Intelligent Board Games and Social Interaction?

frogcircus asks: "Several weeks ago, at a neighborhood yard sale, my wife found an intact copy of Scotland Yard. I had been looking for one for several years (ever suspicious of eBay), driven by fond memories of group games in the late 80s. We played with a group of friends last night, and while some of us loved the game, others seemed a little less enthralled. It soon surfaced that the logic and reasoning involved in the game made it highly attractive for some of us. This got me thinking that perhaps the game was especially appealing to the geek mind. Which leads to my question: to which board games do you feel a close affinity? And to what degree have they engendered social interaction who don't share your particular interests?"

Iron Dragon!

The Rail Builder games from Mayfair (too lazy to google the links) were awesome. There were versions for the UK, Europe, India, North America, and Japan, IIRC. Best of all, though, was the fantasy version - the mighty Iron Dragon. For a while I was playing a game a night with a friend who was staying with my family; we had it down to such an art that we could get through a 2-player game in 45 minutes.

I'm on my second copy, though it's lent out at the moment. I can't think of another board game that captured my interest like Iron Dragon. We had quite the little circle of players going for a while, too, though I think it's fair to say that we are all geeks of one sort or another. ;-)

There was an attempt to create an online version, but I don't know what happened to it - I've never been able to get the demo to work on my machines. Anyone know anything about this?

Siedler!

First and foremost Settlers of Catan. Other games may be Junta for the social interaction, History of the World, then the list drops off fast.

Game fanatic

Cheapass Games [cheapass.com] -- A treasure trove of geek-friendly games. The premise? They provide the idea and enough materials to get you started, you provide the tokens, counters, and dice. The results are great fun at virtually no cost. Highly recommended are The Big Idea and Ben Hvrt.

Another big hit was Four Player Chess, formerly purchaseable at 4playerchess.com but is now managed by a domain-name squatter. :/ Anyway, mine has always been a big hit amongst the Coffee Shop Crowd. it's not too hard one of your own. Take a normal chess board then add three rows to each side (making the board look like a big Plus sign). Add two sets of Chess pieces (preferably all distinct) and you're off!

Steve Jackson Games' [sjgames.com] Knightmare Chess [sjgames.com]. It's a card game played while playing chess. Play a card, move a piece. The cards change the rules as you go (e.g. "All Pawns attack forward and move diagnal until this card is banished"). This game in conjunction with Four Player Chess is hours of insane fun. A quick search revealed one for sale elsewhere [unclesgames.com].

Lunch Money [atlas-games.com] is a sick and masterfully done game of kill-thy-neighbor. Always a big hit amongst those with a ken of violence.

Hot Death UNO [inanutshell.us]. My personal-favorite diversion, an extension of Crazy Eights (UNO), this card game add almost 30 new cards to the game of UNO. For example: Mutual Assured Destruction, Fuck You!, Harvester of Sorrows, The Shitter, Glasnost.... This game is not for the meek and merciful. There's also a PC version here [inanutshell.us] and a Sourceforge project [sf.net] desperately in need of a programmer with mad (motivational) skillz.

MouseTrap!

Best board game on the planet. Come on now, it's got mouse, pussies and gadgets. How can you go wrong.

Poleconomy

I haven't played it fo about a decade, but I remember it as being like a "grown-ups version" of Monopoly. Instead of property, you bought shares in companies. The general dynamic was the same as Monopoly, but it was more complex.

Carcassone

Here in Raleigh, NC we have a few nice game stores. I like All Fun and Games in Cary best. As for the actual games, Carcassone can't be beat. It's a map building tile game with intrigue and guile.

Also, Bang is nice group fun. Scotland Yard is a favorite of my family's. San Juan is card-tastic. Bohnanza is a really cute, easy to pick up game. Once Upon a Time is a neat storytelling game for little kids to share with adults.

RoboRally

You might be hard pressed to find this game as well as the many expansion but it sure is a lot of fun and a geek game. Programming robots to take part in a race of conveyor belts, pits and laser damages. WOW.

As far as I know the game is discontinued but the community is still out there. There is plenty of alternative board to download, new rule sets and so on if you go looking.

Go Twitch!!

Settlers of Cattan

Basically a turn based strategy game. You grab resources and build settlements and cities to be the first to get a certain number of points.

Re:Settlers of Cattan

I will second this. Settlers of Catan is one of the most replayable strategy games that I have played. My circle of friends plays a 3 to 6 player game every weekend, sometimes more than one. The 4-6 player expansion is a must, if only for the extra land tiles. Cities & Knights of Catan is a decent expansion, unfortunately it suffers from a few balance issues. I have not tried the SeaFarers of Catan expansion, but have played with a custom 'mod' ruleset that mimics it (allowing islands, peninsulas, and rivers on the map) and find that to be fun.

Simple Answer

Diplomacy [wizards.com].

First turn takes 30 minutes. Subsequent turns take 15 minutes each.

Unless you have a very small circle of friends (up to seven others), your social life is over.

Take a chance (or not)...

When I was younger, I found I was drawn more to games that minimized chance or at least where performance in the game was less due to chance than to skill.

Chess, for example, would always be preferable to Yahtzee. In a less black and white model (yes, I know, and I meant to do it, durnit!) Scrabble vs. Poker might have been a harder call, each having

As I grow older and (maybe) wiser, I've found that status and "winning" have become less important to me and the experience of playing has become more important... so chance plays a more important role (roll? :) in the games I enjoy.

Of course, it might also be that a purely random game gives my young daughters a chance to win once in a while, and durn they're cute when they're proud.

Kill Doctor Lucky

Cheapass Games [cheapass.com] has some real gems. Kill Doctor Lucky is great for a small group though. Some people figure it out quickly, and others kind of stare off not understanding why everyone else likes it.

I can second the Settlers and Carcassonne nominations. Those both reward skill, though Settlers takes some bargaining craft to really excel.

I didn't like Iron Mountain very much, but Eurorails [boardgamegeek.com] had the best map for the rail series of games I played. The US (Empire Builder) is too large, and Australia has the same problems of overly wide spaces with no cities. Never played India Rails.

Board Game Geeks

First of all, there is a whole class of Board Game Geeks [boardgamegeek.com].

It should also be noted that Scotland Yard is still available as a game called N.Y. Chase, but with a different map.

With those points out of the way, I think the appeal of board games depends greatly on the type of board game. There are several board categories that each appeal to a different group of people. Logic games that involve deduction like Scotland Yard probably appeal to technology geeks more than they do to the general population.

Some people play games as a way to relax, and they do not like to spend as much time thinking about things as it takes to play a deduction game. Some of those people prefer "party" games like trivia games and more social offerings.

You could try to create a Venn diagram of different demographics and the type of board games that they prefer, but I don't know that it would be that useful. It is better, in my experience, to just try to find games that the people you plan to play with like and have fun.

Here is a partial list of some broad categories of games (off the top of my head):

Party games that revolve around social interation like Cranium, Apples to Apples, most trivia games, and most board games that are mass marketed for adults in the USA.

Deduction games that involve eliminating possibilities and figuring out the answer like Scotland Yard, Master Mind, Coda, and Clue.

Induction games that involve formulating a theory based on observed evidence like Zendo and Eluesis.

Programming games where the moves are all set up and then executed like RAMBots and RoboRally (Diplomacy uses this mechanic, but it's really a different kind of game).

Abstract strategy games where the players pit their mental abilities against one another. Many of these are limited to two players and frequently have perfect information. Examples include Chess, Go, Dvonn, Zertz, Tigris and Euphrates, Blokus, and Through the Desert.

Dexterity games were players have to use physical ability to achieve an objective, like Pitchcar, Jenga, and Crokinole.

There are many other types of games, and then there are many games that incorporate several of these aspects. There are even games that I refer to as "psychological interation" games because they revolve more around how well you can judge how the other players will act in a given situation (like Citadels and Werewolf).

Many of the Euro/German/Designer games incorporate different elements to create an experience that appeals to many people for different reasons, but a lot of the preference comes down to why people want to play games. I personally like to win, so I tend to dislike games that involve too much luck. I also like to think, so I enjoy games that are "brain burners".

Some of my favorites include:
Go, a classic two player abstract strategy game

Ricochet Robot, a brain burning puzzle game

Zendo, an induction game

Through the Desert, a multi player abstract strategy games similar to Go

Princes of Florence, a complex designer game that incorporates auctions and strategy in an interesting way

Carcassonne, a relativly light tile placement game that still has enough strategy to be enjoyable

Age of Steam and Power Grid, economic simulation games that require tough decisions to try to implement complex plans

However, I own a broad collection of games so I have something that is approprate and enjoyable for almost any situation. It all comes down to having fun, in the end (and winning).

Puerto Rico

A great game to play with other intelligent people. It's not hard to learn, but difficult to master. There's almost no element of luck in the game (there is one non-player source of entropy, but it's not completely random) but the design of the game leads to billions of possible scenarios. An excellently designed and balanced game - highly recommended.

You can play it online too at BSW.

Axis and Allies

My friends and I have loved Axis and Allies [axisandallies.org] for over a decade now. Between us, we have the original game, and the spinoff games for both the European and Asian theaters.

Hampered by a tedious setup and long turns, A&A is a battle of strategic resources that involves equal parts WWII and trash talk. It is fun to play with three to five players. (With two players, there is less finger pointing amongst the Allies or Axis. What fun is that?)

If you're a geek, you love history, and you've never played it, you really must try it some time.

Stratego

Stratego is by and large my favortie board game. It's not got a lot of social interation as it's only a two person game, unless you count people watching the game. One thing I like about Stratego is that it is really fun to watch two people play who are good at it. It's like watching a really good game of poker because it's very easy to bluff both on offense and defense. I especially like the now-defunct Electronic Stratego just because you don't know the rank of a piece until that piece dies and the electronic bomb system is more challenging.

The other board games I love are Risk, Trivial Pursuit 80's Edition, and Clue.

cosmic encounter

I can't believe no one has mentioned cosmic encounter, my favorate social game.
3 or 4 different game companies have produced versions of it and the original had 9 expansions.
Add that to the tons of user created expansions available on the web and you get a game that never gets old.

The best CE site in my opinion (disclaimer, I did the database programming) is The warp [redamedia.com]

Missing option

While I concur with most of the other suggestions here, I've got a few more fish for the fire:

1. Modern Art. Excellent abstract game for 3-5. Plays well with 3, 4 or 5 players. Players are running modern art galleries. The art has no inherent value, only it's future value based on how it sells now. Nonetheless, you have to bid on each piece. Very nice.
2. Titan: The Arena. Eight monsters battle in an arena over five rounds. Players bet on which ones will survive. The earlier the bet, the more its value.
3. funagain.com [funagain.com] more games than you shake a stick at. Used and out of print, too.

So many!

My husband and I collect board games, and will try any game (within reason) once. IMHO the way to make board games social is to have a set of friends who will also try anything once and consider the time fun, even if the game sucks. Then, once you know what to expect of a game, you can figure out who would enjoy it.

Often if you ASK people what games they enjoy, or what they enjoy in a game, you can figure out what else they'd enjoy.

My mom is a self-avowed game-hater, but she likes Scrabble and will tolerate games that are just excuses to hang out and talk with friends. "Apples to Apples" is a great one (it even plays well with kids), and a little-known Richard Garfield game, "What Were You Thinking?"

For game geeks, anything by Steve Jackson Games is excellent. Illuminati (not INWO) is my all-time favorite. "Ninja Burger," however, is a brand new and darned awesome game.

The "Chez" series (Chez Geek, Chez Grunt, Chez Greek...) are a lot of fun for a group of 20-30somethings. They're more about shared experience than about real gaming, but they've got enough game elements to keep a geek happy.

For IT folk, I love Management Material (Zipwhaa Games) and now IT Management Material. I got a copy for one of my co-workers as a gift and we all spent the rest of the afternoon locked in an office playing it (poor users couldn't find a single sysadmin anywhere). Again, more about shared experience than the game, but beautifully balanced and with nice mechanics.

Fluxx is another one that you can play with anyone, plus it's very portable. Easy to learn (starts with a single rule) but deep enough that someone who loves strategy can have a blast with it.

Mmmmm...games....

~

Games and social interaction

Which leads to my question: to which board games do you feel a close affinity? And to what degree have they engendered social interaction with those who don't share your particular interests?"

Others have already mentioned several of my favorite games:

• Risk
• Settlers of Catan
• Magic: the Gathering

I think all of these games have "engendered social interaction". These games have been the impetus for social interaction since I was a kid, be it playing Risk with my family, the nights (and days) spent playing M:tG in college, or the evenings with friends around the coffee table and Settlers board now.

For me, the games have always been a distant second to enjoying time with those close to me. Through these games I've found many people with whom I have common interests. I consider this a boon, and it was especially so in college. There was always a group of five or six Magic players who would hang out on weekends together. We'd relax, complain about politics, talk about whatever, and generally have a good time. Meanwhile, the rest of the campus was at the frat houses giving themselves alcohol poisoning and acting the fool until the cops or paramedics were called -- and that was never my idea of a good time.

The way I see it, those who share my interest in these games probably have more in common with me, and I am more likely to get along with them and enjoy their company. At least, it's worked that way so far.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne [boardgamegeek.com] is the game that bumped the excellent Settlers of Cataan from the top spot for me.

Carcassonne is incredibly elegant. You place new tiles to expand the world, optionally claiming them for your side. Play is simultaneously competitive and cooperative between players as temporary aliances are formed and broken based on mutual interest. There are several ways to earn points, leading to vastly different strategies (like in an RTS on a computer), and enough expansion packs to keep the game ever fresh.

-m