Topic of the Week: Modules

Boardgames
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bump/resurrect

Do you have any games with a collection of modules?

What delineates a module from an expansion or variant? Heck, I don’t exactly know.

I think what it’s not is a good start – not “more content” (maps, cards, factions). And not just a rules variant, there’s got to be something physically new going on. And there’s a proportion thing, where the adjustment to the game is minor compared to the meat of the base experience, but on the other hand the number of mix-and-match options are higher than an expansion. Lastly, they always come in packs. I think modules allow you to mix and match.

But draw the line wherever you like.

  1. How do you feel about this pot-pourri approach to game design? Is it the generosity of kings or laziness of designers to push their incomplete playtesting to us, who now have to find the best way to play?
  2. What module-laced games do you have in your collection? Does it make you eager to dabble and explore?
  3. Any notable successes or combinations? Any abominations? Who wore it best?
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Just as an aide in definition, this is what I have that I’d include:

  • Castles of Burgundy (all the mini expansions)
  • Grand Austria Hotel Let’s Waltz
  • Ladies of Troyes
  • Seasons of Inis
  • Heat (comes with all the core modes of play)
  • Carson City Big Box
  • Carcassonne expansions
  • Manhattan Project Energy Empire new edition (includes Cold War and some new modes)
  • Evacuation
  • Most anything from Level99 (Empyreal, BattleCon, Argent…)
  • La Granja Deluxe
  • Honey Buzz Fall Flavors
  • First Rat has several options for play

But there’s a bunch of edge cases that I just don’t know. The two Village expansions feel module-y? All the original Dune: Imperium expansions as a collection? MLEM Space Agency with the UFO and the secret objectives? You decide.

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My short answer:
I tend to ignore modules and later find out that I never played the actual “complete” experience.

Examples:

  • Bärenpark says the contracts are “optional”. I never played with the module before deciding the game was pretty boring.
  • Tranquility the Ascent has a bunch of modules included. Since I don’t play the game regularly, I keep forgetting the module rules (and not just those) and when relearning I am too lazy to use the modules even though I remember from my first plays that the goats module is pretty neat.

On the other hand I am an expansion completionist. But that’s mostly for collector’s purposes and many expansions I own suffer the same fate as modules. But expansions are (normally at least) really optional.

Games that fail to deliver a complete experience with the base game without expansions or modules… are more often than not going to land on the sell pile.

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I tend to feel that I want at most two game modes: “the best way to play”, which should be with everything, and “the simplified game for new players”, which I’ll end up playing more often than I’d like to.

Firefly had a lot of expansions (two map expansions, three with new ships, etc.) but I honestly think the best way to play is still with everything, even for a new player. (That was one of the original inspirations for my rulebook project.)

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I had an early success story in my gaming exploration. Within my, likely, first dozen purchases, I bought the Alhambra Big Box, and my partner and I spent quite a bit of time exploring the different modules it contained. I think we both eventually came to roughly agree on which modules to play with.

This early success set me up for… failure. Because as my collection grew, I was quick to buy “modular” expansions for games, only to find that I never truly had time to explore them. Perhaps the closest I got was Istanbul, because we did explore the expansions a bit, both independently and all combined (with the mega-sized board, if I recall)

In general, I like the concept of being able to tweak a game session with minor changes that break up groupthink and, perhaps, mix up the “value” of resources to create interesting new decisions rather than relying on established strategies.

However, I do think with module-heavy games, the problem of “there are dozens if not hundreds of ‘games’ here, which is ‘the best?’” is very real and troubling. If I play a game once and I don’t care for it… what is going to drive me to try another permutation of the modules? What if the game isn’t interesting without adding modules in? (see Anacrhony)

Clinic Deluxe may be the most module-heavy option I have in my collection. I have several expansions, which mostly consist of boolean modules. No, not everything is balanced. Every permutation of which modules you include change the game.

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I like expansions that have a bunch of modules. I particularly like them when they are released later than the base game. If a game comes with modules I’m less inclined as that annoys me trying to have to work out the best way to play.

Santa Maria was a game I quite enjoyed and got the expansion around 10 games in. Being able to add different modules was nice to break us out of tried and true strategies for a bit and varying it each time with different modules and combos. It adds some fun exploration again ahead of minute refinement.

Teotihuacan’s expansion approach is the same and I like it there too and same with La Granja Deluxe post owning years of La Granja. I think for euros which are quite puzzley they benefit but something more player driven they aren’t as needed if player choices have bigger l effects to change how you’d play.

It does make me wonder though if I’d count Roads and Boats maps as modules? They are scenarios but could I draw a meaningful enough equivalence?

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@yashima Yeah, absolutely. And that is my thought on how sometimes modules seem to be a way for designers to toss final playtesting over the fence and hope we’ll deal with it.

Viticulture would be a marquee example - panned game, Tuscany module expansion, BGG reacts, Stonemeier bundles several Tuscany modules into the base game and re-releases as Essential Edition.

On Barenpark I almost did the same as you - and I really wish they’d put the best version of the game as the version of the game, with a family variant to exclude goals. Barenpark IMHO also needed some thought put into the 2p experience, just like Blue Lagoon could be made much better with official rules for dummy colors on islands when playing at 2.

Evacuation, for me, also got a black mark for this. There’s the game, and then there’s like 5 variants at the back, significant enough to feel like modules. Different scoring, and using the front (individual) or back (generic universal) side of action cards. I was fortunate to stumble on an excellent combination of options for my last play of it before selling - which wasn’t enough to stop the sale but wildly changed the game’s spot in my headcanon.

Maybe I’m just not the target market, or maybe they got the target market wrong - in either case deliberately packaging the game for someone wanting something different than me. But I don’t like it when a box feels like the final design came with an “I dunno.”

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The game that pops out most to me is Taverns of Tiefenthal. There’s essentially an introduction game which is very basic, then they add on one module, then another, then another, until you are playing the full game. The expansion continues this modularity with (I think) three more modules. What’s nice is that despite it being the “full game” you can still omit certain modules if you want to and still have an enjoyable game. So far we’ve really only adopted the sommelier/wine cellar module from the expansion, but it’s the easiest to implement, so I don’t need to spend much time refreshing myself on the rules for it when we play.

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I need to check my shelf when i get home, but FCM comes to mind with its modules and I have written my thoughts in the FCM thread

Not necessarily. A designer can be lazy with a “full experience” expansion.

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My policy on expansions still stand with modules, if i cant add these modules in with newbies, I wont bother with those.

Overall, Im fine with modules. Got forbid I have to play Kemet 1 with the Priest track. Absolutely awful module that poisons the rest of what could have been a perfect Ta-Seti expansion.

  • Inis - full fat Inis. The Seasons and Nemeds modules are small bits but are nice tools for you to play with
  • Innovation Ultimate - this one was a series of expansions so not necesaarily module-based. I’d like to have a game that have all 4e expansions!
  • Puerto Rico - only the two buildings expansions were the only ones I’d like to play. The others Im just meh at the moment
  • High Frontier 4 All - Module 0, 1, and 2 are the ones I have played and will say the “complete” experience. 3 and onwards are too much but might change my mind on them. Still keen to try them, the Economy module in particular.

Chicago Express

  • Erie Company - only at high player count. The player who took the Erie basically take themselves out of the alliance play thats going on.
  • Narrow Gauge - I like it. Very situational, like 10%-20% chance of being useful
  • Nickel Plate Road - simple module, basically a gamble on when you think the game is going to end
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An adjacent consideration: Furnace, in which you can either resolve the cards of your engine in whatever order you like or insert new ones as you like but resolve them strictly in order. (Obviously everyone has to use the same rules, since the latter is lower-scoring.) I feel the designers should pick one to be the standard game and allow the other as a variant.

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And then he did it again! Bordeaux expansion adds “you get two wine and grape cards face up all the time because we realised face-down made for terrible gameplay” and “you start with money and 2/3 of your fields already sold because we realised it’s a mandatory 1st-turn action otherwise”.

Literally fixing gameplay issues. That said, I like the fixes and am glad they made them, and won’t play it any other way from now on.

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I heard a lot of people say, when A Feast For Odin: The Norwegians came out, that it made the game so much better they wondered how they’d enjoyed the original.

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I feel like we’re steering towards a different conversation altogether! Expansions that fixed or made-complete their base game, a la Branch & Claw was in the original Spirit Island design but was split out as an expansion on purpose (which, in this case, works just fine because it means without B&C, it’s the “intro” variant that likely would have been in the rulebook anyway).

I’m also reminded of the recent Northstar Games Nature (because I just got an email about a promotion for a free module if you buy the base game from their site right now). Evolution is a great game, but I feel like they stripped out a bunch of the interesting bits for the Nature base game, and now you would need to add in additional modules to get back to something really interesting.

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They have now publicly owned “veterans of Oceans or Evolution, or any habitual gamers, are finding base Nature boring and repetitive. Feel free to proceed directly to the modules.” Base Nature is great for kids or classrooms where it’s being used as a teaching aide for nongamers, but maybe it needed one module to come with it. Hence this promotion…

That said, Crapuchettes and even some of us on here have enjoyed base alone, so I think if you stick with it you may find a cat-and-mouse struggle in the core game. I went to the modules, but I still wonder if expertise brings depth there in the minimal design.

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My issue is that I own Evolution and I’m hard pressed to spend more money just to get another box that does, approximately, what mine already does.

Looking closer at Amazon Rainforest, it appears to be the same traits that were in Evolution.

I mean, obviously, if I spend enough money on Nature, it’ll do more than my base-game Evolution. But for the moment, I have so little time for gaming, it’s just not a priority.

Maybe some day. I mean… Nature does have a solo mode and Evolution does not…

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Again, forking the discussion, but it’s all good.

I think Nature is like Essential Edition but better thought out. I never liked Evolution. Others do. But Crapuchettes took all the criticisms to heart, separated the features from the bugs, pushed the features into modules so that people could opt in or opt out, and spent about 10 years debugging.

If Evolution is a game that you like and play, then you’re likely to want the upgrade at some point.

What it gets rid of, apart from the compartmentalization of “flavors,” is a) the card digging aspect, where you know what you want to do but the card draw won’t let you. Some games lean into this - pax games by showing you the market (near term available cards) before they come into play so you can play around the constraints. Schotten Totten by making the agony the game. Other games with enough tools that the puzzle is adapting to the constraints. I always felt that Evolution or games like Kahuna just missed this angle and left you to rarely be able to play the game you wanted to. Just… man, this round needs a predator. Don’t have a predator. Maybe next round…

b) The snowball. Evolution was often decided midgame. The wrong cards or a vicious enough setback and you couldn’t recover. This one does come down to taste. But I don’t want to lose a game halfway through because someone else drew the combo they needed and I didn’t. If I lose a game halfway through because I was outplayed… a lot of us here like those stakes. So far Nature doesn’t have that, but maybe a future module will bring back that level of brutality.

It’s been advertised pretty well, but the smaller core deck, the separate predator deck, and being able to choose what deck you draw from really give you reasonable control over your ecosystem. You don’t know which exact card you’ll get, but you can generally get something facing in the direction you need, and it’s up to you to use that specific flavor of defense or growth or whatnot effectively.

And here a bad play loses you the round but not the game - you get a chance to come back in the next round. This one still feels a bit fluffy to me, but I still feel like my plays matter. Population is so hard to come by, that starving or getting eaten still hurts enough to make the play worthwhile.

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I never really responded to my own topic.

I generally have a positive feeling toward modules. I like the feeling of options and extra innings, 20% more free, even if I don’t get to it. That said, it’s done well and done poorly.

La Granja came to mind first as a game that does it well. Core La Granja is great, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Principle 1: Modules are optional

Once you’ve sort of mastered a core experience, it’s nice to have something more to dive into. Another thing La Granja does well is offer a variety of modules clearly labeled with their function. Grand Markers focuses the game on the area control. Colchonera and Donkey Song put more focus on the siesta track. One module makes the game more interactive and cutthroat. Another gives each player asymmetric powers giving you a new engine optimization puzzle instead. This one maintains the core feel of the game. This one adds a whole new arena to worry about. This one makes the game harder, this one makes it easier.

The offering covers all the bases, and the options are clearly defined before you commit to learning one.

Principle 2: Modules allow you to tweak the game according to your mood/preferences and make it easy to do so

I think the last and obvious thing is just that they are fun. Not a marketing gimmick or an incompletely playtested option included “just in case.”

Principle 3: Modules are good (obvs).

The counterexample I listed is Evacuation. It comes with “variants” instead of modules. In the manual it’s organized as standard game and advanced rules. In the end, I found the standard game lacking (principle 1). I had to read the rules several times to get a feel for what each variant would do and then did trial and error on a few permutations to hit a target (principle 2). In the end I did find a version that I liked. So yes to principle 3. But this 1 of 3 scenario gives the “not quite playtested” feel - or we made a game and then did a rough dumbing down of it to make it more teachable, and ended up with a worse standard game for it.

Other games that, I think, do it really well are:

  • Honey Buzz
  • Carson City
  • Energy Empire
  • Empyreal
  • Heat (maybe less so as the modules feel mandatory…)

In all of those, the base game delivers, and tacking on a module feels like going to the closet and picking an outfit. What do I have, what do I want today, I’m spoiled for choice.

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