W. Eric Martin: Kid Love/Adult Hate

I’ve started to post my impressions of new titles from the Gathering of Friends elsewhere on BGN, so this column will be somewhat short, although still longer than the previous two I was supposed to write. My freelance writing has been sucking up mucho time in the past few months thanks to a ghostwriting project (with me joining a half-dozen other writers on a health book that the original author couldn’t complete in time) and lots of smaller assignments, so the columns have had to be put aside in favor of news.

Aside from all the adult-friendly games that I’ve recently played, I’ve encountered two adult-not-so-friendly games, both of them published by Briarpatch: Fancy Nancy Posh Bedroom Game and Sea Monsters.

Admittedly the name of the first game, along with its proud pink packaging, should have been a tip-off as to what would lie inside: a game unfit for man or monster, a game suitable only for young girls. Since I happened to be visiting my niece, who is four years old and the target audience of young Miss Nancy, I thought I’d try the game out on her. Woe be to me, my wife and mother-in-law who got caught in the vortex as well.

In Fancy Nancy Posh Bedroom Game, you are trying to complete a posh bedroom of your own. (The box helpfully informs you that “posh is a fancy word for fancy.") This task is accomplished by first playing a purple card (from a random hand of four cards), then playing a pink card each turn and rolling a die; if you roll a color you haven’t previously rolled or you roll the joker, you can flip down a section of the board that transforms one sliver of your bedroom into a posh wonderland of glitter and tinsel and magic stars. Alternatively, you can play a blue “Oops” card on someone else Mille Bornes-style and force them to play another purple card before they can start redecorating once again. Flip down all five of your room slices and you win.

One detail that caught my attention while scanning the rules is that players draw a new card at the start of their turns. Hasn’t this speed bump been vanquished from modern games? Doesn’t every designer know that players should draw at the end of their turns in order to keep a game flowing? The decision process in Fancy Nancy Posh Bedroom Game is not strenuous – it lies somewhere between inhaling and circulating your blood – but there’s no excuse for writing the rules this way.

While a certain young girl enjoyed playing “Oops” cards on others, this game held no appeal for the adults, mostly because we could all imagine it never ending. The deck holds enough “Oops” cards that in a four-player game with four cards in each player’s hand, we could possibly play an “Oops” whenever anyone came close to victory – and if you didn’t play one, the person on the verge of winning still had only a one-third chance of rolling the die face needed. Oh, Nana’s about to win? Let’s all stand aside and hope she rolls well. Asked what she thought of the game, the niece said, “Can we play the other game now?”

Speaking of never-ending, we come to Sea Monsters, in which players are trying to move one of their three ships from the Old Country to the New World. You might wonder about the setting at first, but once you start playing the game the only questions that come to mind are “Why do I have three ships?” and “Should I ‘accidentally’ drop a card under the table and stay there until everyone forgets that I’m playing and I can sneak away?”

The answers: I don’t know why you have three ships because you’ll never need more than one, and I’m already hiding under the table so you’ll have to put your coat over your head instead.

The Atlantic Ocean on the gameboard has a grid overlaid on it, and on a turn you roll a blue movement die to move your ship 2-4 spaces toward your secret goal on the North American continent – unless you roll a sea monster, that is, in which case you then roll the green monster die, moving one of eight sea monsters 1-3 spaces, most likely destroying a ship and sending it back to start. The grid is only twelve spaces tall and twelve wide, so the sea monsters can reach any space easily; with monsters on two die faces on the blue die, you’ll be starting over and over and over again until you realize that the four-year-old won’t notice if you don’t kill someone who’s about to win. Game over.

These games were both tedious for adults, but Briarpatch clearly knows its market. The youngster loved destroying ships, and when asked which game she’d rather play again, she chose the Fancy Nancy one because “it’s fancy.”

For adults, though, these games are tedious, designs that will make adults loathe the thought of playing games. They fit the model that I heard one Hasbro executive describe as “games for Moms who want their kids to go play something and leave them alone.” If you approach an adult who says they hate to play games, games like these will likely be a reason why. The goal of a child playing one of these games is to win; the goal of the adult is to stop playing, and once you stop, it’s easy to never start again.

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Aaaaagghhhh… I _must_ start posting my Top 50 Kids Games to my blog immediately… anything to stop dreck like this from spreading! SHUDDER… Posted by Mark "Fluff Daddy" Jackson on Apr 12, 2008 at 04:05 AM | #

Yes, these two sound like the players make less progress than in Candyland… Posted by Tor Iver Wilhelmsen on Apr 12, 2008 at 02:56 PM | #

Briarpatch. You should have known. Although Sababa Toys has entered the fray recently, including tiny painted action figure quality sculpts in the boxes. Also some bits of cardboard are included. Somebody spent months on the productions, and about 20 seconds on the games. Posted by Frank Branham on Apr 12, 2008 at 06:12 PM | #

"One detail that caught my attention while scanning the rules is that players draw a new card at the start of their turns. Hasn’t this speed bump been vanquished from modern games? Doesn’t every designer know that players should draw at the end of their turns in order to keep a game flowing?” Not every designer, Eric!  Check out my column from about a year and a half ago for a contrary opinion: http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/larry_levy_the_two_faces_of_gaming/ Posted by Larry Levy on Apr 15, 2008 at 02:44 PM | #

See, even Larry doesn’t know! Just kidding, Larry – I do recall your column and the reasoning behind the choice to draw first or last. Perhaps I was just in a mood to complain because the games were so dull. You have only three types of cards and the strategy is almost nil, so when you draw doesn’t really make a difference. Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Apr 15, 2008 at 02:57 PM | #

I referenced back to Bruno’s thoughts from the link.  I have to say what a brilliant article it was and to articulate it so succinctly really spells out the line of thought that goes into high end professional game design. Just another example of why Bruno is always a “must read” in my book.  And it is an interesting point to ponder as (and it seems just like so many others) I was just working on this question in my own boardgame design last night? However, we can all probably (very safely) assume the weight of my personal design does not approach that of our current Euro contemporaries… (LOL) Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Apr 15, 2008 at 08:46 PM | #

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