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Scripted Openings · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:00
  (birds chirping)
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  - Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver,
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  the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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  as I step out for a walk and deliver an episode
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  to you while I stroll around.
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  I'm Brendan Riley.
• 0:12
  (upbeat music)
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  Good morning listeners, it's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago
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  and I'm excited to be out for a walk
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  and enjoying the stroll through the neighborhood.
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  It's high 60s, although it doesn't feel,
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  I feel like it feels like low 60s.
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  It's a little on the cool side,
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  but it's a nice day for a walk.
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  I'm heading up to the library to return a movie
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  and just get some fresh air.
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  And yeah, so I thought I would talk about some game stuff
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  with you.
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  This particular episode is inspired by a conversation
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  I had this weekend.
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  I got to play the game Concordia,
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  which is a game I really enjoy.
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  As you know: it's on my top 50.
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  And I'll talk about it a little bit more
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  in a... actually I probably won't talk about it
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  in a board game espresso episode
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  because why should I?
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  I'm talking about it right now.
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  Okay, so, starting my side then,
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  I wanted to talk a little bit about the experience.
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  So one of the players who is playing,
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  bristle a little bit at the idea
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  that the architect is the first card you should play.
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  Absolutely, I get it.
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  They tried playing a different card
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  and felt a little bit, as I talked to them after the game,
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  felt a little bit like maybe it hadn't gone,
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  maybe they had been hampered by the fact
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  that they didn't play this, in which case that is,
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  perhaps a game flaw.
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  If you have to play this one particular move,
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  why isn't that just part of setup then?
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  If everybody has to take the same move,
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  the same first thing.
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  So I was thinking a little bit about scripted openings,
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  the idea that there's a thing that you're supposed to do
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  as the first part of your game.
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  And so I wanted to spend a little time meditating on that.
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  And then as a follow-up, I have posted a board game geek thread
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  with the creative title scripted openings
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  or which games have the most scripted openings
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  to get some conversation going over
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  on board game geek about this issue.
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  I will put a link to that thread here in this,
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  the show notes for this episode.
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  So if you have thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them.
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  Okay, so first I was going to talk about a couple games
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  that I feel like we could use as examples here.
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  If you're unsure what I mean by scripted openings,
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  I mean this is a chess, I think this comes out of chess,
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  right, that people have played chess a long time
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  and will have different openings that they will do,
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  which is the first part of the game.
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  This is where the term comes from.
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  They will be a set of maneuvers they use
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  in the first part of the game to execute a particular strategy.
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  And then from there they will succeed or fail.
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  In a lot of Euro games or hobby games,
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  the idea is that once people are relatively experienced,
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  a series of early moves tend to be the best maneuvers.
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  The question is how rigorous or refined should the game be
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  to avoid making it so that the smart play is always this thing
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  if you're the first player?
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  And what does it mean for game design if that is the case?
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  So if a game has a scripted opening, how bad is that?
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  And what should a designer do to avoid that?
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  Just as a couple of examples, I was looking up,
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  some games that have pretty scripted openings.
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  Puerto Rico, there was a conversation,
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  Concordia, there was a conversation I found on board game geek
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  where people were talking about how architect is
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  the most common opening move.
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  Although there were several other opening moves listed
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  that people have used.
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  It seems like architect is kind of the default first move.
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  If you don't see a better one to do,
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  architect is usually the best one to start with.
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  And I think this is interesting because
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  the if you don't see that a better one to do
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  will go into some conversation later,
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  so hold that in your thought.
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  The most famous example of this is the game Puerto Rico
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  as it became more and more popular and more and more played.
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  It came to be that experience players
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  had a clear set of the first handful of moves
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  that everyone at the table should make.
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  And if people screw this up, they could get mad at people
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  because like, oh, you're giving an advantage
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  to the next player because you have screwed up
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  the order of the initial move.
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  So Puerto Rico, I think, stands as the height of that.
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  Two others that I was thinking about,
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  it feels like brass is a game that could
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  or should have opening kind of scripted opening,
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  but I think that there are enough different strategies
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  that that's not necessarily the case.
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  And then one particular set, the game that I found
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  that had a long conversation about that was barrage
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  as another game that had potentially scripted openings.
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  The one other game I could think of
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  that has a very tightly defined opening sequence,
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  at least, is Terra Mystica.
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  Terra Mystica is one of those games with a lot of people
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  with having a lot of experience playing it.
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  And if you don't know what you're doing,
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  you can get pretty roundly clombed early in the game.
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  This is also the case for food chain magnet, apparently,
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  where you can make some wrong decisions early in the game
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  and torpedo your whole game.
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  I don't know that that's the same as a scripted opening, though.
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  And I haven't played food chain magnets
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  so I can't speak to whether that game does have
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  scripted openings or not.
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  So what are some of the things that make a game
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  have scripted openings or have this clearly defined early path
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  that you should take?
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  I would say, or I'm going to work the other way
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  and say, what can you do as a designer to avoid?
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  No, OK.
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  Why do people follow scripted openings?
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  How about?
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  So if you're playing a game that has a bunch of different choices,
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  let's use Concordia as an example.
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  I'm going to take a moment to describe it
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  in case you haven't played it or it's been a long time
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  and you forget, what makes Concordia interesting
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  is you have this hand of cards.
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  And the hand of cards let you do a variety of different things
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  on your turn.
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  When you play the card, you do the thing that the card allows.
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  And then that card is now in a stack in front of you.
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  And you don't get to play that card again
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  until you've played the card that lets you pick up your stack.
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  The secondary thing is every card
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  has a scoring bar on the bottom.
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  And at the end of the game, your score is a combination
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  of the card you have is a combination
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  of how you've accomplished these many different scoring
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  options along with how many of each scoring card you have.
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  So that's the part where the cleverness comes in
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  is you buy more scoring cards that meet a certain condition
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  and you do well in that condition, then you do well on that score.
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  So that's kind of Concordia because so many different conditions
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  and elements and things involve expanding your reach
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  on the board.
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  What is often the first play for most players
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  is the architect, which is the person who moves and builds.
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  And there are particular combinations of buildings
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  that you can build with your starting resources.
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  And so if you have access to your starting resources
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  as your early build, that can be a big part of what you're doing.
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  So that's why you might think Concordia is scripted
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  as most players will do the architect as their first maneuver.
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  And if you don't, you're maybe setting yourself up to be behind.
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  So why do people follow scripted openings?
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  Well, if the shared wisdom is that not following a scripted opening
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  means you're going to lose, that's one of the reasons people do it.
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  The other one might be that they have through play
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  come to find that that is their best path toward victory.
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  There is an interesting element in Euro Games, particularly,
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  where part of the game is about playing the other players
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  and finding the best way through the particular circumstances
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  of the board in combination with the other players that are there.
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  But part of it is also managing the choices that you have yourself.
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  And if you're like me and you're not great at these games,
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  you might not see all of the different options
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  or you might have trouble following all the different paths
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  that you could take to get glorious numbers of points.
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  So one thing would be if you've had success in one path,
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  you might repeat that success by following that path again.
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  And sometimes it can be fun to like, oh, I found a good way to do this last time.
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  I'm going to try it again and see how I do.
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  And doing well or not doing well can help you understand that better.
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  Now, if you play a game many, many times,
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  then you start to see which paths are reliably good for victory.
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  And that could lead to something someone might call a scripted opening.
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  So there's an interesting question in terms of game analysis
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  to ask whether that means that actually is the best path
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  or it's the best path for the kinds of play that you like
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  and are good at maximizing.
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  So there's a question to be asked.
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  And I would say the Concordia discussion about scripted openings
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  is pretty interesting because people are like, yeah,
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  most of the time, architect is the best choice,
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  but not always.
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  I'll often do this or that depending on the other things,
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  which leads me to the second point, which is skill,
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  the skill variance or skill tree, how good you are
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  at assessing what's going on in the game
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  and making the best choice based on what's going on.
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  So as you get better at a game, you come to recognize
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  the things that are good and the things that are not good, right?
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  The game, games like this wouldn't be fun if every choice
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  was equally valuable, part of the interesting element
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  has to be which choice you make given the options you have
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  and how to use that to maximize your points.
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  That's kind of the core of what's going on in your old games.
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  Now, if the choices are always the same,
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  I think that leads to a stronger scripted opening.
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  Puerto Rico is a good example there.
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  The set up of Puerto Rico is always the same.
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  The only variance is where you are in the turn order.
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  And thus, if people have played a lot and they find
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  there is one path that usually is better
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  or is always better, and again, if the game doesn't have any
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  variance and the variance only comes from the way
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  the players interact with it, that initial move
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  does end up being scripted because there's the only choice there.
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  So on one hand, there's the rising skill ceiling
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  or skill level, whereas you get better at playing a game,
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  you get better at reading the board,
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  and then you get better at making moves.
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  And thus, that raised skill level means you can understand
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  the tactics of the situation better,
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  and like it's in St. Crocordia, maybe if you've played a bunch
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  of times you would recognize when is it useful to
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  play the senator and grab a couple cards early on?
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  When is it useful to do the market?
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  Because the way the boards are related
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  and you can grab different buildings
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  than you normally could or whatever.
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  Right, there are elements when perhaps it's not
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  architect isn't always the best move.
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  And this is where I think a lot of modern Eurogames
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  have found the space to create that option
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  for a non-scripted opening, which is variance in setup.
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  This happens a lot of ways, right?
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  Sometimes you have variance in personal possibility, right?
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  If you are playing a game that has individualized powers,
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  for example, then your choice matrix changes
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  because you have a different thing you can do
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  than other players and you need to think about
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  what is the best choice I can make
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  that will maximize the value of the choices I have?
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  And that's really, I think, really useful.
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  The secondary part is the board itself might change.
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  Crocordia is an example of this that it has these,
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  or the Crocordia Venus anyway, which is the version we played,
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  has these tiles that you shuffle up and put out,
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  which determine which resource go in which place.
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  And that determination thus creates the situation
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  that the board demands you react to.
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  And so sometimes the choice may or may not be a good one
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  in terms of taking the architect first based on
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  which kinds of resources are available
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  and which kinds of cards are available.
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  Similarly, brass is a game that feels to me
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  like it should have scripted openings,
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  but your choice in where you start the game
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  depends dramatically on which cards you have
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  and what the people before you did.
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  Often a good strategy in brass is to develop early on
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  because building level one buildings
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  is often a waste of time and money
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  because they're gonna go away at the end of the first round.
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  But sometimes the previous players have put you
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  in a situation where building a level one building
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  becomes a valuable choice.
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  Or maybe you have a set of cards that let you get
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  into Birmingham, for example, if you're playing brass
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  Birmingham in a way that will get you lots of points
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  or set you up well for future play.
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  You also have the markets that move around
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  and where that market is really heavily shapes
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  what's useful in terms of playing in the market.
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  So like if you wanted to go crates
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  and there's only one market where you can sell crates,
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  you probably want to build near that market.
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  And that's another example.
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  There are a variety of ways that designers can
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  put into place changes to the setup of the game
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  that make the scripted opening less likely and less valuable.
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  Your skill level at reading the tactical situation
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  on the board rather than just the strategic,
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  not just the long term but the momentary start
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  will shape the value of that sort of default opening.
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  And sometimes you just want to explore different avenues
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  of the game.
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  And this maybe goes to the other question
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  of the idea of scripted opening.
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  Sometimes you have an idea of like here is usually
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  the best path for me to win, but I really
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  want to try this other thing.
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  And so sometimes you will choose a different path
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  to see what happens when you go that way.
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  Part of the fun of a game like this
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  is exploring how it works and what makes it work well.
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  And doing that by sort of poking different pieces of it
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  and seeing what happens is I think a really effective
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  and interesting way to proceed through the game.
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  So that is my take on scripted openings.
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  I didn't really talk about other games that have scripted openings.
• 14:07
  Oh, the other thing I was going to mention is
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  draft games that have drafting.
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  Drafting is another way to really, so variable setup
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  on the board.
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  Individual player powers is the second way
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  to really avoid scripted openings.
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  And then the third way is drafting.
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  Drafting, if you're using in the draft cards,
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  like Seven Wonders, for instance, there
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  are different approaches you might take to Seven Wonders.
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  But a lot of them depend pretty early on which cards
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  did you get in the first couple hands?
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  That if you get a particular set of cards that
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  will give you options to pursue particular strategies
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  that you wouldn't have if you didn't have those cards.
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  You also want to look at what is available on your Wonderboard
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  different bonuses you might get for completing your wonder
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  and thinking about what strategy will you
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  take to maximize the points you get from that approach?
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  So player interaction is also another way.
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  So drafting, having this always changing starting situation.
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  I guess drafting is a form of variable setup,
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  but it's variable game playthrough out.
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  So, OK.
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  So I'm curious, what games do you feel like have--
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  which games do you feel like have scripted openings
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  or have ways that you probably should start?
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  And then in a similar question, what
• 15:31
  are the ways that those games get around that
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  or complicate that if they do it all?
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  Are there games where you feel like, yeah,
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  every time I play it, I have to do this to do well versus
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  other games that have a wider set of opening options.
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  Well, that's about it for me today.
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  I would love to hear what your thoughts are on that.
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  You can share those over on Board Game Geek and Guild 3269,
• 15:56
  the Guild for this podcast.
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  If you would like to get ahold of me,
• 16:03
  you could send me a message over on Board Game Geek.
• 16:05
  Wombat929 is my username there.
• 16:07
  Or you can email me Brendan@RattleboxGames.com.
• 16:11
  Thanks for joining me on the walk today.
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  I hope your next walk, this is what my mind was.
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  Bye-bye.
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