!

I forgot about the personal battle goals. That’s actually one area where limited information is a fundamental part of a design: when a player’s self-interest could run counter to what’s best for the group. Dead of Winter is probably the best case example of it. But you’re right that it’s a pretty weak part of Gloomhaven’s design, because that dynamic is already present when each player is trying to develop his own character.

-Tom

795

To understand your point then, a well designed Gloomhaven would have some sort of game element built into it that communicated the amount of information for the players in a consistent way?

Like say, a small deck of cards that you choose from to say things like Fast, Attack Nearest, Stand Still or something like that? (Not that this mechanic would be good design, but you get the idea.)

796

Like, say, the information on a face-up card, which is how pretty much any co-op game with cards works. :)

My point is that the vague rules on what you can and can’t say adds nothing to the game but an arbitrary boost in difficulty and a weak rationale for playing cooperatively. And for what it’s worth, Gloomhaven doesn’t need to be singled out, since a lot of putative co-op games lean on this mechanism. On my list of issues with Gloomhaven, it probably wouldn’t even be in the top five.

-Tom

797

Okay, I think I got it, thanks.

The nuance I was trying to understand was whether you didn’t like the limited communication element of the turn or whether you didn’t like the way the limited communication element of the turn was executed. They seem like different things to me.

One says that the limited communication element of Gloomhaven adds nothing to the game. The other says that the idea of limiting communication in a Gloomhaven turn is fine, but the way the designer does it via a vague communication rule is poor.

From your recent comment, it take it you like neither the way it’s done nor what it adds to the game. :)

For me, it adds more to the game than an arbitrary boost in difficulty and a weak rationale for playing cooperatively, so yeah, I’m fine with it. But I can certainly see your point, thanks for clarifying.

798

I understand where Tom is coming from and I guess I have to agree that the part about limited communication is bad / lazy game design. However, my wife and I really enjoy playing with this rather idiosyncratic method of communication where we kind of know what the other person is saying but not 100%. It’s true that it starts with a lot more uncertainty when you don’t know what your partner quite means by “early, but not too early” and then as you learn the other’s character you figure it out and a lot of the mystery goes away, but that’s a fun process. (We also try to always retire at the same time so there’s a definite “reset” here.) I think the weird limitation gives us an opportunity to have fun trying to communicate with each other in a way that we don’t normally (certainly not when talking about who’s going to get the kid and make what for dinner) and wouldn’t if we were just spouting the numbers / card names.

So yeah, I see the point about it being poor game design but it really works for us and if he hadn’t put in the rule we never would have thought to do it ourselves. (Maybe this goes to a broader point that there are many things about Gloomhaven that are “bad” game design (Tom said this wasn’t even top 5, iirc) but we really love the game, despite or perhaps because of them.)

(Disclaimer – this is really the only board game we’ve seriously played together, or even separately. I don’t think either of us would know beautiful game design if it smacked us in the head. Perhaps this means we have lots of good games waiting for us!)

799

It also really works well for my group. In addition to what you mentioned, I quite like how it affects how we plan our turns. First it limits how much time and effort it makes sense to spend choosing which cards to play since we don’t know exactly what other players will do. Instead there’s more emphasis on planning after cards have been revealed. What’s the best we can do with the cards we have chosen? E.g. maybe one person’s “early” wasn’t as early as somebody else thought. We have had several tense moments where the card reveal indicated that our initial plan would fail miserably, but we managed to find a crazy new plan that worked.

800

Really? I mean, that’s just kind of how I normally play these things, but without rules specifically mandating it. With co-op games, I usually just want a smooth experience, and do not really have a lot of interest in quarterbacking super-perfect plays or trying to maximize down to the exact number. So we’ll usually just say something like, “I’m going to use that big fireball thing that AoEs a bunch of them, but it will probably go last,” or something like that.

The difference is, that’s how I naturally play, and I don’t really want to have to have some rule where I’m wondering whether I’ve said too much, or not enough, or if I did happen to give out an initiative number was that bad, or is “my slowest initiative card” giving away too much information, etc. Just let me play that way, without mandating a bunch of goofy, “You can’t say this, but you can say that, you can’t disclose this, but you can disclose that,” type of garbage.

Same with the “hidden” goals. I think they’re stupid. I have no idea why I can’t just say, “Yeah, I need to get a lot of gold, so I’ll be going for that.” So we just say it.

Because again, why I can just run around taking all the gold, but not tell my partner “I’m taking all the gold because I need it,” is beyond me.

801

Gloomhaven would be a worse game if everyone had full information all the time. The current rules lead to a touch of chaos and hedging bets in situations where things could go poorly if turn order gets messed up. It also mitigates quarterbacking, which is important in a game like this. I can see how a person might be unhappy with the implementation of the communication rules, but I can’t see how they make the game worse than allowing full information sharing. I especially can’t see how one might imply Childress is a bad designer because he didn’t come up with an elegant solution to a difficult problem in a game that uses a lot of smart mechanics.

I will say that I agree with some of the criticism about communication and hidden objectives. I like the idea of special objectives per player, but it’s awkward and a bit pointless to have to dance around declaring your intentions when it comes to these things…

“I would REALLY like to open that door if you don’t mind, because…reasons”

802

I agree with this. I don’t feel that players needing to be abstract with their instructions is “lazy” game design, I believe it is supposed to simulate calling out information between party members in combat and it feels right. It’s also optional, but I think the game would be too easy if players just showed their cards and planned everything out with total knowledge.