Is Betreyal good to begin with? Never played it

I'm more interested in upcoming FFG exploration game. "Discoveries", or something

@Rainbolt That's a cool tool, but the "solved" part of chess is problematic IMO. What's the fun if you play not by your judgement, but instead just go through memorised motions?

Why not just play Fisherandom (aka Chess-960) instead?

yah I have enjoyed it a lot as every game is different

not only is the game board different every time as it is randomly discovered as you play the game but what happens itself is different as there are 50 different haunts (when the game actually starts) and those are determined by the state of the board when they begin

haven't played the new one betrayal at baulders gate but seen it played and it looks good

@JoeW I like the idea of it, but I've heard that this game breaks about as often as it works, and that would be especially bad in legacy format.

@Deo What you do mean by breaks? I have never had any issues with the game when I have played it

@JoeW Basically it boils down to two things: unclear rules and unbalanced haunts.

@Deo Can you give some examples? As far as balance there are plenty of games out there where it is more in favor of one side over the other and in a game where it can be 4 on 1 the balance will not always be even

@JoeW And I thought the rules where fairly clear but every game has some unclear rules otherwise our site would have a lot less trafic

@Deo Memorizing opening lines is not "problematic". Maybe it's not fun for you, but I have just as much fun (if not more) playing the first 10 moves from memory and then thinking from that point on. I play 10 minute blitz, so the less time I spend on the opening, the more time I get to think later. So essentially I get to think just as much as everyone else, but where I spent that time is all that changes.

@Rainbolt Let me put it this way: I view chess as a game of strategy, and playing by memory hardly counts as strategy part, so it just takes away from "the main meal". YMMV.

@JoeW as I said, I don't have examples from personal experience, but it's not very hard to find some. I have experience with Eldritch Horror, another story-driven game with a lot of random elements, and all those unpredictable moving parts produce some bizzare, deadly or too easy situations. From the looks of it, it's even moreso in Betrayal.

Also, EH is a coop, occasional difficulty quirks doesn't bother me that much. But when playing against other person gaining random game-deciding advantage or disadvantage feels much more unfair.

I have played plenty of games where one side has a massive advantage and it is randomly decided who is on that side but it is still a good game

@JoeW Can you give some examples?

@Deo Yes, I will give some later but a bit busy currently

@Deo Did you understand my point about how once you make it through the well-known opening, the remainder of the game is strategy?

Also, have you ever been scholar's mated (mate in 4 moves)? If so, did you immediately forget it, or did you memorize the line? I bet you memorized it. Not many people will get scholar's mated repeatedly.

@Rainbolt Did you understand my point about why settle for remainder of the game if you can have the whole game as strategy?

Also, there is a difference between using your own experience and blindly following memorized moves.

@Deo I think you may be underestimating the role that the study of established openings plays in chess strategy

Like, in general, at all levels of play

@Deo You're right, there is a difference. One would take more than a lifetime to learn, and the other wouldn't. So if you want to be good at the game, you have to memorize.

I think what you meant to say is that you enjoy playing your way, and you don't enjoy playing my way. I can't argue with that. But if you're actually trying to say that my way of playing is less enjoyable for everyone, then I disagree.

Really a mixture of both is needed. Memorizing so you can spot things faster and understanding so you can counter better

More broadly, in games like chess, a lot of stuff like move evaluation and board position evaluation rely on pattern recognition, so being familiar with established moves and how they are used helps with that

@Deo Some games I would list are The Resistance/Avalon, Secret Hitler, Saboteur 1/2, Bang!, Fury of Dracula. Sorry that is just the list I have atm as some of the games I used to play at lunch at work I no longer have access to. But I would state that a lot of hidden role games are unbalanced for one side.

@murgatroid99 I don't have problem with studiying openings. But need to memorize them in order to play competitively is just unnecessary overhead.

@Deo Are you saying that it isn't necessary to study openings to play at a competitive level, or that it shouldn't be necessary?

@murgatroid99 For a pure strategic game it should be unnecessary. As is memorizing openings is clearly needed.

@Deo You seem to be talking about some kind of idealized scenario where humans are capable of processing arbitrarily large amounts of data in a short period of time

Or where you have an arbitrarily long time to evaluate every move

@murgatroid99 Why is that? If there is no opening history, each player makes moves just based on their own judgement. It doens't have to be perfect, but they strategise right away. Where's strategy in going through motions of memorized opening?

The strategy is choosing which opening to use

It's not like there's one opening and you just play the same several opening moves every time.

@murgatroid99 The one you know the best, clearly.

No, what I mean is that there are branches even when discussing openings

An opening move may be shared by several openings, and you choose which of those to follow based on what your opponent does

There're some decision points, but not that many. And if we speaking about just memorizing them, there are no real base for decisions either

You can memorize sequences of moves, but that doesn't mean that you can memorize every possible opening that your opponent can do. You still have to make judgments about which opening to follow

@JoeW All those rely on group dynamics and not that unbalanced (at least the ones I played). I'm talking about situations where all players have clear goals, but some of them just happen to have virtually zero chance at it.

@Deo Regarding your previous point, chess started out with no history of established openings. There is such a history now that people study because it strengthens your play. You can't put the genie back in the bottle and make that knowledge disappear.

Say, in Love Letter it's not rare that cards you get at some point result in 100% chance of you being elliminated from the round. But it's single round that lasts, like, 2 minutes. I can see people getting upset if something like that happens in hour long game.

@murgatroid99 But you can. Have you heard of Fisherandom chess?

I think I had seen that before. But that's just a different game. It doesn't change anything about chess itself

How is that a different game? Deterministic games being solved or partially solved with time is a known problem and fisherandom was designed to address exactly this issue without changing the game itself.

@Deo Well in some of the games I listed it is extremely hard for one side to win and most of the games end with the same side always winning

It has same rules, same pieces, same board. The only thing that's different is starting layout

and with betrayal the same haunt (which is where the game really starts) can play differently based on how the game ran prior to it being revealed

@Deo That makes it a different game

@murgatroid99 That's just semantics. Sort array of N elements or sort array of N+1 elements. Different tasks?

@JoeW From my experience, Resistance (vanilla) was pretty even. Saboteur 1 is biased towards diggers if they play as team, but it has incentive for them to play slefishly (which many groups overlook). And it's played over several rounds with shifting teams.

@Deo If someone says "I want to play chess", it's clear what they're referring to, and it's not that. You can call it a chess variant, or generalized chess, or whatever, but it's clearly not chess as most people understand it.

@JoeW That is exactly the issue. Same haunt can have wildly different conditions and they are often strongly favor one or another side. Where do we need to go? Oh, that room that we happen to be in already?

When we played sabatour we always played to either be the miner to get the gold or be next to the one who did so we go the most gold

@murgatroid99 It is not classic chess, but it is still as much chess as, say, playing etudes. If you know how to play one you'll know how to play another

As you describe it, classic chess are started to be played from some opening position selected mutually by both players.

@Deo I don't know what "etudes" is in this context

@murgatroid99 I guess "chess study" is correct english term. Some predetermined position that players start playing from. It's a type of chess puzzle/problems

From what I've seen, most puzzle things like that start with a position that is at least in principle reachable in a normal game, and asks the player how to continue. And they're basically a tool for studying mid-to-late-game strategy

@murgatroid99 Some positions in fisherandom are reachable from normal start. One of them IS the classic starting layout.

@Deo Really? There are only so many pieces you can move without touching the pawns

@murgatroid99 Okay, not many, but several positions are attainable. Do you need exact number? What is your point anyway?

My point is that there is a substantial difference between solving a puzzle that involves evaluating moves for a specific late-game position, and playing through an entire game with a different starting layout

How is that different? It takes same set of skills.

And that more broadly the well known concept of the game of chess contains embedded within its definition the classic opening layout

Look, let's talk about racing. You can have some specific track on which some prestigious championship is held, but you can race on many different tracks and it still will be racing. The process is the same. I don't care about specific track, I care about the process.

Chess doesn't need to either

But it does. If someone announces a chess tournament, you know what the starting board layout will be, even though they don't explicitly say it

It has a strong default option, that's all.

"strong default" is really understating it. It's just part of the definition of the game

When you calculate speed by default you use Newton's formulas, but they are actually subset of relativistic theory.

An approximation, actually, but I don't see the relevance

If you decide to play Fisherandom chess and happen to get classic chess position, would you be playing chess?

Sure. In one specific case, chess960 is equivalent to chess

Two cases, even. If you swap just the king and the queen it's functionally equivalent because the whole game has left-right symmetry

But it is not the same position! OMG! If you ask someone to play chess and do this, they will call you out because it's NOT CHESS!

Nevermind. I just value the process of playing chess more than specific layout. If you play with different layouts/situations, you learn the game. If you play with specific layout, you learn that specific layout.

If you play MtG draft it's still MtG.

Yes, it is. Because the definition of the game of Magic does not determine how the deck is built. And draft vs constructed are explicitly described as different formats of the game in the tournament rules.