06.01
Lately there has been a great deal of attention to the card game Dominion. However, I feel that I must set the record straight by exposing some things that have been bothering me.
Basically: “Dominion” is not a RPG. This is obvious, but what is not obvious is, it is even less of a RPG than most other borderline RPG-esque card games & board games. -_- Since it is not a Role Playing Game, and does not engage the player in forming a ROLE, I do not give it my support. There are two core elements in tabletop RPGs which Dominion lacks:
* A Setting for the Game to Take Place In
* A Persona or Identity for the Player
Dominion lacks a board. Now, most RPGs aside from D&D and other tactical games lack a board as well, so this is not necessarily a problem. **BUT!!** In the absence of any other RPG-esque features, a board still helps facilitate identification with the game, because a board — if it is a board on which a single player is identified by a single piece, like, say, “Candy Land” but unlike “Chess” — forces the player to exist within the world of the game. Gaming is about boundless opportunity, but the human mind can only cope with so much at once, so it is often helpful to limit the world to the scope of a board. “The map is not the territory,” they say, but games with a map or board of some kind are an imaginative aid which can, at times, produce even more fruitful roleplaying than purely mental RPGs. By locating ourselves on a map, we create the world around us. For the same reason, “Magic: The Gathering” is superior to other CCGs because it has Lands (despite Richard Garfield’s later vacillating on the idea), which situate each game of Magic as taking place within a world, not just an empty, barren battlemap defined only by the opponents. So, games without maps (such as Dominion and most other card games) are generallyy less imaginative than board-based games.
Secondly, Dominion lacks any kind of ‘player character’ or player role. In board games like “Shadows over Camelot” or “Cosmic Encounter” or “Talisman,” the player chooses a character at the start of the game, and their powers are different depending on that choice. This simple element of choice distinguishes one player from another and aids with individualization. In deck-building CCGs, a player constructs their identity *before* the game begins, by choosing (and buying) their cards. But in “Dominion,” every player starts with the same basic powers as everyone else. As the gimmick goes, they “build their deck during gameplay,” but since they are drawing from the same pool as all the other characters, there is little room to stand out, and every character begins the game as a sort of generic feudal-medieval abstraction.
The lack of these elements makes “Dominion” substantially less suitable for roleplaying and imagination and, thus, substantially less interesting. -_- Even “Monopoly” is more exciting. In “Monopoly,” we have a board representing the physical space of the city, and not only that, it’s a board which changes and develops based on the economic investment (i.e. the will) of the player-characters. A very advanced concept for the time! Also, in “Monopoly,” although there are no character powers in the standard rules, at least you have the option to pick between a thimble, a steam iron, a top hat and a little dog, which summons up imagery of a millionaire with a background in the sewing, housewares, millinery or petwares industry! A true roleplayer needs nothing more than such simple cues to construct an epic drama of capitalism in the rough, a la Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” or Martin Scorcese’s “Gangs of New York.” Thus, “Monopoly” is a better game than “Dominion.” I plan to print this blog post out onto a small business card which I can hand to people when asked to play “Dominion” in the future ^^
I haven’t played Dominion, so I can’t assess whether it’s worse than Monopoly (a very, very high bar of badness to leap, in my estiamtion). But I find your judgment criteria curious.
Is the sole measure of goodness the RPG aspect of any game? Does that make Spades, Backgammon, Reversi (or Go), and Hearts bad games? There isn’t an RPG element to any of them, and yet they constitute some of the most popular games today (among the general public).
That said, Dominion may be less of an “RPG” than Monopoly (like I said, I have no personal experience).
Judging card and board games by how much they are RPGs is like judging a car based on how cakelike it is.
The theme of Dominion is, in fact, awfully thin. But its game play is interesting, dynamic and innovative. The theme of Monopoly is stronger, marginally, because the game did in fact set out to be about something. But the game play is boring, stultifying, and very often lacking in meaningful choice.
Theme and RPGness can be factors that make non-RPGs better — see Warhammer, no better than any other miniatures game except for the rich backgrounds. But making them the only factor on how good a game is, is crazy.
The real reason you don’t like Dominion is that you don’t care for the gameplay. If you liked that, you wouldn’t need to be able to choose to be a thimble to make it better.
Three words: What the f!@#k?
Theo buddy, I usually love your blog and all but man….this is reaching.
What’s next?
Pac Man is more of an RPG than tic-tac-toe?
Minesweeper is more of an RPG than Spades?
Chess is more of an RPG than blueberry pie?
mmmm…..blueberry pie…..
@everybody — I don’t understand the controversy. ^^ A game is about creating a space within which people can experience things outside the bounds of reality, which summons up ideas and images in people’s minds. At least, this is what I think gaming is about. Of course, games like these have no “DM”, they have no one designing the experience and weaving the flow of the events, unless you count the original designer. But the point of a game is to inspire the ***IMAGINATION***! The point of “Tag” is to imagine being chased by zombies. The point of Chess is to imagine being a king in command of huge armies (as well as, possibly, a footsoldier in these armies). In card games, at least one can imagine oneself as a gambler and card shark. Unfortunately, when you get to really abstract games like Go or Tic-Tac-Toe…. （´-`） Then it becomes harder for me to imagine a scenario and a “life within the game” and that is why I consider these games less successful. As a DM or a player, what is real in a game is a Creation (the world) and the player who inhabits that world. That’s what’s interesting to me about gaming. I just don’t get the appeal of more mathematical, dry games.
My guess is that you have little to no experience with young children: The point of tag for the vast majority of kids is NOT pretending you’re being chased by zombies, it’s avoiding being “it.” Most children who are at the age where you play tag don’t even know what a zombie is. Chess, similarly, is not pretending you are a kind in command of armies – I highly doubt the grandmasters or anyone who seriously plays chess is thinking at all about the theme. Nor is poker about pretending you’re a professional gambler. They’re all about competition and winning. As are RPGs for some players.
You’re trying to apply your personal way of approaching a game to the rest of the world but they don’t work like that – most people, for better or worse, live in the here and now and aren’t interested in imagination.
Oh and Dominion is a lot of fun, especially if you don’t try to imagine yourself building a kingdom but rather focus on the strategy behind the game.
@MJ Harnish – I’m sure there are gamers who would agree with you, but strategy without an imaginative scenario is uncompelling. The most glorious battles in the real world are always the ones with the most cultural and historical baggage, as opposed to the ones which are obvious just about food, resources, etc.
If I may opine again, I think the reaction you see is because your sole basis for judging a game’s ‘goodness’ is the RP aspect. And, while the ‘theme’ of a game is important, that is not a very good basis for judging the worth or fun of a game.
Taking it away from the table top context, look at the great American past time of baseball. No real theme there. Just a game of dexterity and skill. But competition is fun. Clearly, there are other reasons to enjoy games than the RP opportunities they provide.
Or, sometimes a game with a great theme (like Twilight Imperium) nevertheless is not that fun to play (for me at least) because of its mechanics. But, by your metric, Twilight Imperium – or some of the lengthier war games – would be “better” games for no other reason that they had a theme. Despite the fact they are a bore to play and may be mechanically unwieldy or broken.
So theme, while important, cannot be the sole metric of judgment. And, while you can say that Monopoly has more of an RP aspect (or better theme) than Dominion, I think its unfair to say that on that basis alone, Monopoly is a “better” game.
Plus, if the measure of a game comes from the individual’s ability to simulate a role-play type experience, that also makes every game completely subjective. Maybe you are better at role-playing zombie tag, and I’m better at seeing my state in Dominion and role-playing a barron (or whatever the theme of the game is). I guess that would make Dominion “better” for me and tag “better” for you. Once we reach that level of abstraction, no game can really be said to be “better” than another.