Month: October 2021

I learned a new term today, it is Intelligence Augmentation (IA). Many of us have heard about AI, or Automated Intelligence, but the term IA was something I haven’t really considered much until now.  It’s not a new concept, in fact it’s as old as dirt. If you’ve ever notched a stick to keep count of something, looked up a mortgage payment in a mortgage table, used a slide-rule or one of those fancy new electronic calculators, you have Augmented your Intelligence.

IA is simply the act of using an external means to keep track of something or perform minor decisions for us while we focus on more important matters. How many of us currently have a cell phone nearby which is sifting through news to bring relevant information to our attention, keeping track of our schedules, and providing a link to the “Hive Mind” so we can ask it just about anything. IA has become an integral part of our lives. Many people fear AI (Artificial Intelligence) will somehow take over and make us obsolete, but in reality, we’ve been using technology to enhance our intelligence from day one and this can lead to newer and better versions of ourselves.

There are many examples of IA in tabletop games. The unique decks for each character in “Un-Matched” spare the player from having to create a custom deck and trying to get it to work properly with each character. The player boards in many games like “Scythe” and “Brass” reveal bonuses and actions as you remove components or re-arrange them on the player board. This reduces the rules overhead and pushes the player towards the fun and interesting decisions rather than the menial bookkeeping and minor decisions that don’t contribute much to the gameplay. Even a minor thing like placing an action token onder each spider token on my “Arachnid” game helps to reduce unnecessary rules overhead. As soon as a player places a new spider onto the web, an action token is revealed providing an additional player action.

Many of us have experienced AI in some form in a board game. It may have been an “Automa” deck used in a solo variant of a game like “Wingspan”, or perhaps the “Bots” used in “Power Grid” or “Root” to emulate additional players. Most of us, however, may not have considered how prevalent IA is in our board games and life in general. It is good to know that games are trying to make us smarter and our gaming experience more fun. I will gladly hand over the boring bits of a game to some device, or even an app. if this means more fun for me.

I welcome your thoughts on this?

Why is there an alpha player problem……”Because I Said So!”. This is, maybe, an extreme example of a problem that often plagues cooperative games. One player can dominate the game and try to control the direction of the game, which is usually only fun for only one person, the Alpha Player. The other players can experience everything from mild annoyance to outright anger. Some people consider this a fault of the game, while others believe it’s a problem with the game group. Regardless of who’s fault it is, it’s a problem which must be addressed and I believe I may have a solution.

I believe the problem isn’t so much that there is an Alpha player, it’s more about who takes on that role. In order to keep the game flowing, decisions must be made amongst differing opinions, and sometimes these decisions are arbitrary. The game must carry on and a dominating player will occasionally step in to attempt to break a stalemate.  This problem is even more likely to occur when one player is more familiar with the game than the others. Pushing through a decision is a necessary function for any group task, but it doesn’t have to be performed by the most dominant or aggressive member of the team. Why not elect an Alpha player who is fair and whose decisions will be readily accepted by the group. Players can elect one member of the group as the “Alpha”, who will make the final decisions whenever the group reaches an impasse. This player doesn’t necessarily have to be the most experienced player, just the one who can make the most impartial and fair decisions.

The players will hold a simple election before the game begins. Each player will pick a first choice and a second choice. (A player cannot pick themselves as a first choice.) The votes are tallied and the player with the most total votes is elected “Alpha”. In the event of a tie, then the one with the most first choice votes will be the winner. If it is still a tie, then the winner will be determined randomly. The “Alpha” will have the final word whenever the players cannot agree. This might help to alleviate the Alpha player problem.

I was listening to a TabletopBellhop podcast the other day, and one of the listeners asked what book or literary world would make a great board game. This is my pitch for a game based on one of my favorite science fiction novels.

Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction story where the Firemen are actually burning books and trying to eradicate the written word, while a handful of people are risking everything to try to preserve them. Players each are assigned a book and have to run around collecting chapters while the firemen are removing the books. Sometimes the firemen are getting close and you have to pick a chapter from a book other than yours. If the fireman catches you you lose one or more of your own chapters and are forced to replace them with whatever is at hand. Once you acquire enough chapters, you become the book. The story you tell from the bits and pieces you have acquired could be quite funny. For example, you can be “Oliver Twist”. Your story might take an interesting turn in chapter five because that chapter came from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, and finally, end with Oliver replacing his Canoot’n valve because the final chapter came from “Reader Digest Home Plumbing Repairs”. Once the last book is read, the player with the most complete book will be declared the winner.

Ray Bradbury might not be impressed with the light hearted approach to such a serious topic, but the game might be quite fun to play.