Blog Post

Unfun Games

  • By keithstetson
  • 26 Nov, 2016
There is a class of games that is not “fun” to play in the traditional sense (although I imagine we could argue about what that is), but one still gets something out of playing them. The term may not be precise enough, but I will call those games worthwhile. These games do not offer the […]
There is a class of games that is not “fun” to play in the traditional sense (although I imagine we could argue about what that is), but one still gets something out of playing them. The term may not be precise enough, but I will call those games worthwhile .
These games do not offer the same sense of satisfaction that a game where you play super capable bad-asses would.
The best example I can offer of this type of game is Liam Burke’s Dog Eat Dog .

A game of colonialism and its consequences. As a group, you work together to describe one of the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, defining the customs of the natives and the mores of the outsiders arriving to claim it. One player then assumes the role of the Occupation force, playing their capable military, their quisling government, and whatever jaded tourists and shrewd businessmen are interested in a not quite pacified territory. All the others play individual Natives, each trying in their own ways to come to terms with the new regime. The game begins when the war ends. Through a series of scenes, you play out the inevitably conflicted relationship between the two parties, deciding what the colonizers do to maintain control, which natives assimilate and which run amok, and who ends up owning the island in the end. The game will come in the form of a book, with the full rules, author’s notes that explain the design process, and a brief historical overview of colonization in the Pacific.

This game is perfectly designed to do what it does. Having played both sides of the game I feel I have a greater understanding of how circumstances dictate behavior and cause people to do things that might otherwise not. It’s hokey to say, but I am a better person for having played the game.
But it certainly wasn’t fun . Not in the way that a water slide is fun. Not in the way that sex is fun. And not in the way that Swords Without Master is fun, either.
I find myself wondering if there is room for this sort of experience in the board game realm. I started designing a nano game for Button Shy’s contest and what was intended to be a thinky-fun game of strategy about the futures market kept become a statement on Trumpian capitalism. The player who bought the game starts out with more cards. The player who wins a round gets information not available to the other players. Hey, anyone could win the game. It’s not like it’s statistically impossible. Just really, really unlikely.
These were clever(ish) distillations of political statements into game mechanics, but they certainly aren’t fun. Even for the player who received a small million dollar loan an extra card or win bonus it’s not fun. It’s not even satisfying in the Dog Eat Dog sense of “Oh, that’s how this thing happens,” even though that’s how this thing happens (Trumpian capitalism, that is).
Freedom: The Underground Railroad gives that feeling, and I think the key difference is that it is a cooperative game. Yes, it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ll complete your task, but that’s sort of the point. (Although I don’t know if actual conductors had to sacrifice one group to save another. That was a hard choice when they were meeples; I can’t imagine it with people). Perhaps The Grizzled also hits a similar note in regards to trench warfare. This makes me wonder if cooperation is needed in the board game space in order to have a worthwhile experience in an inherently unfair arena.
Needing that co-op element would explain why it works so well in RPGs. On some level, they are all cooperative (prove me wrong!). Even if we’re all fighting in character, we’re all working together to tell a story. So bleak, brutal games like  Witch , Montsegur 1244 , and even my own Seco Creek Vigilance Committee are fun for our peculiar definition of fun. Work together to watch it all fall apart.
Fun, right?
By Keith Stetson 23 Oct, 2018
Over the weekend I had the good fortune to be a guest at Gauntlet Con 2018, the annual (and perhaps soon twice annual!) virtual convention run by the fine folks at the Gauntlet community (if you don't know about the Gauntlet yet, you've got some research to do). I ran Seco Creek, as I am wont to do. It was a super fun, if atypical playthrough. Our John Gammon couldn't make it, and I'd never run for that particular mix of four PCs before. We also had two former lovers in the mix - a new record! I think the tone ended up being a little lighter than usual, but I certainly wouldn't call the ending happy. Check it out for yourself!  
By Keith Stetson 13 Jul, 2018


If you know me, you likely know I love Epidiah Ravachol’s sword and sorcery RPG Swords Without Master and have run and played it dozens of times. Based on a suggestion by Michael Miller, I decided to take my relationship with Swords to the next level and run three interconnected sessions of if at the recently concluded Dexcon. My pitch was as follows:

Swords Without Master; "Anthology" by Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing; presented by Keith Stetson. An INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED GAME - Part of the Indie Games Explosion! Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dream ancient worlds and ancient tales. Take up sword and staff, pen and ink, and inscribe your own tale in the Anthology. These stories written on air will be composed by us over a series of three linked gaming sessions. Play one session to play a short story; play them all for the full Anthology.

While we did roll Jovial several times, Glum predominated as I detail in my after action report.


  • Problems with players getting into multiple sessions.

Each of my three sessions of Swords had four seats at the table. My ideal set-up would have been two folks who played in all three games, one person who played in two, and four folks who popped into one game each. What I had in actuality was one person in two sessions and ten folks who played one game each. Not even close.

Part of this issue arose from the fact I didn’t flag explicitly enough in the description that this was a continuing game. I said it clearly, but the way folks read these descriptions you have to shout. The problem with that is if I shouted too loudly, people would think it was an all or nothing affair, which is leaning too far in the other direction.

Another part of this issue arose from how Double Exposure cons do their scheduling. It’s unique, and quixotic, and well discussed elsewhere. Suffice to say, I had several folks come up to me and say “I signed up for all your sessions and only got into one,” and suchlike.

This situation didn’t hurt our story too much; after all, it was conceived as an anthology. The main problem with how this worked out is I had to teach the game in depth at every session. For a game like Swords that has a serious learning curve, this was draining. Added to the other draining factors (see next bullet point), and I left the con properly soured on Swords. I know, me soured, what?


  • Teaching, then re-teaching, then re-re-teaching...

My paying job is as special education teacher, so I definitely understand that re-teaching is going to be required when any novel concept is presented. What I didn’t understand was that (1) I would have to do more initial teaching than expected (see above) and (2) some folks would be resistant to learning.

I mentioned above there were several draining factors to the Anthology, and the second major one was the players who weren’t playing by the rules. I don’t mean that they were cheating necessarily, just that they couldn’t - or wouldn’t - abide by Swords’ strict narration guidelines. By this I mean taking definitive action and narrating for characters other than their Rogue without tossing the dice, as well as inserting enough slipping and struggling to take chunks of time from the spotlight player. Some folks needed a gentle reminder to not do this; others didn’t stop.

There was a domino factor to this, where folks realized that they weren’t going to get the dice again for a while and when they did they’d be spoken over, so they hung on to narration as long as they could. The only rational response to that for other Rogues was to do that same, and we ended up in a narration escalation. The third game of the con lasted for four and a half hours. We weren’t aiming for speedruns, but I was hopeful to get two tales in a slot, or at least head to the bar early. Instead, I ended up exhausted and empty.


  • The map phase has potential.

When I posted on Google Plus about running the Anthology, Eppy sent me the rules for (parts of?) a new phase called the Chronicler Phase. I wanted to have a map as a touchstone for our Rogues and this phase promised to create one. It essentially works as a Rogues phase, but instead of demands about other players’ Rogues, you make demands about the map. “Draw for us the walking castle of Count Oglethorpe.” “Tell us of the burial practices of the Sky Wardens.” “Define for us the sigil to warn traveller’s of sorcerous routes.”

The phase created a very fruitful map for us that directly influenced our Rogue creation as well as our Tale. However, given how new the players were to Swords, it was a bit of heavy lifting right there at the beginning, especially as the Chronicler Phase has Stymies, Mysteries and Morals that don’t function exactly the same as in the other Phases. Still, I found this a useful procedure and was glad to have it.


  • Both our tales and our tome were compelling.

Despite our difficulties, the big experiment of the Anthology was a success. Each individual session had a (more or less) satisfying tale, and there was an overall arc to all the tales that would make a decent novel.

In session one, we had a griffin Rogue, who had come West to see what was happening to his people’s disappearing eggs. Turns out they were being ground up and snorted for their narcotic properties. That must have been an awkward report to the griffin kings.

In session two, a party went East to griffin lands to patch things over with the griffins. Instead, they poisoned one of the triumvirate of kings and set the two great species on the brink of war.

In session three, another party went East as an advance party for an assault and ended up meeting with all three griffin kings (deceased included), before the purest-hearted of them got a seat on the griffin council and held hostilities at bay… for now.


  • So would I do it all again?

I learned a lot from this experiment: both about myself, and about the game. But ultimately, no, I would not do it again. At least not at a convention where scheduling practices could cause me to have to teach the game so repeatedly. Swords is not simple to pick up, and the process of teaching it over and over left me limp. However, I would certainly run Swords as a campaign given the right group of players. And, you know, given time to recuperate from this experiment!


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By Keith Stetson 09 Dec, 2017
After the success of its Kickstarter, I've moved Seco Creek Vigilance Committee over to Pledge Manager. Even if you missed the crowd funding, you can still get in before the book goes to press. Retail copies will be available after the fact, but they will be limited, so pre-ordering is a good idea if you're afraid of missing the game.
By keithstetson 05 Jun, 2017
I think it might be game designer heresy to say it now, but there are a lot of amazing things in Dungeon World. One of my favorites is the command to “Draw maps, leave blanks.” At first this seemed counter intuitive to me. If I have a map, I want a map. Full stop, no […]
By keithstetson 08 May, 2017
I recently got around to reading The Warren by Marshall Miller. The Warren is a Powered by the Apocalypse game based on rabbit fiction like Watership Down. It has some really elegant design. My very favorite bit – and what inspired this post –  is the Compete move. For those who don’t know (and really, […]
By keithstetson 07 Feb, 2017
I have run Epidiah Ravachol‘s sword-and-sorcery masterpiece Swords Without Master dozens of times. Doing so, I’ve developed a very specific way to introduce newcomers to the game. This is how I do it.   Materials Character sheets Eidolons Two obviously differently colored d6, one glum and one jovial Neophyte’s List of Tricks Glum/Jovial indicators Ritual of the […]
By keithstetson 28 Oct, 2016
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By keithstetson 06 Feb, 2016
If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you probably know that Epidiah Ravachol is one of my favorite game designers and overall people. Furthermore, I am a big fan of the misfit space friends genre of fiction. That’s what makes it strange that it took me so very long to play Vast & Starlit, […]
By keithstetson 19 Nov, 2015
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By keithstetson 31 Jan, 2015
The Lonesome Phase had it’s second playtest a few weeks back. Looking over my notes and letting things tumble over and over in my brain gave me some more insight into what’s going on and what I want to be going on. The Lonesome Phase had a much more definite form this time. The Marshal began […]
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