I once read an article somewhere about how he spent huge amounts of time thoroughly playtesting the entire game with his children. This is what made the game balanced and easy to grasp.
My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention.
You only come up with mechanics like this if you put in the time playtesting.
> My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention.
We've actually found this to be very off-putting. It often ends up with certain players remaining stuck in long droughts, often unable to do anything.
As a result, we tend to play with "welfare". Essentially, a secondary currency system that can be exchanged for any resource. Cost scales with the amount of victory points you have, so it becomes less valuable as you advanced closer to victory.
We've found this helps create a bit of balance and ensure that everyone has a chance to stay engaged.
This is indeed frustrating, and it's the reason that when I play with newer players I strongly recommend to them not to place their 2 initial settlements on the same numbers!
If you put those initial settlements on 2 intersections that happen to restrict you to only rolls of 3, 6, and 9 you're in for a world of hurt even though 6 and 9 aren't "bad" numbers per se.
I used to play a lot of Catan and loved the game but then stopped for a few years over COVID (while I played other games online). When I tried it again, that's when I noticed this "drought" problem more obviously. (But that's just a niggle in an otherwise great game!)
> We've actually found this to be very off-putting. It often ends up with certain players remaining stuck in long droughts, often unable to do anything.
same here. There were (online/zoom) games where I spent like 15~20 minutes on twitter, and just clicking 'roll' on my turn because I could never do anything
I prefer ticket-to-ride, where I can always buy a card or two, and always (after buying enough), put some trains on the board.
Interesting. I never considered this. Looked it up and found specific rules and an interesting discussion on BoardGameGeek. Well worth reading, especially if you are an advanced player:
It seems like if you have a good memory, you could be a lot more strategic with the robber when doing this (assuming you mean a deck of 36 cards, you know that a recently drawn "roll" won't come up until the next reshuffle).
While dice rolls follow predictable distribution, in aggregate, they do not do so in the micro environment. You can end up on droughts on "statistically common" numbers.
We've found this is further compounded by the fact that some resources will naturally end up with poor numbers on them. You might have a game where there's only one good "brick" hex, but two people have commandeered it. That resource becomes so valuable, that you can never acquire it.
While you can technically trade to the bank, the 7 rule means it's hard to acquire enough cards to make the trade.
It needs a unfair-fair dice, as is used for random in many games. True random can produce really unfair results, so in any game there is a counter in the background, counting "misses" and gives you a win every third or fourth dice roll. That way it feels more "fair".
Not just with his family. He actually wrote himself an AI with some 60 page Excel monster which could play the game quite well. I worked with him for a short time around end of the nineties and he was incredibly dedicated to his game. He experimented a lot with different game scenarios, for example there is a quite fun Catan card game out there. And he came up with a bunch of scenarios for the PC game we were doing back then. He was also was a super friendly, down to earth person who showed up at game fairs talking to his player base.
> My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention.
I find the variance here way too high. Coupled with being a long game, this essentially bums out a few of the players who end up missing out in resources in early or mid-game and then just stagnating and getting bored. When I'm forced to play the game, I've played by taking the average of a set of dice rolls (essentially shaping your result into a distribution that approaches normal as you have more rolls) but honestly I just don't bother playing Catan when given the choice.
I certainly credit Catan for being my cohort's gateway into the world of board games, a lifelong hobby, and for that Mr. Teuber has my eternal gratitude.
And here I thought _I_ was an elitest for looking down at the Parker Bros. catalog et al from the Catanian peaks. I guess maybe I'm not so sophisticated after all ;)
Not OP but I'm very fond of Bang!, the card based version not the dice version though. And now that I'm reading the Wikipedia page I'm seeing there's actually multiple options for playing online, which is great because all my friends hate it haha. Very cool. No sleep for me tonight :)
I love Carcassonne but I've found I like it even better if you add the house rule of having a hand of 3 tiles, which allows a bit more strategy and planning.
I’ve played both ways and while I liked the 3 tile hand initially, I found that I preferred the single tile variant, at least for Hunters and Gatherers,
Incidentally, boardgamearena supports both single-tile and three-tile hands,
Splendor. It's easy to teach but hard to master. Someone who has played a lot of Splendor will handily beat a noob. It has very little luck but enough luck through player ordering of choices that the game doesn't become a stale abstract where you have to memorize optimal strategies. The theme in the game makes a lot of sense and helps guide players' intuition on what actions they want to take.
If you are asking for possibly harder/more complex games, I would suggest Eldritch Horror (coop) or Dead Of Winter. For other great games that are still very newbie friendly: Ticket To Ride, Splendor, Azul, Imhotep (iirc).
All those you always have something to do, which is my main gripe with Catan, where some games can be A LOT of fun, and some others, you would rather be watching paint dry.
Thank you for the recs! I think I'll have to check out dead of winter.
I think after some reflection I know what you mean about the variance of "stuff to do" from game to game in Catan. We don't play much anymore, as I prefer asymmetry, but I have such fond memories of it, I was just curious.
I'm also not the person you were replying to, but I wanted to add: if you like Catan, it's definitely worth having a look at the modern board game ecosystem, because Catan kick-started a huge revolution in board game design that is only starting to slow down now.
Of the classic "gateway" games, I personally would recommend Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. The former is about collecting cards of the right colour in order to build rail lines across America (or Europe or various other countries), while hoping nobody else tries to get in your way. Carcassonne is a tile laying game where you're trying to build and claim features in a pastoral medieval landscape, which feels like it should be pleasant but can be brutal!
If you want to see how good board games can look, I personally really like Wingspan. It's a game of collecting birds, and includes a huge stack of cards, each of which is a different, beautifully illustrated bird with unique features that relate to the bird's real life traits. It's a bit more complicated than some of the other games here, but also very satisfying when you can figure out how to fit all your bird powers together and create something very powerful.
The other thing I'd recommend is not so much a game as a mechanic, and that's deck building games. The idea is that you start each game with a small deck of cards and play them. Playing the cards generally allows you to buy more cards which you then eventually shuffle into your deck, making your deck stronger over time. I really like these sorts of games because you have such a satisfying feeling of building up cards that work well together and then playing them in a single giant combo.
Dominion is the oldest, and probably the best example of deckbuilding, it's very simple conceptually, but it's very deep, and you can also play it for free online if you want to try it out. There's lots of other variations on this theme though, and I've heard good things about Clank! where you're simultaneously trying to build your deck and sneak through a dragon's lair. If you are a fan of Harry Potter, there's also a Harry Potter deckbuilding game where the players are working together rather than competing, which is really well tutorialised.
Speaking of cooperative games, this is another genre that I didn't really think about before getting into board games. There are a lot of games here depending on what you're into, but Pandemic is a good starting point: you're working together to cure four diseases that are infecting the globe, you need to simultaneously be clearing up infected regions, but also researching cures so you can win the game. It's fun, thematic, and very tense. Alternatively, if you like puzzles, card games, and tense silence, The Crew is a very simple trick-taking card game where you're working together with the other players, but you're not allowed to talk to each other, so the only way you can communicate is by the cards you put down. If you're used to card games, it'll click very quickly, but even if you aren't, the concept is fairly intuitive.
There are a whole bunch of other games that I want to mention but I've already written a long enough comment! I think the best way to get into board games is to try a few games out and see what works for you and what doesn't. There are people out there who exclusively play intense simulations of 1800s rail stock exchanges, and people who just want to place pretty tiles in the right places; there is really something for everyone! If you want more places to try out games, you can often play virtually with tools like Tabletop Simulator or Boardgame Arena, or sometimes there's a local library or board game group or game shop where you can try before you buy.
Oof, I am definitely an "eyes bigger than stomach" game hoarder. I think about 30 percent of my collection is still shrink wrapped and stored in garage bound totes.
The famous and much maligned, but actually good game, Monopoly of course has the characteristic that the best stuff happens to you on opponents' turns. It's a great characteristic for a lot of groups.
It's also a fairly rare characteristic despite two of the largest tabletop games
ever, Catan and Monopoly, having versions of it.
Machi Koro is an excellent more modern game with the same characteristic.
The game is very poorly balanced for current standards. If you choose the start location poorly you automatically lose.
Then due to the 'robber' mechanic you cannot follow any strategy, since you randomly lose resources.
To add more: trade is almost never worth it. I think some expansion introduced small currency coins to try to facilitate more trade.
After 2-3 hours the game ends since somoene managed to buy the cards that give victory points. This didnt happen due to any grand strategy, they were just lucky not to lose their resources to the robber.
Those cards are a built in timer.
Cathan could have been good in 1995, but now mechanically the game is very outdated and there are much better 'gateway' games. For example Carcassonne, which has very elegant mechanics.
Cathan has this problem that your decision options are very limited: trade is often worth it only for one side - so the common strategy is to never trade; then you cannot do any long term strategy, since if you try to accumulate resources you randomly lose them to the robber.
> If you choose the start location poorly you automatically lose.
Yes, if you play badly initially it effects your entire game and you'll probably lose but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that is true for a lot of games.
Catan is an excellent game; it's nicely balanced between luck, persuasion when it comes to trading, territorial maneuvering, resource acquisition, and so on …
Catan helped show me that board games had evolved beyond the games of my youth.
Went down a huge rabbit hole afterwards and most of my closest friends today I've met through game nights, and I've designed several games since that will eventually get out there (one is signed by a publisher but not yet released, hoping to get two more signed this year).
If not for that I'd probably still exclusively be working on video games in my spare time.
Thanks Klaus, for having such a massive influence on the hobby that the industry has had an incredible period of growth and many cool and interesting games that almost certainly wouldn't exist otherwise. RIP.
As I've gotten older I've had to pick and choose from time intensive hobbies I've collected over the years, and board games that rank on board game geek and - in the same way folks serious about their movies use 'film' - often get referred to not as board games but 'tabletop' are something I don't spend time with as much anymore (with real humans, digital editions have been nice). But I can still play Catan and get people to play with me.
Catan is game that scratches my game geek itch, but is fun and learnable by most people interested in a board game at a holiday. I am thankful for Catan. Thank you Klaus Teuber for bringing us Catan.
> board games that rank on board game geek and - in the same way folks serious about their movies use 'film' - often get referred to not as board games but 'tabletop'
There are lots of games that are "tabletop games" and not "board games," and not because anyone's being a snob.
Dominoes, cards, miniatures, for example. If you actually dig deeper into BGG than the links of new hotness, you can find many more types.
Also, anyone who's into Catan hasn't earned their snob status yet. ;-)
There are (unfortunately) at least two common connotations when it comes to “tabletop games”. One is what you’re saying, but the term is also used to specifically mean games like D&D (when using minis), Warhammer, and Battletech. Gloomhaven is one such game that rates highly on BGG and brings with it some controversy around what qualifies as a board game.
Thankfully this whole hobby is as strong as it ever has been, giving folks lots of options that suit their tastes.
Yeah, I agree with this. My family has historically played a lot of Catan, and considering most of them are economists the game has gradually degenerated into a dizzying array of complex financial instruments - options, futures, investments in other players, etc. etc. These were good for a laugh the first (or tenth) time but now it just chews up huge amounts of game time. Thankfully out-of-game stuff hasn't showed up yet.
The rules are pretty clear that you can only trade resource cards. When they say things like "However, you cannot give away cards, or trade matching resources (“trade” 3 ore for 1 ore, for example)" and "You cannot trade or give away development cards", it's pretty obvious what the intent is.
The Dominion designer Donald X. Vaccarino, also a Spiel des Jahres winner, had a memorable take on this:
In all games, within game contexts, you may only do things expressly allowed by the rules. This is what it means to have rules; it is the covenant you have agreed to by agreeing to play. You can play tic-tac-toe in a van while yodeling, but putting a Z in a box is out of the question. It is not up to any rulebook to say that you can't use a memory aid; rather it is up to the rulebook to specifically allow it, or else you can't use one. It doesn't matter how much the game for you is not about this memorization, how much the memory thing seems tangential to whatever fun the game provides; you do not get to use anything other than your brain to handle that memorization, unless of course you are explicitly playing a variant. You also do not get to - and this is important - scrawl notes to yourself on your belly using your own blood. Games between players are played between players, and "players" do not by default include notebooks or pencils, even makeshift ones that are constructed from the players. Expecting all rulebooks to repeat this is nonsense, and anyway would offend people who don't like to talk about blood.
Go explain to little Sally that she can't count on her fingers, because only her brain is allowed. Go tell players that they shouldn't fiddle with meeps because that could be a notation tool. No fun allowed, we're playing board games here.
My group were very casual gamers and I destroyed the group by making a hail-mary trade.
It was my turn and it was clear that one person would win this round if no one won before him. So I made a hail-mary trade with someone else that gave me the slightest chance of winning, but it failed to do so. And of course, that person I made the trade with ended up winning because of my trade. We never played again.
Player expectations affect emotions after a game. Kingmaking is very annoying to people who expect consistent somewhat rational play from every player in a game like Settlers. Those same people would probably expect to be backstabbed and thwarted in Dip so much ruder moves would be acceptable.
This is why I no longer play it -- it also suffers from a severe kingmaker problem. But like others have noted, for me, Settlers was sort of a gateway game that led me into wider world of eurogames and many years of enjoyment & camaraderie with my gaming group.
Road placement can knock one or two players out in the first round or two, on random boards with unfortunate initial placement and four players. Probably the weakest thing about the game—sometimes you pick the best spots available at placement, but are effectively doomed from the start unless other players screw up really badly, and it's that extremely bad kind of losing-early where you're technically still playing but also can't do much. Like, if you want to make other people's experience as bad as yours, you can just give resources to someone to play kingmaker rather than futilely trying to build stuff, which is surely more entertaining than doing nothing, but is also not exactly a positive kind of entertainment.
Playing with three mostly fixes it, but then there are fewer people to trade with. Using a set, balanced board layout can help, but IMO gets kinda boring.
My family tends to play with the 5-6 player expansion with only four players, which I think tends to mitigate your mentioned issue somewhat; on the other hand, having that much space also leads to a lot of 'solo play', where you don't need to trade as much as everyone can generally get the resources they need and you're just waiting for the resources. The expansion-with-four-players certainly feels less cut-throat/competitive, for good or bad.
I generally see experienced players manage to at least scrape out a mediocre starting spot, no matter how bad their turn is. But new players can pick a bad spot, which is like the worst possibility because it leads to a bad first experience for someone who doesn’t even know how to mitigate it or why their pick was bad (I mean you try to coach them but sometimes people don’t listen, etc).
It's a bit of fun to see the losing position early and become a nuisance. I can't normally role play or act, but catch me knowing I have no recovery in Catan...
My favorite style of play is to dedicate the entire game to screwing over the one player that has no sense humor. Even at the expense of actually winning the game.
The reactions to doing moves that only hurt them, which otherwise have no personal gain and often cost you future opportunity, are absolutely priceless.
Cities & Knights is pretty good too, quite more dynamic, and can combine with Seafarers.
Playing with Helpers also modifies the game enough to try more strategies if you are stuck. The "Marianne" helper, for example, can really be a saving grace during a sequence of bad rolls for you.
Cities & Knights makes the game richer, absolutely recommended for advanced board game players. I heard that this was actually the original game as he designed it, but the publisher requested a more beginner friendly version, leading to the base game as we know it.
All other things being equal, the optimal placement of the robber is to impact the person on your right. This makes it longer before the person can retaliate against you (if retaliation is part of the way people play).
Sometimes a player is just way better placed than anyone else; particularly on a randomized map. Last night my wife was in this situation in a 3-player game and my daughter and I both just toggled the robber between her two best hexes. Ended in a 10-9-8 score (where the 9 could have won earlier had they noticed they could take longest-road rather than building a settlement with the right combination of 3:1 trades).
Catan is the game that got me into modern board games 20 years ago. Following board game nights made me meet people who are still close friends today and introduced me to the mother of my children.
My life would have been so different without Mr Teuber creations. Thank you and reset in peace.
Years ago, one of my first wood working projects was a custom Catan board. I used a router and carved every hex myself. I used a wood burning tool for all the symbols.
Settlers of Catan is the perfect "bridge game" - accessible enough to people who are used to playing Monopoly, but complicated and fun enough that it gets people interested in more involved German-style board games.
Most board game aficionados end up not playing Catan very much, but it's hard to think of a game that has introduced more people to the genre successfully.
I'd consider myself pretty into board games. My family played them (and card games) regularly when I growing up. And it's now something I do with friends regularly (and still with family). But I have a strong preference for games in this "bridge" category. Games that are interesting and have an element of strategy but
- take 30-90 minutes on average, not hours or days
- have a relatively simple set of rules without too many special cases
I'd suggest that the super complicated/involved are just one niche that some people are into. And much like books or movies, different people are different things.
I quit BGG years ago over how dysfunctional it was as a forum (acting like a non-profit with fundraisers but actually being for profit, aggravating gamification, hiding "negativity" while promoting praise of themselves to the front page). But looking at their list, it seems it has veered even more away from elegant German style games of the type Catan kicked off, and towards things only a comic book shop nerd could like.
Took the words out of my mouth. I love complex boardgames taking hours (twilight imperium is probably my favorite), but I can play settlers. My parents like games with few rules (not necessarily simple ones), but they also can do settlers, so that is where the family meets.
More’s the pity, IMO. I really like Catan, but I’m not really interested in becoming a board game hipster and learning a new board game every time I play.
I'm what most would probably consider a hardcore gamer or a "board game hipster", sitting here with 70 or so board games on my shelf. (IMO I'm not really that hardcore or hipstery about it for many reasons. It's all relative in the end.)
I like long complex games that make Catan look like Go Fish.
I have played regularly with a group of friends for years now both in person and online. They're slightly less hardcore.
Catan is one of the games we constantly have running turn based. It never gets old.
It's the perfect balance of strategy, luck, complexity, and fun.
You're probably looking at the 8-10 year old range to truly understand the rules and begin to pick up strategy enough to play on their own. There is not much that is truly _secret_ in Catan, so it's an easy one where Dad/Mom can help guide the decision making. You could also very easily simplify the game - take out resource cards, take out bonuses for longest road / largest army, and reduce the winning VP to 5, then it's only about building settlements/cities and roads, and friendly trading.
There is even a junior version that says it is for ages 6+. I admittedly have never played it but have heard that it can work for some smart 4 year olds with a little guidance.
I came here to say exactly this. I don't know anything about the man except that he brought a good deal of tangible joy into my life and the lives of many many others. As far as epitaphs go, you can't ask for much better than that.
RIP. Settlers Of Catan and Uwe Rosenberg's Bohnanza were my intro to boardgames beyond Monopoly. I always hated Monopoly, and all board games by extension. Thanks to Catan and Bohnanza I discovered that board games didn't have to be bad/boring.
Implementing Bohnanza was the main project of the advanced programming class at my Uni. Was really fun, we were allowed to pick any programming language and had to incorporate one or more of the "advanced" techniques the professor taught. I picked CoffeeScript and aspect oriented programming and it was so much fun. Still one of my best programming experiences. AOP lends itself perfectly to boardgames.
Bohnanza is a quite remarkable game. Ruthlessly mathematical in a way that you don't need to process to play and have fun. (I like it. But I don't like to play too often or it starts to feel like work. )
Catan was my intro to modern board games. I haven't played it in 15 years or so, but it is the reason I now have nearly 400 boardgames. I prefer many other games over it now, but it will always have a fond place in my heart.
My best friends are those I play catan with regularly. There is no other game so enjoyable, which can inspire such anger towards friends for their transgressions, yet allow such easy forgiveness. Rest in peace, Klaus.
RIP, this man's creation helped me and my friends make many boring evening better. Also lead to arguments but that's okay, was part of the fun. He really left a huge legacy.
Catan, and the many other games made possible after it's success, have brought me a lot of happiness over the years. I'm thankful for the life and work of Mr. Teuber.
Responsible for millions of divorces and vendettas everywhere.
I stopped playing Catan and switched to cooperative euro games after realizing that the way I play Catan (threatening, holding grudges, taking revenge, creating chaos...) is not how everybody else plays or wants to play. I play to win whatever the cost, but after having strong arguments with my friends and loved ones I decided to just stop playing.
Unfortunately in German only. A superb „OMR“ podcast episode with Klaus and his son as guests talking about past, present and future as well as some insights.
In the 90s when "Die Siedler" was released, we played it until we literally dropped due to exhaustion. :) It is still so much fun. Settlers is one of the all time classics which I guess will still be played in a 100 years.
If anyone in Tokyo is looking for a board game player, ping me. I live near Ueno. Played Diplomacy and D&D in my youth. Would love to start playing again.
I strongly suggest trying boardgamearena.com (together with Discord, Zoom or whatever for voice).
I am a GM for a long lasting, weekly online RPG campaign, and when one of the other players is not available we usually "meet" anyway and just play one of the dozens games available there.
The Elasunders encounter a large flock of white ravens, which they ecstatically interpret as a good omen from the god Odin. The white ravens evoke their well-known Legend of Catan, leading them to believe that Catan is the shore they now walk upon.
Shortly after landing, Candamir's slave-girl Gunda bears him his first-born child, Nils, whom he names after his sister Asta's deceased husband.
... Osmund and Candamir both are attracted to Siglind, but she has devoted herself to the Christian God. Osmund proposes marriage to her, but she refuses, saying she has sworn off all men.
Osmund instead marries Inga, a 13-year-old girl. Brigitta, Osmund's grandmother-in-law from his first marriage, deems them anointed and secretly prophesies to them that their firstborn will be king of Catan. Furthermore, Inga is to one day take Brigitta's place as the priestess of their religion, while Osmund will be ruler of the island.
Absolutely not. The trading is the whole point. You talk to each other, you negotiate, it's interactive. Sure it means the same person always wins, but it's the interaction that keeps it alive.
It's a difficult issue because I think the trading is also the core of what makes the game interesting; it's hard to force players to cooperate with their competitors while avoiding the kingmaker issue.
I played another game fairly recently where people could negotiate trades for resources. Also a mistake in game design. I want to say it was Moonrakers?
You can make a deal with another losing player to maximize your chances of winning. On the next dice roll, seven or above you trade all your cards for one, and vice versa. However, all contracts are nonbinding in Catan so it never works out
My favorite mechanic is the way each dice roll potentially gives everyone at the table some sort of payoff. This keeps everyone at the table engaged and paying attention.
You only come up with mechanics like this if you put in the time playtesting.
[*] RIP