the art of Downtime · 7:11am Jan 6th, 2017
Today's blogpost is the most important storytelling advice ever and should be taught in all novel-writing classes.
not really lol, it has absolutely nothing to do with writing 
From my experience at Bronycon, there's 3 popular games that seemed to be played everywhere I looked.
1. Cards Against Humanity
2. Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder
3. Mafia / Werewolf (renamed Changeling to be pony-themed)
4. (Not counting the people playing Smash Bros by projecting it against a wall in the convention center)
They're all board games! I consider Mafia to be a boardgame too, even though you don't need a table.
They also share the same huge flaw, and I worry that people as a whole are getting the impression that all board games are "supposed to be that way" just because they've gotten used to this flaw. They all have too much boring downtime. Parts of the game when there's nothing for you to do except wait.
Let me make it clear that I'm not criticizing these games (nor their players) for the content. I get that people like CAH for the raunchy offensive humor. I get that people like Secret Shipfic for the chaotic pairings and fandom in-jokes. And I get that people like Mafia because they're lying murderers innocent civilians. The problem I have is with the rules, the structure that contains this content.
Here's how every round of Cards Against Humanity goes. The judge reveals the black card, and you pick the white card you want to submit. Then you WAIT. Wait for everyone to pick a card. Then wait for the judge to pick them up, shuffle, reveal them, and read them out loud. Laughs! Then more waiting for the judge to pick a winner. Then wait for the old cards to get cleaned up, and the next player to reveal a black card.
It's quite natural to find other things to do during all that downtime. Talk about the cards with each other, make some jokes, get another drink. Usually it's not a huge deal, right? Though at some point the inattention coincides and the group gets those awkward pauses where nothing happens. "Wait, who's turn is it?" / "Did everyone put a card in?" / "Who are we waiting for?"
OK, maybe that's just one bad example. It's just supposed to be a raunchy parody of Apples 2 Apples, it didn't design these rules in the first place. And it's just a party game anyway, it's not like Chess where you gotta focus on your next move when it's not your turn. But that might be the problem, the entire game is reacting to the black cards, so it's impossible to plan a next move.
How about a party game where you DO have long-term plans? I only played Secret Shipfic a few times, but it reminded me of Fluxx in certain ways. Your turn comes up, you survey the state of the board, and you try to make as many good card plays as you can. Much like Fluxx, everyone has different goals and is trying to steer the board in different directions. And also like Fluxx, the boardstate is so chaotic that there's no point in planning ahead. Someone's gonna play a combo that changes EVERYTHING.
The result is that there's little reason to pay attention to the game on others' turns. Everyone's playing in their own little world, and interaction usually means someone ruined your plan. Everyone starts playing reactively. Turn comes up, NOW it's time to look at the board, find out what plays are available. That's where the downtime starts accumulating, everyone has to constantly re-learn what the board looks like each turn, before even beginning to think of a play. Maybe a few people will be courteous enough to pay attention during other players' turns, but it's quite natural for them to get bored of watching something that's out of their control. Attentions will drift elsewhere, and this becomes easier as the board gets more complex, and each turn requires more time for learning & analysis.
Here's some advice fimflamfilosophy gave on running D&D games. If someone's playing with their phone, obviously not paying attention, and then on their turn they ask "wait, what's going on?" ..... you skip them. Tell them their character stands still and does nothing. NEXT. It sounds like a harsh punishment, but it's meant to avoid this behavior repeating constantly. If you instead recap the situation for Player A, everyone else will zone out because they already know this information. Maybe some of them won't pay attention when Player A announces an action. Player B will ask, "wait, what did Player A do?" Again, information must be repeated, and then waiting for Player B to analyze and decide. More people start pulling out phones. Time wasted.
Maybe there's better solutions to the D&D situation, and it's a bit different from most boardgames, but the point is that downtime creates more downtime. It snowballs out of control.
I'm not calling people who play these games stupid because they can't pay 100% attention constantly. It's the fault of the rules for not giving them anything to do most of the time. They deserve better games.
Many of the best euro boardgames were designed to reduce this downtime. For example, Agricola has a board that changes constantly as players claim actions, but you always have a clear idea of what others are capable of doing. If it's not your turn, you can think and set priorities for what you want to do. If someone takes your first choice, you'll have a backup ready. With a little role-reversal you might be able to predict what other players want, planning your own priorities and future turns around those reads. I really need these cows. But I think nobody else is planning on taking the cows, so I can be greedy and delay the cows until my 2nd pick. My 1st pick can be something that's in higher demand...
To a beginner, it appears like these euro games have no interaction between players. No combat, no stealing. At a higher level, the entire game is about these mental reads and predictions. Without realizing it, your mind is doing something, even when it's not your turn. When your turn comes up, you'll already have something planned!
I don't think this is some difference between silly party games and serious strategy games. Jackbox Games produces some interesting party videogames that play similar to CAH and other party boardgames, while still reducing downtime as much as possible. Fibbage, Quiplash, Drawful, you're always given something to do in these games. Everyone submits an entry, and then everyone tries to guess the correct answer amongst all the fake misleading entries the other players submitted. Actually this is very similar to the rules of Dixit, a boardgame about artistic imagery and storytelling. Jackbox allows for more raunchy humor, but with a similar set of rules they're cleverly keeping players' attention on the game and the group. Even when the Jackbox games involve playing with your smartphone, that distracting device that supposedly ruins all other social gatherings! How crazy is that? 
Mafia isn't turn-based, since anyone can speak up at anytime, but it has its own unique problems. Instead of awkwardly slowing down, players just don't interact. The game punishes you for drawing attention to yourself, but have to be proactive to make a case against anyone. I'm sure everyone who's played it has noticed that some people just stay quiet until the endgame, when their voice and votes are worth more. The scarce information is drowned in too much noise early on. The game is about randomly killing people until the town's small enough to apply logic, but..... if you die you're dropped out of the game. You get to do NOTHING, and it's usually random chance instead of your own fault. Mafia is mostly downtime, except for a lucky few who survive.
Maybe it's an artistic social experiment expressing a message on paranoia, but it's terribly sloppy game design. It has inspired an entire genre of games that try to fix the concept and make it work. Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica make the traitor-hunt a game within a game, so that there's context fueling the lies and deceit. Resistance drops the player-elimination, so it's not about silencing dangerous people but accumulating information and noticing patterns of behavior. One-Night Werewolf simplifies everything down to one logic puzzle, and just one vote. You're not risking your permanent involvement in the game, so the rules naturally encourage everyone to participate in discussion, instead of letting a few loud people lead the mob.
These are the kinds of flaws you notice when you've played better games, but aren't so obvious when it's the only one you know. Unfortunately, peer pressure gets us to stick with the ones everyone's already familiar with.
Maybe I should make a MLP themed boardgame. I never tried making one before. At least they don't get C&D notices nearly as much as fan-videogames do! I'm not sure what it would be about yet, though.
Speaking of downtime, and waiting while nothing happens, I guess I should start working on those IDW comic reviews. I think people still want to read those, right? Someone? Anyone? 
So much this. We're seeing a eurogame revolution in boardgames in the last decade or two. Party games have been slow to the table.
And I so desperately wish that Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder actually had a game to go along with its awesome cards.
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yeahhh.... I'm scared to actually say that, since people love it so much and line up to buy it. it's hardly a game!
I did try out Buck: Legacy and it was alright. too bad it doesn't fill the party game niche that most fans were looking for.
*raises a hoof*
I'm interested n_n
This makes me think of Mario Party (probably because I have zilch experience with most party/board games). Nintendo addresses the downtime issue (which possibly feels worse when a controller is in your hands) by having a mini game occur nearly every single player turn. You're pretty much always competitive that way, and it keep things active.
Yes more comic reviews please!
Aw, for a minute I thought this was actually going to be on narrative pacing, and how if you make your cool exciting action-packed story where every plot beat escalates the danger and stakes, it ends up really boring because the audience has no moment to sit and feel that escalation. That's a pretty interesting topic that seems adjunct to your usual musings.
Game Design is super cool, too, though! Board Game design especially, because a lot of it is much more intuitive, but it's also an easier field to break into, so you've got some famous examples that don't really... understand all aspects of it.
I don't know if the game flow in Cards Against Humanity (/Apples to Apples) is really an issue of it's design, to be honest? I don't think it's as much a Game (in the modern common nerd culture use of the term) as it is a structured group activity intended to entertain multiple participants. Each round essentially exists in a vaccuum – there may ostensibly be point totals and a threshold to declare winner, but I would be surprised if that frequently affects anything, or if games last a length other than 'until we need to do something else' or 'until we get bored of this'. (Well, I suppose the theory of "Hopscotch only needs one more point to win, so we can't choose any jokes that he would ever make" has come up in my group before, but that distinctly feels against the spirit of the game?) I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to hold any sort of league or tournament for it, either, just because the base gameplay is so subjective.
Tisfuh is... yeah, I don't even want to try and comment on the design of that game. It has so many cards but almost none of them actually do anything, and even those that do hardly even empower you. Your objectives are totally random, as is your ability to accomplish them— but even as I say that as a condemnation, I think it's important to acknowledge that as a strong draw and source of longevity of the game, because a lot of people, probably a majority of people, don't want to try to be good at games. Something with a very low skill ceiling, especially if it's obscured enough, appeals because it feels more fair.
Oh my god, I disagree with that D&D advice so much. I'll be the first to admit I frequently get distracted during games and have to ask for a reminder if something has been established or not yet, but I know that if I were responded to with "I guess you don't do anything, then," my reaction would be far from "Damn, I had better pay more attention to avoid that." I'd be all over the "Hell yes, now I don't have to worry about keeping track of anything!" This is mostly a function of anything turn-based in Pathfinder being an aggressively boring, miserable chore that stands between me and trying to come up with dumb solutions and subversions to things, and blame that almost entirely on the system. (And a lesser extent, the GM.)
Your points on well-designed games are all really well made and I have nothing to really add there.
What I am somewhat thinking about, though, is how much I can appreciate total downtime, where I don't have to 100% focus on a game, and how that can be both beneficial inside and outside the game. I'm going to take that shun-worthy stance that I find Hearthstone infinitely more enjoyable to play than Magic the Gathering, and while I've heard people complain that the lack of instants (or declared blocking, or any of a lot of other things) means that the game is significantly less interactive and less fun; it's a huge boon for me knowing that as soon as I hit the end turn button everything is out of my hands. I don't need that laser focus of figuring out what the best thing to interrupt is, or trying to solve tha math problem of what defend allocation leaves me with the best resources, or whatever. I can either totally look away from the game and like, keep up my social interaction, or read ponyfic, or watch a stream, or even if I'm not multitasking, it gives my brain ample time to relax and start analyzing my options next turn (if I get one). (Tangent, though: Hearthstone and all it's clones should absolutely have players draw at end of turn instead of start, so you don't run into the 'wow this topdeck is really helpful, but how do I fit it in with the other thing I was going to do' problem.)
I suppose you could make the argument that more limited interaction and player choice back and forth does actually overall downtime, though: because instead of actually meaning every player is always engaged, it actually means you always have to leave opportunity for that subtle exchange of 'are you going to do anything?' 'no' 'okay, then next', which just leaves infinite more room for distraction and inattention. I know playing Dominion on the goko client (rip) made Attacks frequently into a miserable experience of 'Who are we waiting to discard now?' and 'Hit the button that says you aren't playing a Reaction already!' and so forth.
yes pls :Kreygasm:
I really really want to play that, I've heard good things and it looks great; but even if I did spend like $150 to order all the cards (or at least the half of them that they still print
), I'd still have nopony actually around here to play it with. :/
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If only I knew how to do that myself!
A2A/CAH: it is a good point that "the points don't matter" and it works fine as an icebreaker (especially since it requires understanding other peoples' sense of humor!), but I can't help but wonder if that niche will get taken over by Dixit and Fibbage and such. They have almost identical themes and rules, just as easy to learn, but much tighter design. It just now occurs to me that another flaw of A2A is the scoring system; it doesn't matter how well you do in a round, only the winner gets the point. Only the current judge seems to have any influence or power (like in the Kingmaking example you mentioned). And that reminds me of another problem, the "all my cards suck!" situation, where people stop trying to win rounds until they get usable cards...
Hrmm, maybe downtime has something to do with player agency. And that's like character agency, so maybe this has something to do with writing after all. Maybe.
Good point! I think this is how so many euro games became successful with non-gamers. They look deceptively simple and shallow, and only when players get hooked do they start to realize how deep the strategy goes.
Though this makes me question TSSSF even more, because seeing it in action doesn't look simple at all. The board's complexity increases as cards get added, more "terminals" for new plays. Lots of text on cards -- usually redundant or flavor, but a few cards are so bizarrely complicated that they seem like they belong in MtG. It could've worked as a simpler game, something closer to Guillotine perhaps. Even if you get distracted in that game, all you have to do is look at the front of the line, and you're caught up with everything important!
(I had a very similar experience with a friend who designed and produced a Trading Card Game for.... another fandom. I told him he was just ripping off MtG but making it MORE complicated, which seems at odds with making a silly game about sex. He ignored my advice, and it was successful anyway. I think it was despite the confusing rules, not thanks to them. Much like TSSSF, I believe most people bought it because they loved the artwork. Good products which don't have to be good games.)
Yeah, I'm not entirely keen on it to be honest. The guy's funny, but pretentious.
I wasn't sure if I should edit it out of the post, but I liked it as an example of the snowballing effect. A lot of it does matter on the GM and game rules.
on Hearthstone: that's a good example. The way I see it, having that End Turn button makes it work great as a turn-based videogame, in ways that Magic and Dominion fumble at, while the instant-type effects work better within boardgames, where it's up to every player to manage the rules together (like McLuhan's cold/hot media theory, but gah that might be opening a whole new can of worms. and I haven't read his book anyway)
I think I did forget to emphasize those types of games in my post. It doesn't have to be 100% constant interaction, because some types of waiting I don't consider harmful. Those periods of considering the next turn still keep one connected to the game, whether it's deep thinking in Chess or a few simple decisions in Dominion. I suppose that might be the key to all 3 of the lousy games I criticized: there's no consistent planning whatsoever. Long-term plans and goals, no matter how half-assed, are better at keeping attention than each turn existing in a vacuum. Even when I played with serious-gamer friends, all of us planning strategies, we'd still spare time for chitchat, snacks, and watching over the baby. So we'd get "distracted" but the game itself would never slow to a crawl.
Maybe I could've picked a better term than "downtime", but I'm still figuring out this whole idea. Thanks for your thoughts!