In games, there can be a meta game that arises between regular play groups. Certain social agendas materialize on the game board. I grew up with three other siblings and both my parents. My mom introduced me board gaming- admittedly my dad taught me chess and I’ve always kept that love of playing, but he never was into the other board games we played at the time (to be fair, all the games where roll and move so I can’t blame him. Teaching me chess showed me there were depth to games). My mom played Monopoly and Careers over and over again with us, Careers being the favorite (and come to think of it incorporated an innovative luck mitigation mechanic AND hidden asymmetric victory conditions plus a trade system nearly as vibrant as Catan, which seems overly progressive for a roll and move game in the 50’s). However she often played in such a way to purposefully let us win. I quickly became unsatisfied with empty victories and played in such a way to handicap myself to offset her own handicap. A relational reality influencing game play. Later on as my siblings became old enough to all play together, I arose as the normal victor, an alpha player if you will. I was the oldest and had years of experience over them, and despising my mom’s tactic of “going easy” I chose the opposite tactic and always went hard. The meta then developed over the years that in order to beat me, my three siblings would always team up against me in the board game- Monopoly? No one would trade with me or at least not offer any remotely fair trade. Risk? Everyone would attack me. Later when we played Catan- road blockage and sub-par trading. I went from winning most of the time to losing all the time. To this day this meta game continues- now I can either suggest co-ops or resign to losing any other game horribly. I suppose my strategy didn’t consider far enough into the future. Likewise, my roommate from post-college and I developed the meta game of rivalry. Whenever we played, whether with 3 players or 5 or 2, we only were in it to beat the other roommate. We would always play and posture in the game with little acknowledgement of players other than each other.
This meta that happens I am interested by. The recent CMON/Eric Lang Rising Sun recently has done something to “codify” a meta-game, that is alliance building. I’m interested in “codifying” these meta-rivalries than can occur. Say in a 4x game, you can develope Nemesis in the game, and that has a certain impact on the gameplay. Not that you directly choose who your nemesis is, but that, say the more you attack the same person, the closer, or more strongly, you become Nemesis or in-game rivals via a mechanic of the game.
Rivalries impact the emotional tenor of any game. When you lose to a rival it seems infinitely worse than a lose to another. When you win it feels infinitely more sweet. Your play gains fervor and even aggression in a way that may not be true against other opponents (speaking for myself perhaps)
If you were to incorporate this as a mechanic into a simpler game like Risk- how would you do it?
As a quick design on my part, the first thing that comes to mind is every player has a “Nemesis track” with say 9 spaces. They have a corresponding token for each other player, every time they lose a battle to any player they move that players corresponding token up one on the track. For every three levels on the Nemesis track you gain 1 additional reroll on the dice against that player in a battle. This could be extrapolated to any game I suppose, just adjust the length of the track and type of bonus based on how many battles typically occur and how “winning” a battle is determined.
What about you?
Your uncle seems to have a knack for elegant board game design!
I like the circle idea, it does the same thing but is simpler (in a good way) than a track.
This isn't an exercise to mitigate teaming up per say, but thinking of a mechanic that captures the essence of "Rivalry" so even people who aren't emotionally invested in a game like me and my old roommate or your uncle can experience tangible impact from repeated actions against or from another player.