Slay The Dragon: First Quests
A New Opponent
On my journey to become a storyteller I have encountered a new opponent, a new storyline if you will. My new opponent is the book ‘Slay The Dragon - Writing Great Video Games’ by Robert Denton Bryant and Keith Giglio. In this book the authors present a guide to become a better storyteller for the interactive medium. To help you do this they present you with quests at the end of every chapter, becoming not just guides but quest givers.
I have approached my new opponent and its quests head on. The first Questline focuses on playing and analyzing games. You do this - and this may or may not surprise you - by actually playing games. Video games and boardgames alike. Of course there is a catch. To effectively analyze and learn from the games you play, you must record the games you play, what you experienced playing them. Therefore the Questline requires you to start your own Game Journal.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that I was eager to finish that first quest quickly. Not to waste any time, I took a glance at the follow-up quest. This one required me to play a new board game and enter it as the first entry of my journal. I used this quest as the perfect excuse to finally play a board game I had wanted to play for a long time now: Ticket To Ride! What follows is a summary of the first entry in my Game Journal.
Game Journal: First entry
Ticket To Ride, played November 19th 2019 [Board game]
Storyline
The story of the game revolves around a group of friends who try to celebrate every year the accomplishment of Phileas Fogg, who travelled around the world in 80 days. This year they have decided to celebrate by traveling to as many American cities by train as possible in seven days. The one to get to the most cities wins $1 million.
The player goal is to win too, although there is no prize in game. The way players win diverges from the story as well, since players have a larger spectrum of strategies to win, rather than only getting to as many cities as possible. This means the goals of the characters and players diverge but they are not opposed.
The world of the story is conveyed through the game board, which depicts a map of the United States with main cities connected with rail lines. The train carriages that the players use to claim rail lines also enhance the player immersion.
Gameplay
Ticket To Ride has a relatively limited set of rules (you can find them here). More interestingly are the obstacles and setbacks. The first obstacle is a simple one: not having sufficient carriage cards to claim rail lines. This resource obstacle forces players to allocate their turn to either accrue more resources or play them to claim lines. The second obstacle is interesting because it depends on the other players: claiming routes blocks them from the other players. That means that this obstacle changes depending on how the other players play and which lines they claim.
The only real setback in the game is also very interesting. The setback happens at the end of the game, when players have to reduce their points with the value of the destination cards they have not completed. Since players can start with only two out of three destination cards (and are free to choose which two), it is entirely up to them to take up more cards. Even taking more allows them to keep but one of the three cards they take from the deck. This means that the setback of incomplete destination cards is pretty much self-induced.
It is also important to note that the gameplay does not really reflect the story, especially in the sense that rather than getting to as many cities as possible, players are rewarded for crossing the greatest distance. It is also odd that the friends in the story would decide they cannot pass over the same rail lines (except for certain exceptions?). There is a clear dissonance between the gameplay and the story.
Impressions
The game itself offers a great variety of strategies to earn the most points. A player can focus on completing destination cards, create the longest railway line, or spend your carriages as quickly as possible to end the game for everyone. The design of the board enhances the ability to use different strategies through the balancing of shorter and longer lines, gray and colored lines.