In Commerce & Coconuts, it seems like anyone who rolls a 4, 5, or 6 for boat building can coast on their starting supplies, build boats every turn, and escape by the end of turn 3 with no trading whatsoever.
Yep, that seems right and that does seem suboptimal.
I think checking for escaping the island at the end of game would fix that since people still need to survive ten turns. Alternately, raising the amount of Boat needed would stretch that out, and more playtesting could figure out what the right target is.
. . . Hrm. What if escaped players still need food and water for the duration of the game, and then have to save up if they want to escape early? Not needing shelter gives a gentle encouragement to go as soon as they can.
You could put the escape check at the beginning of the turn, so that when someone has 12 boat, 0 supplies, the others have a chance to trade supplies for boat if they wish. The player with enough boat can take the trade safely as long as they end up with enough supplies to make more boat (and as long as it's not the final round). They might do that in exchange for goodwill for future rounds. You can also tweak the victory conditions so that escaping with a friend is better than escaping alone.
Players who pay cohabitive games as zero sum won't take those trades and will therefore remove themselves from the round early, which is probably fine. They don't have anything to do after escaping early, which can be a soft signal that they're playing the game wrong.
Nice!
(I wrote the bit about not having to tell people your favourite suit or what cards you have leaves things open for some sharp or clever negotiation, but looking back I think it's mostly a trap. I haven't seen anyone get things to go better for them by hiding the suit.)
To add some layer of this strategy: Giving each person one specific card on their suit that they want with much higher strength might be fun, as the other players can ransom that card if they know (but might be happy trading it anyway). Also having the four suits each having a different multiplier might be fun?
Also having the four suits each having a different multiplier might be fun?
Yeah, setups where (for instance) Clubs are worth 2x, Hearts and Diamonds are worth 1x, and Spades are worth 1/2x would (I expect) accelerate the effect. The example in Planecrash talks about multipliers like 1.3 or 1.1 where the evaluation is closer, which I turned to an integer multiplier to make the math doable in an average person's head.
I have a more complicated and playtested version of Jellychip I mean to publish in a few days :)
Maybe having exact evaluations not being trivial is not entirely a bug, but might make the game more interesting (though maybe more annoying)?
Jellychip seems like a necessary tutorial game. I sense comedy in the fact that everyone's allowed to keep secrets and intuitively will try to do something with secrecy despite it being totally wrongheaded. Like the only real difficulty of the game is reaching the decision to throw away your secrecy.
Escaping the island is the best outcome for you. Surviving is the second best outcome. Dying is the worst outcome.
You don't mention how good or bad they are relative to each other though :) an agent cannot make decisions under uncertainty without knowing that.
I usually try to avoid having to explain this to players by either making it a score game or making the outcomes binary. But the draw towards having more than two outcomes is enticing. I guess in a roleplaying scenario, the question of just how good each ending is for your character is something players would like to decide for themselves. I guess as long as people are buying into the theme well enough, it doesn't need to be made explicit, in fact, not making it explicit makes it clearer that player utilities aren't comparable and that makes it easier for people to get into the cohabitive mindset.
So now I'm imagining a game where different factions have completely different outcomes. None of them are conquest, nor death. They're all weird stuff like "found my mother's secret garden" or "fulfilled a promise to a dead friend" or "experienced flight".
the hook
I generally think of hookness as "oh, this game tests a skill that I really want to have, and I feel myself getting better at it as I engage with the game, so I'll deepen my engagement".
There's another component of it that I'm having difficulty with, which is "I feel like I will not be rejected if I ask friends to play this with me." (well, I think I could get anyone to play it once, the second time is the difficult one) And for me I see this quality in very few board games, and to get there you need to be better than the best board games out there, because you're competing with them, so that's becoming very difficult. But since cohabitive games rule that should be possible for us.
And on that, I glimpsed something recently that I haven't quite unpacked. There's a certain something about the way Efka talks about Arcs here ... he admitted that it wasn't necessarily all fun. It was an ordeal. And just visually, the game looks like a serious undertaking. Something you'd look brave for sitting in front of. It also looks kind of fascinating. Like it would draw people in. He presents it with the same kind of energy as one would present the findings of a major government conspiracy investigation, or the melting of the clathrates. It does not matter whether you want to play this game, you have to, there's no decision to be made as to whether to play it or not, it's here, it fills the room.
And we really could bring an energy like that, because I think there are some really grim findings along the path to cohabitive enlightenment. But I'm wary of leaning into that, because I think cohabitive enlightenment is also the true name of peace. Arcs is apparently controversial. I do not want cohabitive games to be controversial.
Previously: Competitive, Cooperative, and Cohabitive, Cohabitive Games So Far, Optimal Weave: A Prototype Cohabitive Game.
I like tinkering with game mechanics, and the idea of cohabitive games is an itch I keep trying to scratch. Here's six simple games I made over the last year or two as I was trying to get something satisfying, along with my notes on them. If you're looking for something to play at game night, I suggest Handlink then Commerce & Coconuts. None of them are well playtested at all.
Setup: Sit in a circle. Take a standard 52 deck of cards, without jokers. Shuffle, and deal evenly to all players. If you can't deal evenly, set the extra cards aside.
Each player looks at the top card of their hand. The suit of that card becomes the player's Favourite Suit. Remember it. Each player may now look at the rest of their hand.
Objective: Each card is worth points equal to its value. (Aces are 1, jacks are 11, queens are 12, kings are 13.) A card of your Favourite Suit is worth double. A jack of your Favourite Suit would be worth 22 points.
The goal is to get as many points as you can. The goal is NOT to get the most points — you don't care how many points everyone else gets. It could be one, it could be one million, you don't care. Aim to beat your personal best score.
Play: Start a timer for ten minutes.
Players may freely trade cards with each other. You don't have to tell people what your Favourite Suit is or what cards you have in your hand, but you do have to actually hand over the cards you say you're handing over as part of the trade. You can trade cards at rates other than one to one if you want.
At the end of ten minutes, stop trading. Count up your score, and see how well you did.
This is straightforwardly borrowed from Planecrash and Eliezer Yudkowsky's sketch of the basic Jellychip game.
Dealerchip is fairly simple, since each card has a straightforward and clearly valued worth to both players. Sometimes you can't make a perfectly fair trade because you have to trade whole cards and you lack smaller values. When that happens though it's pretty clear (if you're honest about Favourite Suit) who is getting the short end.
(I wrote the bit about not having to tell people your favourite suit or what cards you have leaves things open for some sharp or clever negotiation, but looking back I think it's mostly a trap. I haven't seen anyone get things to go better for them by hiding the suit.)
Ultimately, there's a fixed pie of value to go around, and not that much room for long-term strategy. On a gameplay level, there's also a kind of decision paralysis- sometimes people try to talk to everyone at the table before making deals, or get overwhelmed with the number of offers.
If you want you can spark an argument on Rawls' Veil of Ignorance in a four player game. Assigning each person a different suit such that all four are used, and then deal the cards out at random. Inevitably, somebody will wind up with a higher value hand, and usually argue that it makes sense to evaluate fairness based on the trades instead of just sorting the deck so everyone has all the cards of their suit. Sorting the deck is strictly better for every player than any other arrangement, but involves some people making more upwards progress than others. Is fairness evaluated on the level of a trade, or on the level of overall end state?
Setup: Take a standard 52 deck, with the jokers.
Each player draws one card, looks at it, and places it face down. This is their Value Card.
Each player draws five cards, concealed from everyone else. This is their Hand.
Objective: Your score is the sum of the values of cards in your Hoard that match the suit of your Value Card, plus one for each card in your Hoard that does not match the suit of your Value Card.
If your Value Card was a Joker, you instead score the value of all cards 7 or less. The other Joker is worth 15 points.
You are trying to beat your personal best record. You don't care what the score of other players is; victory doesn't go to the single highest score. There isn't a clear Victory at all. Think of it like going for a run, where you're mostly trying to improve your own speed.
Play: Play proceeds clockwise, starting with whoever says "I start" the fastest. On your turn you can show any card from your hand to the people adjacent to you, and ask them what they offer for it. They each show you a card from their hand, starting with the player to your left. You may accept or reject the offered trades. If you accept, trade cards with the one you accepted.
Either way, put a card from your hand in a pile (The Hoard) and draw a new card.
Once all cards have been drawn and played, the game ends.
This is basically a second stab at Dealerchip, with the Joker values allowing for more subterfuge and turning trade negotiations into more of an ultimatum game. There's some auction action in being the player on the right able to bid up the player on the left. I tried to fix the decision paralysis by limiting you to just the adjacent players, which wasn't really necessary at the level of Dealerchip's simple trades but I saw as a potential issue if I made things any more complicated.
Setup: Take a standard 52 deck without the jokers.
Deal the deck out evenly to all players. Players keep these cards in their hand upright, and these cards are Domestic Cards.
Objective: A player wins if they have a straight flush in hand at the end of the game- five cards of the same suit whose values are increasing by one, where at least one card is Domestic and one card is Imported. (E.g. the 8, 9, 10, J, and Q of Hearts.)
Any number of players can win. Any number of players can lose.
Play: Players may freely trade with each other as follows: they can talk about what they want and what they're willing to trade for, offering any number of cards in exchange for any other number of cards. Don't show the other person the cards during negotiation. Both players must agree to trade, but do not get to see the actual values of the new cards until the exchange happens.
Any cards received via trade are kept sideways, and these cards are Imported Cards.
This was an attempt to make the desires a bit more complicated. The first draft had Wins (a straight) and Super Wins (a straight flush) but I eventually figured that was overcomplicating things a little.
The number of players matters a lot as to how difficult the game is, and I never put the effort into figuring out how to adjust the deck size. I think the sweet spot is about eight cards per hand, with higher value cards (e.g. kings) removed from the deck first?
I still like the mix of Imports and Domestic, even if sometimes people let the cards mix because orientation isn't an important feature of most card games.
Setup: You and your fellow players are stranded on a deserted island. Each of you should roll four six-sided dice, writing down the results in order. Your Ability Scores will be between 1 and 6, and are:
Coconut Gathering
Water Hauling
Shelter Fixing
Boat Building
Start the game with the following Resources: 3 Coconuts, 3 Water, 3 Shelter, and 0 Boat.
Objective: You have ten turns. Escaping the island is the best outcome for you, and the faster you escape the better. Surviving is the second best outcome. Dying is the worst outcome.
Play: Each player goes through each phase of the turn together. (Everyone acts, then everyone trades, and so on.) Start with whoever was in the ocean most recently and go clockwise, except trading when everyone can trade at once.
Each turn has three phases.
After ten turns, end the game.
Yes, yes, the shelters are really badly constructed and keep falling over. Also one coconut a day is a pretty weird amount for a person to eat. Look, it's a very abstract simulation. In the initial version the four Resources were the four suits of a 52 deck, and I'm glad I eventually gave up on that because story of the island is stronger than the abstract thing I had going on.
The part I love about Commerce & Coconuts is how very obvious it makes the importance of trade. The odds are good that at least one of your Coconut Gathering, Water Hauling, or Shelter Fixing will be below 3, which would ordinarily threaten a death spiral. If any of those are a 1, you're just doomed — unless you can trade. In a group of three or four players, you can probably put together a good trade route and have a bit of surplus. I really wanted to add some kind of way to invest resources and get better resource gathering. Part of that is the engine builder in me, but mostly that feels like the obvious next step in the tiny economic simulator I've got going on here.
Ironically, the most valuable players are likely going to be the first to escape the island, making things harder for the remaining players. "Do I have to escape, or can I wait and help other people?" is likely to come up. For gameplay everything is more fun if you let people wait (people are usually happy to help if it's at low cost to them, and they get to keep taking actions) but as a teaching tool I like how clear it becomes that you want the high producers to stick around. (Sometimes unless you're second place under one of their niches.)
Since there's no random element and no hidden information, people can 'solve' the game and math out the rest of the game from the end of turn one. It wouldn't be too hard to add a bit of randomness, but the basic math of the game doesn't have that much room so double check the income. Random elements mean that trade is even more important, since other players become a kind of insurance against accident and famine.
Death/survival/escape is basically the Wins/Superwins from Straightmaker, but the story seems to help it work better. This is the least abstract of the five, and I think that's very much to its credit.
Overall I feel like this is one of the stronger successes of the five.
Setup: Take a 52 deck of cards. Shuffle, and deal half evenly to the players, half to a pile face down as the Discard pile.
Objective: At the end of the game, you'll pick one Central card from your hand. The object of the game is to get as many Alike cards to that Central card out of the Discard pile and into your hand as you can. "Alike" means either the same suit or the same value as your Central card. It doesn't matter how many cards other people get into their hands. Try to beat your previous best score.
Play: Play proceeds in turns, starting with the oldest player and going clockwise. Each turn, you can choose to either Look or Match.
If you Look, look at the top card of the Discard pile, then put it back either on top or on bottom.
If you Match, show a card from your hand and name a quality of your chosen card. (Either suit or value.) Turn the top card of the Discard pile face up- if it matches your chosen card, then you collect the top card of the Discard pile and put it into your hand. If it's not a match, put both the shown card and the top card of the Discard pile either on top or on bottom of the Discard pile.
The game is over when you run out of cards in the Discard pile, or someone runs out of cards in their hand.
You may freely communicate with each other throughout the game.
The point here is to create a shifting network of alliances- you can more efficiently pick up cards if the person to your right Looks, then tells you what's there- and there's the opportunity to differentiate by picking different suits to focus on. This makes games with more than four players unstable, and you can get a bit of bickering based on how many cards of the same suit someone started with. Even if everyone has a different suit, you can get a little bickering over cards with Alike values, which is intentional.
The other point was to experiment with games where there was something to add to the pile. Dealerchip and Straightmaker have a static pool of cards everyone is working with, whereas Discard adds new cards over time. Ultimately though, there's a limited amount of pie to go around and everyone knows the way to get more pie is to prevent other people from getting the flavour they want from the fixed potential supply. I think to make that work, there would need to be more uncertainty in how much new value could be created.
I mostly think of Discard as a failed experiment. It also takes an annoyingly long time to play out.
Setup: Take a standard 52 deck and shuffle.
Objective: Get points by making poker hands with fellow players and dividing the points. Hands are worth points as follows:
| Hand | Points |
|---|---|
| Five of a kind* | 9 |
| Straight Flush | 8 |
| Four of a kind | 7 |
| Full House | 6 |
| Flush | 5 |
| Straight | 4 |
| Three of a kind | 3 |
| Two pair | 2 |
| One pair | 1 |
| High Card | 0 |
(One pair and high card are worth 0 points.)
Your objective is to have the highest average score you can over all hands you play. You don't care how many points everyone else gets, either per-round or on average.
Play: Each round, deal each player two cards. If there are only two players, deal an additional card face up as the Table. Rounds should be fast; if necessary, set a timer for one minute.
Players may freely talk to each other. Any combination of players may combine their cards to make a poker hand, but must mutually agree on how to distribute the points between them. Each player may only be part of one point-scoring hand. If the Table has a card, the Table refuses to combine hands unless it gets 1 point, but agrees to any combination where it gets 1 point.
Variant: Play for a fixed number of rounds. Fifteen is a good number.
Variant: Points must be arranged in whole integers; you can't give someone half a point.
Variant: Each card can only be part of one point-scoring hand. Players can contribute each of their two cards to two different hands.
Variant: Have a Table card in games with more than one player. The Table can be a part of any number of poker hands, though 'negotiates' for one point from each as normal.
*If playing with more than one deck
First off, not letting people use fractional points is kind of me messing with people. For proper negotiation practice I think it's better to let them use fractions. Nothing breaks if you let them split points into smaller chunks, but on a gameplay level I like the overhead of 'I'll owe you ones' and the friction it gives to most ways of building Two Pair and Three Of A Kind.
Adding the Table card during games with more players allows for more kinds of hands, though it's an intentionally stupid negotiating partner.
There exists a lovely argument that it takes five cards to make a hand, so everyone should get a fifth of the points if they contributed one card and two fifths if they contributed two cards. That lasts right until the Fun Negotiations when someone could be part of a flush or part of a straight flush and this becomes a bidding war, or when two players could make a Two Pair together but someone else has the right extra card to make it a Full House.
The thing I like about Handlink is it's the fastest cohabitive game I've yet come up with. You can play rounds very fast, and you can add and subtract players mid-game without creating any issues.
I'm a little sad about two pair and one pair having the same player payouts, but I think keeping the order of regular poker hands and the simple point ranking is worth that.
It's also very worthwhile to drop out of a game if you get a lucky start. I think that's kind of fine? Poker is the same way unless you're playing tournament. You can fix this by playing for a set number of rounds.
Something I like about cohabitive games is that it's a good answer to the dilemma of cooperative games.
Cooperative games risk 'quarterbacking' where the best player tells everyone else what to do and everyone does it or improves the one plan everyone is following. The three ways around quarterbacking I've seen are 1. communication barriers (Hanabi, The Mind) 2. sharp time limits (5 Minute Dungeon, Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes) or 3. potential traitors (Betrayal At House On The Hill, Saboteur.) Having separate goals is nice to prevent this, especially if there's always more to win. Someone might try to quarterback a strategy for everyone to get off the island in Commerce & Coconuts or everyone to get a straight in Straightmaker, but there is a limit on how much advice you should take in Dealerchip.
Sidenote: there's at least a little bit of prior art in the "semi-cooperative" genre, which is generally games where it's possible for every player to lose if a certain condition is triggered, and if you all avoid that "everyone dies" trigger then there's one winner. Notable exception is Nemesis, which has individual victory conditions for each player that mostly benefit from helping each other, but is fairly clear that you can win independent of other players. By my definition that makes Nemesis a fully cohabitive game, though it does lean more cooperative.
I notice I avoided putting stronger consequences in these games than just not trading with someone. It's like an artificial world where tariffs and trade embargoes exist, but not war. Even theft is awkward, though you can stiff people (probably just the once) out of what you said you'd trade them in Disordered Interests or ask for a loan in Commerce & Coconuts then not repay it.
Part of this is I want to give people a proper push out of the competitive mindset. Part of it is probably that I like building things and get annoyed when people knock over the thing I'm building, so adding in ways for other players to kick over my sandcastle seems less fun. (Unless it's a directly competitive game, in which case I can get in the right head space.) I should add more reasons and ways to interact negatively when I see some design space for it.
None of these games have managed what I think of as the hook. It's that thing where, after I lose the first game, I go "oh, let me try again, I think I see what I did wrong-" or where I doodle on a strategy in my head until I get to try it out. They work, they're okay, and I think there is a bit of depth in how to negotiate here, but it's just not catchy. I think that's because there's only really one thing going on at once here, there aren't layers.
They were good tests though, and I think I learned a bit of the design space from playing with these. If you give any of these a try, I'd be interested in your feedback.