Spinners: 1HN Long-Lasting Randomizer

Currently, one of the oddly popular fads among children in the United States is the fidget spinner, which is a three-pronged plastic or metal item that spins on its central axis on ball bearings. Apparently, fidget spinners are simply mental distractions that seem to have been intended as a tool to help children focus their fidgety energies on something without shifting in their seats. However, it has had the opposite effect of distracting children by drawing their attention to whomever is using one. I can see the end of this, though: eventually, EVERY boy (and girl?) will have one, get bored of it, and then cast it into a drawer of other junk.

An ironic parallel I see to the predictable fate of the fidget spinner is the spinner in board games. Certain "classic" American games featured spinners, particularly Life and the decidedly non-board game, Twister. As other Americans do, I have both happy and angry memories of these games. As many of you know, spinners are simply decision randomizers that spin on a central axis until the pointing part of the spun arrow or wheel ends up aiming at a space that indicates a number or course of action. It's rudimentarily mechanical, requiring a deft turn of hand or finger to manipulate it, yet it is not necessarily a component of dexterity games. On the contrary, in the two games mentioned above, spinners are the mode of randomization. In this sense, spinners are similar to any randomizer, like dice. This difference is a simple one: there is a visceral element to both kinds of randomizers that are dissimilar enough to separate those experiences from each other, at least in my mind. By this, with a spinner, I could spin it as fast or as slowly as I wanted, affording me the illusion of agency. In any case, whether it's spinning and landing on the best space in the game, or spinning and having to contort my body into an impossible Escher pretzel, using a spinner evokes flashbacks of joy and rage that are markedly different from the joy and rage of rolling dice.

I noted that there is an ironic parallel between game spinners and fidget spinners; this irony is evident in the state of games today. Among the more widely-recognized connoisseur games, spinners are not found, as far as I can recall. Most of the time, decision randomization takes the form of cards, dice, or even the BINGO mechanic of drawing chits or pieces blindly, yet you do not see spinners. One reason might be because of the form factor of certain spinners, like the one in Life; it is a considerably-sized piece of molded plastic that fits fine in the large game box of Life, but may not fit well, say, in a Pandemic box. Another reason might be that shoddy spinners can lead to cheesy results; for example, if the spinner board in your set of Twister is warped, when you attempt to spin that chintzy arrow, you may barely spin it to the next wedge on the decision wheel, which is irritating and completely eliminates the visceral fun of watching an arrow careering around the wheel. The most likely reason, though, may be the most insidious one: spinners seem childish and out of place in a "serious" board game.

In yet another layer of irony, it is this "guardianship of all that is good in gaming" that has both protected current games from being infected with old, horrible ideas (e.g., the "roll-and-move" mindlessness of Chutes/Snakes and Ladders) and prevented game designers from exploring old, not-so-awful ideas, like a spinner. As I type this, I can imagine a game designer creating a game that involves a default spinner that can be customized as you purchase wedge pieces to fit in the outer rim, reconfiguring the options that are randomly available. Couple this customizable spinner with the youthful delight of spinning something with all your might and you may have a game that combines a deck/bag/hand-building mechanic with a bit of childish fun. (I'm patenting this idea, by the way.)

Sadly, though, we do not find spinners in a lot of games, and I think this is because board game enthusiasts seem to favor games that they can readily dissociate from those awful roll-and-move days of their childhoods. I certainly understand this because I used to have an aversion to dice (traumatic memories of Risk!), poppers (Trouble!), BINGO, and even the luck of the draw (I'm talking about you, War and Uno!). However, as I look at those older games from a perspective shaped by years of Euro gaming, I wonder if enthusiasts have forgotten about the primal joy of pressing a popper, rolling handfuls of dice against another dice-chucker, and even the sheer elation of drawing the high card. This leads me back to the comparison between the fidget spinner and the game spinner; one is an intriguing, somewhat distracting fad that will fade; the other is an often derided and disregarded game mechanic that has lasted a long time. Why not ride the wave of a fad and bring back the game spinner in an entirely different way? Rise of Augustus brought back BINGO in my mind, so I think a Euro game can incorporate a fidget... er, game spinner.

Rules Discussion: The BINGO Mechanic

Thinking about mechanics as I drove to work this morning (though my car could use a healthy dose of mechanical attention), I pondered Rise of Augustus, which is basically a BINGO game, but with some agency over what you do. In Rise of Augustus, you draw four (or five?) objective cards; each card has three to six symbols on them, such as a chariot, a catapult, short swords, and so on. One person reaches into a bag and put out a pog (a large round chit) with a symbol on it and then declares what he or she drew. If you have that symbol on one of your objectives, you can deploy one of seven legions to that card by placing a meeple on the corresponding space. If the symbol is one more than one objective card, you have to choose to which card you deploy your meeple. This process repeats until the herald (the one who is pulling pogs out of the bag) pulls a wild card symbol. Then, he or she places all drawn pogs back in the bag. However, at any time when a person completes an objective by deploying enough meeples to cover all symbols space, that person shouts, "Ave, Caesar!" and removes all meeples from it, having completed the objective. Gameplay ends when one person finishes seven (I think) objectives.

Okay, I haven't played this game in a while, but the BINGO mechanic of drawing a tile or chit from a bag and declaring the number or symbol on the item is a mechanic that has a bad rap... How many of us have attended BINGO game nights and realized that there is NO strategy involved and you have NO choices to make? How many of us have played some kind of BINGO-inspired educational game and found that the game was more about, say, recognizing words or colors than actually "playing a game?" Yet, this bad rap is a bit unfair because BINGO is not a game, but a social activity that does involve letter or number recognition, tactile manipulation of cards and stamps (or pieces to cover the called spots), and you can even win prizes, depending on the event. If seen with the right perspective, BINGO does very well what it sets out to do: it engenders a fun atmosphere where people can relax, listen to an enthusiastic caller yell out numbers and letters on Ping-Pong balls pulled from a spinning wire-mesh ball, and get a little excited about winning an alarm clock... or it's an excuse to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa (which is extremely important).

The BINGO mechanic is difficult to implement in a board game because there is no inherent free will to it; you just pull tiles and hope for the best. Rise of Augustus, though, uses the BINGO mechanic, but does provide some room for players to choose to which card they deploy their legions. Also, when an objective card is completed, players can draft the objective they want from the central area (the time-honored drafting mechanic). Moreover, you only have seven legions at the start of the game, so if you have already placed your legions, you face the difficult decision of whether to shift a legion to another card or not. Admittedly, Rise of Augustus is a lightweight filler game, but it's one of the few games that adopts and adapts the BINGO mechanic and then provides players with decisions after each pog pull. If anything, the BINGO mechanic is a good randomizer besides dice and cards.