In Episode 49 of Cards and Cubes, we have a short intro about the Battlestar Galactica board game reimplementation called “Unfathomable.”
We go into Games Played including CloudAge, The Search for Planet X, Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Gentes, and Hallertau.
Our topic for this episode is Fragility in Tabletop Games. We discuss games which we consider or call “fragile” or even “broken” in some way as opposed to some which are more “stable” but perhaps with some downsides.
Our Games on the Horizon highlights for this week are Lords of Ragnarok, Circadians: Chaos Order, Cubitos, and ADELE.
0:00 – Intro
0:41 – Unfathomable – a reimplementation of Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game
Games Played
5:57 – CloudAge
22:41 – The Search for Planet X
35:19 – Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig
44:40 – Gentes
52:59 – Hallertau
Fragility in Tabletop Games
1:05:35 – What does it mean for a game to be fragile?
1:06:06 – Raccoon Tycoon and auctoning games
1:09:09 – Player-caused or game-caused fragility?
1:10:45 – Games of different types and fragility: games with traitors or hidden roles, area control games
1:12:53 – Two categories of fragility
1:13:27 – Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate and the haunt – randomness / game design
1:14:35 – Player interaction correlation with fragility
1:18:15 – Isolating players in games vs enabling players to interact with each other
1:19:47 – Issues with the mechanics and design themselves vs player choices
1:23:12 – Wanting for games to work, creativity resulting in fragile mechanics
1:25:14 – Player incentives to combat fragility
1:29:23 – Are arbitrary game rules necessary to address fragility?
1:31:28 – Conclusion
Games on the Horizon
1:32:56 – Lords of Ragnarok
1:37:29 – Circadians: Chaos Order
1:41:39 – Cubitos
1:45:32 – ADELE
1:50:46 – Outro