Tonight, I played a game of Roll Through the Ages: the Bronze Age with my wife (with the expansion rules). It was very clear she was ahead, as I had fifteen disasters, and she was churning out bonus points like no other and was about to finish a monument. However, I was able to use exactly enough workers to finish all the monuments left, thus ending the game before she further pulled ahead, and I ended up winning by a point. She was not happy. I thought that I myself was happy, but then realized I was not. The move felt cheap, even though I'd not done anything to intentionally mislead her or the game. I began to think a couple of other games where this has happened - Through the Desert, Ticket to Ride... and I realize that I strongly dislike user-controlled conditions for ending the game, and here's why.
1.) It becomes more difficult to formulate a strategy when you don't know how much time is left. Now, some games or more transparent than others (it is very obvious when your opponent can end the game in Through the Desert, and you can make a pretty good guess in Dominion), but for many of these games, you have little chance of knowing when your opponent can pull the "Game over!" trigger. If the point of playing these "advanced" board games is to exercise our skills in strategy, how can we do that if we are gambling on how long the game will be? If a game is meant to be a push-your-luck exercise, that's different. But strategy gamers often make a big deal out of minimizing luck in a game, and this is something that could be done differently. For example, I feel that Ticket to Ride and Roll Through the Ages could benefit from a set number of turns. I especially dislike that in Ticket to Ride, the person who denies everyone a further action gets to also have the last play of the game. On the flip side, even if the user-controlled ending isn't that bad, often I feel it could have been more with a set number of rounds - you can allow for more strategy when you can mentally allot your time (turns) as well as your resources.
2.) Game length is more random, and the game can become stale. Now I find myself thinking of the game Citadels, where the end-game can degenerate to abuse of the Assassin, Thief, and Warlord to keep the leaders down and away from building that eighth district. I'm more okay with it if each person's turn is going to advance the game state, or at least keep it from moving backwards - an example here would be Lost Cities: the Board Game. It's the same reason I usually shoo the robber away in Settlers of Catan when I roll a 7 - when the game is stuck in a rut, dragging it out just to eke out a chance of winning doesn't sound like a fun use of time. Certainly, like Citadels, any game where you can attack each other (Cyclades also comes to mind) can have the "bash the leader" problem: the game turns into making sure no one is winning, rather than focusing on winning yourself. Fortunately, Cyclades has a natural escalation that ensures that this cannot go on for too long. To a lesser extent, without attacks, Settlers of Catan has some of this problem - "Don't trade with her, she's got 9 points!"
3.) If it's user-controlled, it should be built into the mechanics. Out of all the games I've mentioned so far, the only game I can think of that depends on the user-controlled ending is Cyclades, as the goal of the game is to be the first to accomplish the task of building two metropolises. I'm not saying that a set number of rounds is always the best way to design a game, but if it seems that a user-controlled ending is better, then that should show up in the gameplay. The only other game above where that appears is Through the Desert, but I haven't worked through the game as a round-based game to decide which way is better. For every other game I've mentioned, the ending conditions feel somewhat arbitrary.
I'm not saying that having a set number of rounds is always the right solution (though it certainly often can be). I've played Magic: the Gathering more than any other game in my life (Dominion is probably now second), and Magic has an obvious user-controlled ending - kill the other person! However, that endgame is most definitely built into the mechanics, and how much "time is left" is measured as best as you can figure by your life total, and pushing your luck with your life total is most definitely meant to be a part of the game. Certainly the game can become stale when it reaches a.... stalemate... but that tends to simply make the comebacks that much more glorious.
I also feel like the "direction" of the endgame controls whether or not it feels natural. Specifically, when the end-game is triggered by the depletion of something tangible, it seems to make more sense in our head - whether it be a life total, or a hand of cards, or a pile of camels or provinces. In the cases where the game is an escalation of developments and points and routes and just a feeling of growth, stopping in the middle of the action doesn't make any sense psychologically. I'm sounding very negative about several games that I really like, but quite often at the end of Ticket to Ride or Roll Through the Ages, someone says "Wait, that's it?" and that's just not how the end of a game should feel.
-Derek
P.S. I'll be trying to update this more often, at least twice a week, maybe?.... No promises yet.
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