Math Can Be Annoying
In Lost Cities you have this wonderful scoring event that happens at the end of the game. There is nothing better after a fun game than taking a math test. It helps to have a pencil and paper handy to calculate your mess of a score. You have to sort through bases points, penalties, multipliers, and bonuses. Recounts seem to happen more often than not. All in all, this is a clunky system.
Here comes Keltis, which is sort of a reworking of Lost Cities. You still have all of the math, but it has been cleverly baked into the game. As you move your token, it magically does the math for you. At the end of the game, all you have to do is add some simple numbers together, and viola! you have your score!
Math Can Be Anti-Climatic
Ticket to Ride requires you to track your score as you lay tracks. The rules could have been written such that the players add up their score for tracks at the end of the game, since that method is equally as valid. The big difference is that the end game would be so full of addition that the finals scores would be anti-climatic. Thankfully, the current system lets the player after laying tracks to just move their score token by counting the spaces out or adding two simple numbers together.
Math Can Be Easier
Whether or not this was intentional, I like how in Through the Desert (and probably countless other games) the math is smoothed out at the end of the game. Through the game you collect all of these small valued scoring tokens. Then at the end of the game, you get bonuses for enclosed areas. Lets say you score 7 points for an enclosed area, you would take a 10 pointer and return 3 of your small tokens. After you do this several times, you are left with a lot of 10 and 5 point tokens and fewer 1,2 and 3 point tokens. When it comes time to score, it is a lot easier dealing with adding up units in 5s and 10s than it is dealing with 1s, 2s, 3s and 5s. Its a small thing, but I really like how the math feels like it has been smoothed out for me.
What Did I Learn?
In my game Venture Forth I’ve taken some actions to reduce the amount of calculation that occurs at the end of the game. The game didn’t have a ton of adding, but I wanted to add more scoring opportunities and that was limited by the current method of scoring.
Firstly, I am introducing a score track – nothing too innovative here. When you get points, you move up on the track. As simple as this is, it is one of the best ways to keep track of score and it allows players to gauge their rank.
Secondly, I am removing an equation from the game. This is not something I actively sought out to do. It just occurred because of other changes that I made. Once it was gone I noticed how smooth the scoring looked. Basically, if your adventurer had less “points” than his “power”, then you got a penalty. Now, if your adventurer has “tokens” on him, you get a penalty. What I did was took out the comparison. I know this is a simple little thing hardly worth mentioning, but it does illustrate that math can be moved around. The comparison is still there and the game plays identically, but now you just have to glance at the board to see if you have any penalties rather than to do some quick math.
What other games have math smoothed out?