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Play Games - Interact - Have Fun!
United States
California
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Sunday morning, 8am.
I'm the only one up and I'm wanting to play a game already. Last night the wife and I had a really great game of Dungeon Lords - well great from my point of view as my plan worked out and she kind of got screwed on the last turn as she had no money to do the actions she wanted, but the game was still a lot of fun for both of us regardless.
With my workload these days, I don't get out to game with the guys like I used to and all my gaming pretty much is two player - though there is the occasional 3 player game when I can cajole a friend to come over or get my daughter to join us.
Phantom Players
A lot of my favorite games are best with more than two players - El Grande, Cosmic Encounter and RoboRally are the first to come to mind, but there is a recent trend among game designers that I am really beginning to appreciate: adding in a phantom 3rd or 4th player.
A game like El Grande or Cosmic Encounter would make it really difficult to have a phantom player as there are too many decisions that have to be made regarding cube placement or alliances. Any effort to create a system would be forced and less than desirable in my opinion, as the human aspect is missing in a game where there is some strategic or diplomatic aspect involved.
However, some games actually are very well suited for a system to represent a 3rd player. I've been lucky enough to try a couple of these and the first one I'm going to discuss is Dungeon Lords.
In the game, each player is selecting 3 actions from an identical set of cards (minus 2 of the actions he previously selected the turn before). Worker (or Minion) placement occurs in turn order after each player has selected his actions and layed them out in the order he wants them done. This is a great mechanic as it allows the 1st player to get the action he really wants by placing it first in his order - he will be the first person to place his minion so he knows exactly what he wil get. It's also possible that he will get his preference of his 2nd and 3rd actions provided no one else has played those in their program earlier them he did.
With 3 or 4 human players, you have a hard time figuring out what each other players action priority will be, so unless you are the 1st player, most of your actions are "best guesses" as to where you will ultimately end up. Each type of action has 3 spaces - increasing in rewards and cost usually for each space and since you always hace to take the first available open space, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how your plan will work out (again, unless you are the 1st player).
Simulating a 3rd player is actually very easy in Dungeon Lords. The flip side of the player boards is set up to handle a phantom player buy having spaces for 3 action cards that will be unavailable to the phantom player. This leaves 5 other actions left for the next turn - 3 of which will get used as the phantom player's program. 2 are immediately selected at random and placed face up for both players to see. Minions in the phantom player(s) color are placed for these actions in the middle spot for each action space.
Now each real player goes about selecting their 3 actions from their limited subset hand of action cards for this turn AND picks the 3rd action for the phantom player they control - placing it face down until the other player is ready. Once both players have programmed their turn, these 3rd action for the phantom players are revealed and the last minion is placed in the 1st spot for each action space.
What is great about this system is that 2 of each phantom player's actions will be totally random each turn (from the available 5), BUT 1 action will be under your control to either help you get more rewards from an action space (by allowing you to place in a higher spot as the phantom player you got to program takes the lower spot), OR you can use the 3rd action of the phantom player you control to thwart your opponents placement since you can typically see what the majority of actions are available to him and deduce what he will most likely go for.
This simulates a real 3rd or 4th person very well - usually a real person's actions would be mostly random to you, but you might be able to figure out one thing that they were definately going to do and capitalize on it.
I've played Dungeon Lords with 2, 3 and 4 players and it's just as good with 2 players (and 2 phantom players) as it is with 3 or 4 real players.
Fresco takes the phantom player approach a little differently. In Fresco, a 3rd player (Leonardo), is alternately controlled by each real player. Although his actions are pre set (buy paints at the Market and Paint in the Cathedral every turn), you still select the wake-up time for Leonardo, detemine which market he will "buy" from (effectively closing it down and removing it as a choice for your opponent) and you get to determine which fresco tile Leonardo will complete on the ceiling (removing that tile and earning Leonardo points).
Leonardo doesn't have to have money or paints, he just does things as needed which keeps things simple and it works surprisingly well. There are several strategies with Leonardo, on one hand, since he never needs the correct paints to score a fresco tile, you may always want him to paint the lowest scoring tile to keep his score down. This has drawbacks though as the wake-up time selection is based on the scoring position of each pawn and if you always give your opponent Leonardo's choice of wake-up time before you, then you might get screwed in the market, cathedral or even the studio as you didn't get the wake-up time you wanted.
Scoring a ton of points for Leonardo also can hurt you the other way - if he is too far ahead you'll never get to use him defensively to secure your wake up time, or have him complete a fresco tile close to the one you want so you can get the Bishop bonus. Again, it's a fine balance of using the phantom player to your advantage whenever possible, yet making it difficult for your opponent to do the same.
This balance simulates a real 3rd player very nicely as often, you'll have control and it won't help at all and other times you'll benefit from the actions of Leonardo under control of your opponent - as he had no option in how to utilize him against you.
As a primarily two player gamer these days, I have to say that this is a design element that I'm really appreciating and enjoying as some of the more unusual games coming out are using mechanics and rules for phantom players very successfully.
This is definitely a trend I hope continues!
Discussion Points:
What about you? Have you had any similar experiences with a phantom player in a game you enjoy? What other games feature similar rules or mechanics to include phantom players? What games do you wish had included phantom players? Are there any games with these kinds of rules that don't work well?
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