Tag: magic: the gathering

Theory: Why Do People Play Magic?

Posted on Posted in Game design theoryTagged , Leave a comment

One of the great things about Mark Rosewater’s articles is that not only do we get a window into his design thinking, we also get a window into the market research Wizards of the Coast benefits from. Most of us can only speculate about why players do as they do. WotC has answers backed by data.

Among the conundrums WotC set out to solve is “why do people play Magic: the Gathering?” The results are fascinating, and I’ve found that they’re informative for other games as well. If you’ve ever run into discussion of “Timmies” or “Johnnies” online, and wondered what people were talking about, this is the answer. If you haven’t, I would still encourage you to take a minute to look Mr. Rosewater’s article over. It’s a classic.

The Case Study: Hotfixes and Information Tracking

Posted on Posted in The case studyTagged , Leave a comment

During the playtesting project two rules issues have come up. Below are the questions, the answers, and an updated rulebook. I’m going to steal Quirkworthy‘s Q/A/D format for these–a there’s a Question, an Answer, and some Discussion.

Q: What is terrain piece 4’s actual shape? Does it include the clear spaces between the spaces with terrain in them?

A: Piece 4 includes only the spaces marked as terrain. It does not include the clear spaces.

D: Piece 4 is fun, but it does cause some issues. As matters stand it’s inconvenient to cut out and not at all sturdy. I considered putting a border around it so that it could be handled as one giant piece, but that created two problems. First, it would require expanding the rules on overlapping terrain to deal with terrain that includes clear spaces–does the clear space or the difficult terrain “win?” Second, it would call for rules for two different kinds of borders–those that actually impact movement and those that are merely defining the edges of the terrain piece.

Neither of those rule changes would have to be elaborate, but I would prefer to avoid adding complexity just to make piece 4 easier to manage. I think the better solution here is to take another look at the print-and-play file to see if there’s a way to give piece 4 a bit more structural integrity.

Q: Is the discard pile for searcher movement cards public information? Can I look through the discard to see what cards are out of the deck?

A: Yes, the discard pile for searcher movement cards is public information. It is legal to look through it at any time.

D: This is a difficult question, and the answer could have gone either way. What follows is how I came to the conclusion I did, but I’m especially interested in hearing people’s views on this subject.

A fundamental rule of Over the Next Dune is that players should be making interesting decisions. The most fundamental decisions players make are where to move and what path to follow in getting there. It is vital that those decisions be as engaging as possible.

One way in which I am trying to make those decisions interesting is allowing players to “play the odds” with regard to searcher movement. Since the searchers are most likely to go straight ahead and less likely to turn, players can take intelligent risks. If you can’t get to a completely safe place, it’s still possible to choose a safer spot by going to a location where the searcher would have to turn to catch you. Picking the best spot under the circumstances is a (hopefully) interesting part of the challenge.

Similarly, if you are trying to trick a searcher in order to save a teammate, the relative odds of the searcher moving forward or turning affect where to drag the searcher. I’ve found it interesting to try to find the safest location for my teammates based on what the searcher is likely to do next.

Knowing what searcher movement cards have already come out affects these decisions. If four left turns are gone and no right turns are, the searchers are significantly more likely to turn right in the future, and that impacts where and how the players should move. I think it’s a positive that as the game goes on the odds change–as discussed last time, it keeps things interesting.

However, players can only revisit their decisions based on new information if they actually have the information. In this case, that means they have to know what searcher movement cards have been used. There are three ways for them to get that data: remembering, tracking it by writing it down, and being able to check the discard.

Remembering the cards is a skill; I have known players who were very good at that sort of thing, and it gave them a real advantage. However, it is not a skill that OtND needs to test. Thematically, I see no reason why soldiers sneaking behind enemy lines would be counting how many times their pursuers turned left. (Admittedly, I’ve never had to escape from behind enemy lines. Maybe I’m wrong?) From a gameplay perspective, I don’t want a player who is good at remembering to dictate to other players, or to have other players trying to cede their decision-making to the player with a strong memory.

Writing down the information just seems awkward and irksome. In competitive Magic: the Gathering it helps avoid confusion and prevent cheating, but this is a cooperative game with less potential for error and lower incentives to seek unfair advantage. It’s an unfortunate necessity there; we don’t need to go down that path here.

That leaves allowing players to look at the discard. I feel that this solution has two key benefits. First, it is effective. Players can only make interesting risk-re-evaluating decisions if they have the necessary information, and letting players check the discard accomplishes that. Second, it encourages players who can’t remember or didn’t track the discarded cards to seek out and use that information. In my experience, players who don’t recall what’s in a discard pile frequently just give up and ignore the discarded cards entirely. As a result, they don’t go through the re-evaluation. I want players to revisit the odds of the searchers moving in different ways over the course of the game, and letting them find out what has been discarded will encourage them to do so.

It is true that allowing players who do not remember or track the contents of the discard to check it could slow down play. My suspicion, however, is that this will not be a serious problem. I expect that most players will only check the discard when an exact count is vital; those who value the information most, and who might have the greatest inclination to look through the discard pile, will probably also be paying close attention to the cards as they come out and will therefore have the least need to do so.

Based on that reasoning I am currently saying that the discard is open information. Again, however, I am not wedded to that position. If you disagree, let me know!

Over the Next Dune – Rules – 3-5-14

What We’re Doing: Underlying Principles

Posted on Posted in For new readersTagged , , , Leave a comment

Today was going to be about awkward rules. However, I realized that while I’ve talked a lot about using legal analysis, I haven’t really explained how it works to readers who aren’t familiar with it. I want to remedy that, and in the process discuss in a bit more detail what is driving this blog. We’ll come back to awkward rules in a little while.

At its most fundamental level, legal analysis works like this: there are some facts. Those facts give rise to an issue–the legal question you want to answer. To do so, you go back through the annals of the law to find the rule(s) applicable to your issue. The you compare the facts to the rule(s) to get an answer; the answer is called a “holding,” but it’s basically an answer. That answer/holding may end up being used as a rule in future cases.

So, for example, suppose John Doe takes someone’s car without that person’s permission, joyrides it around town, and crashes it into a tree. If you had absolutely no pre-existing knowledge of the law, that might give rise to the issue “do these facts make out a criminal offense?” (We all know John Doe stole the car, but again, suppose you had no knowledge of the law whatsoever.) Your research might reveal, depending on one’s jurisdiction, a rule that looks something like “taking another person’s property without that person’s permission, intending not to give it back, is theft.” With that rule one might conclude, based on the facts at hand, that John Doe committed the offense of theft; he took the car without permission, and joyriding it dangerously suggests that he did not intend to return it.

There are many pitfalls in this process. First, one must correctly identify the legally relevant facts. You have to know that Jon Doe’s particular name doesn’t matter; if you think it does and spend all your time looking for rules specifically about John Doe you aren’t going to get anywhere. (Of course, there are occasions when John Doe’s identity does matter–think of signs in subways specifically noting that there are extra penalties for harming a transit worker. Sometimes you need some knowledge of the rules in order to detect the relevant facts.)

Second, the issue must be framed correctly. To give an example from Over the Next Dune’s development, for a long time it was possible for the players to get close to their goal with the searchers far behind them. The searchers would rarely catch up, and so the endgame was very easy. I cast the problem as “how can the searchers be kept relevant throughout the game,” which first led me to try various ways to let the searchers “respawn” in more relevant positions and then, when those proved unsatisfactory, to reduce the size of the board. The latter solution worked well, but I only tried it because I had stated the issue broadly. If I had considered the issue to be “how can the searchers respawn to be relevant throughout the game,” I would have kept going down a futile path.

Third, the rule has to be correct. If your calculator thinks that 2 + 2 = 5, it will give you wrong answers no matter how carefully you frame the question and input the numbers.

The problem I’ve seen in game design is that there are lots of facts and issues, but very few reliable rules. Even the rules which are commonly propounded are, to use a term from my college days, under-theorized; we don’t understand them well enough to know their limits and proper use.

Let me give a quick example. Mark Rosewater, lead designer of Magic: the Gathering, once made a list of rules for game design to teach to kids. One of the rules was that a game should have inertia; it should move toward an ending. That’s clearly true for Magic, but players of role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons might disagree. Role playing gamers often look back fondly on long campaigns, and see keeping their games going as a virtue; these games don’t want to move toward an ending, they want to keep going indefinitely. Similarly, I know people who have sunk hundreds of hours into various Elder Scrolls games, exploring and adding to their homes/castles/wizard’s towers/etc. Those players would be happiest if the game never ended–if it had an infinite amount of interesting stuff to see.

Do those examples mean Mark Rosewater is wrong? He’s an incredibly successful designer, having shepherded a brilliant game–and it is brilliant, as even its detractors (who often focus on its collectible distribution rather than its gameplay) generally agree–for many successful years. We should hesitate to say he’s mistaken.

I think the real problem is that Mr. Rosewater’s rule isn’t applicable to all games. In legal terms one might say that didn’t identify all the relevant facts; the case presented was about making a marketable game intended for relatively short individual plays, but he just presented it as being about games. His rule is right–so long as one understands it thoroughly and knows when to apply it.

My goal for this blog is to improve our understanding of the rules that are already out there, and to develop new rules where they are needed. In doing so, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants–and yes, Mark Rosewater is one of them–who went before me. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see farther than they have, but my hope is that by using a legal analytic structure I will be able to see clearly, and to impart what I’ve seen effectively.

Theory: What is “counterplay?”

Posted on Posted in Game design theoryTagged , , , Leave a comment

When I was in college I took a lot of political science courses. In those classes we confronted, again and again, the problem of definitional confusion: arguments started and persisted because people were using the same words to mean different things. It was impossible for theorists to agree on what the implications of “realism”* were, because they had different understandings of what “realism” meant!

The problem emerged again in the law. I vividly remember my property law professor in law school explaining a case in which a landlord and tenant had written up a rental agreement including the phrase “quiet enjoyment,” which they had seen in a do-it-yourself guide. They used it to mean “while it was quiet and enjoyable to live there.” Unfortunately, they had employed the term completely incorrectly; in property law, “quiet enjoyment” is a technical term having absolutely nothing to do with whether the neighbors are loud or whether the tenant likes the apartment.** As a result, when the relationship turned sour the case was unusually difficult to resolve. The meaning of this key term in the agreement had shifted as the landlord and tenant stepped through the courthouse door, completely changing the nature of their dispute.

I sometimes see the same issue in game design. In particular, this comes up in discussion surrounding League of Legends, an extremely popular online game. The designers of League of Legends speak frequently with the playing public, and in doing so they talk a lot about the need for “counterplay.” Unfortunately, there seems to be a definitional divide between the players and the designers (and between different players, and perhaps even between the designers?). As a result, players in these discussions sometimes arrive at conclusions the League designers disagree with–and, just like in political science, arguments start.

What, then, does “counterplay” really mean? It’s clear both from the phrase and from the League designers’ usage that counterplay means something like “you can’t just stomp all over the other player, he or she has to be able to do something about what you’re doing.” However, that definition is about like the “bouncing screen saver” approach to Over the Next Dune; it’s a helpful shorthand but to do real work we need something a little more thought out.

I feel that the most useful way to approach the problem is to break the phrase down into two parts: counter and play.

Counter means that the opponent can respond in a way that makes the opponent’s situation more advantageous than it would otherwise have been. This might mean completely negating the action (Magic: the Gathering’s counterspells), or just mitigating its effects (in League, using Leona’s “W”–a shielding spell–to block some of the damage). Mitigation can even involve an axis completely separate from the attack. For example, in Legend of the Five Rings there are cards that gain offensive power as the opponent destroys one’s resources; these do nothing about the loss of resources, but can help enable a comeback. The key is that when a player acts, the opponent does not have to simply accept being worse off.

Play means that the counter-action(s) the opponent can take are interesting for both the player and the opponent. A good example of this is Vi’s “Q” in League. The Vi player can push “Q” to get ready to charge, and let go to charge in a direction of the player’s choosing. However, the opponent can see Vi getting ready and has the opportunity to dodge out of the way. This leads to some fascinating mind games:

Opponent: “if I just keep going in the direction I am, I will be predictable and Vi will hit me. Should I turn around? If I do that I’ll be out of position to retaliate. What about a stutter-step, so I keep going in the same direction but I throw off Vi’s aim? I’ll end up closer to her, but I’ll have to time it precisely. OK, what if I . . . .”

Vi’s player: “My opponent needs to retreat toward teammates, so she’ll probably keep going in that direction. However, I don’t want to get too close to the opposing team. Maybe I can act like I’m going to charge that way, and then force the opponent to turn away from her team . . . .”

All of this happens in a second or less. It’s a game-within-a-game, and it’s a lot of fun. Getting inside the opponent’s head, correctly predicting his or her choices, and making the right play in response feels great.

Now imagine the opponent just had a button that stopped Vi’s charge. The opponent doesn’t have to do anything, there’s no cost to doing this, the opponent can do it as many times as he or she wants. Just push the button and Vi’s charge stops dead. That would be a counter, but it wouldn’t be interesting. There would be no play in it.

Hence, counterplay means that opponents can respond to a player’s actions in ways that help the opponents stay involved in the game and that are interesting for all involved. Just stating the definition is enough to explain its importance. A game that’s involving and interesting sounds like a good one, doesn’t it?

What I particularly like about this definition–what I think makes it better than intuitive understandings–is that it provides measurable benchmarks. If you want to know if there’s counterplay, ask: what can the opponent do in response? Do those actions improve the opponent’s position? If so, by how much? Do the opponent’s responses create a layered situation that’s interesting for everyone? By answering these questions you can determine in as close to a quantitative way as possible how much counterplay a situation or design element has.

Take it from a lawyer: it’s no fun to find out you’ve had a pointless argument with someone you more or less agreed with, just because you misunderstood each other. I think this definition of “counterplay” is useful enough to put into practice, and it’s the one I’ll be sticking with going forward. I can’t make everyone on the internet use it, but if you see it around here, you’ll know what I mean. 🙂

* This is not a great example–realism is actually a long-standing and well-understood theory. I hope, however, that it gives the flavor of the arguments.

** It has to do with who owns the property, but this isn’t the place for a detailed discussion of the concept; if you’re curious or have a legal question, please see the disclaimer.