A Short History of The Great Dalmuti

An Ambassador of Games

Games could be as big as the movies. They are far from it now; people may play games on the holidays, or as an evening's entertainment, but in general the interactive entertainment of games takes a back seat to the more passive entertainment offered by television and the movies.

When people are looking for something fin to do, games are often dismissed because many people say they don't like to play them. In fact, I've found that people who claim not to like game playing often really enjoy themselves when invited to play the right game. It's given me great pleasure over the years to develop my ability to choose the game that fits whatever peculiar mix of people I happen to be around. I feel like I am acting as the Ambassador of Games, working to represent games in the best light possible. This means not only introducing new players to a game they enjoy, but teaching veteran game players games they thought they didn't like or that they can play with people who don't often play games.

In looking for games which can meet both a new player's need for simplicity and the veteran gamer's desire for depth, I've found that some games are cure-ails, the game equivalent of penicillin. One such family of games is the group of card games that The Great Dalmuti is based on.

In 1989, I was introduced to a card game which was different than any I had played before. The object of this game was to get rid of your cards quickly and so improve your position in a mock social hierarchy. The sooner you got rid of your cards, the better your "rank" (seat) in the next round, and the more you could benefit from "taxes" (in the form of the low-ranked players' best cards). There was no scoring, but there was a good deal of incentive to play well, as the player who got rid of his cards early was rewarded with a good position in the next hand. This advantage was no small thing, either; the person in the best seat could win hand after hand, though there was enough luck in the game that this wasn't guaranteed. The game was called Dalmuti, after the title the highest-ranked player was given.

A few weeks later I found that this game was similar to a gambling game played in Chinatown in New York. Later, a cousin said he had played it in college as Presidents and Assholes, a drinking game. A graduate student I knew had played a similar game in Japan under the name Super Peasant. I ran into the game under the names Scum, Temple of the Seven Pleasures, and Rich Man, Poor Man, and I've probably forgotten more names than those I remember.

I was fascinated by this—how could a game which I had never heard of be so widespread, and under so many different names? At the time I was hardly a card game scholar, but I did read game books for fin and had spent a good deal of time at the library tracking down obscure game references. I began searching for written references to this game and found nothing. (Later I found my first written reference to Dalmuti in David Parlett's excellent book, A History of Card Games. He traced the game to France, China, and Japan, and speculated that it was originally Chinese. The Japanese game he cites is called Dai Hin Mm, or "a very poor man"—conceivably the etymological ancestor of the name Dalmuti.) In an effort to give this game broader recognition, I sent the rules I had learned to various publications.

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

Jn December of 1993 my sister Elizabeth suggested that we create our own version of this game. I was excited by the idea; everyone I had played it with had liked it, whether they typically played games or not. When I introduced the game to the people at Wizards of the Coast, it was an instant hit.

Since the rules to Dalmuti and its many cousins were in the public domain, it was easy enough to publish our own version. There were several precedents for this, which I looked at when thinking about an adaptation: Uno, Wizard, and Phase 10, for example, are all based on previously existing card games—Crazy Eights, Oh Hell, and Rumm) respectively. In adapting this game for new audiences, however, my main design goal was to make sure that anybody who bought the game felt that they had received something special, even if they knew the original game. One thing I thought we could add was game quality. For example, there is no rule that the best distribution of cards for every card game is four suits of thirteen cards. Adding special cards was also a possibility. Then there was the production value of the game. Wizards of the Coast products have a very nice look, and we could do worse than lend that look to a new card game. After all, we once discussed designing standard decks of cards, simply because we thought we could make them look good! The last thing I felt we could do was standardize the game—that is, to help establish one set of published rules which players could agree on. This didn't necessarily mean that we would end up publishing the best version of the rules—just my best shot at a good, easy-to-learn adaptation, a way for players to start learning this kind of game.

"Dalmuti?"

The first playtest cards for what became The Great Dalmuti were developed in spring of 1994, around the time of the Antiquities buy-back program. I would delve into the boxes and boxes of Antiquities'TM that had been returned to us, looking for twelve Atogs, or six Priests of Yawgmoth, which I numbered with a black indelible marker. These were used to distinguish the "suits" in the many styles of card decks which we playtested. Intrigued by the idea of developing a new type of card deck for this game, I played around with numerous variations on the game. Many of my cohorts at Wizards did as well; every day someone would have a new deck with a new set of rules. Most of these variants were wildly different than Dalmuti, but failed to capitalize on the essential simplicity of the game. I remember some games in which people moved randomly at the end of every hand, others in which no one ever moved at all. I also remember the work-disrupting call, "Dalmuti?", which you could announce over the office intercom at any time of the day or night and get a game together—a game that invariably involved our very own Duelist editor, Kathryn.

In the end I settled on a "pyramid deck," in which the number on a card reflects both the "rank" of the card—a single 2 always beats a single 3, for example—and the number of those cards contained in the deck—two 2s, three 3s, and so on. There were a number of strengths to the pyramid deck. It elegantly reflected the social stratification that the original game was based on, with a few people at the top and many at the bottom. I also found that the deck made for an interesting game, almost a caricature of the original game. In the original, the higher-ranked players tend to rely on powerful cards to win, while the lower classes can pull out a win by playing combinations of low cards at the right time. In The Great Dalmuti, the higher classes also tend to go out with good cards, but the lower classes often win by collecting seven or eight of a kind which the higher classes, for all their high cards, can't beat. Thus, the higher ranks can easily be overwhelmed by the masses—a feel I like.

The look and flavor of the game took some thought. I think that most published card games look worse than a regular deck of cards, and I was determined that the player of The Great Dalmuti at least be rewarded by a unique and attractive atmosphere. I considered all sorts of milieu for the game, including India and the Turkish Empire, but I didn't want to borrow from an unfamiliar culture without careful research first. Eventually I decided to go with a non-saccharin fairy tale, based roughly on social classes in the European Middle Ages. I split the cards into two halves of six ranks, the ruling ranks and the ruled ranks. The lowest three classes were Serfs, Stonecutters, and Shepherdesses, the providers of raw material—food, shelter, and clothing, respectively. The next three classes were Cooks, Masons, and Seamstresses, the processors of these raw materials. Similarly, in the ruling class I made two tiers, each composed of military, religious, and noble leaders. These characters were all excellently portrayed by artist Margaret Organ-Kean, with help from Daniel Gelon, Sandra Everingham, and Anson Maddocks.

A New Forum For Games

It was only after the game went to the printers that I heard about the existence of other companies' adaptations of the original Dalmuti. Zillionaire was a Milton Bradley version of the same game, part of a doomed line of games called Big Deal Games. I found it interesting that this game had failed in the States but was very widespread in Europe. It was one of my early lessons that the European game community is a lot different than the U.S. game community. Shortly afterwards I was introduced to a slew of European games based on the ideas in Dalmuti: Karriere Poker, Gang of Four, and Hollywood Poker, among others.

The discovery that these games had been published added to my puzzlement about the fate of Dalmuri. There is no reason why everyone shouldn't have heard of this game. It was frustrating to know that there was such an amazing game a lot of people would like that they'd never be able to find, even in Hoyle. The problem is that there isn't a forum through which such a game can be spread effectively. The people I most want to tell about games like Dalmuti are those who don't think they like games, and who therefore wouldn't teach the game to others.

We need more people who enjoy games to adopt games like this, games that everyone can play. Teach these games to your friends and family; cultivate the game genes among them. If you didn't know there was a game like Dalmuti out there, take a lesson from it—there are lots of unpopularized games out there which deserve to be played. It is a little more work to teach the casual player games that don't come in a box, but it is often worth the effort. The reward can be family and friends who are open to trying new games, and who consider games a great form of entertainment

rather than a waste of time. If more of us who love games made the effort to be ambassadors for them, we would soon have a world of people who relish a new game as much as they now enjoy the latest box-office release.

The Hot Chocolate Of Games

What defines a game? Chess consists of a set of rules. But chess is also the shape of the pieces, the manner in which the game is played, the history of the game. If you always play chess in front of a fire with a cup of hot chocolate, then for you this atmosphere is part of the game itself. You might think of a game of chess as a person: The rules—the object of the game, the functions of the pieces—are the skeleton, relatively inflexible and providing structure for the rest. Then there is the body, or form of the game—the colors of the board, the military names, and the shapes of the pieces.

The flavor that a game has can completely change the experience a player has playing it. If a game has a science-fiction flavor, I will have a different experience than if it has a his torical flavor, even if the game rules are essentially the same. Similarly, when I play go, if I play on a plastic board with plastic pieces, my play experience is completely different than if I play with a wooden board and stone pieces. believe that some players internalize games enough that the environment and trapping of the game make no difference; these people are playing a celestial go, a go that resides only in their hearts and minds. Unfortunately, I am anchored to 1this world when I play and only occasionally get a visitor's pass to different world. For many game players, the form and flavor of a game is as important as the rules themselves,

But there is more to a game than just rules or form. Much of a game consists of the traditions and rituals that the player brings to it. Some of the most interesting elements of a game are the traditions associated with play. Some of them have an obvious origin, such as cutting a deck of cards before the deal, while others, like the tradition of Ace being high in a given game, have a more obscure origin and meaning. Many games of cards have exceptionally strange rankings. making the 7, 8, A, K, Q,J, T, 9order of cards in Le True, for example. seem perfectly normal. Often, these seemingly arbitrary rules—white going first in chess, or black going first in go, for example—are nothing but traditions that have been incorporated over time. Though I am sometimes tempted to teach such games without these arbitrary rules, since they can increase the difficulty of learning, they are a legitimate part of the games, and I always honor and pass them on to new players.

Often players bring their own rituals to games. I know one group of players who would call out,"Magic Realm" whenever two or more people rolled the same number on a die. The call was named for an old Avalon Hill game in which players apparently rolled a lot of ties. Another group would finish a game of Acquire by changing their money to the highest denomination and laying their bills down one by one until only one player had any money remaining. The way some people choose to keep track of life in Magic, using stones while others choose paper and pencil or a counter, could be considered a matter of tradition. As with most forms of entertainment, since such traditions change the way a game feels to play, they are truly part of the game.

It is interesting to track how traditions get spread. The call of "Magic Realm" has probably not spread to other gaming groups, but I believe it has spread to new people of the same group who have no idea where the call came from. In time, if the tradition is followed consistently enough, it might even change from tradition to rules of the game. An example of this in my group is the use of a timer in RoboRally. Using a timer makes the game go more quickly and makes the game play a bit more amusing, so it has become a standard element of our games. Some trading card games now make a rule of knocking the table to indicate when a turn is done, a tradition that sprang up in Magic, and previously existed in many classic card games.

Zen And The Art Of Game Playing

When I play a game I am very familiar with, Ifrequently find myself falling into a state of detachment. My body and enough of my brain know the task I am performing so that "I" can take a break. The mind is cleared as the body goes on autopilot, producing a special sort of relaxation—one in which there isn't enough concentration left over to worry about problems outside the game that I otherwise might fixate on. I am told that musicians are familiar with this frame of mind; I experience something akin to this when I juggle, or when I tak a shower.

Although the best part of a game is the problem solving and innovation that it stimulates, I know many good game players who aren't at all innovative in certain games. There was probably some problem solving when they learned the game, but eventually they found a skill level they were comfortable with, kicked back, and settled in.

This is particularly apparent with games such as Uno or Klondike solitaire. These games have enough luck in them that most people play close-to-optimally anyway. It is obvious that the attraction is not problem solving; instead, I believe it is the ritual of play, the performance of a task players know well for the sake of the task. Just as some people find pleasure and relaxation in the daily rituals of cooking meals, walking the dog, or doing a paper route, many game players get the same pleasure through the ritual of the game. This is something positive that games offer to good and regular players, a part of the art of game play that does not rely on continuous learning and problem solving.

Ritual gaming also provides a comfortable medium in which to relate to other people. The games act as modular rituals that can be fit into any part of the day. Similarly, games can provide an excellent social vehicle for an age in which so many of the social traditions have eroded, leaving many people a little lost when among those they don't know too well. A game provides a good, interactive common ground for dealing with strangers in a social setting, or with friends you have lost touch with. I wouldn't be surprised if game playing were more common among people without much daily routine, as a substitute for other sorts of rituals.

It is certainly not true that a ritual game player is a bad game player. There are many people who play a fine game bridge or chess, even though it is essentially the same game they've played for the last twenty years. I consider this way of playing games no worse than my continuing to juggle , from time to time, even though I've learned no new moves in years. One might think of this method of game play as software which ritual players have stopped revising; now , they compete their software in the way Magic players cornpete their decks—they don't stop making decisions once their decks are tuned.

I often partake in ritual play, but there is no doubt that my favorite part of games is discovery. Nothing is quite like the discovery phase of a game, the period in which new players make their first big leaps in skill and the overall game technology is increasing rapidly. Because of this, I really enjoy learning new games. While most people find learning new rules too burdensome to do often, I have incorporated that into my whole game-playing style. You might say that learning new rules and trying new things with games is part of my personal ritual of gaming. For example, I'll seldom play a simple game of chess when I can play a weird variation that I haven't tried before. Are innovation and ritual in games mutually exclusive? I don't think so. One of the reasons I keep coming back to Magic, and why I've repeatedly returned to Cosmic Encounteris because these games have enough variation to satisfy my interest in puzzle solving and innovation, while building a familiarity necessary to bring ritual play to another, higher level.

Understanding the role of ritual in games can add to your enjoyment of playing them. Don't be afraid to institute a convention, or to take pleasure in one you already have. Just as the smell of fresh bread may send you to a past that never really existed, the sounds of shuffling or the feel of the dice—the rituals of the game—may bring a purer pleasure than the play itself.

An avid game player, Richard Gaifield (a.k.a Playful Al) is well-known around The Duelist for his ritual of tempting busy cditors into playing the latest game he designed "in his spare time...."

The World of Games

One of the most persistent issues I have to deal with as a game designer is the relationship between a game's mechanics and the "game world." By game mechanics I mean the rules of the game: bishops move on the diagonal, collect two hundred dollars when you pass 'Go,' the queen of spades is worth thirteen points, etc. The game world isa more nebulous concept; it is the universe portrayed by the game, which may be expressed through a strong story or through characters with whom players can identify. In Magic, for example, the fact that a 2/3 creature defeats a 2/2 creature in combat is part of the rules, a consequence of the game mechanics. The fact that the 2/3 creature is a Hurloon Minotaur who was magically summoned from his home world to battle a Gray Ogre in a struggle between two planeswalking wizards is part of the game world.

The relationship between game mechanics and game world has traditionally tended more towards flavor than simulation. Look at any game that's more than forty years old—games such as Monopoly, Clue, chess, and backgammon—and you won't find any real articulated game world, at least by today's standard.

In the hobby game industry, however, the relationship between game mechanics and game worlds has a different history. Wizards of the Coast sprang from the roleplaying industry, where every game necessarily had a world associated with it. Roleplaying finds its roots in military simulation, where a game was considered flawed if it didn't simulate its conflict in a reasonable manner. Likewise, roleplaying games focus so much on portraying their worlds that game mechanics often take a back seat for many designers.

I am a product of this industry in many ways. My first designs were roleplaying adventures for Chivalry and Sorcery and Dungeons and Dragons, and these were strongly tied to the environment in which they were supposed to take place. My early games often had some world in mind— inspired by a movie or a book, or even a bizarre vision, as RoboRally was. Usually, though, the development of the world depended upon innovations in the mechanics of the game, and rules that improved the game were incorporated into my picture of the game universe. Sometimes, this worked the other way: changes in the game world suggested changes in how the game was played. For example, very early versions of Magic had players accumulate mana from turn to turn like currency. When the game evolved into its current form, with the mana disappearing between turns, the simulation suggested that there should be release of energy when the mana wasn't used—which is how we got mana burn.

Wizards of the Coast sprang from the role- playing industry, where every game necessarily had a world associated with it.With Magic I had complete freedom to develop the card game as it wanted to be developed. V:TES and Netrunner, on the other hand, were my first lessons in the costs associated with letting a game world drive game design. In Jyhad, I think I tried so hard to capture White Wolf's World of Darkness that the resulting game, while a fairly good representation of the struggle and intrigue among vampires, is much too ornate for most people. Much of the work done on the game since its original release has focused on making it more accessible to its players.

With Netrunner, the game mechanics were suffering greatly until I took a step back and decided to design outside the world and then step back in. This led to many parts of Netrunner that aren't really simulations of R.Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020 world (like using bits to power your ice- breakers), but which make excellent trading card game mechanics. Now, as I work on Wizards of the Coast's third trading card game adaptation, BattleTech, I hope that my work will benefit from these experiences, that I'll be able to negotiate better between the demands of a prefabricated world and the needs of strong, elegant game mechanics.

But in the process of exploring my own game design, I'm becoming increasingly more interested in not letting my games suffer the pressures of an external game world. Rather, I want to explore the rich worlds that the games themselves can create, to make the game mechanics and the game world one thing. I believe that the best games that I have ever played were very apparently first a game and then a simulation. That isn't to say these games don't have a flavor or a world of sorts attached to them. I seldom make games that were, initially at least, purely abstract. But for me, a game world should be more suggestion than outright simulation. In the end, when I play Magic I still see myself hurling spells at my opponent, although I have no idea how to "visualize" the spell Twiddle. Within the universe of Magic, Twiddle seems very sensible, a reasonable inhabitant of a world whose broad outlines I understand but whose details are left to the imagination.

When he is not working on BattleTech, Richard Garfield spends his time playing the elf in Gauntlet, which he claims simulates the flight aspect of the basic fight-or-flight instinct.

Games and Politics

In my experience critiquing games, the concept that has caused the most dispute is politics. I refer to a game as political if it has more than two players, or sides, and during a significant portion of the game the other players could agree to make you lose. Two-sided games, like Magic, chess, bridge, and basketball, are never political.

Right now my study of political games is riddled with judgment calls, making it far from precise. For example, Yahtzee is a game for more than two players that isn't particularily political: I could win even if everyone else decides I shouldn't. RISK is highly political, however, since one person cannot expect to beat the rest of the players allied together unless they account for less than half the power in the game.

There are some good things about political games. Any player usually has a chance to catch up, no matter how far behind he or she might be. A political game is as deep as the players wish to make it: simple and straightforward, or convoluted and laden with conspiracy.

That said, I lean toward games where politics take a back seat. I haven't always felt that way, but over the years I have found that when I played games with a strong political component, the game itself didn't matter much.

Playing Nicely with Others

There is a wide array of opinions, often passionate, about the role of politics in games, with equally intelligent folk at all extremes. Most people who have played a lot have had some good experiences with political games. It is always hard to draw conclusions from past game experience, though, because good players can make any game fun. Similarly, it is hard to determine whether a political game is itself at fault or if the players aren't playing well. When someone is always whining about being behind, is that a problem with the player or the game?

Players often increase their enjoyment of political games by establishing unwritten rules of conduct. I know circles where whining is punished by group attacks. Other groups forbid negotiations, or only allow players to exert limited influence. Players are commonly expected to maximize their personal position even when they have no chasAe ofwuiiisiig. Often it is difficult to figure out exactly what the rules are, and playing around on the boundary of what is acceptable is risking group displeasure. When the game depends on unwritten rules, I usually credit the players with creating a lot of the fun, rather than the game.

There is a lot of potential for abuse in most games where players can trade resources freely, since two people who cannot win individually could flip a coin and give the winner all their pooled resources to create a single viable position. To prevent such abuse, groups sometimes outlaw coin flips or random decisions, but players can still circumvent such efforts by alternating the "winner" between games or by developing understandings. For example, if John is out of the running in this game and gives me good trades or gifts, he will get reciprocal consideration in the future.

Bad Games and Good Politics

Many features crop up frequently in political games that I consider bad game elements. A major part of the strategy in a political game is to draw attention to other people's positions and attempt to play them off against one another. One of the easiest ways to do this is to take a weak position. This may not immediately appear to be bad, but the implications are profound: if you choose a weak position, then it is not actually weak. And if weak and strong positions really have the same power, then how you play the game doesn't make much difference. What really matters is how you play the players, whether the game is RISK or Family Business.

One of the most unpleasant features of a political game is what I refer to as kingmaking. Kingmaking happens when a player who has no chance of winning can choose who does win. This holds some charm for beginners, because being a kingmaker allows revenge against irritating players, and justifies diplomacy—the winner is chosen by someone else. The advanced player tends to dislike kingmaking, though, because it trivializes the time spent playing. The longer the game goes on, the more irksome is such an ending.

Another depressing thing about many political games is the way they encourage passive play. If attacking another player costs me and my opponent resources, then there is a strong incentive to sit back and let other people fight. Games that have this characteristic can be a lot of fun if some of the players ignore this and attack anyway, but are a real drag if everyone sees waiting as an advantage. How many times have you seen one player get sick of doing nothing and say, "Well, I have to be going, so I am going to attack"? Boredom should not be the incentive for conffict in a game.

It is a good exercise to evaluate the effect of politics on games involving more than two sides. This can be quite a challenge, and people who meet it often come out with a different perspective on the games they play. The result for me was discovering that most political games were, underneath the veneer, the same game, and that I was tired of playing that game. I will be discussing this in my next few columns.

Richard Garfield's 1996 bid for the presidency was derailed by an "agreement" hashed out in the seedy backrooms of Washington.

Modeling Game Politics

In my previous column, I discussed the nature of politics in games. This time I'd like to introduce a couple of mathematical models, or simplified simulations, to help deconstruct the impact of politics on gaming. The two models I will describe are the "chip-taking game" and the "dart game."

THE CHIP-TAKING GAME

Give each player a number of chips. On your turn, take a chip from a player, removing It from the game. A player who runs out of chips is out of the game.

Having more chips in this exercise is not an advantage. If I have twelve chips, Lily has eight, and Taco has nine, you would expect me to be in first place. If you think about it, however, I have no inherent advantage. If Lily and Taco take chips from me, I will be at their level long before I can eliminate one of them. Now if Lily, Taco, and I each have one chip and it is my turn, I can choose whether Taco or Lily wins, but cannot win myself. I call this situation the kingmaker position.

Of course, in a "real" game, the chips might be money, game pieces, or spaces along a racetrack. Whatever the setting, seemingly advantageous positions often are not, and some positions will leave a player in a kingmaking situation. There are many possible variations: take one to six chips randomly; choose to take more than one chip or pass; or decide you can't know how many chips your opponents have. You can customize this model to learn something about a particular game.

THE DART GAME

Three players each have a balloon and an unlimited supply of darts. Players take turns throwing darts at each other's balloons.A player whose balloon Is popped Is out.

It's natural to measure skill in this game as the ability to pop a balloon. One might assume that the most skillful dart thrower will win, but in practice, players might all aim for their biggest threat, and the "worst" player will win more often than the others! The most accurate player, seeing this, might try to convince an average player to take out the least accurate player first.

This model illustrates another facet of political games. The player with the most skills is not always the "best" player. The game often turns out to be one of negotiation. In a two-sided wargame, the person who knows all the odds and tactics may be technically superior, but introduce a third side and all that ffies out the window— victory goes to whoever bought the soda.

SOLVING THE GAME

This is not to say that skill doesn't matter in a political game, but it probably matters less if all the players know the game well enough to estimate the others' "chips." For example, my play group enjoyed many sessions of Siedler Von Catan, but after a certain point our games hinged on whining about being behind. Before then, it was possible to win with a better understanding of what constituted an advantage. But once people had a pretty good idea of the inherent strategy, playing against the others counted for much more than playing the game.

You could view a political game as "solved" when you reach that point, somewhat akin to playing tic-tac-toe after you have a perfect strategy. You are now playing a ritual game. This can be pleasurable simply because you are exercising a skill, rather than improving on it.

REMOVING THE STAIN

If you wish to develop your skills, though, you may want to reduce the political element in the games you play. Here are a couple of methods you can try.

Play for the Long Term. Try offering something valuable not just for first, but for other places as well. This could be prizes, money, or points that count toward a league score. Then players can do as well as they are able, instead of gunning for the leader. There is a saying, "No one remembers second place," but in the long term a consistent second place can be good. I seldom was the big winner in my poker group in college, but I am sure I did better over the years than anyone else.

Play in Teams. It is worth trying out a team version of a game and reducing it to two sides. In my opinion, team Magicru/es over free-for-all play. Likewise, team Warcraft is the elixir of the game gods.

Eventually, any play advantage that stems from a better understanding of strategy will be overshadowed by how everyone treats you. After that point, gaining further knowledge is worth far less than becoming everyone's friend. If I still like the game, I change the way we play so that the politics are diminished. Another option, of course, is to get a different game and begin the journey of exploration again.

Richard Garfield spent years perfecting his knowledge of Parcheesi but finally acknowledged that politics had too great an effect on the play environment.

Nothing Beats Good Old Rock

We're all familiar with rockpaper-scissors. It's probably one of the first games we all learned to play, along with tic-tactoe and war. When I start a game I always play rock-paper- scissors (RPS) to determine who goes first.

The first thing to note is that there is a tempo to playing RPS. Most western players hit their hands three times, and on the third hit reveal their choices. An alternative is to count the strokes instead, so the rhythm goes downstroke! upstroke/downstroke-reveal. If you play against opponents with a different operating system, the game will surely crash.

A chant is also called for, which is generally "1-2-3" or "rock-paper-scissors." My play group prefers the chant "rock is strong." When there's a tie we don't start over. Instead, we continue on from the last downstroke, counting upstroke/downstroke-reveal while chanting "REALLY strong."This repeats until the tie is broken.

STRATEGY

Of course there is no strategy to RPS. Choose randomly and your opponent can't take advantage of you (Game Theoiy 101). In practice, however, most people aren't very good at making truly random decisions. I occasionally hear stories about two people who play a lot of RPS and one of them routinely cleans the other's clock because the loser's response pattern has become predictable.

One strategy around here is to almost always choose rock. ("Good old rock. Nothing beats rock.") The logic here is that players who use this strategy don't care if they lose most of the time. If, for any reason, they do care about the outcome, they change strategies.
WHIMSICAL

I have been involved in the construction of several RPS variants that are functionally equivalent but have different flavors. For example, there is monster— villagers—mad scientist in which monster attacks villagers, who attack mad scientist, who controls monster. There is also fire-boat-water in which fire burns boat, which floats on water, which puts out fire. You can make up appropriate hand gestures for these, or the obvious face gestures for the tongue-lips-teeth variant in which tongue breaks lips, which cover teeth, which bite tongue.

What about see no evil beats hear no evil beats speak no evil, where you cover your eyes, ears, or mouth respectively? This variant is interesting because you can't see if you won or lost when you choose the see no evil option, making you somewhat vulnerable to cheating friends.
POST MODERN

We used to always determine who went first in our games with RPS, but when playing with a large group of people, RPS can take a while, so we altered the rules slightly. With more than two people playing RPS, for example, if only rock and scissors are played by the group, all the scissors are eliminated from the game. However, if a single player chooses paper, that paper saves all the scissors. With six people choosing randomly, it takes about four iterations to reduce the number of players. This has a certain charm and beat ("Rock is strong, very strong, very strong, very strong...."), but we felt there ought to be a method that chooses a winner more quickly.

Our first attempt to solve the speed problem was to add "big rock," which can only be chosen if there are four or more players. If one big rock is played, that player wins. If more than one player chooses big rock, all big rocks destroy each other.

Later, we hit upon "ready aim fire" (RAF), a version of RPS constructed specifically for a group of people. In RAF, players chant "ready, aim, fire" and then shoot either another player, themselves, or nobody (into the air). Everyone who gets shot is out of the game, except players who are both shooting themselves and being shot by other players. In this case, players shooting themselves survive and all those shooting at them are out (because it's impolite to shoot a suicide). This game reduces the number of players quickly and has the added appeal of looking like a John Woo film in execution.

If you don't like the violent nature of RAF you can play "who's to blame?" which plays just like RAF, except you assign blame (instead of death). Naturally it is gauche to assign blame to someone who accepts blame willingly.

The Dojo Effect

I have been asked by a number of different people what I think about the "Dojo effect." The Magic Dojo is a website (www.thedojo.com) where players discuss advanced strategy and deck design. The supposed "effect" is that anybody can read this site, copy a deck, walk into a local tournament, and trounce honest local decks. People are generally surprised that I wholeheartedly support the Dojo (and other independent strategy sites like Mindripper—www.mindripper.com) and think the long-term effect is an unqualified positive.

Part of my support is simple faith in Magic as a strategic game. It speaks poorly of the game if its interest can be destroyed by talking about it. I believe analysis of in-depth games doesn't bring the game down to the masses, but creates experts from the masses, making the game even more interesting. Magic now has more viable deck types than at any other point in the game's history. This variety is at least partly the result of increased deckbuilding technique, brought about by more educated players.

Bridging The Gap

This Dojo-type effect is by no means nonexistent in other games. Take bridge, for example. Players commit to their bidding systems before a match. Bidding systems are extensively analyzed and compared to one another. Some systems do better in certain environments than others. Tweaks to systems constantly enter in and out of fashion, and occasionally vastly new bidding systems spring into being.

Bridge experts tend to lead the way, and their successftil systems are copied (with varying degrees of success) by amateur players. Having a good bidding system is not sufficient, however. You have to know how to use it. Experts who have never invented a system still have distinct bidding methods because they have customized how they bid by choosing between existing bidding system components.

If you replace "bidding system" with "deck" in the above paragraph, you can see the similarities to Magic. The deck analogy exists in other games as well. For example, in chess you can replace "bidding system" with "openings." Chess players are not committed to a particular opening before the game, but they are committed by their preparation to a set of openings and responses. In fact, chess players assemble teams to look over published information and scan the Internet in search of new lines of play because the amount of information is too great for one player to handle alone. Excellent chess players cannot survive in a tournament environment without this information.

Play Or Build?

Su here is a Magic expert's skill if it is not in constructing decks? Just as in bridge and chess, the skill lies in game play. Plenty of "Sligh" decks made their showing at the U.S. Nationals, but the two that made it to the Top 8 were played by David Price and Andrew Pacifico—both accomplished players. A lot of skill is involved in deciding which deck to play based on your own play style and your estimation of what the environment will be like at the tournament.

In addition, tinkering with a deck takes an enormous amount of skill to do correctly. A single card in the deck or even the sideboard can make a lot of difference to the overall performance of a deck. Plus, when an expert does build a deck from scratch, he or she will have at least a temporary advantage over those players who merely imitate it, stemming from personal knowledge of why the deck is constructed the way it is and how the parts interrelate.

Finally, the best part of having an orthodoxy is watching it get overthrown by the fresh new bidding system, the new opening, or the new deck that changes how everyone thinks. You can't have these revolutions without acknowledged experts backing various views on the game. Decks will still come out of nowhere, like the "Stupid Green" deck at this year's U.S. Nationals (see Deck Deconstruction on p. 44) or "Turbo Stasis" two years ago, but even these decks take advantage of that body of knowledge. The "Stupid Green" deck was tested against all major deck types before "appearing" at Nationals.

Sources such as the Dojo allow players who want to play Magic with their competitive peers to do so without spending huge amounts of time constructing decks. The true masters will never be satisfied to let these sources do their thinking for them, but these resources are an indispensable part of a collection of tools, and someone will always be watching and waiting, ready to take advantage of a chink in the armor of establishment.

Richard Garfield has no chinks in his armor.

Hive Mind

What Were You Thinking?

Wizards of the Coast will soon publish What Were You Thinking?, a party game in the style of Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary. Thisis a first for the company and my first published party game as well.

In WWYT, one player reads a question that all players must answer. You get one point for each person who wrote down the same answer you did. If you are asked to give more than one answer, you score each answer separately and then add them together. After all answers are scored, the person with the fewest points gets a penalty card. When a player accumulates eight penalty cards, that player loses and the game is over.

Game questions range from personal queries or dilemmas to fact-based questions. Sometimes you are asked to list a number of items from a particular category. Regardless of the question, the only measure of right or wrong is how many people in your group wrote your answer. You get no credit for knowing the Nile is the longest river in the world; if everyone else answers "the Amazon," you lose. You can also laugh the person who didn't put "tomato" on a list of five vegetables because it's technically a fruit.

If you want a little taste of WWYT, try the following questions with your friends. I've even provided my answers (below) so you can see whether you get more points than I do. You have an advantage, of course—you know your friends. But I've played a lot, so that may make up for it! Remember, the objective is to match the other players.

1. List four planets.
2. List five black-and- white films.
3. What animal has the longest lifespan?

In one playtest session, a group with a wide variety of ages was asked to list five rap stars. Delighted younger players love into their lists. Clueless older players did the best they could. The best they could do was pretty good. They all chose Frank Sinatra, figuring he was a singer everyone knew, so Frank became a top-scoring rapper. The kid who knew the most about rap music lost. In WWYT it's actually dangerous to know too much.

As you can see, the objective of WWYT is to match the group—not to find the truth—so the game reveals a lot about your playgroup. Since the pretense of truth is dropped, the voting reveals how people in your group view each other.

For example, in a recent game, eight players were asked: "Would you sacrifice all of your worldly possessions for as long as you live if doing so would ensure world peace?" One person said "no," which didn't reflect what she believed but rather what she believed about the group. Similarly, some said "yes" based on their beliefs about the group. The results and the following discussion told a lot about the players.

The closest game to WWYT I know is Family Feud. A major difference from Family Feud is the lack of survey-generated answers. In WWYT, players make their own environment. Another design difference is the mechanic of determining a loser rather than a winner.

Games that determine a loser instead of a winner have been around a long time, though they aren't very common. What Were You Thinking? improved immensely when we changed its goal to finding a loser. First, it can be really hard to catch up in games in which you want to match other players. Second, in a game in which the object is to not stand out, it seemed more fitting to call the person who stands out the loser rather than selecting someone to stand out as a winner.

The original name for WWYT was Hive Mind When presenting the game, I told people that the queen of the hive had determined there were too many drones and this was a test to get rid of the excess. Drones would not be judged by accuracy of answers, however, but by their ability to think like the hive. This concept appealed to Magic and RPG players, but was a hard sell outside the adventure game market. If you saw the tapes of our test groups repeatedly picking Hive Mind as their absolute least favorite name, you would understand why we chose to go with What Were You Thinking? for a game that's all about matching the majority.

For Richard Garfield, every game is a party.

A Game Player's Resolution

I was entertained by Magic lead game designer Bill Rose's resolution last year to eat a brownie every day (which he kept for over a month). Shawn Carnes (one of the more flamboyant members of Magic R&D) earned some points for making a list of over 100 resolutions, several of them broken by the time he finished the list.

Most of the time, however, I hear the same stale, often-made, seldom-kept resolutions. "I am going to quit smoking." "I am going to lose weight." "I am going to exercise eight days a week." These resolutions only indirectly address the needs of the game-playing community. For example, a player who successfully resolves not to smoke will live longer and can therefore play more games, which helps the entire community.

To more directly affect the lives ofgamers everywhere, I modestly offer this list of resolutions for game players to choose from.

I Resolve Not To Blame Bad Luck For All My Losses. Did you do the best you could with what you had? Are you sue you weren't outplayed?

I Resolve Not To Blame Good Luck For All My Opponent's Victories. Did you make mistakes for him or her to capitalize on? Did your opponent make moves that provided a good chance to "get lucky"? Did he or she need to get lucky by drawing the perfect card because ofa long string of bad luck? —

I Resolve To Make People Feel Good About Their Play. Let other ilayers know when they make move you think is good (and make a note of it so you can use it and not be surprised by it in the future). Ask other players for their advice

I Resolve To Learn New Games. There are many good — giies out there. Also, games in one area will help your play in others. Poker will help your Magic play.

I Resolve To Play Old Games In New Ways. If you usually play Extended Magic, try Classic Magic, or the current expansion block, or Sealed Deck, or Draft, or team Magic, or a league. If you usually play standard hearts, try playing with the jack of diamonds as negative ten points, or have the 10 of clubs double your score. If you usually play standard chess, try allowing each player to custom- set his or her pieces before the game starts.

I Resolve to Spread Games I Like. Almost all players learn games from other players, not from the rules or from the company that sells the game. The best way to keep a game alive and to make sure you have people to play against is to teach other people the games you like. Don't wait for someone else to initiate an evening of Clue. Do it yourself!

I Resolve To Learn New Strategies For Old Games. It's easy to get caught in a rut. Try something outrageous and see if it works. If you usually play control decks, then learn to play white weenie, or a goofy combo deck.

I Resolve To Take Games Less Seriously. Play with your folks
and your "nongaming" friends and don't let their play get you down. In fact, play the way they do and have fun. You don't have to use words like aa, oe, and qat in Scrabble, or take 15 minutes figuring out the optimum move. Play with some new players!

I Resolve To Take Games More Seriously. It's easy to be intimidated by tournaments and even by more serious games, like Go and Bridge. It does take some effort to participate in these games, Lut they can be very rewarding. Play with some new players!

I Resolve To Play More Games. This is what it's all about!

Richard Garfield plays games for a living and he plays games for fun and he plays games to learn and he plays games to teach. Mostly, he just plays games.

The Silence Between the Notes

Aimost all games have some mental or physical downtime—time that is spent doing something mindless or doing nothing at all. In most turn-based games, while you wait for your opponent to take a turn you're in downtime. In roleplaying games, if the DM is engaged with another player and you aren't involved, u're in downtime. In bridge, you are deep in downtime territory when you're the dummy. Even real-time games have downtime. For example, StarCraft downtime happens while waiting for units to come on line. In Everquest, downtime occurs while walking around town.

Downtime also includes time spent setting games up and tearing them down. Games with multiple decks that need to be sorted and reshuffled for each play, or with thousands of components, shduld be measured as having significant preparation or cleanup downtime. The nice thing about this particular time is that the person who organizes the game will probably do most of it for you. The bad thing, if you're like me, is that this organizer is probably you.

Turn-based computer games are notoriously bad for downtime (with more than one human player). I find games like Monopoly much better face-to- face than online. The actual time between turns is, if anything, better online, since paying for things and getting change happens much faster. However, I find it's much more acceptable waiting amund a table and watching live opponents than sitting back and watching a screen.

Some games have hardly any downtime at all. In head-to-head combat video games, downtime is almost entirely limited to waiting for the bout to start. In a game like basketball, downtime is almost entirely defined by your physical limitations—you get tired and grab some rest, either by slacking on the court or getting a substitute (or calling a foul perhaps).

Not All Bad

Downtime isn't always useless time. Often it's vital for the game to work, or at least for it to be fun.

The most obvious reason that downtime isn't necessarily bad is illustrated by basketball. Most players need to rest sometime during the game, though it varies among players as to how much or how little. The analog holds for mental sports as well. Players need a rest from thinking.

I find that games like StarCraft have too little downtime, and after an intense game, I feel mentally fatigued. Many people like the aspect of the dummy in bridge. It's a break in an otherwise potentially intense mental competition.

Are You Up Or Down?

Recognizing downtime is often a challenge. When playing hearts, you may not realize that you can't take any more tricks, so you should be in downtime but you're not. Conversely, if your plays may make a difference but you don't recognize that, you may be deep in downtime although you shouldn't be.

Sometimes downtime isn't even really down. The most obvious example is in a game where you need to think during your opponent's turn. In Scrabble, I can anagram my letters and try to build off a variety of tiles on the board. When my opponent makes a move, I simply add that move to my analysis and I am almost done.

If a game situation can change too much during other people's turns, then your thinking time may be wasted, so your time is more down. If my Scrabble game has four players, I will only anagram my letters or daydream until right before my next turn, and then start thinking about the board. Things are just too likely to change to make thinking worthwhile.

Designing Time

There are many ways a designer can subtly alter the game to change how players use time. Consider a Scrabble game where you draw your tiles at the beginning of your turn rather than at the end. Suddenly the downtime in that game becomes much less usable. Yet this is standard in many card games where players draw cards at the start of their turn. Time is the most valuable resource a game uses, so what players do with their time should be a vital concern to game designers and critics. Determining the right use of time is part of the art of game design. If you feel you are spending your time poorly in a game, consider finding games that respect your time a little more.

A semi-professional Scrabble player in college, Richard Garfield can play entire Scrabble tournaments with no downtime when he's in peak mental condition.