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Root Review
Gary Sax wrote:
stoic wrote: .
Usually yes? But I don't see how a 30 minute 3-4 player game automatically ends up a toad.
Edit: 90, thanks Charlie. My point still stands, I think.
It will be a toad for most after the initial cuteness of the artwork wears off and the vast majority of gamers decide that, "No," they don't want to fanatically learn the rules of each and every faction in order to balance out this asymmetrical game, and, they also grow tired of looking for dedicated Root players who rooted out the rules well enough to make this a competitive game meriting repeated play. This toady will soon reveal itself. Croak...
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stoic wrote: It will be a toad for most after the initial cuteness of the artwork wears off and the vast majority of gamers decide that, "No," they don't want to fanatically learn the rules of each and every faction in order to balance out this asymmetrical game, and, they also grow tired of looking for dedicated Root players who rooted out the rules well enough to make this a competitive game meriting repeated play. This toady will soon reveal itself. Croak...
Every game is a shelf toad when you have 1000+ games. Root's a good game, worth replaying. Most of the copies sold won't get 10 games played on them, if any at all. That's the reality of the current market.
That's got little to do with Root, and everything to do with 5000 games a year and Pokemon collectors catching them all.
The asymmetry is a hard nut to crack. But if Dune can survive as a classic (toad that it fucking is...) then Root has a chance too. Even better in that it's not based in a 50-year-old novel, and plays in half the time. Will it? Who knows.
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- GorillaGrody
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BaronDonut wrote:
GorillaGrody wrote: When these designers sit down to design games around the liberatory struggles of the Viet Cong or of the the anti-capitalist forces of revolutionary Cuba, they treat them as orders of magnitude more complicated than a traditional wargame. This complication constitutes a critique, acknowledging the failure of liberatory movements over the course of history.
Hey GG, can you elaborate a bit more on this? I don't totally understand the connection you're making between complexity and critique.
In my (our?) limited COIN experience, they seem to be more of a sidewise step in complexity to their more traditional brethren, choosing to focus their mechanics on interplay between political entities than, say, the fire rates and effective distances of different automatic rifles. To me, this kind of complexity generates a more productive and critical engagement with historical conflict; it's why Fire in the Lake is a better Vietnam game than the ones that treat American forces and VC as equivalent shirts-and-skins chits on a map.
This may be getting too deep in the water for this particular forum, but for my part, I don't really see simulation as equaling accuracy, and certainly not critical engagement. In fact, I see it as a lot more dangerous to simulate the desire people have for politics to transform their lives as a tug of various chits on the board which, in some other context, would simulate fire rates and movement capabilities. Fire In The Lake doesn't really ask why America was in Vietnam, and I'd argue that's because the tactical realpolitik of the game doesn't allow the question to be asked. America was ever in Vietnam, according to Fire In The Lake: play it again and see if you can win it this time. In Root, however, I am encouraged to ask why the Eyrie behave the way they do. The reductiveness and essential quality of their role demands the question.
Games, to my mind, don't produce convincing simulations. The harder they try, the worse they become. I mean, try playing GURPS sometime.
Games do, however, produce beautiful abstractions. I think gamers often try too hard to tell themselves that abstractions are simulations because they are beautiful, especially when those abstractions suit their model of the world.
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- ChristopherMD
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GorillaGrody wrote: Fire In The Lake doesn't really ask why America was in Vietnam, and I'd argue that's because the tactical realpolitik of the game doesn't allow the question to be asked. America was ever in Vietnam, according to Fire In The Lake: play it again and see if you can win it this time.
This is a really great thought, thanks for it.
I think you're right in saying that games never really work as true simulations. Their gameness, the need to be a playable thing, seems to be at odds with the goal of simulation (or recreation or whatever). It will never be sufficient. That said, I think games can generate ideas and posit models and have interesting things to say about the past, even if they are compromised by abstraction. I mean, all the other tools we use to deal with or interact with the past are abstracted or reductive in some way, too: narrative, theory, statistics, etc. I think a game can communicate something useful, even if that's only the worldview and assumptions of the designer.
Also, lol, GURPS, no. Never again.
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ChristopherMD wrote: How does getting players up to speed on how to play the various factions in this game compare to Cthulhu Wars? I'm sure the mechanics are different but it sounds like they have the asymmetrical faction strategies in common.
I'd be interested to hear that comparison as well. I have good luck in teaching Cthulhu Wars like this:
"Cthulhu, you're the hammer, you want to fight and die a lot. Black Goat, you're Zerg, you want to spread your forces everywhere. Nyarly, you are highly mobile and conduct guerilla warfare. Yellow Sign, you're playing your own wandering mini-game. Try not to get the guy with his butt cheeks showing killed. You folks ready to play?"
Well, ok, that's *mostly* how it goes, anyway.
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- Michael Barnes
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One is that it simply takes longer to do the ol' rules talk. You need to go to each player and explain what they do, how they do it. This is not terribly hard. The game makes it fairly easy, actually, as it provides these helper cards for every player explaining what all the other factions are about. As long as everyone is aware that they have a subset of rules and that not everyone gets points the same way, etc., it usually works out OK. I think it helps if you explain that one faction is the invader, one is the existing government, one is the rebellion, and one is the mercenary. Those simple terms bring a lot of the concepts together. So that's kind of like the Ken B. Method, isn't it?
The other is that there are things that are not immediately visible. For example, in the last game I played, the Marquise player was completely waylaid because they didn't understand how the Alliance can basically nuke a clearing in an uprising. They didn't expect the effect of it to be so severe, and it wasn't something they picked up on in the rules or the buildup. This can also happen with the other factions if they don't quite catch some of the subtleties.
With all of that said, I think Root has a little less in terms of different elements to learn, reflecting on the spellbooks, different units, special abilities, GOO differences, and so forth.
I've taught it to a grand total of 11 newbies and although that first game is going to be a learning thing, I don't feel like anyone came away feeling like they didn't know what was going on or anything like that. There is a walkthrough/play through of the first couple of turns you can do if you really want some firmer guidance.
In sum- some of the "OMG every faction is different, what do I do" fear is overblown. This is not a complicated game.
On the "shelf toad" issue...it doesn't matter. Even if I never play it again, it's still an incredible game. The notion that a game has to be immortally replayable for the rest of your life to be great is kind of dumb. I've only read The Scarlet Letter one time, but it's still an amazing book. The game can be picked up again and learned again in 10 minutes and it's rarely more than 90 minutes long, so it's not like there is a special consideration because of its format or whatever.
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Kickstarter for Pax Pamir is wrapping up today. I watched that video and I'm all in. The theme and unique production are just...man, it looks amazing and a gameplay video hooked me even more.
Being as Pax Pamir is Root's spiritual ancestor, do I "need" Root too? (Understanding that "need" is a hideously abused word in our hobby and I use it fully ironically as you could bury me under the weight of all the games I own and it would crush my bones to powder and take years for anyone to ever find my lifeless husk.)
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GorillaGrody wrote: Fire In The Lake doesn't really ask why America was in Vietnam, and I'd argue that's because the tactical realpolitik of the game doesn't allow the question to be asked. America was ever in Vietnam, according to Fire In The Lake: play it again and see if you can win it this time. In Root, however, I am encouraged to ask why the Eyrie behave the way they do. The reductiveness and essential quality of their role demands the question.
I cannot see how the first sentence and the third co-exist there.
The Eyrie were ever in the forest, it pretty much says so in the rulebook. Root might encourage you to invent some background for why your animals are duking it out, but a game of FitL starts at the same point as Root: "however we got here, here we are, let's fight".
The difference being that you can hit the books and research any number of interpretations of why America was in Vietnam, and then square your ideas of the game model with the assumptions that were made to enable it being a "game".
Root backstories are fan-fiction, and I never feel a demand to write fan-fiction.
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Ken B. wrote: Alright Barnsey, no one answered this, so I gotta know:
Kickstarter for Pax Pamir is wrapping up today. I watched that video and I'm all in. The theme and unique production are just...man, it looks amazing and a gameplay video hooked me even more.
Being as Pax Pamir is Root's spiritual ancestor, do I "need" Root too? (Understanding that "need" is a hideously abused word in our hobby and I use it fully ironically as you could bury me under the weight of all the games I own and it would crush my bones to powder and take years for anyone to ever find my lifeless husk.)
Aside from being from the same designer, there's no actual lineage there. Pax Pamir was (and will be again) a derivative of Pax Porfiriana, a shifting-strategies game of buying the right stuff out of the market and deploying it to get an edge over the other players.
Root is an asymmetric light wargame, with its origins in COIN (among other things), and it's about using your various species advantages and disadvantages to race towards an abstract finish line of "30 points".
They're very opposite in design, Pax is about differentiating yourself from a horde of equals through clever play (and good luck/timing), while Root is about measuring your inherent differences against a common goal.
One game is not required for the other at all. If you like one style and not the other, buy that one. Or both. Or neither.
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Not Sure wrote:
Ken B. wrote: Alright Barnsey, no one answered this, so I gotta know:
Kickstarter for Pax Pamir is wrapping up today. I watched that video and I'm all in. The theme and unique production are just...man, it looks amazing and a gameplay video hooked me even more.
Being as Pax Pamir is Root's spiritual ancestor, do I "need" Root too? (Understanding that "need" is a hideously abused word in our hobby and I use it fully ironically as you could bury me under the weight of all the games I own and it would crush my bones to powder and take years for anyone to ever find my lifeless husk.)
Aside from being from the same designer, there's no actual lineage there. Pax Pamir was (and will be again) a derivative of Pax Porfiriana, a shifting-strategies game of buying the right stuff out of the market and deploying it to get an edge over the other players.
Root is an asymmetric light wargame, with its origins in COIN (among other things), and it's about using your various species advantages and disadvantages to race towards an abstract finish line of "30 points".
They're very opposite in design, Pax is about differentiating yourself from a horde of equals through clever play (and good luck/timing), while Root is about measuring your inherent differences against a common goal.
One game is not required for the other at all. If you like one style and not the other, buy that one. Or both. Or neither.
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- GorillaGrody
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Not Sure wrote:
GorillaGrody wrote: Fire In The Lake doesn't really ask why America was in Vietnam, and I'd argue that's because the tactical realpolitik of the game doesn't allow the question to be asked. America was ever in Vietnam, according to Fire In The Lake: play it again and see if you can win it this time. In Root, however, I am encouraged to ask why the Eyrie behave the way they do. The reductiveness and essential quality of their role demands the question.
I cannot see how the first sentence and the third co-exist there.
The Eyrie were ever in the forest, it pretty much says so in the rulebook. Root might encourage you to invent some background for why your animals are duking it out, but a game of FitL starts at the same point as Root: "however we got here, here we are, let's fight".
The difference being that you can hit the books and research any number of interpretations of why America was in Vietnam, and then square your ideas of the game model with the assumptions that were made to enable it being a "game".
Root backstories are fan-fiction, and I never feel a demand to write fan-fiction.
Michael mentioned above a distinction between theme and setting I agree with. Setting is backstory. Theme is an interwoven set of aesthetic decisions which form an argument. You're correct that the setting puts us in medias res within a conflict. But I'm saying that the abstraction you perform as the liberal-industrial Cat faction--the scope of it, which is telescoped out to the maximum--points out that they are nearly as robotic and fanatical as the Eyrie faction, in spite of the fact that the Cats are the "euro" liberal economic faction, and that the birds are the fascist "ameritrash" faction. Every action, because it is abstracted, reminds you of this.
I don't remember much about Fire in the Lake, because it was a 5-hour slog of the minutest detail, but I'm pretty sure that at some point someone pulled a Mai Lai Massacre card and that it gave someone somewhere a couple of points. And my point is 1) That enacts the exact sort of real-life reasoning which made the Mai Lai massacre possible and 2) I'm sure that the designers realized the contradiction there, but instead worried about how many points, and when.
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Source: For more examples of the inevitable future of Root's horrific worldview and the repercussions for the adulteration of anthropomorphic animal artwork, please see the following website: www.quirkbooks.com/post/busy-deadly-world-richard-scarry
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GorillaGrody wrote: Setting is backstory. Theme is an interwoven set of aesthetic decisions which form an argument. You're correct that the setting puts us in medias res within a conflict.
I liked the geek list you put together a few years back to illustrate this idea. Gonna trot it out again: boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/187923/modest-proposal-regards-theme
GorillaGrody wrote: I don't remember much about Fire in the Lake, because it was a 5-hour slog of the minutest detail, but I'm pretty sure that at some point someone pulled a Mai Lai Massacre card and that it gave someone somewhere a couple of points. And my point is 1) That enacts the exact sort of real-life reasoning which made the Mai Lai massacre possible and 2) I'm sure that the designers didn't realize that, but instead worried about how many points, and when.
I remember that moment occurring, and the queasiness it evoked, as it should, when you bring atrocity in the realm of play. This cognitive dissonance was both troubling and interesting to me. I was just re-reading the design notes included in the FitL playbook--you're right that both designers are more concerned with questions of how rather than questions of why or should, though there is a moment when Mark Herman contemplates receiving his draft card 45 years ago when it feels like this might be examined in greater detail, but he backs down in service of mechanical design decisions.
Of course, this is the default stance of wargames in general. I think there is an unresolved tension in the pleasure we take in the abstraction and recreation of human pain. I remember that after we played FitL we played Maria, a much cleaner, far more abstracted take on the War of the Austrian Succession. Still thematically linked with atrocity and horror (as all wargames are), but zoomed out to the nth degree and far more lighthearted.
I'm not even sure I'm responding to your points anymore, but I'm contemplating my own break-even point when it comes to this kind of game. Is it thesis? Abstraction? Granularity and specificity? I don't know. I really like wargames, but never feel totally comfortable with them.
Root is a nifty trick in that Wehrle manages to continue his project of examining fraught power relations (like he did in Pax Pamir and John Company) while sidestepping some of these discussions by making it about critters instead of real-life guerillas. It's the same thing Martin Wallace did when he rethemed his game about anarchist assassinations into Study in Emerald.
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