MUSING & MACHINATING
|
SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
As our lives become more technologically infused with every passing day, it is no surprise that table top gaming is moving in the same direction. However, a rift is forming between those who find it an antithesis of gaming's original form and those who fully embrace the shift from analogue to digital. So let’s look at a few perspectives. The Purist This is a position which is firmly entrenched in the fundamentals of tabletop gaming: it is social experience. Tabletop games bring people around a table to play a physical game whether it is naughts and crosses jotted in an exercise book margin, the annual family game of Monopoly, a bunch of friends for Dungeons and Dragons or a vicious grapple with an opponent in Warhammer 40,000. Every player has a need to fulfill; be it a drive for competition, to socialise, to escape the rigours of day to day life, to bond etc. It is the social thread that pulls those with disparate ends together, and if you're open minded you'll forge new friendships that would otherwise be unlikely. That alone is magic, to bridge gaps (in age, class, gender etc) that otherwise may not have been. It certainly is a compelling argument to be a luddite in this corner of your life. The Technophile There is no way you could assert that technology hasn't had an impact on table top gaming, but many have gone full bore and play games, that were originally physical, digitally. Games like: Ticket to Ride, Carcasonne, Mysterium, Star Realms and Forbidden Island have traditionally been played with other people in a shared material space but now these (and many more) can be purchased digitally and played that way too. There are a huge amount of positives to playing digitally, so I’ll look at a few of them. Firstly, convenience. It is undeniably easier and quicker to whip out your phone to play a game; you don’t need a table or even have friends! Play with randoms or alone with the A.I. at any time of the day or night. Insanity. Secondly it’s vastly cheaper. Ticket to Ride is £3.69 on the Google Play compared to the £25+ cost of the board game (excluding postage). It is a 5-player game, but even if you personally bought 5 copies then it’s still £18.45. If you already own a few games, you'll have encountered the problem of storage: not a problem digitally, as It’s stored on your Google Play library or phone/tablet. If reading rules is too much effort (i.e. Jeremy Vine) then applications are right up your alley: it's all adjudicated for you without any hesitation or misinterpretation. Let's face it, apps really do have the edge on paper. it’s Ronseal, although it feels a little soulless. The Hybrid What about the best of both worlds, to get the best of each approach with the tactile, very human quality of the Purist with the streamlined convenience of the Technophile? It's entirely possible and very common in the form of companion apps, scoring apps and PDF editions of rulebooks. Companion apps are exactly that: applications that work in synchronisation with table top games, and there are quite a few that once you start using them you won't look back. The gleaming example is One Night Werewolf. This is a game of deception, the townsfolk vs. the werewolves, in which individual unique identities are dealt out and which are kept concealed There are secret shenanigans, there is a 3 minute discussion and finally a vote on who to hang for being a werewolf. If a villager is hanged then the werewolves win and vice versa. However the secret shenanigans are done with players' eyes closed, with each character ‘waking up’ and using their specific character ability. Which means one person has to wake up, read out the character who is acting next, explain what they do and go back to having their eyes closed. This takes a very long time if you have more than 4 players (10 is much more fun), with going through each character (in the correct order), reading the ability and waiting a generous amount of time to let them complete their action. Let me remind you, there is only 3 minutes before you start this process all over again. Tedious. Yet there IS an app that fills this role; it is spectacular and a must-have. You plonk in the characters, and it does all the steps for you with a very clear, velvet smooth voiceover. Absolute magic. Scoring apps for some games are unnecessary because if you can do basic arithmetic then you'll have no trouble, but there are some like 7 Wonders that are indispensable. The reason is there is one scoring mechanic that is so complicated that you need a PhD to work it out: science. My goodness, the strife from science-scoring is unmatched. There are 3 symbols for science cards and in various combinations they give different outcomes; some can score you a lot more points than others in specific sets. Here is a very basic explanation: if you have 8 science cards (not uncommon) then you have to go through all the possible combinations and compare the score of each combination to find out which is the most advantageous. For 7 players, it takes a long time, not to mention it is arduous given that it is just 1/12 of the scoring conditions. The app is great: slam in what cards you have and the app calculates the best score instantly, no sacrifice of a virgin required. PDF rules can be hit and miss, mainly because of the load time on less powerful machines. On a phone, the PDF rulebook (pamphlet) for Keyforge is painfully slow, a drawback for such a quick game that can be a little rules-dense at first so loading it feels like a chore rather than a boon. On the other hand it is free... This is where you come to the premium PDF rulebooks seen in wargaming and role-playing games. Holy crap will that rock your world but at a cost. They are excellent for blitzkrieg pedantry alone. You’ve got a search function to quickly find the exact topic you need conformation from; there are links in there where other rules are referenced to jump to them; you can enlarge text to better thrust it into your opponent's/player's/GM's face; you haven’t got to carry around a great tome (3 A4 hardbacks for D&D 6E at 988 pages total): it is the way to go undoubtedly. There is a catch. PDFs, despite having no physical component, aren't much cheaper at all and you won't get a free one if you buy a physical book; plus they cannot be resold or traded unlike actual books. I am an advocate of physical media though, because if I’m going to spend £60 on books, then I want to feel like I’ve spent £60 on books, not £50 on PDFs then my tablet runs out of battery halfway through a session. What do I think? I’m in love with games; truly, madly and deeply. To see the physical and social aspect stripped away completely makes me a little uncomfortable, I would (rather tentatively) suggest it makes the hobby more toxic as it creeps into the mainstream. The same thing happened to video games. They were niche geeky pastimes that have become widely accepted. Yet as they became less intimate experiences, with online multiplayer rather than LAN, there was an erosion of sportsmanship, an increase in vitriolic attitudes and intolerance. Now you'll struggle to find many video games that you can even play on the same machine, where previously they were a dime a dozen. That is not to say I am slave to a completely analogue experience Apps are so bloody useful and, without them, some fabulous games would gather dust because their concept isn't as easily implemented without a third party, as is the case of One Night Werewolf. Maybe it’s an elegant but complicated scoring mechanic, like 7 Wonders. Perhaps it is simply just having Google on hand to check an FAQ, errata or clarify a particular card because you lost the piddly pamphlet that came with the expansion (I’m looking at you, 7 Wonders expansions). If you’ve read this far then my position is pretty apparent, I’m a gaming cyborg. Moreover, I think you should be too.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2019
Categories
|