King of the Hill

During International TableTop Day I had a chance to try out Illuminati at one of my good friend's recommendation. The game has some very cool and thematic mechanics. Plus the satire and crazy conspiracies you can create make it a very flavorful game. Unfortunately, the end game is a bit to reminiscent of another of Steve Jackson's games, Munchkin. Until the end, the game is rarely adversarial. As soon as one player is about to win, all the others dog pile him or her to prevent it. This happens to the next two or three people who try to win. The winner is decided then by being the first player to be in position when all the other players' have exhausted their resources. This creates a very frustrating and confrontational end game to otherwise light games.

I think this is a separate phenomenon than King Making, or a losing player making the deciding choice between two contenders for first. Games like Settlers of Catan have King Making. Often there will be a just two players with a good shot a winning. Then actions of the third or fourth player will ultimately determine who wins, either through trades or placement of the robber. These players can simply impede progress or aid in another player's progress, it is impossible for the King Makers to actually tear you down and remove points. In Munchkin, it is very likely that the efforts of the players will result in losing a level or completely wipe out the gear one acquired. Further, the efforts of all the players will be coordinated as most will stand a decent chance of winning if they tear down enough other players.

The best analogy that I have come up with is playing King of the Hill. The objective is simply to be the only one standing at the highest point of some hill or other terrain feature. The game is rough as people will physically push and throw each other down. You can even have multiple people team up to pull one person off the hill. Contrast this with King Making, which is more like a duke peddling influence to frustrate his least favored candidate.

The problem with King of the Hill environments in games is not the underlying analogy game. King of the Hill is a fine game and something like Smash Up implements it well. The problem is having this rough and tumble situation evolve at the end of a game. In Smash Up, you are told that it is a free for all to capture bases. But Munchkin wants to be a game about killing monsters in funny ways. It is purely an emergent result of player behavior that the game ends with King of the Hill. Essentially all the play until level 8 or 9 is set up for the final King of the Hill match. This is not explained by the rules nor generally expected by the players, which is where the game fall flat. That King of the Hill is not an intentional part of the design and isn't integrated into the flavor of the game breaks player expectations. Any game that does something counter to player expectations runs the risk of being frustrating. Especially if the violation of expectations happens in a very rough and tumble way.