A naïvely constructed die - i.e. a perfect cube, but with pips dug out for each face - will already bias in favor of 6 rolls and away from 1 rolls simply because six pips require removing more material (and therefore mass) than one pip. Likewise with 5/2 and 4/3. The "precision" dice used in e.g. casinos address this by filling in the pips with material exactly as dense as the die's base material; the injection-molded dice in most board games (let alone wooden dice) obviously ain't constructed with that level of care.
This is also part of the reason why some dice games - particularly those typically played with cheap dice - deem 1 to be more valuable than 6 (example: Farkle) or require at least one 1 roll to win (example: 1-4-24). Or they'll require some number of high dice to make the game ever-so-slightly less brutal (example: Ship-Captain-Crew).
I guess if this really matters, you could come up with some set-up rules to swap some 3s with 11s, 4s with 10s, etc, so that biases towards 1-2-3 are less impactful. But that would be painstaking and annoying. I absolutely wouldn't care to do that, unless we track ELO and have an evenly matched group, which is a bit absurd in a casual game. And as in any strategy game FFA, everyone will still gang up against the current leader (even with imperfect information).
I think that’s one of the reasons GMs sometimes make a high roll from the player into a punishment. Especially by asking for the roll first and telling what they were looking for after. It’s a way to balance out the consequences of unintentionally loaded dice.
If the player used the same dice for all rolls, a balance check against biased or loaded die was therefore built directly into the game, with the perk of making it very obvious if a player was using specific dice for specific rolls
"You should probably know that this was a load-bearing pillar."
Also, if someone is obviously cheating with a loaded die at an RPG game, they're not the kind of player that should be invited back. Most characters have ways of increasing their modifiers to rolls that matter most to them (My current ranger is 1d20 +16 for Perception), and having high-enough base numbers can mean that anything other than a natural 1 is usually some kind of success.
- How dense is the wood?
- How much wood does each pip remove?
- How much water does the wood absorb per unit of volume?
- Are any capillary effects at play transferring absorbed water into the rest of the die?
- Is it better to soak the 6 side to take advantage of more surface area? Or the 1 side to take advantage of more soakable volume?
- Is the wood even uniformly dense to begin with?
In settlers, trade is always important… getting an early lead can get you ganged up on. At least in my experience, the best way to win is to look like you are in second place, line things up (get close to some crucial port for example) and then rocket past the Designated Villain only when doing so will get you a really solid lead.
There's still dice rolls in some games of course, but open trading in particular feels like something that people really don't want in games anymore. And I totally get why
Why?
Catan is one of my favourite boardgames.
Long trading discussions are one component of this. The pure randomness of dice meaning that the internal economy can be all messed up for a while also plays into this
There are games with more consistent runtimes that also don’t get bogged down by people with a high chatter:play ratio.
I like hanging out with people to play games but Catan is in that category of game where just one overly annoying person can just make a session totally suck.
I’d rather play something like Carcassonne or some other modern games that involve competition and territorial management like El Grande where I at least have an idea of how long it’ll take.
It's a decent intro board game because the mechanics aren't terribly complex, you don't have to manage too many pieces, and there's so much randomness that any given player can win if they're even vaguely trying.
But that last bit is also its achilles heel - there's so much randomness that the strategy is basically ankle deep. It just becomes a session of "do I have friendly people at the table" or "can I cajole/harass people into bad trades".
Neither of those are all that fun (at least to me). There are much better social games, and there are much better strategy games.
Feels like it's in their best interest to have a "fair" game where they skim some percentage of odds off the top.
That said, when organized crime gets involved, somebody always thinks "if I rig this, I'll do EVEN BETTER!" Maybe they're a corrupt employee skimming from the house, maybe they're a loyal employee skimming for the house, but unless you have something like the Nevada Gaming Control Board forcing fairness on them, you basically never get it. At least, from what I've read on the subject. Source: I've read some books on card counting & otherwise beating the odds in casinos, and this my vague memory.
And it's ironic that the house wants to rig games, because a biased game means a mathematically savvy individual can go in and calculate how results differ from "fair" games, and can then skim some profits for themselves if the bias is larger than the house advantage.
A lot of the effective value of a casino is gamblers ruin -- gamblers stop betting when they run out of money, but the house can't run out of money. If the game has sufficient variance and the players are not aware of the bias, then the house still wins.
It's not hard to imagine ways to get cheated out of a "fair" bet in card games, roulette, slots, etc. whether it's a mechanical cheat, sleight of hand, adjustment of odds, or whatever. Not saying it happens or is even a common occurrence but it's very easy to imagine ways it COULD happen or has happened in the past that are impossible for the player to detect.
Craps is the only game it feels like to me where provided the payout odds used are the same standard you see everywhere and the dice aren't metallic there is virtually no way to cheat the player/a bet in a way that wouldn't also benefit another player/another bet.
For the house or a croupier to cheat, the benefits versus the risks would need to be high enough (more likely in high value games?)
Also there's the scenario of an employee colluding with a player.
He had his own issues though.
The best way I’ve found to mitigate this is to have a bag of assorted dice with the set. The various sizes and materials, with a swap out at every game, makes sure the dice bias isn’t predictable.
Regarding dice decks. I find they make the game sterile. A near perfect bell curve means you can anticipate number droughts or floods, aiding in robber strategy.
This is somewhat mitigated with cards that require you to reshuffle the deck. Even with shuffle cards included the numbers are too evenly distributed or balanced removing any feeling of randomness or luck from the game.
This, or the process of loading the dice was simply not very effective.
Even with the forced shuffle cards, the outcomes fall too much in the bell curve and make the game feel sterile. Because if you get a flood of 5’s and 6’s you know a drought is soon upon you.
My two house rules are:
1. 2 dice are pulled from the bag at random. If dice are too similar for the Cities and Knights expansion, pull another die.
2. First 7 is re-rolled until not a 7. I have found this can speed up the early phase of the game.
It's like Risk but you submit each round's actions in advance and they are resolved simultaneously, rather than turn-by-turn. All of the action is off the board, not on it. Coalition-building, intelligence gathering and managing trust—even when betrayal is inevitable.
I learned a lot from that game.
but shouldn't it be "no significant evidence that the dice aren't unbiased"? that's different from either
Seems like it'd be more advantageous to make people over/underestimate the chance of being robbed, but this didn't affect the chance of a 7. Is that the same no matter which side you soak?
Soak the dice to shift the most common to be 5 or 9 rather than 6 - 8? Is that possible?
But yeah it's tongue in cheek, talking about bayesian probability for the water stains opposite the sixes
At least with games like chess, you might be down but you still have some hope of coming back with some maneuvering.
Maybe what I didn't like was the parallels with life. There's not usually a rabbit in the hat to come out on top, the rich just get richer.
Monopoly feels like the game might take 4 hours but you know 20 minutes in that you're hopelessly behind and cannot come back. Then it's just 3 hours and 40 minutes of torture.
If you're doomed to lose the game should be over quick.
> The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903,[1][8] when American anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie created a game called The Landlord's Game that she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George as laid out in his book Progress and Poverty. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. She took out a patent in 1904. Her game was self-published beginning in 1906.[9][10]
I think most people are in this situation in life, but would disagree with you. The game itself was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies, hard to get the message when it's over quickly.
The good one was intended to demonstrate a better alternative.
For what it's worth, if you play Monopoly by the actual rules, and you don't act stupidly stingy on your trade offers, a 4-player game of Monopoly shouldn't take more than 30-45 minutes.
The problem is, people of course don't like losing, and everybody loves a comeback story. So people play with house rules that constantly inject extra money into the game, which prolongs the game's purpose: For all the wealth to consolidate to a single player.
House rules in Monopoly are so common that a lot of people don't even realize they're playing house rules!
Do you give money for landing on Free Parking? You're playing a house rule.
Do you give $400 instead of $200 for LANDING on Go? You're playing a house rule.
Do you allow purchasing Hotels when there aren't enough houses? Do you allow building to not be even? Do you use some sort of object to act like a hotel because the game only comes with 12 hotels in the box? You're playing house rules. The fact there are only 12 hotels and 32 houses was a deliberate design choice to force players to trade and allow one player to horde all the houses and hotels.
You can't mortgage properties that have buildings on them. You must sell the buildings first, and you only get half of what you paid for them from the bank. When you unmortage, you have to pay an extra 10% fee. You don't collect rent on mortgaged properties. If you play any differently, you're playing a house rule.
Rolling doubles 3 times sends you to jail. That's actually NOT a house rule!
Speaking of jail, you DO still collect rent while in it! This means that deliberately staying in jail can actually be a strategic move if another player is possibly about to land on your dark Green properties (Baltic, North Carolina, Pennsylvania) while your opponent owns the Oranges, which you're likely to land on immediately after leaving jail.
Don't get me wrong, Monopoly is a shitty game for many reasons, but "Games take 2+ hours" is not one of them unless you're playing it wrong.
Even the one on the NES is totally fine.
Rules enforced without having to remember them, auctions run for you, nobody has to be the banker, no manual book-keeping for how much is owed where and mortgage status and all that.
Plays so much faster and smoother than the real thing, and no dumb house rules making it last forever for no good reason.
In Settlers there are actually strategies and "luck" is more evenly distributed. You can vary your approach or strategy - ex: by focusing on upgrading to cities as early as possible to give you 2x advantage, regardless of starting locations.
Parallel to life: birth location determines most of luck in life (opportunities, income, connections, friends), but you can increase this advantage by moving, within certain constraints (education, visa, marriage, etc.). Nevertheless, luck is certainly the most important factor.
In a better and not broken world, laws (rules of the game) will try to avoid the 1st and reflect the later. Ex: antitrust, immigration, affirmative action, etc.
Like another commentor said, the intended fix for this in Settlers is social dynamics: the leader is going to be blocked from the best settling spots, isn't going to get favorable trade deals, and is going to get hammered by the robber. The key strategic gameplay in Settlers is not about profit maximization (that's pretty easy to do), it's about minimizing any appearance that you're a threat until it's too late to do anything about it. If players never collaborate to take down the leader, then early gains can definitely beget later gains.
Wingspan if you don't want to be aggressive against other players
Cascadia for shorter game that supports low player counts
Azul is another shorter game
The isle of cats is a personal favorite, very neat game about packing cats on your boat
Red Rising has an excellent board game if you've ever read the book.
Kind-of a board game: 7th continent
Games around the 3-4 players seem to have best flow and pace. I may buy wyrm (sister game to wingspan) just for the card designs.
I did play a game of Twilight Imperium for 12 hours, which I won. Mostly newbie’s but with a host who’s provided guidance on the rules. Great fun but perhaps something to work up to.
Even when a player situation wasn’t looking good, he took them aside and pointed out options for them to get back in the hunt for victory points.
It’s very easy for a player to go “rogue” and spoil the game for the other players.
Pandemic Legacy for one of the best experiences you'll have with the same group of friends over months (cooperative, play through once over 12-24 sittings). The game builds in complexity as you play so it starts reasonably simple (though the first season starts with the basic ruleset of Pandemic so if you've played that it's a head start but not necessary).
Kingdomino and Cascadia for quicker terrain building games, I consider these fairly similar though Kingdomino is quicker and simpler. These I can play with anyone.
Paperback if you already like word games like Scrabble etc, and want to dip into playing a deck building game.
The Crew if you like trick-taking card games, it's a co-op variant to games like Bridge or Euchre.
Carcassone is an oldie but goodie. Very social compared to many competitive games, as though it's turn based everyone wants to have their say for what you should do with your piece. Compared to e.g. Wingspan where you're largely ignoring/out of the loop for what's going on with everyone else all the time.
Diplomacy is a masterpiece and surprisingly beginner-friendly, but it's very hard to get a game going, cause first off you need exactly 7 people. I played online with friends on Backstabbr.com, and yeah it only took 5 minutes a day, but each game lasted 1-2 months. Or it'd be 2-4 hours in-person.
Designate one player as the seller of an imaginary product and one as a potential buyer. The buyer needs a random secret number B from 50-100 which is the max they can pay, and the seller needs S from 0-50 which is the min they'll sell for. Use an RNG if you have one, otherwise you can do it yourself: Have both think of two random numbers from 0-100. Each says one number but not the other. Add the other person's number to your secret one, mod by 50, then add 50 if you're the buyer.
Negotiate over the price until either a sale is made at P or someone unilaterally kills the deal. Seller wins (P - 50) points, buyer wins (50 - P). If the deal dies, seller loses S points, buyer loses (B - 50). I hope I remembered these right. Then switch sides and repeat.
All of these are very inexpensive and rules light and very approachable for beginners.