Interesting Decisions

[Arthur Wohlwill]

Making a game with interesting decisions is a struggle for me. Often there will be a “best move for the moment” and since it may be hard to plan, people will usually go with that, even if it is not the best long turn move. When designing, is this something that is foremost in the plan? Is it based on interesting decisions from other games? Or does it come out of playtesting? You ask the testers what is most interesting and develop that? Specific examples might be useful. Thanks!

[Roger Meloche]

In my latest game, I was just trying to get it to flow smoothly at first. The decisions ended up being intuitive, but boring and repetitive. It is tough to make the decisions more interesting. I am going to try limiting the players options, forcing them to work with a small subset of all the things that they wight want to do. I will also change the structure of the turn so that players will have to reveal some but not all of their strategy to the other players in the initial start of the round. Hopefully the limited decision space will create more asymmetry, and the initial part of the turns, giving your opponents a glimpse of your plans, will encourage bluffing and second guessing. I’m hoping this will make the decisions more interesting. Fingers crossed.

[Arthur Wohlwill]

Sounds interesting. How do players reveal strategy? What is hidden (cards, other information?) How does one bluff? Auctions can give some interesting decisions, but I am not working with those or any other things that could be bluffed.