Player Elimination Improvisation
I spent the weekend with a small, wonderful group of friends playing board games. Over a two-day span, we played five different games - Vegas Showdown, Spellcaster, Everdell, Clank!, and Solarquest. You’ve probably never heard of some of these, especially Spellcaster (more on that someday), but today I want to talk about Solarquest.
A small portion of the Solarquest board.
Solarquest is a 1985 board game that is basically a Space-themed Monopoly game with a few additional twists: a fuel tracker that can strand you indefinitely in space (which means you lose) and optional (but important) rules for laser fights that can cause you to explode (which also means you lose.) If you’re thinking “But Eric, Monopoly doesn’t need more punishing player elimination mechanics!” then you’re absolutely on the right track. Player elimination in board games is usually pretty crappy.
Through some lucky rolls and good resolutions of “Red Shift” cards (think Community Chest), I took control of 6 of 9 locations in Jupiter’s orbit and quickly bankrupted my friend David, who had lost two of his own planets to bad Red Shift cards, leaving me far ahead of my two remaining opponents. The original spaceships from the game box were long gone, so we used actual Monopoly pieces (mostly - one player used a Xenomorph earring,) and my choice of the car led to some unflattering Elon Musk comparisons.
As the game continued in a slog of rent payments and occasional anticlimactic laser battles… actually, let’s talk about laser battles. You have to pay precious fuel to fire your lasers, and you only hit if you roll doubles on 2d6. A hit causes that opponent to lose money equal to the number you rolled times 100, which means up to 2500 “Federons” can be burned in a hurry. Why not 3600? Well, if you roll double sixes, your target explodes and you get all of their properties and money.
Anyway, we had some fairly unimpressive laser fights and the game was going slowly, but there was still a lingering desire to not call the game off quite yet. At this point, I started to think about ways to reintroduce David into the game. I was starting to flash back to a game of Monopoly I played against my friend Gavin and his father about twenty years ago - Gavin lost early and went to the other room to play Unlimited Saga for PS2 while his highly competitive father and I slugged it out for two more hours. I don’t remember who won, which probably means I didn’t.
After some contemplation, I proposed that David, who really enjoyed the comical random range of the laser mechanic, re-enter the game as a roving band of Reavers whose purpose was simply to laser other players and eschew property and money in order to speed the game along. My pitch was that his turns would look like this:
At start of turn, fire lasers upon any player in range (two spaces)
Roll dice to move, ignoring gravitational-based movement mechanics to ensure smooth progress around the board and ignoring fuel restrictions
At end of turn, fire lasers upon any player in range
David was only too happy to agree, especially since my proposal started him in close proximity to me, his favorite target for lasers all game (and, you know, always.) Shortly thereafter, we amended the rules one more time - since rolling doubles normally caused a player to draw a Red Shift card, which wouldn’t really make sense for the Reavers and their laser-like focus on… well, lasers, we allowed David to benefit from normal Monopoly rules and get an extra roll and additional shot of lasers on a roll of doubles. This would ensure even faster movement around the board and some good equal-opportunity blastin’.
Not too long after, Eva was overtaken by further rent payments, allowing me to negotiate Space Peace with Andrew so that we could play another game of Clank!. So what’s the moral of this story? If you’re playing a silly, low-stakes game where people want to continue playing but aren’t invested in victory at all costs, consider a little improvisation to make sure nobody has to sit out too long. Make it a collaborative effort, and if you happen to be winning and can skew the design a little so that you’re actually disadvantaged by the made-up mechanics, even better.