Rules Discussion: Sanctioned Cheating

I haven't written anything for Rules Discussion in a while, but I do have a topic today: sanctioned cheating, which is the concept (not necessarily a mechanic) of being allowed to "cheat" within the rules of a game. I'm not talking about deception of an opponent with misdirection or baiting tactics that prevail in miniature and/or war games; to convince your opponent that you're attacking one region when you're actually targeting another region on the board is endemic to such games. I'm also not talking about using distraction or "table talk" to fluster or confuse an opponent, though some may consider this "cheating." Instead, I'm discussing the concept of breaking or bending rules in a game as being encouraged by the rules of the game itself.

One form of sanctioned cheating is outright lying, which happens rampantly in Sheriff of Nottingham (in which you are encouraged to deceive the Sheriff to smuggle contraband into Nottingham) and the classic Balderdash (in which you try to convince others that your false definition for a word is the "real" one). I'm very much on the fence about this topic because encouraging one's children to lie (even in a game) may send a conflicting message. Lying can happen to humorous effect, and the rules allows for it in these games, so it is actually "wrong" to do it? Hmm... As a Christian, I am truly conflicted by this idea, yet games like these can be fun if it is understood that lying is only "acceptable" when sanctioned by the rules... That's really confusing!

Another form of sanctioned cheating is the one on which I'm focusing: rules that allow you to break the rules, which is complicated, so I'll focus on one game to explain: Cheating Moth, or Mogel Motte in German. This game involves a simple objective of ridding yourself of cards to win. Each player starts with a hand of eight cards. Depending on the face-up card in the discard pile, each player places the appropriate card on top of the discard pile. For example, if there is a "1" card on the pile, you can place a "5" or a "2." There are several cards that incur special conditions, such as a "mosquito" card which requires all players but the active player to slap their hands on it; the last player to do so receives one card from each player's hand. Anyway, there isn't much to say about the hand evacuation aspect of this game... except that the rules allow players to not only rid themselves of cards in the conventional way, but also in any other way they see fit! This could involve, say, dropping one card at a time on the floor, or placing them up a sleeve, or playing each card on the discard pile out of turn, all the while convincing the other players that it's one's turn.

Of course, this sounds like anarchy, but there's yet another catch: at the start of each game, one player is the "Guard Bug," whose job is to catch cheaters. For instance, if someone drops a card on the floor and the Guard Bug sees the act happen, he or she calls out the cheater, who must then receive one card from each of his or her opponents. Then, that cheater becomes the Guard Bug. The Guard Bug is the only player in Cheating Moth who cannot "cheat," which is a huge burden because he or she has to rid themselves of cards the conventional way AND keep a wary eye on all the players to not only stem the tide of cheating, but also to get rid of the Guard Bug title for themselves!

Sanctioned cheating is a dynamic that doesn't necessarily interest me as a gamer, but it's an intriguing, also mind-bending paradigm to consider. In the case of Cheating Moth, the "cheating" is sanctioned in that you have a game "layer" in which there is a basic mechanic for getting rid of cards, and then there is a kind of social layer on the game layer that allows you to circumvent the rules in the game layer. This is when sanctioned cheating works in a game: if there is an elementary game mechanic and victory conditions in place, the rules can allow for a subset of stacked rules that let players get around the game mechanic. For games with simple objectives and rules, it would be easy to place a cheating social layer on the game. However, for complex games like Twilight Struggle or Agricola, cheating would confuse everyone and throw the game into chaos; can you imagine if players could steal sheep from the central area, or even the "bank?"

In order for sanctioned cheating to work, I believe you have to have a strong and direct core of simple rules and victory conditions. If goals and rules are complex, cheating actually works toward undermining the entire game, but with Cheating Moth, you have an easy goal (i.e. get rid of cards) which is dull if played in that way, but the cheating layer (and the "Guard Bug role) adds another layer to the game that doesn't undermine the rule layer. Sanctioned cheating is a difficult topic to broach because one may have strong convictions against cheating, and yet there may be a social layer that allows for cheating in a game. To be honest, this is not really my cup of tea, and yet Cheating Moth is quite fun because you are required to be creative with how you remove cards from your hand.

What are your thoughts?

Rules Discussion: Set Collection

Set Collection is a category recognized on Board Game Geek that refers to the game mechanic of collecting sets of something to make something happen. This is not a new mechanic by any stretch of the imagination because classic card games like Gin Rummy and Poker involve collecting pairs, threes-of-a-kind, and straights (i.e. three or more cards in numeric order), but it's a mechanic that seems to get a fresh facelift with each new game released. For example, when Settlers of Catan was published in 1996, I'm sure that collecting sets of cards (i.e. resources) to build cities and gather development cards was not new, but the look and feel of the game was certainly novel. When Ticket to Ride was released in 2004, it stoked heightened interest in board gaming with its gorgeous artwork, top-notch production values, and easy-to-learn, tough-to-dominate gameplay; yet, at the heart of the game is a simple set collection dynamic in which you collect cards of like color to connect cities. Set collection is a core mechanic of many games, whether they are venerable classics or upstart new releases.

What makes set collection feel new with each game is not the mechanic itself as much as what you have to collect. For those aforementioned card games, a "set" is defined by cards of like or sequential value, and, in Poker, one set is often valued over other sets. In Settlers of Catan, what defines a set is what you intend to build; in Ticket to Ride, a set is determined by the color and length of the route connecting two desired cities. As more games are released with a set collection mechanic, gathering the requirements for fulfilling the sets is different, which makes it a time-honored mechanic that rarely fails...

Or does it? Set collection is often subject to the randomness of the deal or the flop, as well as the interference of the other player. Though the latter is a welcome attribute of many games, the former is an annoyance that can stymy even the best-laid plans. What happens if you don't draw that sixth orange card to complete a connection? What about those times in which you don't get the roll necessary to collect that last ore card? Either case is heartbreaking or irritating, though wild cards and other in-game items can help mitigate randomness at the cost of game speed, such as when you take one Locomotive card in Ticket to Ride instead of taking two cards, thus slowing down your acquisition of train cards. In any case, set collection can represent the most fun and grating aspects of gaming, sometimes simultaneously.

As a mechanic, I enjoy collecting sets, but it's not a mechanic that compels me to buy games. To be honest, I didn't buy Ticket to Ride because of the set collection mechanic; I bought it because the gameplay was easy to grasp, it was beautiful to behold, and it is as cutthroat or friendly as you and your opponents want it to be. Nonetheless, many of the more accessible games employ this mechanic. If it works, why fix it?

Rules Discussion: Multi-use Cards

Multi-use cards in games are fascinating to me because they challenge our preconceived notions of resource and hand management. To explain, multi-use cards are cards that serve more than one purpose in a game. For example, Twilight Struggle employs cards as events that are favorable to a player, events that happen despite the active player's wishes, or for influence points; as a result, a player has to weigh the consequences of playing an opponent's event just to use the influence points, or ponder whether playing a favorable event card for the event or for points is best. Many of GMT's card-driven strategy games work on this premise of using your or your opponent's events.

Another example I've experienced recently is Oh My Goods, in which cards serve as either resources, processing buildings, or as raw materials and/or goods if played face-down on a building. This dynamic introduces many uncertainties into the game, such as which resources/buildings are face-down as goods on a building (which affects the distribution of certain resources and/or buildings in the deck), or how many resources of a certain type are left in the draw pile, or what the heck does your opponent really have, even if you can see the discard pile and there's only one or two cards left in the draw pile...

A third example is a guilty pleasure game: Monopoly Deal. In this game, almost every card can be played for its primary purpose as a property or event card, or played as money to be pooled in your personal bank. By playing properties as money, they permanently become money cards and are thus removed from circulation, which in turn affects the distribution of certain property colors in the deck.

I'm sure that there are other examples of this dynamic in gaming, but multi-use cards complicate the finite nature of in-game resources and introduces some uncomfortable uncertainty into any game. No longer are cards just played straight; you have to consider that you are, say, reducing the number of a particular resource in a game, or you have to absorb the negative effect of playing an opponent's card to take advantage of a card's other purpose. Anything that monkeys with card or resource distribution in a game appeals to me, so when I find a game that features multi-use cards, my eyes widen. Sometimes, I like a bit of the unknown in a game.