Ahoy Matey!

Oh Ye Pirates! Hoist Ye Sailes! Strike ye fear into ye hearts!

Ho ho ho! One Gamer (turned Pirate) has been using his Lego armada to enhance the experience of Days of Wonder's Pirate's Cove. In his blog post he logs the details to his game adaption (apparently the game has become a favorite), and Lego's have allowed him to all but eliminate chance from pirate ship skirmishes.

Har har! What ingenuity!

Still, Legos and games have not been strange shipmates.

Aye, when I was a lad we used to make games out of our Lego stash. Legos make great game components! They are naturally delimited and come in all shapes, sizes, colors and styles. Perfect.

Lego the company has picked-up on this as well. Refer to an earlier post at Pinebars about Lego's advances into the gaming sphere.

Oh, and don't forget the popular Lego Star Wars series for video game systems.

See below an excellent rendition of Settlers of Catan in Lego.

I eagerly await the day when an astutely crafted Eurogame design by Friedmann Friese or Klaus Teuber is released exclusively by Lego.

And as you design your own games, consider using Lego's to help you solve your component problems.

In the meantime, answer me this, what Euro game would you like to see designed in Lego?

Catan vs. Monopoly

As I was exploring cyberspace today, I came upon this blog post about Settlers of Catan. One of the first things I noticed is that it's by a baseball writer for ESPN.com, Kieth Law. Ooh, I thought, board game news from ESPN! Unfortunately, the article has no drawn out comparison between sports and board games besides a short economic comparison at the top of the article. Law does, however, go into a nice history of Settlers, including it's relationship with games America had to play before Eurogaming worked its way to the US. Indeed, The Settlers of Catan was the first German-style board game to become popular in the US.

Law mentions in his article two aspects of the Euro-genre of games that I believe are too important to pass up. First, the games are competitive and fun from start to finish, although they rely WAY less on luck than anything that had been popular in the US before. Second, and related, there is no elimination from a game as there would be, for example, in a game of Risk. Allow me to make a quick note of my own on each subject.

First, I'll address the competitive nature of the games. Klaus Teuber, the designer of Settlers, hit this nail on the head, finding a perfect mechanic to keep everyone interested in the game. In Monopoly, once someone has landed (by a roll of the dice) on the correct spaces and made enough money, his victory is eventual, almost all the time. In Risk, once someone has a big enough army (and rolls 5's and 6's), there's little stopping her. In Settlers, however, the roll of the dice is far from the final say. Trading is an integral part of the game, and I've played plenty of games where a player is in position for the victory and the other players then boycott all trades with this person. The best player and the robber often become well acquainted by game's end, oftentimes only to see someone else pass him up for the victory. In other words, the game is designed to let players who fall behind make the ground and even snatch up a victory. Many (though not all) of the Eurogames do this, which make each game interesting from start to finish.

The other subject of note is the lack of elimination. As I said, it is related to the discourse above. It's importance is this: previous to 1995, when American board gamers wanted something of more heft than Monopoly, they had to resort to war games. War games take hours to play, and often a person will be on the brink of elimination and lose interest, else they will be fully eliminated and have to wait hours until they can get involved with the group again. Eurogames are not only played in a significantly shorter time span, but there is, as I mentioned above, involvement from start to finish.

In conclusion, that is why Eurogames are way better than American games. Just kidding; that's not what this post was about. But I do hope you found my rant in favor of Settlers of Catan to be helpful.

Settlers of Catan Mechanic and Race for the...Meeting?

My staff members have all turned into sprinters.

That's right, every Sunday night they sprint down the hallway to be the first to arrive at our weekly staff meeting.

Why?

And more importantly...how?

Board game mechanics can teach us a lot about why and how people behave. Be careful when you write the rules for your team!

Consider the following--more traditional--rules to combat meeting tardiness:

Rule 1: (Desired behavior) "Don't be late!"
Rule 2: (Define) "If you're on-time your late, if you are early you are on-time!"
Rule 3: (Penalties) "If you are late you will be written-up!"
Rule 4: (Some concessions) "If you have an emergency tell me ahead of time and we can make an exception..."
Rule 5: (More concessions) "First time you're late is a verbal warning, but next time is a write-up!"
Rule 6: (Threats) "If you get three write-ups you will be referred to the big boss!"
Rule 7: (Tie-up loose ends) "If you're late you will have to meet with me to go over what you missed."

This traditional approach may work, but there is one drawback.

If the main rule is, "don't be late" then there is no incentive to get to the meeting any earlier than 1 second before the meeting starts. Consider the following model:

The yellow area is the "Window of Arrival," or the average arrival time of staff members.

If you are like me, you always plan to get to meetings as LATE as possible and yet to still be on time, but of course what happens then?

COFFEE SPILLS, FRIEND CALLS, FORGET YOUR PHONE, LEFT YOUR KEY INSIDE

Whstever the excuse...YOU'RE LATE!

Let's call the pink area SPILLOVER, and we all know that spillover occurs. (Just try to fill a measuring cup to exactly the top level with water.)

I propose instead a different system!

First, let's assign every staff member a color (So...Brian=Red, Ted=Green, Sam=Brown...ect.), and then get a pawn to represent each color...

(For example: these pawns can be purchased from Board Game Bits.com)

Next, adapt an innovate BOARD GAME MECHANIC (I just love when I actually write a post that goes with the theme of my blog) from Settlers of Catan to suit your needs.

Ok, so the adaptation of the Settlers of Catan mechanic takes a little bit more explanation. Allow me to summarize.

See the following picture to jog your memory about the circular "chits" that are used in Settlers to denote probability:
When you roll two dice, the probability of rolling a "7" is the highest and of rolling a "12" or a "2" the lowest. In Settlers, numbers 2-12 are placed randomly on the board to demonstrate the probability of any given resource being "produced." So, a player would want to locate his towns near resources that have numbers close to 7 to produce the most resources.

Remember how that works?

Good!

So, to apply the same principle, count the number (n) of people you want to arrive to your staff meeting on time (in my case 8) and assign a probability to n outcomes along a continuum, such that a roll of two dice will have one outcome.

Next, make a board! Like this...
And assign each staff member's pawn to a location on the board according to when they arrived at the meeting. Those arriving first are placed at the low levels of probability and those arriving last are placed in the high levels of probability. In this instance, green arrived first!

Last, explain that you will ask for volunteers during the meeting to help with projects A, B and C. If nobody volunteers say that you will roll the dice and the person who's number(s) are rolled have to volunteer. (Alternative: Allow staff members who volunteer before the die is rolled move up in position on the board)

This works! But why????

One more model should explain:
The arrival window has been expanded! Instead of having incentive to arrive 1 SECOND before the meeting time, incentive has been changed to arrive SOONER.

As a result, spillage is depleted to ZERO:
And so my staff are SPRINTERS!

...and they are also PAWNS.

But they make it to staff meeting on time, and yours will too!

(Of course, you will occasionally have to make good on your threat to roll the dice, but it is ever so fun to be able to let fate (and their own decision to be later than others) decide who gets punished).