Risk

I played my first game of Risk today.  Well, it was actually some computerised knockoff, but as far as I can tell the rules were the same and the map almost identical (although the names differed).  It's never been a game I really looked at before; I'm mostly uninterested in multiplayer (i.e., more than two player) wargames as a result of early experiences with Diplomacy, and one even worse one with Machiavelli that would have been the last time I played games of that kind.  I'm not temperamentally well-suited to games where breaking alliances is a key part of the play.

(I also have issues with games where much of the play lies in convincing players to adopt the courses of action that you wish them to.  I'm all for setting up a situation through gameplay that shapes the desirability of their options, but it ceases to be fun for me when such facets are overshadowed by the persuasiveness of others (or myself).  I enjoy tactics and strategy, but not negotiation and persuasion.)

This was a three-person game, and fortunately (from my point of view) there was no real attempt to do much negotiation.  We had a random start, each claimed a continent (more or less), then fought out the rest.  I was fortunate enough to win as a result of a couple of things, in particular being able to claim two continents early on with a very small combined border (this was where the map differed from the official one, and I think it is a flaw in the version I played).  The other part was an overly cautious player adjacent to one side of that, enabling me to get away with glass cannon tactics far longer than I should have.

I don't want to comment on the quality of the game so much -- although obviously it plays fairly well -- but rather on the difference that I feel the computerised version made.  None of us had played it before (whether physically or on computer) so we were all on even status there.  We each got caught out by some interface issues, not understanding the attack rules and troop transfer mechanism at first.  If we have been playing a boardgame as such we could have simply worked out what was going on and resolved it, but since here the computer was in control we had to live with the consequences of these errors.  This may well have been ultimately significant, as that player I described as being overly cautious was, I believe, caught out by this several times, finishing their move early as a result of selecting troop movement.

But the difference that struck me afterwards -- and maybe I'm wrong about this, but it feels right -- is how little real investment there was in the results of battles.  It was pretty much just "click-click-click", with win or loss following.  Whereas if we were clustered around the board, dice clutched tight as we tried to infuse them with winning energy, making each individual roll... I think it would have been a lot more engaging.  By streamlining that process away the game was quicker and easier to play... but I think it also lost a good deal of player involvement as a result.  There was still the overall board position to consider and play for, but the narrative of the battles was lost.

I'm not sure that anything could be done about this, mind you.  But it feels like something to keep in mind when producing a computerised version of a board game: What aspects of the experience are being lost, and if they are important, is their some way to provide a similar experience?