Chance in games is like seasoning in food — it’s all about the right amount. Just imagine a life without chance, where everything could be planned out strategically. That would get boring over time. In a game, I want to have experiences — I want adventure. A good game is like a miniature life, one where I can make mistakes, enjoy a streak of bad or good luck, and still recover. But you shouldn’t be at the mercy of randomness. There should be ways to compensate — like a friend of mine in CATAN, who always complains about his bad luck, prompting others to treat him more kindly and rarely target him with the robber. In the end, he often wins — to everyone’s surprise.
[Read More]
— Klaus Teuber on the importance of randomness in games in CATAN-News 1/2000 🗄️
What makes a Kennerspiel?
Spiel des Jahres 2021 nominations might still be a couple of months away, but I thought now is still a good time to return to one of the harder questions in my predictions post from last year: What exactly makes a game a Kennerspiel? By that I don’t mean the qualities that earn a game the award, but the distinction between the more casual Spiel and the more complex Kennerspiel categories.
[Read More]