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The Beginning (of the Game) · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to pick up and deliver it the podcast where
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I pick up my audio recorder as I step out
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: for a walk and deliver an episode two while I
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Greetings listeners. It's a lovely
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: day here in suburban Chicago. I'm pleased to be out
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: for a walk in high fifties temperature with the sun out.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It is choice lovely day to be out for a walk.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The semester is almost over. I have started grading finals,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: which always feels good and a little melancholy, mostly good,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and I am taking a walk up to the library
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: to stretch my legs. So let's get into it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I published an episode a couple days ago called The
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: End where I was talking about games that have the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: best ending, and I thought, why not follow that up
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: with another episode about beginnings. So this is my episode
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: about games that have the best beginnings. I think actually
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: this episode was way harder to make, actually, because most
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: games don't have great beginnings. I think there actually had
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of difficulty in choosing which games I would
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: talk about for having the best endings, because I think
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: there are games, there are lots of games that have
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: fun endings. Even if they don't seem to, or even
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: if they they're not dramatically fun or like, the end
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: of a game is usually fun for me, I think,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: whereas the beginning of a game is usually not that fun.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I think when a game starts, the beginning of the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: game feels like it has potential, so there is fun
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in the possibilities of what might come from the game,
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  Speaker 1: but that's often kind of it.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: So well, I spend.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Some time thinking about what are games that have really
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: fun beginnings, games where the beginning is great, And here
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: are the five I came up with.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: I'm starting with Happy Salmon.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I think Happy Salmon is a great game all the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: way through, but it has a great beginning, like when
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you start, there is a moment of just joy while
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: you're getting going, And for me, Happy Salmon is my
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: favorite game to teach. I've played a lot of games,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I've taught a lot of games. I think I'm good
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: at teaching games generally, although depending how carefully I've prepared,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes I'll forget something really important, so that's not good.
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  Speaker 1: But generally, I think I'm pretty good at teaching games,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and I have a lot of fun doing it. Happy
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Salmon I think I have a perfect teach for it,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: or as close as you can get. I learned it
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: from Bruce Vogue, who taught it to me at Origins
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. When I bought the game. He was
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a delight and a hoot, and it was just it's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: just very smooth. I'm not gonna go over it here,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: but it's easy to teach. And the thing about Happy
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Salmon that makes the beginning so fun is as soon
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: as you're done teaching, you're at every everybody shuffle up
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: your deck, shuffle three, two, one, go, and boom you're
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: off to the races. And by the time you're into
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the game, it's over. Somebody says, I want, oh, Happy Salmon.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: It's great all the way through, but the beginning, because
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: it starts off that way, is great.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 1: This is, of course, a genre of game that at
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a variety of levels is really fun. Pacu Paco was
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: almost my my answer for this one as well. This
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: is a silly little dice real time dice rolling game.
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  Speaker 3: That one's fun because you all yell Poco Pocu paku.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: At the same time, another silly dice rolling game is
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Escape Curse of the Temple, which begins with the recording
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: that goes escape and then the music starts and you
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: all start rolling. Those are all really fun beginnings. But
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I put all the real time beginnings of real time
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: games together in one more oh, one more honorable.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Mention for real time games.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: If you ever get a chance to play the game, Dude,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it's one of those games where you're like, you only
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: need to play it once. I've played it many times
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: because I keep showing it to different people. But it's
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: it's fun because what you do is you have to
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: say dude and get other people. It's like your Happy Salmon.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: It's the same mechanism as Happy Salmon, only instead of matching
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: a hand motion, you're matching the way you say the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: word dude, which is awesome. I actually have both dude
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and more dude in there. It's a really fun one
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: two punch. Oh I need to get that game out again. Well,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I can hear a Northern cardinal going. It's a little
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: machine gun sound there anyway, So Happy Salmon I think
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  Speaker 1: has an amazing start. So a different kind of great
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: beginning for a game is a game where you set
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: your game up at the beginning of the game, and
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  Speaker 1: the exemplar for this for me is going to be Agricola.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I think of Agricola is a really interesting game where
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you do tons of thinking about how the game is
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: gonna go before you ever play any pieces, if you're
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: playing with somebody who's experienced.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: And you're experienced.
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  Speaker 1: For me, the preferred way to play is you get
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: seven occupation cards and seven improvement cards, and you draft
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  Speaker 1: one of each, and then you pass the hand and
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: draft one of each, and pass the hand and keep
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: going until you've drafted seven of each, and then you
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: play the game and you're probably only gonna I mean,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I guess in games where very aggressive about occupations, I'll
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: play three or four of them, and the same might
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  Speaker 1: go for improvements, but it's pretty rare.
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  Speaker 3: Usually it's like two maybe three of each.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: You only have fourteen rounds usually, and so you're gonna
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: use one of your two or three actions to play
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  Speaker 1: an occupation. But they you know, they're accelerators, right that is,
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  Speaker 1: and that is the heart of what makes Agricola pretty interesting,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: because it's all the same action spaces every time. It's
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  Speaker 1: the occupation cards that make that game really shine and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the place where you find the efficiency and really do
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a lot in the game is when you find a
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: way to really maximize the value of the occupations and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the improvements that you play. So from that perspective, there
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: is a ton of mental work and a ton of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: anticipation that you build into the game as you are
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: looking through those occupations and those improvements and deciding what
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you're going to which ones you're gonna draft. In a
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: similar way, Resarkana has that same level of excitement there.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: I think Resarkana a little less so for me, like
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: because there's a sort of monumentality in the first draft.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Like I feel like Agricola, it's much less important that
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: your first card you draft to be really important, are
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: really useful to you, Whereas in res Arkhana, I think
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it's really important that the first card you draft to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: be important and be useful to your strategy. That if
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the first card you draft ends up not being useful,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that's a bummer. Now you only get eight cards in
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  Speaker 1: your deck, I think, yeah, you draft four and four
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and you're.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: Probably going to play three, four, five of them.
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  Speaker 1: And the others you'll churn for resources. So your draft
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: choices are really important. So I think the starting of
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: res Arkhana is also really exciting the way that Agricola is,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: but just a little less so. And then I also
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: put three chapters in there as another game where the
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: start of the game the first part the drafting, is
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  Speaker 1: really interesting, So that is drafting to start, and I
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: think Agricola is the best of those. Next up is
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a category I guess I would call the hope of
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: possibility or the joy of possibility. The two games that
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I have here for that category are Calico not at
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a third one, Calico and Las Vegas and Revive, And
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say Kaliko is my favorite version of this
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  Speaker 1: because at the beginning of Calico, you have the four
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: potential scoring things, and you have your own personal scoring
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: tiles that you're trying to do, and you have this
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  Speaker 1: array of tiles in front of you, and the first
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  Speaker 1: choice you make, you're starting down one of those paths,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: but they're all still open. They're all still wide open,
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  Speaker 1: and as you go along, the game gets more and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: more intense, so you sort of go from this wide
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  Speaker 1: open hope springs eternal possibility kind of thing to a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: very tight experience at the end. So from that perspective,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I think Calico is really interesting. Revive works in the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: same way. At the beginning to Arrive, you're all in
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: the middle of the board. You're just deciding where to go.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: The whole field of opportunity is available to you, and
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: you can make moves and play items, and you start
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  Speaker 1: working your way out the board really interesting and fun.
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  Speaker 3: You build a cascade of.
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  Speaker 1: Bonus points on top of each other, and you draft
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  Speaker 1: cards and.
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  Speaker 3: You just have all the room to go.
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  Speaker 1: So the possibilities at the beginning of Revive are also
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: there in a different way, but with the same effect.
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  Speaker 1: I think the openness at the beginning of Las Vegas
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  Speaker 1: is really interesting.
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  Speaker 3: When you're playing Las Vegas.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: You know, at the beginning, you roll your six dice
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: or eight dice or whatever, I think it's eight. You
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: roll the dice that you have at the beginning, and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: every space is open, especially if you're the first player.
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  Speaker 1: There's nowhere you can't go. So you roll those dice,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you get some doubles, you get some singles, maybe you
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: get a triple, and then you have to figure out, like, okay,
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  Speaker 1: where am I going to plant my flag? Which casinos
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  Speaker 1: am I going to start trying to take that choice
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  Speaker 1: I think is really interesting and fun. And then as
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: it goes on, you get more and more restricted, people
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: start blocking you. The tension rises, and that's a different
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: kind of fun. But the initial open space of possibility
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I really like, and in those three games, particularly in Calico,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I think it resonates very strongly. So I'd be Kaliko.
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  Speaker 1: My third favorite start of a game. The fourth one
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  Speaker 1: I want to talk about our games where you start
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  Speaker 1: your shenanigans right at the beginning, and this would be
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: a Game of Thrones. Now, Game of Thrones is a
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: big soldiers on a map game. It's not generally the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: kind of game I would choose, but when a group
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: of people are playing it, I often do enjoy joining
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: in on it. I like the struggle of how long
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: you're going to all with somebody, when you're going to
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: betray them, when they're going to betray you, how openly
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  Speaker 1: do you collaborate?
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: There is no team game, you know.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Another option would be Rex or Dune, where you have
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: a team that you can alive formally with somebody and
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: then you can both win together. That's a fun twist.
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  Speaker 1: But what I like about the openings of these games
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: is again like Calico the sort of wide open possibility,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: but you add in the frison of who are you
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: gonna lie with? Right from the beginning, you can start
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: being like, hey, I want to attack you. If you
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: don't attack me, I'll go north, you go south or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: Right like setting yourself up to be in concert with
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: somebody and then hearing other people around the table make
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: those same kinds of bargains, keeping track of who's helping whom,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: who's going alone, where are those where do those alliances
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: lead sit? And they're all there right at the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: So I think a Game of Thrones is exemplary of
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that kind of immediate machinations, and I think that's really interesting.
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  Speaker 1: Two other games that I'll put in that similar category.
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  Speaker 1: On the one hand, a game that crosses the excitement
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: of a Game of Thrones and those kinds of bargains
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: with the real time element of Happy Salmon would be
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Sideial Confluence.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Sideiro Confluence.
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  Speaker 1: You are immediately trading with people and you're trying to
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: maxim the way that you're going to get points, and
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it's done in real time. So there's both the sort
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of building alliances or making connections with people, but also
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you have to do it fast, and that's a little
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: different than the way Game of Thrones works. I will
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: also put a Handful of Stars and Mithotopia as two
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: other games where your relationship on the board demands that
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you negotiate with people. I think Rising Sun also reflects that,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: but I haven't played Rising Sun, so I can't say.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I can't explain how that one would fit because I
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: haven't played it. So that's my fourth option for best
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: way to start a game as something like a Game
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: of Thrones. I've got two honorable mentions before I get
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: to my last one. First honorable mention is Through the Ages,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Like Agricola, Through the Ages is kind of samey each
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: time you play it. It's the same set of cards,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: but the beginning of the game is always just this
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: sort of delightful around like which wonders and which leaders
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: are going to come out in a way that you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: can grab them, and which ones are you going to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: lean into grabbing. You know, if you grab Michaelangelo, okay,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you're leaning into getting a bunch of points early, building
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: a bunch of wonders, trying to set yourself out that way.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: If you lean into Julius Caesar, maybe you're going to
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: go for military and try to be ahead on military
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: the whole time. Whichever leader or early wonder you take
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: will often start to ark a path for you that
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: you have to follow then or you can change direction,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: but it at what cost.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: So through the Ages I.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Think has a really interesting beginning in that way, but
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: it is more stayed, so it's not to the level
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of making this list. And then the other one I
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: wanted to point to is similar to you a Game
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: of Thrones of the same kind of excitement, and these
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: are social deduction games. There's a wide variety of social
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: deduction games, and I always think the beginning of a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: social deduction game.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Is really interesting.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: The first round of the Resistance, where you no information,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: first round of Secret Hitler, like if you play with
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: people who are not very aggressive about everybody just kind
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: of votes yes and you don't get any information.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: But what's really fun is to.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Try to vote no, try to make people demand or
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: ask to be on a team. May people talk a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: little bit, start making them negotiate so that you can
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: get some data, even if that data is almost entirely worthless.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: I think social deduction games are generally really interesting at
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the beginning because of the tension of not knowing what's
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: going on or having a hide that you know what's
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: going on if you're a trader. All right, Finally, my
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: favorite or my fifth game on the list, I would
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: say these aren't in any particular order. These are just
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: five games that are exciting starts.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: This is Pandemic.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Pandemic, I think is a really interesting start because again,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: sort of like Agricola, you are planning out what you're
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: gonna do. You all have adapted, you've all taken characters,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: so you sort of got an idea about how you're
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: gonna do things. But then that first round of infections
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: comes out and you immediately have to strategize, like, Okay,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of red spaces infected. We're going to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: have to keep somebody in the red area the whole
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: time treating those cities so they don't keep having outbreaks.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: And the same goes.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: For a variety of different categories, and as you look
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: at who has which cards and what skills there are,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: you try to coordinate how you're going to tackle the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: various problems the game is going to throw at you.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I could probably substitute Spirit Island for pandemic in this conversation,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: and it would do just as much for me. But
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I think all of them are really interesting as ways
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to think about how to navigate the space. Well that's
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: about it for me today. As I think about games
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: with interesting beginnings, I'd love to know what games with
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: interesting beginnings have I missed?
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: What are your favorite games with interesting beginnings?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Head over to board game geek kild and share your
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: thoughts on that three nine is the guild number. We
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: already have a discussion over there going about end of games.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Gabriel posted some really interesting comments and I'm hoping other
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: people will join in. But I'd also love to hear
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: what games do you think have great beginnings? What makes
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: for a great beginning of the game. Well that's about
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: it for me today.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: I want to say.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me, and I hope that your next
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: walk is as pleasant as mind was.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Byebye.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: Brought to you by rattle Box Game