Building Blocks Of Tabletop Game Design Review

From gallery of ericbinnyc

Welcome to Quick Hits, a short-form column where I discuss multiple games I've recently played, giving brief thoughts on each game - from the game's components, theme, and gameplay, to particularly notable experiences during a game, along with any other remarkable aspects that come to mind.

Ignore the above intro this week. This column is not actually about board games, but about three board game-adjacent items — a documentary, an encyclopedia, and a novel.

AlphaGo, directed by Greg Kohs

You may remember when the IBM Deep Blue chess computer beat world champion Garry Kasparov, and the stir that caused about the advancing state of computer intelligence. At that time, many opined that while Deep Blue was an impressive display, it would pale in comparison to a computer that could beat a champion Go player — due to the vastly higher mathematical complexity of Go, which is played on a much larger board. Enter the 2017 documentary AlphaGo, which details the five-game Go match between world champion Go player Lee Sedol, who holds the highest rank of 9 dan, and AlphaGo, a computer Go program developed by Google DeepMind. I won't spoil the results of the competition, but will note that the 90-minute documentary is a compelling watch for anyone that enjoys game theory, even for someone like myself that hardly knows how to play Go. One of the most interesting aspects was how the computer never tried to beat its opponent by increasing its margin of victory, but only made moves based on how they would affect its potential win percentage. By this, I mean that the computer never tried to beat a player by running up the score, only by ensuring it would win, even if only by one point, which is very different from how the human mind operates. If this sounds interesting to you, AlphaGo is currently available to stream on Netflix.

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design, written by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, art design by Daniel Solis

A funny thing about this tabletop design encyclopedia is that when I got it, I planned to flip through it and read the parts that were of particular interest to me, and use it as a reference to help me in writing more knowledgeable and informed reviews and blog posts. But then I started reading it, and have been reading it closely, interested in every page, and unable to skip a single discussion topic — even when they go into detail on topics I don't personally like!

The books starts from the top down with overall game structure, then drills down into turn order structure, actions, resolution, and into game end and victory. It also covers uncertainty, economics, auctions, worker placement, movement, area control, set collection, and various card mechanisms. Each of those sections drills down even further, to the point there was a chapter dedicated to the subset of real-time games that use multiple sand timers (e.g. TAMSK). I'm going to write a full review of Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design after digesting it all, but the "too long, didn't read" is that this book is a must read, not only for game designers and developers, but also for anyone that wants to critically analyze the hobby, as well as "how it works" types that are interested in a deeper, "nuts-and-bolts" look at the myriad decisions of how games are put together and made to work as cohesive wholes.

The Player of Games, written by Iain M. Banks, first published in 1988

This 1988 science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks is the second in his Culture series — the first is Consider Phlebas — but The Player of Games functions perfectly as a stand-alone novel. Here is the publisher's blurb on the novel:

Quote:

The Culture - a humanoid/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players. One of the best is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player of Games, master of every board, computer and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel & incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game, a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game and with it the challenge of his life, and very possibly his death.

While the game Azad, like many games from popular culture, is entirely fictional, reading about the journey of Gurgeh, who has mastered every game he has set his mind to, to master a game so complex it defines the society that plays it, is fascinating. The entire novel — which was written in the late days of the Cold War — also functions as a sci-fi take on the Fischer-Spasky chess match, with the Culture's expert game player, Gurgeh, an aloof outsider, attempting to master Azad, a complex and all-encompassing game entwined in every facet of the Empire's society. I'd recommend anyone that enjoys both science fiction and board gaming check this out.