Aaron Lawn: Long Surprises

I enjoy longer¹ games.  But there is definitely a different mindset that I have when I sit down for a long game.  I’ve prepared myself for something long.  But sometimes, a supposedly short game turns long.  The game drags out.  Sometimes it’s clear why.  Sometimes it’s not, and the next thing you know, you’ve been sitting there playing a game that says 60-90 minutes on the side of the box and it’s past midnight. 

AP is often blamed.  Almost always.  Slow players caused the game to go long.  But ultimately AP is mostly enabled by game mechanics, and while some players are more prone to it than others, when a game encourages AP, the game is going to gain in overall length of time. 

AP factor one: Large Decision tree².  This type of AP is probably the most common in eurogames, and it often takes what might be a 60-90 minute game and pushes it into a 120-150 minute game.  The easiest, though probably not the best, example is Kramer/Kieslings Action point games - notably Tikal and Java.  These games provide a wide range of player options at every point, multiple methods to secure victory, and a mostly empty board at the beginning of the game.

AP factor two: Obscure Decision tree. Some games intentionally keep adding layers of interaction onto every choice until it is hard to determine the full impact of any action.  Neuland³ is a reasonable example of a game where every action point spent causes your future choices to change, and a given sequence of actions will strongly impact what the next player chooses to do.  Container also has many obscure decisions.

AP factor three: Equality, or Unknown Ramifications:  Sometimes, choice A and choice B are absolutely equal.  A player who strongly evaluates their own actions will wind up with two choice of which there is no clear “best move”.  This can result is AP while trying to determine what that best move is, despite that there isn’t a way to determine this.  This factor seems to crop up most in games where there is heavy player interaction, or some form of random element that will ultimately make one of the two choices better.  A straightforward example of this would be a theoretical choice in settlers of catan - The player has exactly two choices of where to build their next city.  Both are the same resources, and offer the same opportunities for future growth, but one is on a “6,9,5” and one is on an “8,9,5”.  The only difference between the two cities is knowing if more sixes or eights will be rolled.  Information that cannot be known.  Few players will pause long over this specific decision, but in longer, more complex games....

AP factor four: Sleep.  Or lack of it.  And finally, not a game design choice at all - but the greatest boon to AP ever, a tired player.

Overall, most factors in game design that contribute to AP have a strong decrease with repeated play.  Repeat play of a game clears up obscure decision trees, provides a framework of importance to large decision trees, and experience teaches players when parity between choices is inescapable.  It’s not surprising to me that AP is one of the most common complaints among the core board game players - mostly because the core players of board games no longer play most games more than several times.  Through the Ages is a reasonably good example of this.  While never a short game, repeat play can trim as much as 3 hours off the playtime of the game as the open, obscure⁴ decision tree is discovered.  Of course, some players will remain extra prone to AP.  But that is going to be regardless of game or circumstance.  Those players can cause even a game of No Thanks to take an hour.

After dispensing with AP, here’s some other common causes of drawing out the length of a game.

Trading:  Any game that involves trading or negotiation has a hugely variable length of play.  The common example is Settlers, but the best example is probably Traders of Genoa or Diplomacy.  Some groups will take those games and bring them to completion in under two hours.  Others won’t. Colosseum⁵ drags out an extra 30 minutes or so because of the trading phase.  I think it’s important to separate AP and trading.  Slow or intense trading isn’t AP - it’s a separate beast.

Math:  Most common in stock and railway games.  Excess math can easily drag out a game.  The extensive route profit counting in an 18XX is the best example of math coupled with pathmaking causing a simple operation to potentially add hours to a game.  The hardest thing about math slowdown is that often there are no choices of note to make during the counting.  Specifically in 18XX, a train *must* run it’s most profitable line - so players are simply determining the best line in order to score.  Math is what ultimately moved some games to computers, and why the 18XX moderator programs exist.

Shared Decisions:  This is less common, since relatively few games have them, but whenever players must join forces against the game, or one other player, there is invariably extra time taken in coordination and planning.  Fury of Dracula.  Descent.  Knizia’s Lord of the Rings.  Even Pandemic, which is a very quick game, lasts as long as it does because of the time spent making shared decisions.

Last Man Standing Victory:  And the granddaddy of all.  Risk.  More recently, Antike.  or Munchkin.  or Minos.  or Illuminati.  or… Also commonly referenced as “Whack the leader”.  These are games where Victory and game-end conditions are only obtainable by one player, so when one player gets close, other players conspire to stop that player.  Victory is obtained by having a strong enough position to fend off the rest of the table⁶.

Of course there are other reasons why games are long - but these are the most usual culprits of the “surprise” long game.  My latest surprise long game was a game of Indonesia that lasted a whole game night - 4 hours.  We hadn’t played the game in about two years, so I shouldn’t have been surprised… but there we were nonetheless.  The culprit?  Math.

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¹ The defining break point for Long for me is somewhere around 150 minutes.  A two hour game isn’t long, but a three hour game is.  For some, two hours is too long.  For others, longer.  -shrug-

² or branching path of choices.

³ which also has a very open decision tree.  Most games with an obscure tree are also pretty open, but open trees aren’t necessarily obscure.

⁴ Which is especially obscure if you’ve never seen the cards before. 

⁵ Days of Wonder’s most recent game

⁶ Or the best luck with the dice.

© 2008 Aaron Lawn

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Comments:

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Indonesia!  ...but a worthy use of your time, nonetheless!  Nice article, Aaron. Posted by Nathan Morse on Mar 27, 2008 at 05:00 PM | #

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