The jargon for this is a "comeback mechanic" - game designers have to be cautious with them though, as if the final round can flip the results too easily what was the point of all the other rounds?
In "Power Grid" (a power plant building game) the turn order is recalculated every round based on how well the player is doing, with the players doing worst getting more chances to bid in power plant auctions and being first to buy on the fuel market.
In "Flamme Rouge" (a cycling-themed game) a 'drafting' mechanic means the leading player has to add 'exhaustion' cards to their hand, much like riders in real races try to slipstream behind the race leaders.
In "Suburbia" (a city building game) victory points are 'population' but as you move up the population tracker, you cross red lines that reduce your income and reputation.
In 'Trans-America' (a railroad-building game) points are scored by connecting cities, and it's easy for a naive player to connect 4 cities before a lucky expert player connects 5 and ends the round. This creates the impression of a close game as the best and worst players will be within 20% of each other.
And of course, the other option is: A scoring system so baffling and opaque, nobody can work out who's in the lead until the calculators come out at the end.
Yes, you can lose the meaning of all other rounds but the last. And if player strategies can maximize comebacks, then all the smart people will only focus on the comebacks and only the less experienced or relaxed players will play the actual game (and be constantly frustrated by seeming to win early on and then losing to comebacks without feeling any power to change that).
In chess, which doesn't have a clear comeback mechanic, this sometimes works out, since the impact of late game mistakes can vastly outperform early wins. So, comebacks are clearly and directly linked to the skill of the winning player making a mistake and the skill of the losing player being able to capitalize this mistake.
But even that direction doesn't come for free. As in such games skill is so important, inexperienced players fighting each other will have a lot of huge randomness in their outcomes and altogether the game only becomes fun once you reach a certain minimum skill level.
Last but not least, there are also alternatives to comebacks. For instance, in poker or pen&paper roleplaying games a factor of pure randomness is added. So, while on average the skilled players will have almost all the positive experiences that chess players have (they win more often, they have more clarity and control about the progress and current status mid-game), the unskilled players can sometimes make a lucky win which seems satisfying enough that some people get addicted to poker without ever gaining much skill.
As Monopoly also has a random element, I wonder if simply tuning the impact of randomness would make it more fun, allow for more lucky comebacks, etc. As a stupid example, maybe event cards could introduce property tax rates that stay until another event card alters them, or a renter being unhappy about the rental property won't pay the rent or even create costs through law-suits, required building repairs, or clean-ups.
> the unskilled players can sometimes make a lucky win which seems satisfying enough
I like games that have this feature, perhaps even more then a come-back mechanism.
In the game of go playing against a higher skilled player you usually have some portion of the board where you are doing better then expected. The higher skilled player might have actually "given" this result as a trade favorable to them, but that is usually not the perception of the lower skilled player.
In fact on a 19×19 board there are so many micro battles going on that the lower skilled player will usually get enough perceived good mini-results that it is enough to enjoy the game, despite knowing they will definitely loose in the end.
In addition—to take this out side of board games—as someone that is not good at sports, I like sports usually only when there is a lot of added randomness so I can get at least a lucky shot or two, even if I will loose most likely loose the game as a whole. For example when I play basketball I like it a lot better when we play on a coarse concrete, with crooked baskets and a peeling ball. Another examples include: laser-tag (er even better a nerf-gun fight) vs paint ball and disk-golf vs. traditional golf.
> inexperienced players fighting each other will have a lot of huge randomness in their outcomes and altogether the game only becomes fun once you reach a certain minimum skill level
This is a very good point.
I play chess with my children a few times a year and I was subconsciously feeling that it is not that fun.
Only after watching The Queen's Gambit I realized that the fun is there, but out of reach for me.
A countervailing pattern I've seen (in games with 3+ players) is that, if one player pulls into a lead, then the other players will start piling on them. Board games like Avalon Hill Civilization, Family Business, Root, etc. -- basically any game where you can choose one of your rivals to attack.
Munchkin takes this to the extreme, where someone will perpetually be on the edge of winning and there are a variety of colorful ways to set them back. It's random and chaotic by design.
Monopoly doesn't really involve such a mechanic. You can refuse to trade with someone who is pulling ahead, but by that time it is more likely to be too late.
Assuming your Monopoly house rules allow arbitrary contracts (if they don't, they should) the non-winning players can extend credit to each other, and allocate their combined resources very efficiently to try to beat the winner.
It's very hard as a single player to beat a credit union. So the winning player will want to build some sort of alliance with at least some of the losers to make their coalition weaker, which will pull those players up the ladder and give them a chance, and so on. It creates a mostly good dynamic of cooperation for self-preservation.
In the end, one person wins, but it's often a close race.
(This works best if you play with the same crowd every time, because then people have reason to build trust with each other and won't suddenly default on a huge loan without feeling the consequences of it.)
Interesting. Sounds like I should find some people to play a game of Monopoly with!
The game seems to have earned a bad reputation, the prototype for the sort of game you shouldn't play anymore because everything from the last 25 years is better. I'm not sure this is deserved, but realistically my copy will probably end up collecting dust. After reading your comment, I hope not!
> Assuming your Monopoly house rules allow arbitrary contracts
IIRC, you don’t need house rules for that, so long as “arbitrary contracts” covers future commitments for things otherwise legal to exchange (you do need house rules for such contracts to be self-enforcing, though.)
Taken to an extreme, this has a 'kingmakeer' problem though, where who wins the game can often be decided by someone who has no realistic chance of winning (either by directly aiding or allying with one player, or failing to block another player).
I agree, but I wouldn't always characterize this as a problem.
I remember playing a 3-player game of Root (which I highly recommend!) Player A ambushed me and managed to burn down my headquarters. At that point I realized I couldn't win, and I spent the rest of the game attacking A.
A complained that I was just throwing the game to B, which is exactly what happened. The kingmaker problem made A's decision into a huge blunder. If you don't pay attention to psychology in these games, you will lose.
It is essential to a competitive game that everyone try their best in that specific instance of the game. Depending on the player, this could mean "go all-out to win" or "place as highly as possible" or "come as close to winning as possible" or even "score as many points as possible". All of those are reasonable. Playing for things external to the game is a problem.
There tend to be three kinds of kingmaking: revenge, social dynamics, and wanting to leave. All of them have something in common: they are done for reasons outside the gamespace. They're violating the boundaries of the game.
Revenge (what you did) is out-of-bounds because it's using the game to win future games rather than playing the current one.
Social dynamics and wanting to leave are out-of-bounds because they're using the game for rewards that have nothing to do with the game.
> It is essential to a competitive game that everyone try their best in that specific instance of the game.
No, its not.
It is, of course, more desirable from the perspective of people who prefer that style of play that others conform to it, but it is in no way “essential”.
It may be beneficial to mutual enjoyment to have table agreement on metagame issues like this in advance (OTOH, one might do well to recognise the inherent incentive structure toward the metagame approach you decry in games which tend to produce a long, lingering defeat with no reasonable route to victory.)
An interesting point, but I would argue that I was following your dictum and playing within the boundaries.
I wasn't angry at my friend, and I wasn't personally seeking revenge. I was role-playing my cat army, which suddenly had its home city burned down. My cats certainly were seeking revenge.
In real life, facing an enemy who has nothing to lose can be highly dangerous, and creating such a situation is foolhardy. Why should a board game be different? Why play for second, when a more appealing alternate goal suggested itself?
The equivalent in monopoly is making an unfavorable trade with whoever is in second place, putting yourself behind in order to give the 2nd place person a shot at winning.
What is the mechanic in Settlers that enables this? Can't think of anything apart from how resources seems to be unevenly used throughout the game (wood and brick being more sought after early on to build roads and settlements, while iron and grain become more important when cities are built later on).
If you trade with the winning player, they win faster. If you trade with players who are behind, it doesn't really change the outcome of the game (they will probably still be behind at the end of the game)
The only thing preventing that winning player from reaching 10 points is 2 stone and 3 wheat. So as long as no one gives the winning player those resources, the game continues.
Alternatively, the winning player can try to win on their own by massing up 20 other resources and trading 4 for 1. But everyone else can more efficiently get the resources they need by trading with each other, allowing for an innate comeback mechanic.
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At a minimum, that puts even the weakest players always in the position as kingmaker. So everyone has something to do at all stages of the game.
In Catan there are multiple ways to try to get to 10 points, so if someone else is in the lead via one strategy (e.g. city building) it's still possible to be in the lead for a different one (e.g. development cards).
Catan is a poor example, because there is no built-in mechanic. Player interaction allows for targeting leaders and making mutually beneficial moves with people who are trailing. For everything great about Catan, it's a pretty old Eurogame, and it lacks a lot of refinements to the genre that have been made since.
Power Grid gives a turn order advantage to players who make less income.
Dominion is a deckbuilding game where you earn victory points by buying and keeping junk cards in your deck, so your deck gets worse as you score increases.
Suburbia reduces your income progressively as your population (score) increases (which also forces players to balance the two).
A number of games including Terra Mystica give turn order advantage to whoever passed their turn first in the previous round.
There are, of course, many more games that don't have such a mechanic, but rely on balancing the relative rewards of the various moves such that early turns are less about taking a lead and more about setting up which paths to victory you can attempt in later rounds, so the skill is in setting up a path that you're able to execute well and then executing it well.
The main thing is the free-for-all nature combined with the existence of trading. It is obviously tactically incorrect to trade with anyone who is about to win, but it usually takes a while to get that last point or two without a trade.
Dominion is a great example of this. For most games (depending on which cards are played there may be differing victory conditions) the way you win the game is by obtaining Province cards and adding them to your deck. These are worth a lot of points, but have no actual utility in the game (where most of the cards you are adding to your deck let you do things like draw more cards or gain resources). So as you get closer to winning, the composition of your deck becomes worse and worse, and you become less and less likely to be able to purchase more Provinces.
There are certainly games that have negative feedback loops for leading players. Some Ludo variants make it progressively harder for players to make valid moves the more pieces they brought home, for example by forcing the player to move to an empty home field with an exact dice roll.
Generally, I'd say that if you have a game that regularly ends in close finishes it's likely either very random or it contains negative feedback loops.
"Imperial" - the best boardgame of all, in my opinion[1]- largely circumvents having a comeback mechanism by making the game scores being a dynamic result of all player interactions until the very end. You typically only know for sure whos about to win in the last round but (very importantly) it does not feel random at all (there is virtually no luck, no dice, no card decks)
In short, its a light wargame in which the players control the nations - but they are not the nations. They are investors who buy bonds in the nations and the player with most investments controls (governs) that nation. Controls shift during the game and war is _not_ the objective. Profiting from your nation(s) is.
Do check it out. The game is well reviewe and still critically underrated
> Is there a board game where one's advantage doesn't compound, though?
The thing is, it's not usually such a zero-sum game as it is in Monopoly.
In better designed games, there's more opportunity cost associated when you start optimizing for something. Individual players can pursue their own, different strategies. A player who optimizes for "strategy A" might be weak to "strategy B." Getting the resources for "strategy B" might become easier, since there's less competition for them.
The trick to Monopoly is that there is no alternate strategy. Opting to (or being unable to) buy land doesn't open up some other path through which you can win - it just means you're going to lose.
I used to play the MAD (magazine) board game as a kid. It's pretty good. Pretty crazy, not surprisingly. A lil like Monopoly except the pick-up cards involve doing weird things, or telling every player to pass their money to the player on their right or left, which happens so often that you never are winning for too long.
Yes. As others have pointed out, it’s more and more common these days - or at least more common to have a situation where the players aren’t entirely sure who is ahead.
Examples include:
* Innovation
* Wingspan
* 7 Wonders
* Brass: Birmingham (and the original Brass, too)
In "Power Grid" (a power plant building game) the turn order is recalculated every round based on how well the player is doing, with the players doing worst getting more chances to bid in power plant auctions and being first to buy on the fuel market.
In "Flamme Rouge" (a cycling-themed game) a 'drafting' mechanic means the leading player has to add 'exhaustion' cards to their hand, much like riders in real races try to slipstream behind the race leaders.
In "Suburbia" (a city building game) victory points are 'population' but as you move up the population tracker, you cross red lines that reduce your income and reputation.
In 'Trans-America' (a railroad-building game) points are scored by connecting cities, and it's easy for a naive player to connect 4 cities before a lucky expert player connects 5 and ends the round. This creates the impression of a close game as the best and worst players will be within 20% of each other.
And of course, the other option is: A scoring system so baffling and opaque, nobody can work out who's in the lead until the calculators come out at the end.