wow.  I did a double take to make sure I wasn’t asleep for 6 months.

I once congratulated John Bohrer on being a graceful winner of his lawsuit against Martin Wallace.  Is it too late to take that back?  Oy.

I wonder if it’s possible for players to have their trading families go bankrupt by taking to many wedding gifts on the first turn?

How many other people checked the date on their computers right after reading this? It’s *not* April. Huh.

Liebe & Intrigue, the expansion! :) Sorry, the rest of you, I think this sounds cool.

Oh, my.

Poe’s Law?

I cannot help but feel this title is in bad taste.

While the name is certainly questionable, I’m sure this game will get a lot of free buzz as a result.

Extremely poor taste. Bad show.

Blah. I’m not worried about the title so much. That’s just inside boardgame politics. Let ‘em have at it.  For me: Yawn. Ho-Hum.

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What I want to know is why the advertising of “a luck-free game” is all of a sudden all the rage and supposed to make that itself a quality that is good in games???

Luck = *managed* probablility

Luck adds an uncertainness to the game dynamic that has to be accounted for and managed.  THAT often makes a game somewhat unpredicable… and enjoyable.

Maybe the more appropriate this title:  Age of Scheme: Routes to Riches, a probable lack of fun game....

Whatever the title, looks like a neat game!

Lessee here: Arrange marriages by dictat, effectively a combination of indentured servitude and social networking via marriage, the use of dowries as bribes and purchase prices for slave wives, women sold as objects, cultural and social endorsement of prostitution in the name of “family business”—I expect the Puerto Rico slavery folk to have a field day.  I do hope the game lives up to this exciting introduction!

I’ll repeat here, what I wrote over on BGG:

I absolutely can’t wait to read the session report about the highly, sublimely successful Vallace Family of Great Byzantine, who did manage to rise above their humble beginnings by getting involved with some better and bigger trading families. That’ll be a great read!!

All the best John, I seriously hope this is a fun jibe, because if it isn’t, well - I have 8yo children in my class who behave with more grace, winner or loser. I guess we’ll get to see what manner of people are involved here - for those who haven’t already decided.

Cheers,

Giles.

Is it April 1st already?

Another reason, along with the usual chintzy components and overpriced, not to buy Winsome games.

Ryan, “luck-free” is a descriptive term, not an inherently positive attribute. For you, the term lets you know that you don’t need to look at this title any further; for others, they’ll perk up their ears and say, “Hey, I should look at this one more closely.”

I included the term in the description as most games have some degree of luck, which makes Age of Scheme stand apart from the pack. Other terms that work the same way would be “cooperative game” or “timed actions”; you don’t need to describe a game as being “competitive,” for example, because that’s the default, whereas identifying features that fall outside the norm helps others fit the game in their mental space more easily.

Eric

Eric,

In context, I can go with your logic regarding this being a “descriptive” term for the game in this case.... as opposed to an actual attribute of the game. 

Your explanation makes sense.  Thanks.

Ryan,

At a gross level games are about prediction.  What will happen?  What will happen if I do XXX?  The existence of the question assumes that there are unknowns.  Those unknowns can be typified into two classes: unknowns because certain physical systems are random or otherwise unpredictable (within some presumably known range), and unknowns because human decision making processes are not (easily) perfectly predictable.  (For the nonce I’ll consider human decision-making processes non-physical systems) Coarsely these are the cases of, “What will these dice roll?” and “What will my opponent do?”

Some people like unpredictable systems, estimating and managing probabilities within those physical game constraints.  Some instead like to manage unpredictable players and are not so interested in managing the probabilistic results of dice or cards or whatever.  They play against other players and they primarily want to manage those players and their unpredictability.

I solidly fall into that second camp.  I don’t mind the physical systems but I also don’t find them interesting.  Managing player interests, incentives, perception and the like however I find fascinating.  I don’t find managing probabilities of card draws, dice rolls, chit pulls, tile flips and the like interesting but I’m willing to put up with them as long as they don’t get in the way of the far more interesting player patterns.  I’m much more interested in what the other players will do in a given situation and how I can exploit that as part of my victory path than I am in managing my hand of cards against a probability matrix.

There is a third system: 

Unpredictable systems AND unpredictable players.

Example:  I’m the Boss.

Love that game.  My favorite.