Making a Board Game Fun

I'm trying to consider the facets of gaming that really apply to board games, and why someone chooses to play, and enjoy, one.

Things that I dislike about board games -

I absolutely hate it when there's multiple paths to victory, but one of them in particular is the fastest path to victory every time. This means that once everybody you play with has mastered the game, they will all attempt the exact same process to achieve victory every time the game is played. I will avoid this at all costs in my game through a balance of randomization, and the ability to quickly change a strategy based on events that transpire.

I also do not like a game that is entirely luck either. It proves nothing, and the competitive spirit is crushed after the first round of play. Take the game Risk, imagine instead of 52 countries, there are now two countries, and only two people can play. The game ends up being nothing more than chance at that point, and would not be a fun game. The current version doesn't get that much different when the players hit a certain skill level and it gets to the end of the game, though. This is something that I also want to avoid.

Some games have a balancing factor that comes into play when one player gets too far in the lead. Often times, this balancing factor can get out of hand quickly, and make it nearly impossible for the player who was first winning to actually achieve victory. And other times, it will make it almost impossible for the winning player to be stopped. The trick is to teach people over time that ganging up on the person who is winning first, can be worse for your victory position than doing nothing at all. As a general rule, it is best to consider every players motivation for participating is to win. This is not the rule for everything, but simply for balancing the game.

Slow turns also get me down. It has to be easy to decide what's going to happen on your turn before you even begin it. One possible way of doing this is to have the resolution of all of your actions be taken during the turn, and then you have everyone elses turn to plan. Whether players take the opportunity or not is up to them, but that it is there is the important part here.

Next week I'll be working on logistics in particular. I want to understand how things are going to happen, and then worry about balancing it all.