Luck, Predictability and Why Games are Fun

Wow, it’s been a while.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about gaming lately, for various reasons. One is the Yawgmoth’s Will debate that raged at the Mana Drain. Another is the arrival (or rather the discovery) of APBA Baseball in my apartment. Another is Mythopia, the game David P. Baum and I have been working on. And of course there’s my love for the game of Magic.

A lot of my thinking has drifted toward the “What makes a game fun to play?” area.

APBA Baseball was introduced to me this Tuesday by my housemate Matt. It has a history going back to the 1940s and has been continually updated since the 1950s. You can still buy the game and supplies today.

It’s a simple concept: Each player chooses a baseball team and sets a lineup. Each position must be filled (including a DH if you decide to play with American League rules) and starting pitchers are chosen.

Hitters are represented by cards with columns of numbers (from 11 to 66) on them representing their batting tendencies. A row in the column might look like this: “34 23-6.” Whichever player is batting rolls two dice; the first number is the tens, the second is the ones. So, for the example above, if I roll a 3 and a 4, I look at the first column and see that 34 translates to a 23 and report that to Matt, who looks it up on the pitching and fielding chart.

Pitching and fielding is handled on four large, double-sided cards with different situations—bases empty, runner on first, runners on first and second, etc. Lower numbers (1-11) are hits, and higher ones (up to 41) are fielding. A zero is a reroll and looks at the second column on the hitter’s card. A line on the defense cards might look like this: “23 Out at first. A 2B, PO 1B,” which indicates a groundout to the second baseman (as he got the assist on the putout at first).

So my roll of 34 means that my batter died at first. Shame.

The cards are detailed enough that you can actually fill out complete scorecards for an entire game. Matt’s dad used to simulate entire seasons with his friends in college, with complete stats for everyone on their teams.

That seems a bit excessive to me, but the clatter of the dice is addictive nonetheless, so we’ve played seven games already in two days. Right now we’re simulating the 1993 World Series between the Blue Jays and the Phillies because that’s the year’s teams we have. (If you’re interested, he’s up three games to two and we’re heading back to Philly after an 8-1 Phillies loss. I’m the Jays. Pat Borders for the win.)

Like I said, it’s a fun game, but it bothers me at times that it’s so luck driven.

Luck makes it an interesting game from a third-person perspective, by which I mean the games would seem fairly realistic to an outside observer, but it’s a real pain to negotiate inside the game. If you roll bad, you roll bad and you lose. There’s not a lot you can do about it assuming you already have the best hitters in your lineup. Sure, the rolls should even out over time, but it’s still frustrating when each hitter’s card translates to different results, so rolling a 3 and a 4 might be a walk for John Olerud, or it might be a fly out to right field for Mookie Wilson.

As an example, last night I called for the sacrifice (which uses a special book, separate from the cards used for fielding) with Joe Carter at first and Candy Maldonado at the plate with none out (ex-Indians for the win). I rolled a 66. Maldonado’s line for 66 is “66 1” (he’s good enough to not have the extra random 0 factor) which translates to an instant homerun on any of the regular fielding cards. Unfortunately, in the sacrifice book, it’s just a successful sacrifice—batter out at first, runner advances.

Laaaame…

It feels too random, even though that randomness is somewhat controlled.

Obviously some element of chance is fun going into a game. Hence, the opportunity to get something for nothing releases endorphins in the brain and causes gambling addictions. I don’t want to know who will win or how the game will play out because if I do, what’s the sense in playing? I do, however, want to have some control over at least my own destiny and some insight into the possibilities.

That might seem like a lot to ask, but it’s really not. Take the game of Hearts for example: You play with a standard deck of 52 cards, and for each heart you take in a trick (no trump, high cards win) you get a point. If you get the queen of spades, you take 13 points, but if you get all hearts and the queen (i.e. “Shoot the Moon”) everyone else takes 26 points. In a four player game, each player gets 13 cards, and each player gets to pass three of those cards, so you end up seeing a total of 16 cards. Plus, you can guess what one other person has or what their strategy is by the three cards they passed to you.

That’s a lot of information!

You can give away the queen of spades and set yourself up to be safe from it. You can hang onto it and a lot of spades and dump it on someone else at the first opportunity. You can set yourself up to shoot the moon or to defend against it or to never win a trick. As long as other players play somewhat predictably, not even perfectly, you will have a pretty good idea of what each one is thinking for that hand halfway into it.

But still each hand is different, and sometimes a card that you’ve lost track of will sneak up on you and surprise everyone at the table. You know the potential results, but nothing is certain. That’s what makes the game fun—the random nougat, nut, or caramel filling in the known shell of sweet, creamy chocolate. I didn’t want to make a “Life is like a box of chocolates” parallel, but candy is delicious, so there you go.

Magic has this too. You know exactly what’s in your deck and can, without too much trouble probably, figure out what you need and how likely you are to get it at any particular moment. Not that knowing your chances of drawing one of your four Forces of Will will actually help you unless you have a way of tutoring for it or drawing more cards, of course.

Plus, most formats, even some limited formats, have enough of a metagame that you can identify what your opponent is packing after their first couple of lands, and certainly into the second game. Again, you won’t know what they’re drawing every time, but you know what you’re likely to see.

It’s fun because you have control over the situation—again figuring that your deck isn’t complete crap and that you and your opponent are semi-competent players—but the games rarely turn out the same way. When something unexpectedly lucky happens, like topdecking Yawgmoth’s Will for an amazing comeback victory, it’s generally okay because everyone knew the possibility was there. You (or your opponent, if it was you who drew the Will) hopefully had your deck and hand prepared to combat that. If not, tough beans.

Anyway, Yawgmoth’s Will is not something I really want to get into right now. Suffice to say, I don’t think it needs banning forever, but the recent suggestion of having rotating banned and restricted lists is pretty cool, if a little contrived and possibly difficult to implement.

Currently, Dave and I are trying to get the same sort of controlled randomness element into Mythopia. It’s difficult; designing a game like this gives one a new appreciation of well-designed creations like Magic. We’re not there yet, but it’s coming.

The most recent iteration was too predictable. Games came down to one thing: recurring lifegain cards. Essentially, unless the other player had a totally dominant board position, whoever had lifegain and the means to find it at the end of the game won. Every time.

Obviously there are some adjustments to make.

Right now we’re cutting down the consistency and flattening some of the abilities so they’re not quite as good as they were. I have faith it will be awesome.

Anyway, do other people get this feeling about games too? That they have to be the perfect blend of skill and chance to be fun?

It’s probably different for different people too. I’m not generally a gambling man, for example, but I’ve learned to count on luck when I have to. Better lucky than good, right?

No. Not really.