Good Idea, Bad Idea: Mandatory Pacifism

In my last Good Idea, Bad Idea I talked about random maps. This got me thinking about the mechanics of board games. Today I’m going to talk about two board games: Settlers of Catan and Risk. Both are classics and yet they are so different. Risk gives us a simplified world map, one I’ve memorized far better than the real globe, while Settlers is board is composed of randomly distributed hexagons. Risk is all about destroying your enemies while Catan only allows you to harm others indirectly through trading and passive aggressive building.

I know these are board games, but they have digital versions, and they’re great so you should be playing them anyway. Also it may be a bit unfair to compare them as Risk is decades older than Settlers. Still I love them both and they offer good contrasting examples of how conflict can be mediated through war or pure economics.

When I was freshman in college the guys in my dorm used to love to play Risk. I know some people don’t look for competition in games but I love it. Our games were always ruthless and brutal with plenty of name calling and yelling. Hoarding cards was always a dangerous proposition as it gave the other players more incentive to wipe you out and take them. I loved it and never thought that board games should be about anything else besides building armies and smashing them into each other. Then one day someone brought in Settlers of Catan and rocked my world.

If you’ve never played it Settlers is part of the new wave of European board games that have been taking America by storm in the last decade. Much like the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Europe has something of superlative quality and we in America must have it. Euroboard games emphasize several mechanics: keeping all players invested until the game ends, several ways to score points rather than just one, and a level of difficulty between casual games and serious war games.

Anyway, one of things that it’s impressed me about Settlers is how cutthroat games can be. In Settlers you expand out from an initial position, building roads and settlements in an effort gain access to more resources. But prime spots are limited and intense competition for them drives the game. Once someone builds next to that field or quarry that spot is closed off forever. That’s right, forever.

By not allowing other players to directly attack each other it makes the game incredibly intense. Think about Risk for a second. It’s important not to lose battles and keep your continent borders intact so you’ll get extra men on the next turn. But often people still manage to break through North Africa, or Central America, or Indonesia. Still this is to be expected and as long as sufficient troops are available to counter-attack or press the battle elsewhere the game continues. This ebb and flow goes on until massive armies exist and great swaths of the board change hands every turn.

Not so in Settlers of Catan. Instead, once something is built it endures to the completion of the game. You have no recourse but to get there first. Whether it means making an unfavorable trade with another player, stealing resources with a development card, or taking the poor exchange rate that the banks offers, players are forced to do whatever it takes to get the job done. And it’s great.

Settlers seems to bring out the latent businessman or woman in us all. There’s wheeling and dealing, begging, threating, throwing of cards and dice angrily, and yelling, always yelling. I love it. No one can serenely sit back, they are either directly involved in the struggle to build or hoping to profit off it. It always seems wrong to ask for three cards in exchange for that one that little Billy really needs to build a road, and yet it is so right.

Settlers of Catan teaches us that gathering wealth can be even more cruel than war itself.

P.S. It’s so Urgent