Explore!
“What are the points for in the end?” she asked after I finished reading the rules.
„I don’t know,” I replied, „I haven’t read that part.”
Blasphemy? Madness? Idiocy? Perhaps. Or it’s a worthwhile consideration, a topic worth exploring? Just take a look for yourselves. How many times have you said it’s just the first game, that you’re playing without any pressure, that you’re only getting to know the game, that it’s all chill and cool? But then, in the end, you start counting the points. Suddenly, Krzysiek has 117, Wojtek has 104, and you have 32. And it’s supposed to be chill and cool, but those 32 points sting. It’s the first game, you’re still learning, but these 32 points feel bad anyway.
After all, the first game is about exploration. It’s about understanding the game’s mechanics, searching for synergies, and trying to uncover all those little gears and hidden wheels that drive the entire mechanism. You move in a certain direction, tinker with something, and enjoy the sandbox where you build your little castle, having a great time. But then, boom, the game ends, and you’ve utterly failed with just 32 points, a resounding defeat. It was fun, but now it’s not.
So, what if, in the first game, we play without checking End Scoring Points? Make it totally random – some of you’ll score high, and some of you’ll score zero. So what? What if we genuinely didn’t read that part of the rulebook? What if we freed ourselves from these constraints and simply explored the game? Exploring the mechanisms, enjoying a new game, and utilizing all those diverse actions not because they yield End Scoring Bonus and Victory Points but because they intrigue us, because we want to understand them, and because we are eager to try them.
Blasphemy? Madness? Idiocy? Perhaps. But the dialogue at the beginning of the article truly happened. I genuinely didn’t read the section describing the End Scoring. I genuinely explored the game for the joy of it, not for the VP. And truly, it was a freaking amazing experience.
I strongly believe that good board game is the one that tells a good story. You play it and suddenly you are sucked into it, you feel chills on the skin. Emotions grow. In a moment you defend castle. You hear roar of warriors. You smell boiling oil. You are into it.
That's how I design my games. I always want to tell a good story. I want players to be into it. As deep as possible.
Often when I get this score it usually means I wasn’t playing the game as it was intended. Maybe I wasn’t building engines in an engine-building game. Maybe I didn’t manage my money in a stock game. Maybe I got so hung up trying to convince King Theoden to join the war. Maybe I wasn’t attacking enough or prepping myself during scoring rounds enough. Maybe the game is a long haul, or maybe it’s bursts of tiny win opportunities.
But why didn’t I see it and others did? Am I stupid? Did the rules went over my head? Wasn’t I intuiting what others find intuitive?
Embarrassing, yes. But uninformative, definitely not. Through this I learned that Agricola is not a game you can win by spamming pigs and pumpkins. Or that Arnak can be efficiency scored without investing somewhat on the research track. Or that you can score well in Imperial Settlers without a good number of faction buildings to raise you up. Yeah, I feel bad, but if I love the game for a second session, scoring informs me that certain paths are just „more correct” than others. Doesn’t mean I won’t take the wrong road anymore, but at least I know what this game intends me to do, and the feeling next game that „I get it now, and hopefully I can go toe-to-toe with my peers” is much more rewarding.
My group sometimes plays without knowing what the end game scoring will look like. But we always want to know the results. We discuss our choices and what we want to try next time. When the discussion is good, we will likely play again.