Vast: My Favorite Game Mechanism

Jamey discusses the asymmetrical game Vast from a design perspective.
www.stonemaiergames.com

[@markoreilly4433]

Really interesting points Jamey. Looking forward to playing vast. I think the main two challenges to designing such a game are : 1) designing such a game ;-) 2) designing each separate rule book so they are each exceptionally clear and concise . Key I think would be spending almost as much time honing the rule books to perfection as making a great fun game. If the rule books are fantastic, then the barrier lowers :-)

[@jameystegmaier]

Those are great points, Mark! Especially about the rulebook. I think the Vast rulebook does a good job--we didn't need to look up anything on BGG.

[@alifarczadi1124]

Thanks for suggesting this video to me on your live chat today. You are right with messing up the rules. Even if we are concentrating while playing new games, we mess things up on our first 1-3 games. I cannot imagine how many games it would take to observe if someone makes a minor mistake. I'm curious about Leder Studio's new game that's on KS, The Mysterious Manor. They said its more streamlined, easier to teach and to play. Decisions, decisions... Glad you give your thought on so many games, Jamey! It really helps me get a more complete picture of the games.

[@jameystegmaier]

Thanks for checking out the video, Ali! It's neat to hear Leder may have addressed some of these concerns in The Mysterious Manor.

[@yunsuk21]

You bring a good point Jamie of how ambitious the design is. I am not a designer, however if life has taught me anything, "nothing ventured, nothing gained". I do think that complete, easy, asymmetrical design exist. And you are not the only designer to pose this question. And they will try to find it. So I do hope that you find your own design and that many will enjoy it, including yours truly BTW the knight is a girl. I am not sure if you said he or she in the video.

[@jameystegmaier]

You're right, the knight is a girl! I knew that while I was playing, but I messed up while filming this. I look forward to seeing designers attempt this monumental task! Even though I'm very hesitant to try it, it definitely has opened up a whole new area of design for me as I brainstorm ideas.

[@bradansworld5576]

Being able to make the mechanism not only new, but actually work AND make the mechanism simple enough for players to understand, is a real talent. Agreed- the barrier to entry for a new game mechanic is an issue, particularly for new and less-experienced game designers who are mostly trying to get their first or second games just to work properly, let alone balance a new mechanic and then have to keep the fun factor and simplicity factor. Great video!

[@alicebunnymera]

Personally Vast is looking to be my boardgame of the year. If you can get past that initial barrier to entry its a game with incredible versatility and incredible replayablity. Something I found useful when I got my copy and started playing it with others was the fact you can play most roles solo. I played a couple of matches each of solo knight, goblins, dragon and thief to learn each role individually. Then when I teach people I play as the cave, this way I take a more back seat role in the game and due to the fact that the cave's job requires intereacting with and understanding the other roles you can help people along as you teach them

[@jameystegmaier]

I'm glad you've had such a good time with it!

[@fledge31]

Good thoughts Jamey! I’ve been digging into Vast more recently (initially very intimidated) and after playing the core roles solo a couple times have a much better understanding. It’s certainly a barrier but the mechanisms/interactions are so interesting. I hear that the new game Vast: The Mysterious Manor is simplifying and streamlining a for ease of learning while actually containing some more interesting decisions. Though I imagine many of the issues you noted will persist, this new one sounds more approachable.

[@Chris.Currie]

The barrier to entry with VAST is really just the first two rounds of the first game for the person who owns and 'hosts' the game. Whoever buys the game is going to benefit from reading up, but that person can send out the rulesheet PDFs ahead of time or just be ready to go when everyone sits down. Then, you just go person by person, letting them take their first turn and explaining their available actions. Refer to the rules sheet when they ask questions. The handouts are literally the exact same pages of rules from inside the manual and 98% of the rules that a particular role care about are on that sheet (there are a few Cave-related rules only found on the Cave sheet). I've played it four times now; the first time was five of my friends; I sat by as the 'Rules Guy' and watched everyone's turns. Second and third time, I played Goblins with a mix of experienced and new players. And just recently I played as Cave, with my wife as the Dragon for her second time, my mom as the Knight, and my brother as Goblins. The first time, when it was brand new out of the box, our first round took an hour because we were all learning at the same time. Now that I know the game, the game with my Mom and Brother took maybe 20 minutes each for the first two rounds while I explained Knight and Goblins. After that, the rounds really start to hum. What's nice is that each role comes onto the board one at a time, so there's a two-turn curve while the board gets fully set up to discuss play and strategy. Additionally, the game comes with difficulty variants for each role, so its possible to make the game more difficult for experienced players and much easier for folks sitting down for the first time; that's a really great thing to include in the box and I think it reduces the barrier to entry significantly. I know that Leder Games have said that they're working on rules videos to help folks who learn best from being taught vs. reading the manual.

[@Avelice0]

Two player asymmetric games aren't too bad! :) In fact there's a lot of one vs. all games which have quite a bit of asymmetry, like Fury of Dracula. I have to wonder about team games, something like Captain Sonar--that's almost an asymmetric game, but it doesn't feel quite as asymmetric I think because everybody is working for a greater goal. I do appreciate a game like Vast, but man does it seem like a lot of work. Balancing one game is hard enough! But we need games like this to really advance the hobby in my opinion, even if they might be impractical design models for many designers. One of the important questions, is how much do you gain by having an asymmetric game. It's cool for sure, but there's a design time/end result trade off I feel like. But, at the end of the day, we designers want to make things that seem like fun, so there's no harm!

[@jameystegmaier]

Well said. I completely agree that I'm glad Vast exists. It's pushed me as a designer, and hopefully it'll inspire some really interesting designs in the future. Hopefully some of those designers will heed the disclaimers I mentioned in this post, as I think those are important factors to consider.

[@johnodonnell2495]

I think that some of the mistakes stem from the chosen graphic design did not seek to symbolize a lot of the terms. There is a huge amount of text to parse with little nuances all over (the board, the rulebook). I am a big fan of this game and company but see this text overload as a constant issue with Leder Games' designs. I'm not sure where it comes from and why it is not iterated upon but would like to see this fixed in their future designs.

[@TorIverWilhelmsen]

There is a middle ground where the players share most of the rules, but there are unique "extra" rules for some. E.g. the French player in Liberty or Death who only meddles in the Caribbean until the war has been going on a while and they get to enter the mainland, and only they send fleets to blockade cities, messing up recruitment for the British player.

[@jameystegmaier]

I like that! Star Wars Rebellion is similar in that each player has a different objective, different units, and different things they can do, but the rules for leader placement and combat are the same.

[@nether50]

White Bear Red Moon - boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10884/white-bear-red-moon - (Which I haven't played for (gulp) 40 years - has two sides which ae reasonably balanced at the start. You need to gain alliances with minor nations (Each one has a different requirement), and each minor nation then has it's own very unique set of rules and units. So it goes from being not very different to totally asymmetric once a few allies join in.

[@jameystegmaier]

That's a clever way to do it, Nick--increase the asymmetry within each game so it's more of a gradual incline.

[@kirbywarrior1]

I think the first thing this would require is a really good player aid/board for each role, and a streamlined ruleset with very few exceptions to allow each player to settle into their role pretty easily. The "finicky" factor would have to be really low. As far as other asymmetrical games, I think that Siena is an interesting take on the genre, by starting off all players at the same 'level,' but after some time, you can choose to advance to the next level. This next level takes the cards in the game and makes them mean something different to you than they did before, and they lose their previous meaning in the process. I mention this because every player will go through these same level changes before the game is over (so the asymmetry is temporary, but means you can explain the same concepts to every player), but they go through them at different times, and the different levels interact with each other in different ways depending on how many players are in each one. I think it's a game that needs to be tweaked a bit and polished up in order to hold clout in 2016's gaming landscape, but I enjoy it.

[@jameystegmaier]

I think Vast does a good job of this. The rulebook has all of the rules, but each character has a separate 1-page guide (front and back) to hand out to the player playing that character. That's really interesting about Sienna. I haven't seen leveling up used in that way before.

[@FaatiBomBom]

Gorgeous boardgame with interesting mechanics and rules. I like how its done in Vast, their new game "Root" seems to be a bit to much to explain as you say with a first play. In Vast the design really speaks to the individual rules where in Root they took a different (less clear) design route I think.

[@nether50]

Finally (honest), the Quartermaster General series, where there are two teams of players (EG Japan Germany Italy vs UK, US, USSR) against each other. each player has completely different sets of cards (EG Germany has a Blitzkrieg card), and obviously different map setups.

[@nether50]

Also interesting is Arcadia Quest, where each of 4 players starts by choosing 3 different characters with unique rulesets. It is persistent and episodic, so at the start of each scenario, each player is different.

[@jameystegmaier]

Do the characters operate in completely different ways, or is their a global way to move, fight, etc, and each character is just better at some things and worse at others?

[@nether50]

No, core mechanics are the same, but each character has special abilities (As do the persistent items you pick up).

[@nether50]

Sorry, to answer the question fully; some characters are 'better' - more HP,dice, etc - some have unique rules (EG Able to use - and disable - a nearby opponents weapon).

[@Stephen-Fox]

While I can't imagine doing it for something as ambitious as Vast, aren't most One vs Many games extremely asymmetric (Both sides are usually dealing with fundamentally different mechanics to interact with the same world, I think?) while removing or reducing the barrier to entry for new players since you can just stick them on the Many side and teach them the game as if it were a coop and the One is the System rather than a player. And then you have stuff like Space Cadets/Dice Duel where each player is doing their own little minigame to contribute towards the team, which... Seems to have a lower learning curve (Though based on Geoff's said on both Game Tek and Ludology, I get the impression that Dice Duel was, in part, a response to how high the learning curve of Space Cadets turned out to be even if you're focusing on only the role you're playing that game) What's interesting to me is the Highly Asymmetric coop games we've started to see over the past few years - Space Cadets is the obvious purely board game example but Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes is a sort of hybrid, in that one player is entirely playing a video game and the other is not doing anything involving a computer unless their bomb manual is PDF rather than printout - Literally one player can't see the computer but has a detailed instruction manual of how to defuse every possible module on a bomb, and what order to defuse them in. The other player has a computer screen showing a bomb, but no information on how to defuse it - that are starting to emerge, as well. Doesn't do anything for the Learning Curve problem you mention, mind - I think Geoff Engelstein mentioned on either a Game Tek or a Ludology that they deliberately made the roles less asymmetric for Dice Duel because they weren't happy with how large the learning curve of the game was despite players only really needing to know how their specific role's minigame functioned.

[@jameystegmaier]

That's a great point about one vs. many systems and games where each player has their own minigame. I think most of the concerns I address go away in one vs. one, one vs. many, and many vs. many games.

[@landmarkforum3652]

I like strongly asymmetrical games, but having played Vast, I think it goes too far - you can do it best in ways that avoids the issues that you're talking about. In The Voyages of Marco Polo, for instance, each player has a ridiculously powerful asymmetric power that radically alters the play experience, but each power only affects one or two rules - everyone is still playing with the same base rule set, so there's no barrier to entry there.