"Please Don't Kill Me" Games

There is a certain subgenre of games that irk me. I will call them "Please don't kill me" (PDKM) games for the purpose of this article.

Essentially, they offer player interaction, but the only meaningful thing you can do with other players is screw them over; selectively. There are no teams, and every player is out for himself. This tends to turn the game into a game of grudges, and dogpiling the person in first place.

This really annoys me as a gamer and as a designer. I can remember many games where my strategy was just to essentially play "multiplayer solitaire" (or turtle, depending on the game) and divert attention from myself. It is very counterintuitive to actively punish players for doing well, and tends to promote "safe" (aka boring) gameplay. I also dislike it because it promotes "metagaming" where you do not play the game, you play the players, and old grudges and biases will haunt you. As someone who typically does well in games, "Please don't kill me" games tend to make me feel like a target.

A few examples of games that fit into this category:

• Munchkin - By far the worst for this, players hoard nasty cards until a player hits level 9, then players essentially remain there until the group collectively runs out of punishments. I actively dislike this game for that exact reason.
• Rattus - Not nearly as bad for it, this fits mainly in regards to player roles. If a player can sit on 2-3 roles for most of the game, it is very unlikely he will lose, however if (like me) a player continuously gets his roles stolen, he doesn't really stand a chance of winning.
• Smallworld - Smallworld fits this pretty much to a tee; however for some reason however, I never seem to mind it as much in this game. Smallworld just seems to have a particular brand of magic that, no matter how much players screw each other over, no one gets mad about it.
• Risk - This is pretty much why Australia is the best continent. But really though, why would you ever play Risk when there are so many better games available?

There are a lot of different ways to avoid PDKM syndrome.

• Cosmic Encounter avoids this trap by the cleverly designed Destiny Deck. Whenever you are to make an attack, you draw a card to determine which player you attack. In addition to the standard player cards, there are also special cards that target players meeting certain conditions (e.g. fewest lost ships, most foreign colonies). It also helps that losing your own planets is not overly punishing.
• Axis and Allies remedies Risk's flaws by forcing predetermined teams.
• Dominion's attacks hit every opponent, so that you cannot actively pick on a given player.
• King of Tokyo actually made a solution out of a problem, integrating this into its core gameplay, allowing confident players to become the "King" and take on everyone else
• Many eurogames don't let players directly attack each other, and only indirectly interfere with each other (by building a road or train route first, or buying key commodities up before they can).
• Shadows over Japan uses a combination of hidden knowledge and limited actions to keep players from each others' throats. The opportunity cost to attack another player is quite high, requiring you to reveal one of your ninjas, and potentially reveal your allegiance, as well as spending precious actions to move into position and attack. I think it is rather clever, though maybe I'm biased ;)

Until next time,

-Colin