My Surreal Afternoon Spent Explaining Scythe to my Boss.

san il defanso wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:

san il defanso wrote: It does the thing it does really well without being very clear on what that thing actually is.

Uh, can you clue us in on what that thing is? As best I can tell Scythe tries to do frikkin' everything, all of it simultaneously. It's a kitchen-sink design. The only thing I think it's missing is a rondel.

I'm sure I don't know. More what I mean is that all of the mechanical elements work really well with each other. It's a game of tumblers clunking into place, allowing more tumblers to turn. That's tough to do mechanically, but it's in service of a game that is absolutely all over the place. Is it an economic game? A conflict game? A game about victory points? A game about a post-apocolyptic world? It's none of those things very clearly and all of them at the same time. It's well-designed sound and fury, the game design equivalent of a nothingburger.

I say this as someone who would probably not turn down a game. It's runaway success has surprised me though.

I think it is a success in that it gave those on the fringes of boardgames a taste of all sort of mechanics, a gateway from gateway games. "I like the xx portion but not the Y portion." "Oh, then you should try this game, it's more focused on the aspect you like..." As someone said, it is a buffet and if you have never had those items before, it's an eye opening experience. If you've sampled everything on the buffet before, you end up failing to see anything exceptional about it.tl;dr we're mostly jaded here.

jeb wrote: That's a great point, Shellie. We've reckoned with insularity here, and I can't imagine what it's like to stumble on this page. Maybe I should fire up some discussions about the best shit to get at Target or Wal-Mart.

Maybe we should set up a glossary page on the site with a prominent link on the home page?

RobertB wrote: @Sag - Combat points and popularity aren't free - IIRC it's a minor PITA to get those.

Combat in Scythe is all opportunity cost and no stakes based in the outcome. I agree with the designer that more games should have higher opportunity cost for attacking, but Scythe makes the battle itself much more negligible by neutering the outcome so much.

Compared to Dune, the game that bears the closest resemblance to Scythe's combat, you can really see the difference.

The failure was that you aren’t really attacking or anything like attacking...nobody dies. You basically just ask them to leave and they may or may not go.

Ugh, if Stegmaier didn't want combat in the game, he should have just written the rules that way. Making combat possible but completely unenjoyable seems like a poor design choice.

Shellhead wrote:

Ugh, if Stegmaier didn't want combat in the game, he should have just written the rules that way. Making combat possible but completely unenjoyable seems like a poor design choice.

If I was feeling pessimistic, I'd say combat is there to check off a box on the feature list. But I don't think that's it. Winning a fight is worth a star; one of six or so. He wants it as an option, but not a required path to victory.

As for the cost of losing the fight, it usually smarts a little because a loss often sends the unit(s) home from out there somewhere in the middle of the board. And stuff in Scythe moves slow - units aren't going to run right back to where they were killed.

RobertB wrote: Shellhead wrote:

Ugh, if Stegmaier didn't want combat in the game, he should have just written the rules that way. Making combat possible but completely unenjoyable seems like a poor design choice.

If I was feeling pessimistic, I'd say combat is there to check off a box on the feature list. But I don't think that's it. Winning a fight is worth a star; one of six or so. He wants it as an option, but not a required path to victory.

As for the cost of losing the fight, it usually smarts a little because a loss often sends the unit(s) home from out there somewhere in the middle of the board. And stuff in Scythe moves slow - units aren't going to run right back to where they were killed.

More or less it's a lose-a-turn punishment. Or maybe go-back-to-start is a better metaphor.