3/16/2024 0 Comments Games like stratego![]() This includes: tokens, markers, or the environment.However, there are a number of fairly standard ways to hide component information, which I've outlined below: Really, any of the standard components that I laid out in Thinking Virtually #57, Designing Strategy: The Components can be hidden. Theoretically, any game which allows players to show each other their hidden information would fall into this category, but generally it's less common that the other two methods.Īll of these questions of who are also closely related to the next query. Concentration and Clue(do) both involve the game system hiding away information from players.Īnother variant might allow a set of players to know a specific piece of information, but not all of the players, as a whole. Sometimes, however, the game system itself holds on to the information, until it's revealed either to individual players or to everyone. Any card game provides a good example here, with each player only seeing his own hidden cards. Most commonly, individual players get to hold onto hidden information, without it being seen by anyone else. The next question is: who gets to hold onto hidden information? There's a whole language of subtext in Poker, from "tells", where a player might accidently give away his hidden information through a habit, to the well-known idea of a "bluff".įalling back on some of my earlier language for strategic games, I'd say that hidden information allows you to notably increase the complexity of a game, by giving players many more options to consider, but does it in a way that's invisible to the casual player, thus offering the best of both worlds: playability and strategy. But now there's a strong subtextual level where you consider what each player is showing and how they're betting and what it says about what they may or may not have. There's the textual level of play, where you decide whether to stay in or not, based on what cards you have, and what your probabilities are of improving that hand based on the number of cards left and what everyone else is showing. You get two cards down, then four cards up, then one more down, and betting occurs throughout. Frankly, I consider 5-card draw a random and boring game. You have your textual level of play where you're trying to figure out how to better your hand, but there's almost no subtext-no real strategizing on what other players might have, because their bets have almost no meaning without context. You draw some cards which no one else sees, then you bet, then you draw some more cards that no one else sees, then you bet, then everyone reveals cards and someone wins. I think Poker in two of its variants provides the best example of why hidden information is cool.įirst, consider 5-card draw. But you also have a subtextual level of play where you're trying to figure out what information other players might know based on their cues-and what information might be hidden by the game system based on your own statistical analysis. You have the textual level of play, where players are interacting with each other and with the game system based on what they see. ![]() In my opinion, doing so creates a whole new level of interaction in your game. The first question is clearly: why would you hide information? However, as with everything in strategic game design, there are many possibilities. The basic technique of hidden information is simply to hide some aspect of the game from some of the players. Popular board games which depend upon hidden information include Battleship, Clue(do), Concentration, Mastermind, and Stratego. Just about every traditional card game does Go Fish makes the secrecy part of the game play, Poker partially obscures information to create more interesting betting dynamics, and Bridge hides cards but forces players to bid which causes partial revelation. Generally, I think of using hidden information as a somewhat uncommon technique in the main vein of (non-card) tabletop strategy games, but it's interesting to note that many of the most popular strategic games out there depend upon hideen information of some type. Thus far I've presented games pretty simply, imagining that everyone sees the same pieces sitting on the same game board. Its absence was called to my attention on the very forums attached to this column back when I was talking about components. ![]() I've got four or five topics left to discuss, approaching strategy from a few more wacky vantage points, but first. As noted in the RPGnet news last Friday, I've decided to drop the rest of this series back to biweekly, to help retain my own sanity while juggling some other stuff over at Skotos. Welcome back to the topic of strategy at Thinking Virtually.
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