Taleweaver recommends: Tabletop simulator

Yup, I can see you thinking: "oh, here he goes again. Old fart Taleweaver railing on the "advantages" of board games over video games. And now he's recommending...a blend? Better get some popcorn". Well...as long as it keeps you reading, I'm fine with that.

And to make this blog even harder, I have mentioned tabletop simulator before, right at the tail end of my top games of 2018. So on top of that, you're now ALSO thinking something like "Oh, so now he's praising something he used to diss? OMG, he's going full Donald Trump on us! You can't change the past!!!!" (and if you weren't thinking that, you most likely were after reading that ). I'll get right now that. But for now, I've got to add that this is obviously partially due to this stupid lockdown situation. I don't consider myself much of a social person, but the total lack of human-to-human interaction is getting to me. And I'm not even in a bad spot, as my girlfriend and me still have stuff to do in the house and our daughter is really getting spoiled with attention from us.

That said...grab yer popcorn and let's dive in.



Upon rereading my summary, I have to say that I - ironically - still stand by every word I wrote 1.5 years ago:

40. Tabletop simulator (windows)
This is one I can not NOT mention, but at the same time don't want to praise too much. This is basically all board games ever created. However: a game that does everything excels at nothing. I didn't expect the community to just hack in AI or do anything but scan images of their board games, but even so...this game is butt-ugly in so many ways and has such a terrible UI it's not even funny (why is even a game manual so hard to come by?). And because it basically throws you all the pieces of a board game at you and says "here...now have fun" I don't even like it to simply try out a board game. But truth be told: I'm very, very happy it exists. There should be a sequel or - even better - some competition in this field, but having tabletop simulator beats the tool not existing at all.

So...what happened in the mean time? I wish I could say that the developers stepped up their game and overhauled it to match its potential, but truth be told: that part didn't happen. Or to be precise: they certainly didn't sit back (take a look at these patch notes if you've got waaaaaaay too much free time), but the issues I was talking about are, for a large part, still there. The background screens are a bit different, yes, but instead of the "butt-ugly" they are still at best basic. So...not to dish the devs too much, but that criticism still stands.

The differences are really on all other fronts. More specifically, I see no less than four categories:
1) the board game industry's booming. This is the same chorus I've been chanting to for years: there's an incredible amount of great board games being released. And where video games mostly stay true to given categories with a slight pitch of a second category pitched in ("oh, so this is a souls-like (read: 'very hard') game in 2D? How innovative!"), trends and categories shift and intermingle much more in the board game world.
2) solo gaming. One of the more recent trends is that board games now often include a single player variant. While this is usually done to mitigate the learning process a bit (the problem of not being able to play a game without friends around was an issue before the pandemic), it certainly is a nice boon here.
3) tutorials on youtube. While it is now possible (or at least easier) to include a custom pdf on a game board, it still isn't the best way to learn a game. However, there are now youtube channels for most if not all board games, so the learning process (which was a main flaw against TTS) is now solved externally.
4) personal. Okay, this is just me admitting I was wrong. See, what I did in 2018 was attempt to play the only game I knew that I could play solo: the board game pandemic. I figured that since it's a co-op game, I could just play two characters. But while it's true, the act of setting up was tricky. The game requires you to divide the stack of cards into 4-6 stacks, insert one epidemic to each, then put the stacks together again. This was (and to a degree: still is) a hassle. And as soon as I managed it, I remembered I should take hand cards before that. Result: I disliked the start of pandemic, and in addition to the ugly backgrounds and retarded UI choices, I pretty much gave up on it. What I should have done, however, was start out with simple dice games and then move toward more complex games (or: less introductionary) when I was more used to handling the interface.
The second option, tied with something I said in my yearly rundown, is what got me coming back. But I'll get to that...

I can also add a fifth and a sixth, but these were outside my scope back then. The fifth is that the game is apparently very immersive in VR, which isn't too surprising (manually handling playing pieces is what board games is all about), but I can't speak from experience there. The sixth is that board games are meant to be played with friends. And while my multiplayer experiences with strangers aren't that bad, I'm not really keen on playing with strangers. Especially since this is a game where cheating is extremely easy, as there is no way to really track something (example: sometimes you want to put a dice on a certain value. So you can use the numerical keys to make it show that number. You also obviously want to roll a die from time to time, so you either flick the thing or press 'R' to randomly throw it up and have it come down on the same spot. But anyone can just press R followed by 6 to seemingly automatically roll a 6). I'm also still on the bench about the devs inclusion of a "flip the table" option right on the screen. While you can certainly undo it, I just KNOW that as soon as I play a stranger, the table gets flipped the second I start winning even the slightest bit ).



Another thing I've often bit***d about was that mobile games can actually be good if you're willing to pay some money upfront rather than thinking fancy-looking free-to-play games were made out of charity. Especially board games are (IMHO) a good match for a commute, as they are fairly quick, complete experiences with lots of research behind them (read: board games that totally flop never get made into apps). Pixelated cardboard is one of those sites that covers extensive reviews on anything semi-board game related in the iOS/android world (or any other virtual platform, for that matter). One of their recent articles is interesting even if you don't give a f*** about anything else in this article: places to play board games online.

I have to admit: I had heard about boardgamearena and tabletopia, but never really gave them much thought. The former recreates board games in simple, almost abstract terms in any given (supported) browser. While they've gained a lot of fan praise over the years, it was something I didn't give much thought about. I've tried it now: creating an account and a 'tutorial game' against a bot ('can't stop' was the game) was actually fairly decent affair, but anything but splashy. And since most games don't have a bot AI, I'm once again in the loop of not having friends over. I like what it is - a community based around mostly volunteers - but I'm not ready to jump in.

Tabletopia is a different breed. Their approach is to ask permission from the creator/developer/studio first, and go all in on those games. Not only is this all visually stunning (even more than the actual board games, if I'm honest), but in large parts rules are enforced. It's still dependend on your goodwill not to cheat and without AI, but when I played through railroad ink (of which I have a physical copy) I couldn't stop thinking on how this was what tabletop simulator really could have been.
I...can't say it lasted very long, really. But that is in no way a blame on tabletopia. The deal is like this: the more I browsed through their section of 800+ games, the more I noticed what I was missing. Tabletopia is one of the sites that (IMHO) does free to play right: it has some games that require premium membership, others are completely free and others are somewhere in the middle. But it's not like the free games are teasers or that you're nagged into subscriptions. Rather the contrary: games like railroad ink, mint works or K2 are very, very decent games that I can fully recommend (heck...from mint works I tracked down the print&play version by the author, and I'd probably buy a copy of K2 if I found it in a store).
The caveat is that you're essentially be given a demo. A fairly decent, uninterrupted and fully playable demo (read: a solo campaign and/or a two player hotseat mode is usually free), yes, but still: a demo. K2, for example, has two sets of weather cards (summer or winter), and two player boards (again, summer or winter), so with the board game you can mix & match to create 4 difficulties. On tabletopia, you only have the easiest variant available (or 'least hard', as it takes some getting used to).


Furthermore: with my collection of around 65 games (or about 74 if you include played-through escape room boxes and expansions), I quickly started peeking if game X or Y were available. They usually weren't. So I reinstalled tabletop simulator. Because of the same reason console wars are fought: in the end, it's about who has the most exclusives. And tabletop simulator has a HUGE head start...



If there's anything missing in my 2018 (abbreviated) review of tabletop simulator, it's that you can define elegance as beauty in not having anything to add, but nothing to take away. AKA: elegance is about just highlighting the essential. Tabletop simulator (TTS from here on out) is waaaaaay on the other end of the spectrum. I already mentioned the weird option of the devs to include a "flip the table" right on the main screen (meaning: it's visible on EVERY SINGLE GAME YOU PLAY). But it really goes much deeper than that. Wait...lemme show you:
(spoilertags because it's a pretty big image)

Okay, granted: the central menu showcasing some of the mods I've downloaded (and which I mostly if not all recommend), which is the most important thing. But the menu on the left has options for selecting and moving objects (certainly useful in games), drawing objects on the board (useful in some games, and on multiplayer it's a great tool to highlight parts of the board), a weird "zone" button for which I have no idea what it means, line measurements (which is useful for wargames, I presume? ), a flicking option (which is useful in about 0.5% of games), a...combine objects option???

Above is a menu for loading games (no, that's not just on the main menu for some reason), a way to add in 3D objects in the game, a music player...and so on.

*sigh* What I'm saying is this: there really isn't a separation between how to edit a given game and how to play a game. This is, I cannot get around it, an absolute mess. There is some interesting side effect of this (I'll get to that), but the important thing to note is that this is a program made by an ICT department. And I have to call it like it is: a program. It might be sold on steam and be called a simulator, but it's actually an editor wherein you just so happen to be able to play the board games you create as well. I wouldn't say it was an afterthought, but I honestly think it's about 50-50 for them.

This clunkiness is especially visible when you want to add some games to yer collection. As I presume like most people, I bought this thing on steam. This means that any game created can be uploaded to the steam workshop, where it's only a few clicks away from being visible for anyone who knows the given name. As I'll explain in the next chapter, I've dabbled in this as well, and this as well isn't as elegant or smooth as it could be...until you're on steam, that is. Once you're in the workshop, you can search and subscribe with the least possible effort (meaning: if you know many board games, your main concern is to remember all their names rather than it being a hassle to import them ). So: yeeeey for steam, boooooh for the game itself.

Well...except that it works, obviously. Because "clunky" and "more steps than needed" are different criteria than "functional". And yes: TTS is functional. To an almost absurd degree...




I've considered comparing tabletop simulator with napster or gnutella before the music industry kicked in, alternative netflix sources or with those fancy tools or sites where your only limitation was knowing what game/movie/comic book/porn thingy/book/whatever you wanted to get a copy of. But both the program's clunkyness and the board game industry's reaction invalidate any comparison on that field.
To start with the latter: you don't need a tutorial on how to read (comic) books, hardly guidance in how to start a movie or audio clip and the majority of nowadays' video games have their tutorial built in (even though the mechanics are usually already collectively known). For board games, this is different. The best way to learn a board game is by playing it with people who already know how to play it, which...isn't always possible (especially in these times ). This leads to situations like with my colleague, who wants to start a board game collection but has no idea which games he'll like. Or like me, where I buy a game based on reviews and online playthroughs...and then have the game collect dust for years because my girlfriend doesn't like the game's theme. Or the even worse situation which we encountered with my brother-in-law last old year: that the board game was still in plastic wraps by the time we came over and nobody knew how to play the game (result: by the time things were unpacked and we understood the rulebook's intention enough to play it completely wrong(1) ). None of those situations end up with the board game being played as intended, which in turn ends in the board game selling less (I mean...would you buy a game where your friends go all "erm...I think this piece needs to go there" and "no...wait: sorry, I forgot to say that you're not allowed to buy THAT at this point"?). If you're able to see the game in action through actually playing, you'll learn a great deal more than even the most extensive youtube playthrough. Many board game creators know this. And while that doesn't make it legal for anyone to scan their copyrighted cardboard and recreate their entire game, they are less prone for DMCA's and prosecution than on other platforms (but again: it doesn't make it legal).

The program's clunkyness is also a factor, at least in combination with the target here. You see, most board games are fairly simple endeavors. For go, all you really need is a square board and a simple object in two colors. And while this is an extremely simple example, the far majority isn't much harder. Some carbon boards, dices in variable colors and amounts, a handfull of tokens, cards...and that's about it. Of course those come in all different sizes, but since the vast component of board games is your imagination to begin with, a lot can be created by starting with nothing more than a bunch of images or even predefined stuff.
...and entire games can be recreated by using nothing more than a basic scanner and a few hours of playtesting. Why? Because the tools you need for importing models or custom images are literally amidst the stuff you need for playing a game. Of course this creates an entire new category of dickery ("oh, so you just HAD a full house, eh? Well...here's MY response: an import of an image of your mom's face pasted on a porn star's body!! Try to beat THAT score, motherfucker !!"), but I can't deny that it encourages to try and improve things.

As an example: I almost accidentally stumbled across the use of (snap) points in a game. These basically draw objects towards them, so when you place one in the center of a square, objects (dice, pawns, ...) that are placed there are automatically placed in the dead center. It doesn't add much, but it's a nice quality of life improvement. And because there's no real way to lock it, I can just improve upon what someone else made. I started with attempting to lay out mint works so I wouldn't have to repeat it for the solo challenge each time. But then I thought that another version used fancier mints as tokens (but that had worse scans), so I copy-pasted it into "my" version. Then I added the manual. And some snap points. Oh, and there's a little promo card to add to the adversaries. That image went into 'my' version as well. The thing is: none of this is hard. And it gets to some weird results. Say dixit...that's a game with about a 100 esotheric cards where the aim is to make people guess which one you have where everyone else is trying to throw the others off guard by adding similar cards. Because of this nature, you can throw in all versions of the game and end up with 400 or 500 cards. Instead of "just" that, someone created a version with EVEN MORE esotheric cards. This adds less to the experience than it might sound, but certainly ensures a longer replayability.



Yeah...of course this rant wouldn't work without saying something of the multiplayer. And again: I don't give a hoot about anonymous guys on the internet. But with the corona virus I want to talk with friends and such. And I could quickly convince my colleague to give TTS a try. We played just yesterday. The short end was that it was a blast. The long version...well...we've only started to begin to SLIGHTLY touch the surface of what was possible. I started with a game of qwixx because we both knew it (more so: my girlfriend and me played together with him over google hangouts about a week ago, teaching him as best we could). It was much easier than over a webcam(2) and even IRL, as the version had a way to track automatic scoring.
Next up was the amazing roll & write Ganz Schöhn Clever. I had taught it to him earlier, but if you look at the score board (ahem...), I can't blame him for being confused. But by simply showing a few sample turns and writing on the boards (and of course: pointing out what I would've used on tough rolls) he got the hang of it a lot faster than otherwise would be possible.
Granted: this all took us nearly two hours (I had a sore throat at the end ), so a game of risk 2210 wasn't played afterward. And it's no incident that both these games were fairly simple and had perfect information(3). But once we're done exploring how TTS actually works to get things done, I'm sure the longer games will start to be played as well.


A few days ago, gbatemp (Chary) recommended Uno as a game to play online. I can't really fault that decision, as uno really isn't that bad. That is to say: it's simple and doesn't require much hard choices (which is what almost my definition of a good game is: having multiple interesting different decisions to make), but it certainly doesn't last longer than it should and goes well with children (always a plus ).

...but if it's about playing board games online, then I really think tabletop simulator has more to offer. And that's an understatement: there are about 200 versions of uno on TTS. And because it's so easily replicated with other images (or more images...or more "take that" cards. Or more jokers. Or...or...), it's like everyone can bring their own version.
Of every game.

Cheers,

Taleweaver


PS: at this point I can easily create at least a top 20 (or even top 50) on boardgames. But that's for another time(4)



(1): to be fair: the game they picked (based on the "expedition Robinson" TV show) was pretty lame.
(2): note: we did use google hangouts at the same time. At two points the connection from hangouts hung...but TTS kept happily playing.
(3): that is to say: everything was visible at all times. I'm not 100% sure how cards work, but that'll be next
(4): this entire writing took over half a day. Also because I was interrupted all the time because our daughter required attention the whole time.