The Trouble With Friends

In a competitive two player game your objective is simple, win! As such, quite often your choices are easy to make, you simply pursue the path that should give the best return. However, as soon as the number of players increases your choices can become less clear. Casual alliances and the potential for treason can encourage you to make 'sub-optimal' plays in order to avoid attracting too much attention.

In the game Junta each player is given a role in the corrupt administration. Each position has different abilities and command of certain military units. At the start of each turn the President will distribute the budget as face down bank notes (face down so as to hide the denomination), each player then gets to vote to pass or reject the budget. While there are ways to put a budget through at gunpoint most presidents decide to be as fair as possible in order to try and stave off a coup d'etat.

Junta is designed around social interactions and as such the need to compromise is obvious, but this same requirement will often show up in games where it was never intended. Playing multiplayer Magic: the Gathering is often an exercise in not looking too threatening for fear of having every other player try to eliminate you. It has gotten to the point where players have started to tap all their lands at the end of their turn to show that they have nothing else to do and don't represent a threat during an opponents turn. I find this to be irritating and refuse to do it, because it means that if I later don't tap out I'm advertising a card I want to play at instant speed. The annoying part is that often I get attacked early on simply because I have untapped lands.

Cooperative games, such as Arkham Horror or Pandemic, can suffer from a different problem. Since everyone is working together they will often discuss strategy and tactics, which is fine until a more experienced player starts effectively taking everyone else's moves for them. The thing to remember is that, generally speaking, multiplayer games are designed to be a social affair with everyone having fun, not an exercise in ruthlessly winning, and should be played in such a way so as to maximise enjoyment.