The SdJ nominees for 2019 were announced last month and were full of entrants of interest to co-op fans. The traditional SdJ award, which runs pretty light nowadays, nominated Just One (a true co-op, sort of) and Werewords (a hidden traitor game). Then the heftier Kennerspiel award nominated Detective (another true co-op). It was a…
Team Study: Bang! The Dice Game
Two weeks ago, we discussed Bang!, one of the foundational teamplay games of the ’00s. Today we’re following up with a look at Bang! The Dice Game, which followed in its footsteps by offering a variant of Bang!’s teamplay with dramatically simplified game mechanics. Bang! The Dice Game by Michael Palm & Lukas Zach Publisher:…
Co-op Thoughts: Losing the Game
In Meeples Together, one of our prime assumptions is that you’re playing the game to win. Certainly, there can be any number of anti-cooperative incentives that encourage players to do things that are contrary to victory, but they still occur within the spectrum of winning and losing: players often angst about their anti-cooperative incentives because they…
Team Study: Bang!
The 21st century has seen a number of pivotal cooperative games, such as Lord of the Rings (2000), Shadows over Camelot (2005), and Pandemic (2008). However, the adjacent teamplay space has seen several games that were just as foundational. One of the earliest was Bang! (2003), which brought the idea of hidden teams into the…
Case Study: Police Precinct
One of the interesting results of the success of Pandemic (2008) was that a subset of co-op games came out that used Pandemic’s design as a starting place. Some were very obviously influenced, such as Richard Launius’ Defenders of the Realm (2010), but others went further afield, but still maintained a similar foundation of modern…
Apocrypha I: Cues, Triggers, and Timers
The text for Meeples Together was finalized in July 2018, but we’ve continued to play new co-ops and team games since, including Abandon Planet (2017), AuZtralia (2018), Betrayal Legacy (2018), Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2018), Just One (2018), The Ninth World (2018), Pandemic: Iberia (2016), Pandemic: Rising Tide (2017), and Sprawlopolis (2018)….
Case Study: Room 25
Room 25 gets some attention in Meeples Together, but it may be a game that you’re not familiar with, so here’s a full case study on the game, which has been growing and expanding since 2012. Room 25 by François Rouzé Publisher: Matagot (2012) Cooperative Style: True Co-op or Traitor Play Style: Exploration, Simultaneous Selection…
Co-op Thoughts: Subverting Cooperation through Roleplaying
In Meeples Together we write quite a bit about subverting cooperation. For the most part, cooperation is easy, so a designer needs to figure out how to convince players not to work together — through limitations, restrictions, or anti-cooperative limitations. The more a design can convince players to spoil their own game … the better! This year,…
Team Study: Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is another co-op related game that released just as we were Kickstarting Meeples Together. It’s a sequel to Between Two Cities with many of the same mechanics, but it’s still worth a little investigation on its own. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig by Rosset & O’Malley…
The Betrayal Legacy Chronicles, Part One
One of the joys of a Legacy game is seeing how it changes over time. I love that idea, which is why I’ve been so enthusiastic writing about the category’s Legacy Play, Legacy Venn, Legacy Mechanics, and Legacy Emotions in past articles. As I’ve seen my own groups’ games of Pandemic Legacy: Season Two and SeaFall…