Design Patterns: This Is Bigger Than All Of Us

In their terrific new book, Meeples Together, Christopher Allen and Shannon Appelcline discuss”challenge systems” in cooperative games. Though they don’t explicitly offer a concise definition of a challenge system, we might distill one out of their extensive coverage of the topic and say that a Challenge System is a mechanism or set of mechanisms that produce an escalating set of obstacles and threats that will cause players to lose the game if they are not overcome. Allen and Appelcline note, in passing, that though their focus is on cooperative games, challenge systems exist in competitive games too, and that’s where we’ll focus our thoughts on today.

Implicit in our definition of challenge systems is that they represent threats that players must all face together – or, at least, the consequences of not facing those threats will impact all players. A good example of this is Survive: Escape From Atlantis, where on their turns, players remove tiles from the island, representing its sinking into the sea. The loss of tiles from the shared board makes the job of escaping to safety more difficult for all players – though the impacts of removing any one tile may hurt one player more than another. This type of mechanism, to continue with Allen & Appelcline’s language, causes decay in the game state, a worsening of the position of the players relative to their goals. Fewer island tiles and more sea spaces makes for a more dangerous board that will lead to more eaten meeples!

Another type of challenge system can be seen in Kingsburg, where players will have to face a Horde army that attacks each winter. The Horde army is represented by a single card, but each player fights the Horde separately and simultaneously, in fights that have no impact on one another. Thematically, players are all defending the kingdom, but from a game economics perspective, players are investing some of their actions to build enough military to claim the reward for defeating the Horde, or they’re directing their resources elsewhere, and accepting the penalties for losing to the Horde. Since the penalties in Kingsburg are quite stiff, and the strength of the Horde is uncertain, the dynamic is more of a press-your-luck choice as to how strong to make your military.

Whereas Kingsburg’s challenge system is experienced by each player individually, other games provide a collective challenge system, typically with rewards for the player who contributes most, punishments for the player who contributes least, or both. Technically, a system that only provides rewards may not be a challenge system, but simply another source of victory points or other benefits, similar to building the castle in Caylus.

One implementation of this kind of challenge system includes an evaluation of whether players defeat the threat together, or not. For example, in Game of Thrones: The Board Game players must collectively defeat the invading Wildlings. Players bid in an all-pay auction, seeking to spend a total sum of power equal to or greater than the strength of the Wildlings. If the players succeed, the player who contributed most receives a reward. But if the players fail, all players suffer a substantial penalty, but the player who contributed the least gets double the penalty.

When there is a collective element to a challenge mechanism, it creates a cooperative dynamic inside the competitive game. Some games, particularly traitor games, lean heavily into this dynamic. In Battlestar Galactica nearly every turn features a nearly-identical auction, mechanically speaking, to the one in Game of Thrones. In GoT, this subsystem is a gloss, an almost optional layer that works well because of the shifting allegiances and inter-player dynamics. In BSG, on the other hand, this mechanism is the heart of the gameplay, and provides mechanical expression for the thematic question of who is part of the collective, and who is working against it.

One game that offers a kind of case study for these challenge systems. Martians: A Story of Civilization can be played in four separate modes, solo, cooperative, semi-cooperative and competitive. In solo, one player controls everything. In cooperative, everything is shared: resources, workers, demands for resources, etc., and any player may use them as they wish. In semi-cooperative, players share some set of technologies, but each player has their own resources, resource generators, and private technologies. Players race to score the most points, even if the specific scenario’s goals aren’t met, but the game optionally allows players to choose to enforce an all-lose outcome if those goals are unmet. Finally, the competitive game fully separates the players, though trading is permitted. There is no scenario or additional challenge system present in this mode, though common impacts like weather modifiers will impact all players.

Challenge systems are a compelling tool for their ability to represent thematic elements and evoke a larger scope for the game. Video games often include many of these kinds of systems, where their upkeep is managed by the computer. In board games, too much of this kind of game butlering can lead to a charge of fiddliness. Nonetheless, challenge systems enable external elements like invading armies, capricious gods, or natural disasters to impact the game in meaningful ways.

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