Why I don't like 18XX

 There's a genre of game out there called 18XX... for those who don't know, 18XX is a series of games such as 1830: Railways and Robber Barons, or 1846: The Race for the Midwest. There are a million of them, and to be honest, I don't know the first thing about their pedigree, their history, which ones came out first vs which are newer, and frankly I don't know enough about them to even tell them apart. The genre is big though, and it has many hardcore fans - including some friends of mine, some people I've mentioned in this blog before, such as J.C. Lawrence (AKA clearclaw) or Eric Flood (AKA etothepi).

One way you can tell that the series has become a whole genre is by looking at the titles of similar games that are not named after a year, but follow the same nomenclature, such as 18MEX, or 18Chesapeake.

Games in this genre look like rail games, where you don't own any particular rail company -- rather you buy shares in the different companies, and you sometimes build rail or upgrade engines on behalf of the companies in an effort to increase the value of their stock, resulting in your earning dividends or your holdings increasing in value.

Another, similar stock manipulation game that I found myself not loving was the rondel game Imperial, by Mac Gerdts. In that game, you bought shares of countries, and when a country's turn came up the share leader would decide what to do. One thing to note about that game (and I think they changed the dynamic a little in Imperial 2030) was that if you did not control any countries, you basically did not take any turns - you could play a good portion of the game without even taking a turns, but still be in contention to win! I love rondels, but I found that dynamic odd.

One of my favorite games of all time, Railroad Tycoon (AKA Railways of the World), could be described similarly to the 18XX games above EXCEPT in that game (and Age of Steam/Steam) you DO own a rail company, and while you "issue shares" to get money to work with, you're issuing them to nameless, faceless NPCs, and they don't fluctuate in value at all, so they're nothing like the shares in an 18XX game.

So why is it that I love RRT/RotW but I can't bring myself to even look at any of the 18XX genre? Well, there might be a few reasons... 

1. 18XX tends to take a very long time to play - I prefer games in the 1-2 hour range
2. 18XX games tend to have low production values - this isn't a huge concern for me, but it is a small one
3. 18XX games have a lot of counting, calculating and passing money back and forth - this isn't a deal-breaker for me, but it is a lot of busywork
4. Owning a rail line vs owning shares of various rail lines - the big difference between RTT and 18XX. I think I like to build up and have ownership of my own stuff
5. Stock Manipulation as the main mechanism - this is probably the biggest reason I like RRT but dislike 18XX. I'm just not into stock games
6. The promise of a train game - I'll explain below

As I mentioned above, the biggest difference between the Railroad Tycoon family of games and the 18XX family is that one is a network building game, while the other is a stock manipulation game. Yes, you build rail networks in 18XX as a way of influencing the stock values, but the heart of the game is the stocks: influencing their value, timing your buys and sells, that type of thing. I guess I'm just much more interested in the network aspect and in delivering cubes, and I like having my own personal capacity to do that.

So that's probably enough reason to like or not like a genre of game -- if I don't enjoy the main mechanism, then it follows that I wouldn't want to play the game. But there's one more aspect to it that might twist the knife just a little bit...

The promise

I've actually seen a few posts around the blogosphere lately about promises. Andy just posted today in his Prototypical blog on BGG about the promise made by box art. Jeff Warrender posted last year in Jeff's World of Game Design (also on BGG) about this topic as well. I feel like I've seen the topic of promises come up on Board Game Twitter lately as well.

The general idea is that the box cover, art, theme, and setting of a game suggest a promise to the player of what kind of experience they can expect to have while playing. When gameplay doesn't live up to that promise, it degrades the overall experience - sometimes to the point where you're turned off to the game and just don't want to play it anymore.

Stock manipulation not a mechanism I'm particularly fond of, but it's not a deal-breaker on it's own. I like Acquire, for example, which is entirely a stock manipulation game about building and merging hotel chains. So while the difference in main mechanism certainly explains why I'd prefer Railroad Tycoon over an 18XX game, perhaps the reason I don't feel compelled to play 18XX at all is that to me, the "build a train network" trappings implies a promise to me, one that is fulfilled by games in the Railroad Tycoon family: I'll be building up a rail network in order to make deliveries. That said, the focus in 18XX games on stock manipulation rather than network building or delivering fails to deliver (haha) on that promise - from my point of view anyway.

So I think that's probably why I shy away from wanting to try an 18XX-style stock manipulation game with a train theme, even if it's a game (or genre) that I might actually enjoy, given a chance.