Nothing too specific here.
Trading & Negotiation - do you like it, or want to like it, as a class of games?
What games have you played with this? Notable likes and dislikes?
This genre lends itself to some stories - any good anecdotes about things that went particularly well or poorly?
Bohnanza was the first of the type I played. I have more fond memories than recent plays though. But I still like it. Itâs easy and fun and value determination is not too hard.
Anecdote from just the other day, I am told by a younger friend: âMy uni friends donât really play any hobby games usually, they want to play Risk and Uno all the time. I got them to play Bohnanza and they always overpaid everything. I won easily, that sucked.â
I like negotiation games that are not too freestyle. For example Kyoto Protocol is too much. Itâs like with the blind bidding systems in auction games. I am just not comfortable having to very freely determine value for stuff. (We have not played QE, different genre but it exhibits the issue I think. Ra and Nidavellir are counter examples. I donât know enough negotiation games to have examples from that genre.) Also I think we may gave let the world be destroyed in our game.
I like games that have some negotiation options, especially those that allow for temporary partnerships⌠Cole Wehrle likes to include this kind of stuff in his games. But these games are hard to table for me and I realize I want to like them more than I do. I find all of them quite stressful to playâpractice would likely make me better at those.
I have two big unplayed games that feature the mechanism prominently:
I feel like both might get around some of the issue of free value determination in different ways. Sidereal by having so a) abstract resources and b) asymmetric values and Zoo Vadis by having coins that represent very small amounts (or so I feel from reading the rules).
And then there is Cosmic Encounter which failed so badly to work with my group that I know part of the problem of playing such games are the people I play with. Many of them prefer everything within some fix ruleset to exploit rather than anything that smells of having to be a little bit creative (weirdly this lumps in Dixit style games with this group).
I know to keep looking if I find a game with negotiation. No one in my group has said âwe hate thisâ, but games with it that weâve tried (Bohnanza/Zoo Vadis) have fallen flat.
I think that these types of games require a) a certain personality type that is a bit more extroverted than the average person at my table and b) a willingness to think on your feet and have fewer guard rails in the game. Again my friends (and possibly me) like those rules⌠and negotation by nature is less rule-bound.
I used to have some people at my table who would probably make those games sing⌠but they have moved away.
Certainly a part of games that I want to try more. I think I hardly have played any games with trade-negotiation that is not imposed by a rule.
Not much into negotiation games. Does âI split you chooseâ count as a sort of passive aggressive negotiation? I donât like that either.
my instinct is winning must create some counter balancing negativity which I donât really want to get on board with.
I donât know how this is different to drafting well though. Like if i create a hilarious doom situation in a drafting game (eg Azul)⌠I couldnât tell precisely you why this is more acceptable to me than winning a deal.
I used to dislike negotiation - I was in the camp of thinking that I was terrible at negotiation, negotiation skills werenât ones I wanted to develop, and that negotiation wasnât what I was after in boardgames.
Then I realised that all that was wrong, and negotiation is a good facet of boardgaming to explore, actually.
I still donât have many negotiation or trading games, just John Company 2e, I think. Oath features some significant negotiation, sometimes. But most games can feature some element of negotiation, and that has turned out to not be the bugbear I had thought it to be.
I enjoy negotiation in games, but I may enjoy it differently than others.
To me, itâs more about looking around at othersâ positions and finding the right inflection point to offer a trade that is mutually beneficial. The negotiation isnât itself the source of joy- itâs the fact that I found the right position and proposition.
Im always suspicious of anyone who finds a good deal for both of us.
I agree with this completely. I often wonder playing euros, which donât explicitly mention negotiation what game could be played if one started conversations about moves. Like in a worker placement game I think itâs possible to construct a bunch of turns to catch a leader, for example. Is this in the spirit of such a game? Or in something like spectacular if a person says âleave that for me and I wonât take this oneâ I think suddenly it morphs into something . In what is a largely solitaire looking game, you might have to breach some unsaid contract.
Thereâs a hardcore stance on this that goes along the lines of âallowing table talk turns all games into the same (negotiation) game,â which I used to think had some merit, but these days I think makes some mistaken assumptions: people are free to react to table talk in any way they like, and in a game without free negotiation, a playerâs reaction (or non-reaction) should be based on the board state, not whatever is said. The main time I think table talk needs significant moderation is when you have people playing that donât really understand the game yet (first time plays, etc.)
Collusion can fundamentally change a lot of games though, and some people understandably donât like that. Collusion doesnât actually require words though - with sufficient understanding of a game, you can collude entirely through in-game actions. I suppose thatâs something that many games design around.
For some reason I seem to enjoy trading and negotiation games. But I need those games to have trading or negotiation-only as the main mechanism. I find a lot of these games that does ââânegotiationâââ on the sidelines (e,g. Scythe, Rising Sun) to be extremely shallow in regards to these aspects.
A successful trading game has to have asymmetric values that should incentivise a trade between players. I mean, thatâs why people trading in real life, no? This is also why Empires failed so badly.
Not sure which ones youâre talking about. Because thatâs a weird position to take in a trading game. Often, a deal is a positive-sum that benefits A and Bâs position in relative to C, D, and E. The question then becomes about who do you want to advance with you and which one of you benefits more.
This is the bit that worries inexperienced traders though - the assumption is that the trade must benefit the other person more, or else why would they do it?
Of course, that assumption may be mistaken - in games that support it, working out a trading relationship, or being seen as a person willing to make generous trades, can have more value than the trade itself.
When I think of trading, first game that comes to mind is Catan, closely followed by Lords of Vegas and Chinatown. All pretty much require trading to function, unless you get lucky to the point everyone expects you are somehow cheating. Equitable trades are pretty easy to achieve, though sometimes one player can hold out for more if the trading partner is really desperate for the trade.
Negotiation brings to mind Diplomacy, which I have not played since high school, Zoo Vadis, and really any wargame involving more than two people that isnât team based. ZV is nothing but negotiation, really, as barring having a bunch of your pieces in one enclosure, you need other playersâ help to advance your pieces.
Diplomacy and other wargames always seem to involve negotiating agreements with neighbors to not cross certain boundaries or to team up to attack someone in a stronger position.
I am okay with both mechanisms in games, though feel I am not the best when it comes to negotiation.
I do feel like I am pretty good at timing when to break a treaty though! 
Sidereal Confluence obvs 
I also have Zoo Vadis on order, so weâll see how that goes.
I think I also prefer games where trading/negotiation is a fundamental mechanic rather than something optional. I think partly because Iâve played too many games where alliances between two players are allowed, but if you are the third person in a three player game it sucks to be shut out of that part of the game for the entire time (looking at you Rising Sun).
Theoretically, I donât object to negotiation in ânon-negotiationâ games but it does weirdly feel like breaking some kind of social contract. If everyone is on board it would probably add a lot to many games 
I think Bohnanza is the exception that proves the rule. We have great fun playing Bohnanza, but I canât think of a single other game focussed on trading or negotiation that I own, have played (apart from Settlers of Catan, once - it was ok I guess), or have any desire to play.
I am confident in saying I do not care for trading/negotiation games!
I donât mind them - I used to love Diplomacy when I was younger as I loved constructing fragile alliances and then figuring when the best time to break it wasâŚbefore they did!
But no-one else I play with (apart from some very experienced gamers, often playing games Iâve never played before so I AM suspicious that I canât see whether a trade is good or not for me) likes them at all so I very rarely get to play anything.
Wierdly, auction games (which have a similar thought process of working out the value of something to you and maybe to others) donât seem to have the same effect and High Society and Modern Art etc get played quite often.
Because a win is still a win. It advances you ahead of the other players. The objective of the game is to win the game, not to âbeatâ the trade partner on a deal. So, itâs about reading the state of the game. You donât want to be generous to the leading player(s), but you can let someone win more if they are trailing. Obviously, newbies can be forgiven for not reading the board state. Thatâs why repeated plays of games with opaque values is required.
My post was purely pointing out the why, not justifying it or saying it is correct in any way.
This is an odd one for me, because I like dealmaking but I am absolutely not a salesman, so I tend to enjoy such games if I play them with similarly introverted types, not so much if thereâs That Loud Guy (even though I may enjoy playing other games with him).
I think thereâs some correlation here with the difference between a traditional deal (we both end up better off than before) and the Trumpian style of deal where I browbeat or deceive you into accepting something unfavourable and thus win. There is probably a place for the latter outside the annals of psychopathy, but itâs not at my gaming table.
Iâve still like to try Sidereal Confluence some time! Iâve played Zoo Vadis with some of you and had a good time, though possibly I was just a useful sucker. 
Iâd have said the opposite: âI donât trust you, so I give you an incentive to make the split as even as possible.â I rather like it in Hanamikoji.
Even if this were true, Iâd hate to have to play in silence or with only permitted phrases.
Going completely meta for a second. Every game is a negotiation between players, whether explicit or implied.
As weâre onto explicit negotiation here, I like it as the central thing. Aa @lalunaverde says though, you need asymmetric positions to make it interesting, otherwise trading becomes too easily calculated.
Zoo Vadis does this through player powers, Bohnanza does it through your hand. I havenât had chance to play anything else but would love a chance at Sid Con