Valerie Putman: Replay value and the value of replay

Last week I got snowed in at Ubercon in New Jersey.  Sunday afternoon, when the convention normally would have been long over, the game room was still full of fellow gamers waiting out the bad weather.  My new friend Rob (one of Alan Ernstein’s play testers) asked if we were interested in helping him break in his newly purchased copy of Railroad Tycoon.  I’ve been wary of trying this one, since I am a die hard Age of Steam fan, but when gaming with such a great group of people, almost any game would have been fine with me.  (I did veto Arkham Horror…sorry, not a fan of “experienceâ€? or cooperative games).  Well, we ended up playing Railroad Tycoon three times in a row!

We set the game up for 5 players.  I was the only one who had ever played Age of Steam and Alan had played Railroad Tycoon only once before.  The other three players didn’t have experience with either game.  We read through the rules and set off.  Early in the game several players competed for the city dense northeast.  My experience with AoS paid off and I set up in an area of the board where I could see the potential for a nice network of 3, 4 and 5 city deliveries.  I had some competition, but won the game fairly easily.  As the game progressed I saw the light bulbs going off above the heads of my fellow players and in some ways the win was unsatisfying.  I knew that if given the chance, this group would put what they had just learned to good use.  In fact, we were all discussing what we’d love to try “next timeâ€? as we started to pack up the game, which for me is a good sign of great replay value in a game.

I knew I wouldn’t hesitate to play Railroad Tycoon again when given the chance.  There is certainly room in my gaming heart for both RT and its predecessor.  But honestly, I wanted to play again NOW.  I didn’t want to wait a few months to see the game hit the table again.  So, even though I really didn’t know the gaming habits of my new friends, I decided to throw out the suggestion that we give it another try while our ideas about new strategies were still fresh in our minds.  To my delight, the entire table agreed!  We broke for a quick dinner and then started a second game of Railroad Tycoon with the addition of a 6th player.

Everyone definitely improved for the second game and I barely managed a tie for 4th place (but within 4 pts of Alan, the winner).  We got to see some cards that didn’t appear in the first game and we were more prepared to increase our bidding for start player when powerful cards we had become familiar with in the first game came out.  It was a tremendously satisfying game and everyone felt much more comfortable with the rules after playing the game back to back.  But I still wanted more.  Alan had been pondering out loud about the viability of starting in or near New Orleans and I wanted to see it attempted.  I also had some ideas about how to play the northeast that I wanted to try.  So, in a half-hearted tone to indicate that I knew the suggestion was crazy, I asked if anyone would be willing to play for a third time

Well, golly, four of us were game!  I think Matt would have been interested as well, but he was going to brave the storm and try to drive home.  We were particularly thrilled to get a chance to see the game with different numbers of players each time and couldn’t wait to see the game progress with only 4 players on the board.  After 2 turns Alan realized that this was not the game to try for New Orleans (the cube distribution was quite unfavorable) and another player would have also benefited from starting over.  So we reset the board for a fourth time and I managed to battle Mark in the Midwest all game, leaving Alan and Rob to gain a healthy lead in their respective corners of the US.  Rob won the third game, 3 points ahead of Alan in 2nd place and a hefty 12 points ahead of my 3rd place finish.  (Hmmm…I don’t seem to improve with repeated play!).

I find that now, almost a week later, I’m still thinking about the games and I credit our replays for the depth of strategy that I’m still pondering.  I’m not interested in becoming a student of the game, like many Chess, Go and Puerto Rico players.  I generally don’t read strategy articles and I certainly won’t stop playing other games.  But I really appreciate the deeper understanding I have of the game from playing it several times in a row.  Earlier in the weekend I had played Tuhuantinsuyu and at the end of the game I found myself coming to some conclusions about how to play better next time.  But then, I vaguely remember coming to many of the same conclusions after my last play of the game, over 2 years earlier.  That’s not very helpful.  It’s not that I care so much about winning, but it seems a shame to lose those insights that come immediately after playing.  So while I love a game with replay value, if those experiences are separated by weeks, months, or even years, I think we lose some of the value of replaying a game.

I’d rather be gaming,
Valerie Putman

© 2006 Valerie Putman

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Comments:

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I always have strategies I’ve come up with after a game and want to replay immediately.  Unfortunately with I have 5 & 7 year olds, and the people I play with have kids around the same age.  So long games are not likely to get replayed.  It’s hard enough to find time to play a long game as it is.  Shorter games it’s much easier to pop out the let’s try again, I want to try something. Posted by Jonathan Greisz on Feb 19, 2006 at 10:18 AM | #

Valerie - Like you, I was really struck by my first playing of RRT. It quickly hit the table again for us, and we became so enamored of it that we have taken to ending game nights by go out to breakfast at midnight, then playing a game of RRT and going until the wee small hours. Only once have i played it back-to-back, however. Lucky girl. There are a few gripes i have with the game, like the South not really being viable, and the Tycoon cards themselves have issues, but that’s what house rules are for, right? Have Fun, Play Games Dave Posted by David Fair on Feb 19, 2006 at 02:23 PM | #

Actually, my first playing of the game was unsatisfying as a 3 player game.  I felt that the game finally had gotten up to speed right when it ended.  I won, but somehow didn’t feel it has “developed” as much as I wanted it to. Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Feb 21, 2006 at 02:58 PM | #

I’m also getting the urge to play titles more often before going on to the next bright and shiny game. As a result I’ve gotten less compulsive about getting every new game that comes down the pike. I am more selective and look for games with a lot of replayability. Even some older titles (such as Mexica) I have pulled off the shelf more than once a year. I think that I have almost broken the new game addiction. I have shelves of unplayed and seldom played games and I want to get to know them before leaving them abandoned as they have been. Posted by Paul Sauberer on Feb 22, 2006 at 06:20 AM | #

Paul, I have to agree that this has been a shift for me, too.  In the past, I rarely wanted to replay the same game when there were other games to be played.  Who had time to play the same game twice when there were so many others to choose from?  Is this common in the development of a life-long gamer?  Is the next step devotion to a single game that we replay to death?  Nah, I doubt it. Valerie Posted by Valerie Putman on Feb 22, 2006 at 12:54 PM | #

There are a few recent games that I want to try and get to the table again soon. Among them are Hacienda, Vegas Showdown, and Australia. I also want to have certain older games like Fifth Avenue get played. Then I have the not-quite-so-recent unplayed that are high on my list like Palazzo. Then there are the ones that have been languishing that I really want to try like Giganten. If I were honest with myself, I could probably be more than fine for years with no more than 200 games out of my 700+ game collection. This realization has not only slowed down my buying but made it much easier to part with games, even if I haven’t played them. The big question I ask myself now when making a buying or trading/selling decision is “Will I want to keep playing this?” Not a whole lot of games get an affirmative answer, particularly when compared to other games. Last year I played between 250-300 unique games. There really aren’t a huge amount of games that can crack a lineup of that size and leave me with the desire to play again soon. RRT has bumped AoS out of my “keeper” list. I can see myself wanting to replay RRT far more often. It also scratches roughly the same itch for me. I have already put the AoS expansions on my trade list and will likely do the same with AoS itself when I get just a little more courage. Posted by Paul Sauberer on Feb 22, 2006 at 02:02 PM | #

I was wondering what happened with Ubercon given the storm on Sunday, so it was really interesting hearing your story. Funny thing is, a similar thing happened to me the time I played it. 6 of us played it for the first time during the last Jersey snowstorm in January. It was an amazing experience. If only we got snowed in like you though! I would have loved to play it again on the spot for the same reasons! Posted by Mike Doyle on Feb 22, 2006 at 07:39 PM | #

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