The Gaming Den

So, I was recently reminded of SPI's old War of the Ring game (which I owned a copy of back in the day). It was not very good, and the relatively recent remake is superior in almost every way. But that 'almost' really bugs me, because it eliminated the three-player game.

Yeah, the remake claims that it can be played by up to 4 players, but that is a lie; there are only two sides, and adding more players only splits the responsibilities for the sides between multiple players, which is lame and is also done in such a way as to really screw over teamed players who disagree on their strategy.

The two-player dynamic (in both versions) is a simple asymmetric one: there are basically two games being played in parallel, the army game and the ring game; the Sauron player has a huge advantage in the military game, but must overcome highly defensible positions and is working under an unpredictable time limit, determined by the ring game. (The Free Peoples player can pull off a military victory, but it's tricky.)

But the original game included a genuine three-player variant. It was plagued by the general not-very-goodness of the game, but I liked the concept. In that variant, the third player got the Saruman forces that were otherwise controlled by the Sauron player (and their military goals). That side was weak compared to the other two, but with a combination of a strategic position and a few key special abilities, it could (and had to) play the other two sides against each other, essentially threatening to throw the game to one to wring concessions out of the other.

I played the three-player version a few times, and it was (relatively) great. Not only was playing as Saruman very different from playing as either of the other sides, but playing against the Saruman player as either of the others was also really different from the two-player game. It embraced the transition from the zero-sum game to the three-player dynamic and transformed the whole experience.

Anyway, this is all by way of my wondering how that kind of transformative dynamic could be taken further, up to like six players, with each side playing differently from the others and each one added changing how the other sides have to play as well. Using WotR as a model for the first three sides, that leaves three more. One mechanic I think could be poached would be the Bene Gesserit setup from the Dune boardgame, where they have very limited strength, but the ability to steal another side's victory under certain secret circumstances, so they like to 'help' other players, who can't trust them, and it adds a whole element of bluff and double-bluff.

That's four. So, what might two more sides look like? Thoughts?

Dune is actually a much better game than War of the Ring, and it's a good example of how to do this sort of thing. I think the best example is the Guild. You have to pay to move troops to the planet (unless you are the Fremen), and if the Guild is in play, you pay to the Guild player. So if players spend more on moving their troops around, the Guild has more resources.

Having a situation where the various factions worked like that, absorbing resources from the other players when they spent resources on certain aspects of the game, would do a lot for expandability. Obviously, you have the incentive to spend as many resources as you can on the portions of the game not controlled by the other players.

You could even do a thing like Junta, where the influences that players have vary over the course of the game. Perhaps one of the players could take over the docks and then get kickbacks when other players had to use the docks.

And of course, Junta is another good source of expandable asymmetric gaming ideas. The government offices are really varied in power - the Generals are pretty much useless unless there's a coup, and El Presidente has total control over the money but if he doesn't use it to keep the right people happy the head of Internal Security will have him shot or the Generals will rise up against him during the coup phase.

-Username17

Dammit, now I want to play Junta again. That game was an excellent example of how simple mechanics create a deep metagame, much like Go or Diplomacy.

Early L5R had genuinely good multiplayer. I don't know if it still does.

Look up Solium Infernum. Generally great multiplayer, and deserves to be a lot bigger than it is.

The best game I know for the qualifications you are looking for is Bang! which is an amazing game themed around spaghetti western shootouts. Bang has three factions, the Law, the Outlaws, and the Renegade. Each side has different requirements to win and have to spend the game shifting their allegiances. It's one of the best games I've ever seen, the only downside is it works best with 4, 5, and 6 players. You can play two player games but it's not as interesting.

The original Illuminati game had an interesting concept where every side had its own specific win condition, but it suffered from poor balancing of the factions.