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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 11:52
jwarrend
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I guess it's my turn to be the moderator. Alas, I can't follow up Richard's beautiful essay on Roll and Move games, so I'll just give a couple of brief words about tile laying games and then you all can take the ball and run with it.

"Tile laying" probably describes a broader class of games than the previous two topics, "Action Point Allowance" and "Roll and Move". Where those describe specific mechanics -- specific ways that a player interacts with the game -- I feel that "tile laying" generally describes the overall scope of the game itself. Many games, such as Settlers of Catan, use tiles as a "modular board", a board that changes every game (but whose configuration is static during the game). I think that this goes beyond the scope of this discussion; for present purposes, I think we want to confine ourselves to games in which the tiles are added one-at-a-time to create a "board" as the game goes on.

General design "advantages" of using a tile-laying mechanic include, I think, game-to-game variability, a feel of "building" something during the game, and good emphasis on tactics.

The principal "disadvantage" would probably be the randomness associated with tile-drawing, although this can be mitigated in several ways.

The "original" tile laying game is, I believe, Scrabble, which, despite being a different type of game than what we commonly discuss here, is, I feel, an absolutely brilliant design. Other examples of "great" tile games are Euphrat and Tigris, ranked second only to Puerto Rico on the BoardGameGeek's rankings, Acquire, one of the first "German" games (from an American designer and company!), and Carcassonne, winner of the German Game of the Year and one of the industry's biggest sellers. Rather than extol the virtues of these excellent games, I'll leave it to others to discuss why they are interesting examples of good (or bad) design.

So, folks, here's your chance to chime in. What is great about the tile-laying mechanic? What obstacles does it present the designer? What player experiences can it help to create? What are some well-known tile games that exemplify this mechanic? Feel free to expand on (or refute!) any of my points, answer any of these questions, or propose your own!

Looking forward to a hearty discussion,

Jeff

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 12:21
#1
rkalajian
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

I'll generate s pretty short reply.

I like tile laying, and am currently using a tile laying mechanic in one of my games, because I love the sense of "world building". A game where laying tiles builds the board is just more interesting to me than a static world that never changes.

Now i'm sure there are plenty of tile based games where laying tiles doesn't build the board....but i'm not talking about those :)

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 14:22
#2
GamesOnTheBrain
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

While I can't say I've played too many tile-laying games, it seems to me that one of the greatest aspects of them is how the tiles can interact with each other -- a.k.a. neighboring tiles.

Take Scrabble for instance. Some tiles, like an A for example, can be interact with virtually every other tile in the game. Other tiles, such as a Q, can only interact with a few others. With these variances in interactivity, tiles suddenly have "combinations" much like card-game combos. With the right number of different kinds of tiles, you can have hundreds if not thousands of combos.

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 15:23
#3
DarkDream
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

I think Timothy hit the nail on the head on one of the essential aspects of the "tile-laying" mechanic that really works well:

Quote:
it seems to me that one of the greatest aspects of them is how the tiles can interact with each other -- a.k.a. neighboring tiles.

To me the tiles themselves are not necessarily valuable in terms of victory points or some other beneficial commodity to players, but it is the "combination" of the tiles that makes them valuable; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Tile laying as I see it has these following qualities:

1) allows for a huge number of combinations or arrangements of the tiles themselves.
2) laying tiles (this discussion assumes we are talking about laying tiles), can lead to the feeling of "expansion," exploration or actually the building of something which can add thematically to a game. With some games, older tiles are removed, which can render the feeling of moving towards something if you have a race game. A good example of this is "Mississippi Queen" http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/256.
3) the actual laying of a tile itself is a quick mechanic that does not take a lot of time to do.
4) Depending on the context of the game, can lead to analysis paralysis if a player has choices of different tiles to lay down.
5) On the upside, if the game is designed well, every turn of laying a tile can present the player with interesting decisions.
6) Can be used to time the arrival of certain events or the arrival of a certain tile. An example of this is in the game "Zombies!!!" http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2471 where the helicopter pad used to escape the nightmare only shows up after an X amount of tiles have been laid down.
7) Can be used as a randomizing element to the game.

Besides these points, I think the greatest strengths with a tile-laying mechanic is that they can offer a lot of indirect interaction between players, greatly enhance the playability of a game and create a tense atmosphere where players are praying that no one will lay a tile that might nullify a players chance in getting a certain amount of victory points.

On the downside, a tile laying mechanic may lead to a more luck driven game or one that ends up being too chaotic. As mentioned, a game may suffer from analysis paralysis increasing downtime.

I think when designing games, the use of a tile-laying mechanic should suggest itself for certain types of games where you want a variable landscape and an added bonus of playability. Games dealing with exploration, building and expansion type games may be good candidates.

Some thoughts.

--DarkDream

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 15:28
#4
Zzzzz
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

First off, thanks ahead of time for moderating this topic.......

jwarrend wrote:

General design "advantages" of using a tile-laying mechanic include, I think, game-to-game variability, a feel of "building" something during the game, and good emphasis on tactics.

I agree that tile-laying enhances the tactics/stragetic parts of these style games. Depending on the game, many players will try to calculate the best plan of tile laying to help their position in the game. But as with most tile-laying games, they need to also decide how it will help/hinder their opponent.

jwarrend wrote:

The "original" tile laying game is, I believe, Scrabble,

Really.... I never thought scrablle was that old, if you look at http://www.mattelscrabble.com/en/adults/history/page2.html it seems to be initial developed around 1931.

Mahjong is thought to have evolved around the 1850s based on some chinese card and domino games. For more info about MahJong see site http://www.fact-index.com/m/ma/mahjong.html)

Dominos.... Chinese domino tiles can be traced to writings from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) (AD 1120)..... see http://www.fact-index.com/c/ch/chinese_dominoes.html

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 15:37
#5
Scurra
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

There are two distinct types of tile-laying games: those that work to a constrained grid (such as Metro) and those that are entirely free-form (such as El Caballero.)
I would certainly agree that Scrabble is a pretty early example of a fixed grid, empty board game.
My best guess as to early freeform tile-laying games would be some form of pipe-laying game, or maybe a river system? (I know that there are examples of the genre from at least fifty years ago!)
(edit: well I hadn't thought of Dominoes in quite that fashion, but it probably should be!)

What makes them elegant for me is that of the simplicity of the tile itself: you simply can't make a complicated game out of the process of laying down a tile; it's the interactions of the tiles with one another that is generally where the game comes from.
(Which is another reason why Settlers isn't really a tile-laying game :)

One of the attractions of the genre has to be (as it is with Action Points) that it puts a key aspect of the game back in the hands of the players - in this case it is the generation of the playing area, ensuring that it is different every time.
I find it interesting that what I consider to be the best "tile-laying" game out there (Euphrates and Tigris) operates not only within a constrained board, but with certain elements of that board also defined. You'd think that these restrictions would have a negative impact on the game, but I suspect that they are the real factor that enables the game to shine: if they weren't there, the game could collapse into horrible analysis paralysis given the extreme variety of placement options.

(edit: And below, I see that Richard cites Age of Steam which also has a constrained, restricted board which creates a paradoxically rich environment in which to build.)

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 15:41
#6
Zzzzz
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:

What is great about the tile-laying mechanic?

What obstacles does it present the designer?

What player experiences can it help to create?

Tile-laying mechanic is great for many aspects, I would have to say I agree that variety/variation is one of its strongest sides.

But at the same time I think this "variety" might also be one of the largest obstacles for a designer to implement. Depending on the number of different tiles being used in a game, just designing them to all flow together must be a real challange. Not to mention actual time to playtest so many possible tile laying combinations to determine the game is stable.

I think player experiences vary based on how the tile-laying mechanic is implemented. For module board creation games, I think the players might feel more control over how they can arrange the battlefield in their favor.

Not sure this post says much... but now it is out of my head...

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 16:16
#7
FastLearner
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Zzzzz wrote:
jwarrend wrote:

The "original" tile laying game is, I believe, Scrabble,

Really.... I never thought scrablle was that old, if you look at http://www.mattelscrabble.com/en/adults/history/page2.html it seems to be initial developed around 1931.

Mahjong is thought to have evolved around the 1850s based on some chinese card and domino games. For more info about MahJong see site http://www.fact-index.com/m/ma/mahjong.html)

Dominos.... Chinese domino tiles can be traced to writings from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) (AD 1120)..... see http://www.fact-index.com/c/ch/chinese_dominoes.html
I agree that dominos is definitely a form of tile laying, but Mahjong is really just a card game played with tiles, in my experience.

-- Matthew

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Mon, 08/02/2004 - 16:32
#8
Anonymous
Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:
"Tile laying" probably describes a broader class of games than the previous two topics, "Action Point Allowance" and "Roll and Move". Where those describe specific mechanics -- specific ways that a player interacts with the game -- I feel that "tile laying" generally describes the overall scope of the game itself.

Yes, it's interesting that it covers such a huge scope, although I think Action Point Allowance does, to a certain extent, permit itself to be plastered on all manner of games, too.

I suppose tile-laying in many German-style games is to be both praised and chided for the "cleanliness" it brings. By this I mean that Carcassone could easily be a game where you build roads and develop cities on an existing board, while retaining the "I am investing in a project with a finite part of my workforce" element. The tiles necessarily reduce the possible combinations, but this is largely a good thing for the speed they seem to add to the game.

Should we include in tile-laying games those 18xx railway games, and their glorious offspring, Age of Steam, in the category? Probably so as the track tiles in the game are similarly replacements for track that could be individually drawn on the board (as in many crayon games). The distribution of tiles can even be used to make it a race to updgrade certain areas (as in 18xx games-- I've only ever played 1860, but I gather this appears in other games of that type).

Best wishes,

Richard.

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 13:31
#9
jwarrend
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Richard_Huzzey wrote:

Should we include in tile-laying games those 18xx railway games, and their glorious offspring, Age of Steam, in the category?

I would say that we most definitely should, as track-laying is just one example of a great implementation for tile-laying -- building a big "something". Tiles can be great for laying out a "network"-- of pipes, subways, train routes, bus lines, etc. They can also be great for building a city, etc. What else have tiles been used to "build"?

Also, someone else mentioned a use that I admit I hadn't considered, that of tiles as a facilitator of an "exploration" mechanic. This is sort of like the "modular board" category, but because the tiles all start face down, I think the "feel" is more like a "draw and place" system on a constrained board than just a "board that changes every time", but I welcome opinions on either side.

So we have that tiles can work well in a "we're building something" game, or a "we're exploring something" game. What are some other contexts for tile mechanics?

Again, great discussion all, as usual!

-Jeff

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 13:43
#10
dr_Edge69
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

One day i thought about using some hexagonal tiles in a way i've never seen before.

I was thinking it would be great to use it as a caracter design. In a game i thought about, all tiles would be parts of robot that you can buy an exchange, to get your robot stronger etc...

The tiles give you the possibility to really change the look of you caracter, a card game can not give you the same feeling. I think you really feel for example, when your removing the "robot arm tile" and replacing with another kind of "robot arm tile", that you're really upgrading your robot.

Maybe an other way in a medieval theme would be to had shield, sword and armor tiles on you caracter...

I'm not sure if their is a future for the use of tiles in caracter design and representation in games, but it would be i think a new use of the tiles.

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 15:33
#11
Zzzzz
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:
What are some other contexts for tile mechanics?

Tiles as a dice replacement.
(A few months ago, in another thread, someone mentioned this idea.)

What is interesting, tiles as di offers you flexibility that standard dice might not easily handle. IE, a value range of 1 to 37.

You also gain the ability to remove some outcomes, fairly easy. If you no longer want results of 4, 19 and 36, remove the tiles. Mind you this seems a bit odd as I write.

Tiles as game status/state component.
What I mean by this, using tiles to track states of a game, maybe even role selection. One game I am co-developing uses tiles to indicate when a player is involved in an event or not. They will lay tiles facedown, blank tiles representing no involvement an event, and specific event tiles for indicating events they will take part in. Once everyone has lay tiles down, they flip the tiles over and see who they will be competing against in each event.

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 15:42
#12
jwarrend
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Zzzzz wrote:

Tiles as game status/state component.
What I mean by this, using tiles to track states of a game, maybe even role selection. One game I am co-developing uses tiles to indicate when a player is involved in an event or not. They will lay tiles facedown, blank tiles representing no involvement an event, and specific event tiles for indicating events they will take part in. Once everyone has lay tiles down, they flip the tiles over and see who they will be competing against in each event.

It sounds that the tile in your example here plays functionally the same role as cards, kind of like the action selection mechanic in Lowenherz, in which 3 actions are available to all players and players use cards to indicate which action they wish to take. This is definitely a job that tiles can fill, but for the purposes of compactness, I think it would be best to confine ourselves to mechanics that use tile-laying, and not just tile-playing.

However, your category does have some valid examples; Tikal, for example, has several "Volcano" tiles in the mix that, when revealed, trigger an event. I believe that zaiga's game Gheos has a similar mechanic. So, to be sure, within the context of tile laying as part of building a bigger "structure", "event" tiles can be part of the set yet have some different functionality. Good call!

-Jeff

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 17:47
#13
Zzzzz
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:

It sounds that the tile in your example here plays functionally the same role as cards, kind of like the action selection mechanic in Lowenherz, in which 3 actions are available to all players and players use cards to indicate which action they wish to take. This is definitely a job that tiles can fill, but for the purposes of compactness, I think it would be best to confine ourselves to mechanics that use tile-laying, and not just tile-playing.

I agree that for purposes of compactness, tiles might not be the best solution. Maybe one of its weaknesses? To bulky for some types of games?

And I think you described what I was trying to say, better then I did.

Such as the "Volcano" event tiles.....

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 18:08
#14
jwarrend
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Zzzzz wrote:

I agree that for purposes of compactness, tiles might not be the best solution. Maybe one of its weaknesses? To bulky for some types of games?

Sorry, bad word choice on my part. By "compactness", I was referring to "keeping the discussion compact", in the sense of "let's only talk about games that use tile-laying, even though many games use tiles for other things".

As for bulkiness, I suppose it depends on the tiles. One thing I will say is that I haven't yet designed a tile game primarily because tiles are more difficult to prototype than cards are (but also because I don't think my mind really works that way...)

-Jeff

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 18:23
#15
sedjtroll
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Maybe this is a good add-on to these discussions...

Who here HAS designed a tile laying game?

Zaiga's Gheos looks amazing (if anyone's been lucky enough to see it). I only saw the rulebook but it looks to me like Carcassone only WAY better. So this would be an example of a 'world building' use of tile laying

Hpox' Micropul I know for a fact is great, as he was kind enough to send me a copy. Here I can talk about the difference between prototyping with stickers on 1 layer of chipboard vs playing with 1/4" wood tiles... the tiles are a lot nicer and easier to manipulate, though it does make the stacks much taller and more precarious. Not that that's a problem or anything. But that's neither here nor there... this would be an example of an abstract tile laying game (like Dominoes).

Fastlearner's Everest is a sort of tile laying game in which the terrain is put on the mountain via tiles. In that respect it's more of an 'exploration' typ of tile laying rather than a building type, and it's confined to the spaces in the mountain.

And finally, am I the only on that finds this discussion interesting in relation to the Collaborative Game Design project? Spielunker, the game we as a group (those who participated) were working on is a game where tile laying is used to build/explore caves and players also move around the board as it's being built, seraching for discoveries.

Is there any other type of Tile Laying that we haven't already discussed in terms of Building, Exploring, or basically abstract?

- Seth

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 21:06
#16
Torrent
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Noone has mentioned Samuarai yet. It is a Tile-Laying game, with a fixed structure. The tiles are influence markers as opposed to any feature. I don't know if you would put it in a seperate category or into the Abstract one.

I love TileLaying and really wish I could do a design for one. The idea of creating the tiles to work together has always stumped me. I'll keep working on it.

I think the idea of doing 'combo's is an interesting feature of most tile-laying games. That perfect play that just gets a lot of points. Sort of the drawing the right tile to join into a big field in Carcassonne.

Andy

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Tue, 08/03/2004 - 22:07
#17
doho123
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

One aspect of tile games that hasn't been used too much is the ability to stack tiles on each other. Upwords was a Scrabble game that did this; Java is probably a more well known example of this.

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 06:52
#18
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Re: [TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:

As for bulkiness, I suppose it depends on the tiles. One thing I will say is that I haven't yet designed a tile game primarily because tiles are more difficult to prototype than cards are

Yep, I'd go along with that. I've probably spent more time cutting tiles out than cards, and I've only done four tile-laying games (compared to probably 25 or so with cards. I think it's mostly because paper doesn't really act as a good substitute.
(Anyway, this is way off-topic. Sorry.)

One thing I like about tiles as a result of them being slightly chunky however is that they can bring a semi-three-dimensional component to the game; Tikal uses this device. I've used it in my Planning Permission game: by stacking tiles the locations get physically taller and thus more obviously significant.

Some games that use this mechanic then take it one stage further and develop the tiles into blocks (Torres and Pueblo are two that spring to mind here) which then use the relative heights to determine things.

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 07:39
#19
rkalajian
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

sedjtroll wrote:
Who here HAS designed a tile laying game?

Well i'm in the process of designing one :)

It's funny...people have talked about bulkiness of tiles and tile stacking and i've come across those two issues while designing this game.

Tile stacking is coming in handy for me because players can change tiles (ex: set plains on fire) but the changes aren't permanent (ex: another player puts the fire out).

Bulkiness and cutting and all that mess are solved by buying the wooden hexes that were posted on the board earlier. I believe that they are 22 cents a hex, and are a good base for sticky labels. Now this can get a little expensive depending on how many tiles you need. Another option (even though it would require cutting) I had thought of was thick cardboard or heavy cardstock.

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 08:04
#20
Fos
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

sedjtroll wrote:
Who here HAS designed a tile laying game?

Raises hand.

There are multiple phases in my game which are triggered by drawing certain tiles. Overall, however, it's probably not a game I would design again (which is a good thing! Learning, etc.). The most innovative mechanic in the game was a shifting geographic system that gave players access to resources according to the position of their pawns. Unfortunately, this introduced a near crippling amount of choices for any turn.

Which leads me into one of the disadvantages of tile-laying, which can be mitigated by the fixed elements Scurra talks about.

A tile-laying game, without constraints in the actual tile-laying, can give a player too many choices, or worse, no clear idea of an optimal placement for a specific strategy. By introducing limits, as has been said, the game can be quickened, though this too may have problems when not implemented carefully. With too many limitations, players may not have any valid moves; effectively locked out of the game by strategic planning of another player, and while this is a clear indication of the better player, if the game is going to have such direct interaction its better to force the player into certain moves rather than cut them out completely (for the fun of the game).

Checkers does this. Most of the strategy of the game (for me, at least...) is forcing the opponent into jumps. The game simply ends if a player cannot make a valid move. And for a large, complex tile-laying game, where tile-laying isn't the only action taken by a player, but is still the central action, the ability to lock out another player needs to be tempered (or removed entirely). Imagine if 4 people were playing a game and player X couldn't lay tiles because he had no valid tiles to lay. Say a turn takes 30 seconds per person, and you can see player X sitting around on his hands for quite awhile before he's "allowed" to take another action.

And while locking out is a potential problem with any game if there are restrictions built into player actions, I believe it's a problem that deserves to be directly addressed when designing tile-laying games. Yes, the problems of tile-laying can be shored up immensely with a few restrictions and fixed states, but a balance needs to be struck or you'll have players sitting around doing nothing.

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 16:14
#21
setarcos
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Has anyone played Peaceful Resistance? (I have not, but it’s been at the top of my wish-list for a long time.)

It’s an abstract tile laying game that looks to me like it makes interesting use of the stacking mechanic.

http://www.abstractstrategy.com/peaceful-resistance.html

http://www.looneylabs.com/OurStores/product.html?ProductID=6&List=Random+Emporium

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 17:51
#22
FastLearner
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Of the three games I'm actively working on right now, all 3 have tiles.

One uses them as a sort-of exploration device (Everest, as Seth mentioned), where you're laying tiles for your own advancement while hopefully positioning them to restrict others.

The second uses them as a form of territory claiming/blocking/expansion (Elvencraft), where you're claiming certain merchants and trying to keep others from doing the same.

The third has all the tiles placed at the beginning, with players flipping them over (and back again) to change the game state (new version of Frog God's Pond), where you're working to keep your pieces protected while damaging those of the other players. It's not really tile-laying, per se, but rather tile-modifying and, somewhat, tile-exploration.

So... yup, I've designed tile-laying games, though in all 3 tile-laying isn't the focus of the game, but rather a component.

-- Matthew

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 18:08
#23
sedjtroll
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

FastLearner wrote:
So... yup, I've designed tile-laying games, though in all 3 tile-laying isn't the focus of the game, but rather a component.

And I think that's the way to go with all of these mechanics. A game is more than just it's core mechanic. A [game] is the integration of mechanics and decisions. The mechanics shouldn't really be the focus of any game.

- Seth

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 18:37
#24
FastLearner
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

Carcassonne is very nearly a pure tile-laying game, as are ZooSim and Cronberg/Bonobo Beach, and both M and Metro are pure tile-laying games, and there are others, and they're all good games. I think you can have good pure tile-laying games, I think.

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 19:14
#25
sedjtroll
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

FastLearner wrote:
Carcassonne is very nearly a pure tile-laying game, as are ZooSim and Cronberg/Bonobo Beach, and both M and Metro are pure tile-laying games, and there are others, and they're all good games. I think you can have good pure tile-laying games, I think.

I can't talk to much about the others as I have no experience with them, but for Carcassonne it's not the tile laying that's interesting. It's where you put your meeple that is interesting. Well, of course where you put the tile IS somewhat interesting, but if the game had no meeple and just tiles then it wouldn't be nearly as good as it is.

So sure, Carc has little else to do than place tiles, but the focus of the game still isn't really on the tile laying. It is moreso than some other games, but not entirely.

I feel I'm not coming accross the way I want to so let me go about it another way... Looking at it from a game design standpoint, if I focus on the mechanic of tile laying then I'll likely end up with a Carcassonne without meeple, where you score points for finishing cities and roads or something like that.

When I simply use Tile Laying as a mechanic and focus on making the rest of the game interesting then I might end up with the current Carcassonne that we all know and love.

- Seth

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 19:52
#26
Scurra
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

I'm sure you'll be glad to know that my GDW game next week is a tile-laying game. Happy now? ;))

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Wed, 08/04/2004 - 22:03
#27
jwarrend
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

sedjtroll wrote:
And I think that's the way to go with all of these mechanics. A game is more than just it's core mechanic. A [game] is the integration of mechanics and decisions. The mechanics shouldn't really be the focus of any game.

I think you make a point so uncontroversial that I can't imagine anyone would actually disagree with it; but, since you said something somewhat similar in the "Roll and Move" thread, it makes me wonder whether you feel that someone has disagreed with this sentiment in some way or other. Is that the case? In what way have they done so?

Quote:
if I focus on the mechanic of tile laying then I'll likely end up with a Carcassonne without meeple, where you score points for finishing cities and roads or something like that.

When I simply use Tile Laying as a mechanic and focus on making the rest of the game interesting then I might end up with the current Carcassonne that we all know and love.

Or you might instead end up with a pile of rubbish! True, Carcassonne is a great game, but hey, making great games is tough! I don't think there's any reason Carc couldn't have been great sans meeples, but your broader point is accurate, that doing so would have required a different source for interesting decisions to come from. So, sure, a designer should go beyond just trying to make a game built around a mechanic and make it interesting. But then, the flip side of that coin is that a designer should go beyond just trying to make a game out of an interesting theme and make the decisions interesting. I set out to make an "Indiana Jones" game, which at the outset sounds appealing, but if the game stinks, it will quickly be forgotten. I think setting out to make a great "tile laying" game or "roll and move" game is an equally valid starting point, but sure, it's by no means a terminus.

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Thu, 08/05/2004 - 03:11
#28
sedjtroll
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:
sedjtroll wrote:
A game is more than just it's core mechanic. A game is the integration of mechanics and decisions. The mechanics shouldn't really be the focus of any game.

I think you make a point so uncontroversial that I can't imagine anyone would actually disagree with it; but, since you said something somewhat similar in the "Roll and Move" thread, it makes me wonder whether you feel that someone has disagreed with this sentiment in some way or other. Is that the case? In what way have they done so?
I'm not sure if someone's disagreed with that perse, I think I just have a pet peeve against discussions that begin with a faulty premise, such as "mechanic X is the focal point of such and such a game which is good, so why is mechanic X so good?"

So it makes sense that I said basically the same thing in both discussions, and I guess I apologize as I didn't realize I'd done it until you pointed it out.Fair warning: I'll likely say something similar in the future if it comes up again. Another one to watch out for is the whole 'dice = randomness' thing, in particular if it's 'dice=random=evil'.

Quote:
if I focus on the mechanic of tile laying then I'll likely end up with a Carcassonne without meeple, where you score points for finishing cities and roads or something like that.

When I simply use Tile Laying as a mechanic and focus on making the rest of the game interesting then I might end up with the current Carcassonne that we all know and love.

Quote:
you might instead end up with a pile of rubbish! True, Carcassonne is a great game, but hey, making great games is tough!

That's irrelevant to the example, as you seem to understand as evidenced by...
Quote:
I don't think there's any reason Carc couldn't have been great sans meeples, but your broader point is accurate, that doing so would have required a different source for interesting decisions to come from.

;)
Quote:
a designer should go beyond just trying to make a game built around a mechanic and make it interesting. But then, the flip side of that coin is that a designer should go beyond just trying to make a game out of an interesting theme and make the decisions interesting. I set out to make an "Indiana Jones" game, which at the outset sounds appealing, but if the game stinks, it will quickly be forgotten. I think setting out to make a great "tile laying" game or "roll and move" game is an equally valid starting point, but sure, it's by no means a terminus.

I can't argue with that. Any of these mechanics or themes can be a great starting point. A starting point however is different from the focus of a game.

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Thu, 08/05/2004 - 10:59
#29
jwarrend
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

sedjtroll wrote:

I'm not sure if someone's disagreed with that perse, I think I just have a pet peeve against discussions that begin with a faulty premise, such as "mechanic X is the focal point of such and such a game which is good, so why is mechanic X so good?"

I might suggest, then, that this series of TiGD discussions may not be to your taste, since we are very deliberately attempting to talk specifically about the mechanics themselves, and understand both how they work and what they're good for (and bad for).

I don't want to wade into the discussion about Carcassonne, except to say that I don't think you could possibly say Carcassonne is anything other than a tile-laying game, AND that the tile mechanic is very central to what makes the design great. That's not to say that calling Carcassonne a tile-laying game exhaustively describes the game, but neither would it be inaccurate to refer to Carcassonne as a tile-laying game; I don't think there's anything wrong with talking about the tile-laying aspects of Carcassonne in isolation. To say that you can't do that is akin to saying you can't talk about a song's lyrics being good or bad, since they're just part of the whole song, or that you can't talk about your steak being good or bad since it's just part of the whole meal.

Believe me, I think that attempts by people to categorize go too far sometimes, but I think they're a reality of the human experience; we have an overwhelming tendency to group things in terms of qualities that they share (or that we perceive them to share). There are large numbers of games that include the mechanics we'll be discussing here, and while each game uses the mechanic differently, and is good or bad for reasons that go beyond the mechanic itself, there's no question that the games do use the mechanic, and I claim that by talking about the way the mechanic happens to be used in each game, we can learn about the mechanic in a way that can help us as players and designers of games.

So again, I completely agree with your broader point, that a game stands or falls on the quality of the decisions it presents the players, and not simply on a gimmicky mechanic. But I would disagree that talking about mechanics in isolation is in any sense a waste of time, or that one can't understand a mechanic by considering games that have previously implemented it. I hope that's not what you're saying.

-Jeff

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Thu, 08/05/2004 - 14:31
#30
sedjtroll
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[TiGD] Week 3: "Tile laying games"

jwarrend wrote:
I might suggest, then, that this series of TiGD discussions may not be to your taste, since we are very deliberately attempting to talk specifically about the mechanics themselves, and understand both how they work and what they're good for (and bad for).

I guess I'm not communicating my point well at all. It's great to talk about mechanics- how they work and what they're good for/bad for. That's different from pretending that the core mechanic is the focus of the game. What I'm saying has nothing to do with wheather the mechanics are talked about in isolation or in conjunction with other things- except to say that when they're talked about in isolation it should be the mechanic that's discussed, not something else (like the game). In other words, one might say "Tile Laying is an interesting mechanic, therefore Carcassonne is a great game" and they may be right on both counts, but the one doesn't necessarily follow the other. A more clear example might be "Tile Laying is boring therefore Carcassonne isn't interesting". Tile laying CAN be boring, in and of itself, but clearly Carcassonne is interesting - I don't even like it that much but I definitely find it interesting.

This has gotten way off topic, so let's try to bring it back on-topic...
We've said that Tile Laying can help invoke the feeling of building something or exploring something (in some cases both). How can we as designers use this information in our designs? When should we think to ourselves "hmm, this might be a good place to use a tile laying mechanism"? Is there a building/exploration feeling that would be negatively impacted by tile laying- a situation where tile laying might not work well, even in a type of game that seems to led itself to tile laying?

- Seth

P.S.

Quote:
But I would disagree that talking about mechanics in isolation is in any sense a waste of time, or that one can't understand a mechanic by considering games that have previously implemented it. I hope that's not what you're saying.

That's not what I'm saying at all. Talking about mechanics in isolation is not a waste of time, and one CAN understand a mechanic by looking at how it's been used. However, in order to do so we should look at how the mechanic is used in those games and compare apples to apples, not just how interesting those other games are (or aren't) as a whole.

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