Pauper's Ladder is a board game from 2019, but the German version was just released this year, and I bought a copy. Pauper's Ladder is an adventure game, that is to say that you are dealing with a lot of unpredictable random events. You have some control, by deciding where you go, or by manipulating cards. But the basic mechanic is moving somewhere, drawing a card, and then seeing whether that card is good or bad for you. As my personal venture into fantasy board games and roleplaying games started in the 80's with Talisman, I can relate to that game loop.

Board games over the past decades have developed a divide between Eurogames and Amerigames (and that is the polite term, some people use Ameritrash). While not all Eurogames are European and not all Amerigames are American, a majority of games I see in shops here in Europe or encounter at a games fair are Eurogames. Eurogames are mostly about resource management and strategy, player interaction is often only indirect, and very often the victory condition is having the most victory points at the end. If you like to plan several moves ahead, Eurogames are for you. Amerigames are more concerned with the experience than with planning and strategy; they don't mind sudden surprises, as long as that creates fun, and those surprises can be players being able to directly attack each other.

Now for most of my life I have been playing pen & paper roleplaying games, which are very clearly Amerigames. And I continue to enjoy campaign games, like our current campaign of Arydia, which sit somewhere between board games and roleplaying games. So I did enjoy Pauper's Ladder, even if for Euro gamers the randomness might be a bit disconcerting.

I was thinking of the advantages of Amerigames this weekend, as I was playing some older Eurogames with some people in an unfavorable composition for that: Two of the four players knew the two games very well, and had even years ago played one of them at tournament level. Me and another guy played those games for the very first time. Even if winning is not the most important thing about playing games for me, playing a board game at such very different levels and having the feeling of not being in the running at all isn't much fun.

Since I have stopped playing roleplaying games and am visiting public board game nights twice a week on average, I have bought a lot of suitable games for that, and brought a different game every week. Apart from a few games like Dune: Imperium, which for some time were repeatedly played, most of the board games I played were as new to me as to the other players, which evens the playing field. One would need to play the same game with the same people repeatedly to achieve another sort of balance; and that is difficult in the environment I am playing in. Amerigames like Pauper's Ladder have this problem to a much lower degree, as the randomness much diminishes the effect of experience, and people can win by just being lucky. I really want to have some games like that in my collection, also because on some nights I just don't feel like deep thinking.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 10:08 AM Permanent Link