I seem to have a different sense of meanness. I’ve played Cards against Humanity once, and it left me with a bad taste in my brain; I wouldn’t play it again, and I would probably get up and leave the room if other people were playing it—and what bothers me about it would be a thing I could call “meanness,” though I would probably be Nietzschean and say ressentiment.
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Ugh. I very much appreciate this side of mean being brought up. I find CAH reprehensible and it disturbs me to no end that my (non-gaming) friends all know and like it. And I mean, banal on top of it all. Ugh!
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ObPaullicino (and Matt and Quinns): https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/review-cards-against-humanity/
I wouldn’t really call CAH a mean game in the sense of the rest of the thread, in that you’re not really attacking other players, but I would call it an unpleasant game.
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I was coming from what is perceived as mean in boardgames, which is often very different from person to person, and as the thread shows offers a wide variety of interpretations. I found that the more I play the more my own preferences seem to have shifted back to more interaction and confrontation which I do not necessarily find to be mean… (still I can only play Pax Pamir every once in a while and find playing it very stressful even though I will say it is one of the best games I own)
@RogerBW summed up some of the basic underlying premises nicely:
The CAH type of meanness is somehow baked into a game designed to bring out the worst in people? It took my local group around 4 nights of playing with the same people (during a vacation) for it to get out of hand and although I would say that wasn’t because of the type of humor but because they got competitive about guessing what the current “host” would like (They could probably do the same to Dixit). It has been quite a few years since then and likely I would find the humor mean today in ways I didn’t perceive back then.
For me there is a difference between people being mean to each other and a game encouraging moves that interfere with someone else’s next move. Blocking someone from a worker spot or taking the last resource–while possibly somewhat frowned upon at a buffet–does not qualify as mean in a game. But ganging up on someone or making a move just to piss off another player that is mean in a game context. It probably also qualifies as being mean outside of the game context and the question arises if maybe it is a “player problem” rather than a “design problem” (to quote SVWAG)?
But there are definitely games that encourage interfering with other players much more than others. Several of you have mentioned that shorter games that encourage mean moves are more palatable (6 nimmt! and The Estates both do not have long play times) or games that have confrontation as the basic premise like many 2 player games (except Arler Erde).
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I always bring up Anomia as the antidote to CAH.
- People laugh harder with Anomia than Cards
- Cards is about passively passing someone else’s “jokes” around the table (quotation marks of critical importance here). People get away with it because they are not inserting themselves into the game. Anomia brings you yourself to the table - the game only holds what you bring into it.
The card just says “Body Part.” If you end up shouting penis, that’s on you. And that’s going to be something you and your friends laugh about for years.
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I think there is an element of knocking down sandcastles that comes with the time investment too. Smaller games generally don’t create a sense of grand plans. In arboretum if someone steals my points fine. But if someone steals my last beer barrel/port in brass that I was saving for the past 8 turns then it can be a bit more frustrating.
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I agree. One of the critical components of a game being “mean” in my estimation is how long the game is and how much effort is involved in the mean act and recovering from the mean act.
If I spent 45 minutes building up a thing and you happen to top-deck a mean card that completely undoes my 45 minutes of build-up – that’s a mean game (and a game I likely wouldn’t play).
But if I had been building up a thing for 45 minutes and you had been building up your mean act for the same amount of time as a counter to my a thing, then that’s more palatable.
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The my effort, your mean effort circles of the Venn diagram. And where they meet, “a fine move”.
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I’ll stick with the OP’s definition of meanness, with my own assumptions. Games that allows them to be confrontational or ruthless against other players through the use of the game’s mechanisms. So, for example, this counts out trash talking in a game of Champions of the Wild. While the game tells you to discussion why the grasshopper is better suited, selecting the grasshopper to compete on a marathon itself isn’t a mean act.
Some games are mean because they allow that behaviour among players, but other games are mean because they have some “filters” in their system where only less than X can pass these filters. If you didn’t made it, then you’ll lag behind. So tight worker placements like Agricola or In the Year of the Dragon are like this.
Does all interaction count as being mean then?
No. Some are positive. Also, I find that “meanness” is relative in which some people find TTR or Terra Mystica mean, in which I say “No. They aren’t”
I’ll stick to unmentioned games.
Intrigue by Stefan Dorra is easily an excellent candidate for this. If you think Diplomacy and Game of Thrones is too long for you, this one is a compact version of a filler game. It is rage-quit inducing to some people, but it is still fun as alliance and backstabbing happens right from the get-go. You got backstabbed by Player B? Frustrating but doesn’t ruin your game, as you were planning to do the same to Player C anyway.
Dominant Species gives you a lot of tools to screw over people. The competition action is to kill X number of opposing cubes. The glaciation action expands the glacier and kills all animals except 1 for each player on that hex, and basically nukes that hex’s scoreboard. You can remove food source which can starve other animals. Event cards that are take-that, but there’s many to choose from and can only be access by the last action.
Santiago - I’m sure you can find this in Germany. A game of making proposals laced with bribery and the active player making choices which of these proposals will be accepted and who will benefit and who will get screwed (yourself is included in this equation). No take-thats. Simple rules.
Panamax -
“Evergreen, can you move, please? You’re blocking the canal”
“No.”
No one have mentioned El Grande yet! It is now mentioned
Vanuatu Only played it once, but the action selection is tense. You place your tokens on an array of action tokens, but you can only use it if you have the most tokens. You remove when you use it. And you have to take an action when it is your turn.
Expect people squatting on action places because they aren’t in a hurry to do them
Evolution - a card game of building up your species with traits, which also allows them to be carnivores and eat other players’ species
Trias - shifting tectonic plates and your cute little dinos have to swim to shore or drown in an area majority contests on various forming continents
Condottiere - mean due to it being a bidding card game. I found that there’s enough randomness with the card draw, but letting the big shots spend their hand on a big battle while you win the small ones is always satisfying. Only play this with the classic rules. The modern rules makes snowballing more likely.
Stephensons Rocket - strange thing in this game is that it creates angst when a player doesn’t want to participate on a positive-sum arrangement, mainly due to how tight each move is. Yes. You all predict that you’ll probably benefit more with that move than them and they are simply acting in their own interests, but how dare they!
Yunnan - typical “meanness” that is inherent on auction games, but adding the logistics element here where players can manipulate where the taxman will land on the Silk Road based on their number of pieces there, and then tax the players
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“Khan of Khans” is a great mean game. You are trying to get cattle, and you can rob each other. You only get so many opportunities to stash your gains, so it’s a matter of pushing your luck and seeing what you can accumulate while your opponents lose stuff. I have had some terrible games with the worst luck, and it’s been fun.
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A favourite “mean” game among my Friday online group is Papayoo. It’s a very silly trick-taking game that mostly involves avoiding winning tricks and trying to give your most horrible cards to everyone else.
It generally goes like this:
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Babel - a 2 player game co-designed by Uwe Rosenberg of all people. Two players build temples in Mesopotamian setting where you can employ armies to raze or steal temples from one another.
Hellapagos - a semi-coop game of leaving a deserted island together. The group will find that it’s impossible to feed 5 people every day AND have to have an extra set of food and water for 5 people to go on a your journey with 5 rafts to leave the island.
But then, the game doesn’t specify that you ALL have to leave together. Food and water are hard to come by and life is cheap.
Wlidlife Safari/Botswana/Thor/Quandry/and so on… - Oh I see you have loads of zebras in front of you, would it be a shame if someone plays a Zebra 0 to crash the value of all the zebras?
Spectaculum - Oh I see you have loads of purple circus performers. Would it be a shame if the purple circus went to a town with a plague?
Domaine - Mean as you can intimidate other players by aggressive expansion with your larger number of knights. It has take-that card where you can switch a knight from their side to your side.
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